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View Full Version : STRATEGY: Training camp.


Ben E Lou
09-22-2011, 08:59 AM
If you're not gaming the system in training camp, then you're not being all you can be in FOF MP. A few pointers.

Training Room--Pretty straightforward. High-injury league? You want to increase this. Low-injury league? You can get away with lowering it a bit. (Never done less than an hour, so I don't know how deep this particular rabbit hole may go.)

Pass Plays, Defense, Run Plays--Again, pretty straightforward. Spend more time on what you need help in.

Special Teams-I'm convinced that this setting only significantly affects "fringe" plays such as blocked punts/kicks and bad holds/snaps. It has little or no impact on returns. I've been using 1 minute for ST for a while, and am consistently in the top half of my leagues in returns, return defense, punt distance, and FG%. In IHOF, where I have studs at P and K, I used one minute this current season. After 13 games...

My kicker is 24 for 25 on FGs, 10 for 11 from 40+, and 4 for 5 from 5+.
My kicker is in the top 4 in the league in touchbacks, TB%, avg. field position, and avg. kickoff distance
My punter is #3 in punt net and pct. inside the 20.In short, as I said above, if it's affecting this stuff, it's only very marginally. I do see an "increase" in miscues, but that merely means I maybe get 2 or 3 punts blocked per year instead of 0 or 1. Bah. (And I'm not even certain there's an increase in that stuff. That comment is mainly anecdotal. It could be that this setting is just broken.)

Film Room--Now THIS is where you can make some serious headway. If your QB is around what you think to be his max in formations, you can drop this all the way down to 1 minute with little/no consequences. In fact, I once had a QB *gain* a formation with only 1 minute spent. Usually, they just stay the same. (Obviously, if you have a young QB who needs to learn formations, you need to keep this where it is or even raise it.)

Team Functions--Increasing time spent on the touchy-feely stuff can help your cohesion significantly. If you've got the extra time, do it. And frankly, I would imagine this is more important than any individual pass/run/defense increase, since cohesion affects all position groups.

Firefly
09-22-2011, 10:07 AM
What amazes me is that just this morning while I was trying to meditate, an hour or two ago, I had an idea that I'd never even came close to considering: "I need extra minutes to learn formations so, what if I drop ST in camp all the way down to 0? It sounds like a great idea! I'll do just that"

Then I open FOFC and I find this...

Dutch
09-22-2011, 06:37 PM
I always assumed ST had a bigger impact on KR and PR rather than how well your K or P do. I used to run 2hrs of ST in IHOF and consistantly had very good or excellent KR and PR averages. Of course, since about 6.3, I don't think I could say that anymore...perhaps it's broken entirely now.

Ben E Lou
09-22-2011, 07:07 PM
I always assumed ST had a bigger impact on KR and PR rather than how well your K or P do. I used to run 2hrs of ST in IHOF and consistantly had very good or excellent KR and PR averages. Of course, since about 6.3, I don't think I could say that anymore...perhaps it's broken entirely now.A few thoughts...

1. I suppose it's possible that a positive is being applied to PR/KR for going over the standard times, but that little/no negative is being applied. I tend to doubt that, though. I suspect your case is more because...
2. You had guys with big red PR/KR bars and perhaps some other good ST guys. To be clear, I'm suggesting that PR/KR/ST bars matter for returns, and that TC doesn't matter that much.
3. I don't have any reason to believe that it's "broken entirely now" as in this is any different from the way it has always been. I don't think there have ever been patch notes indicating any change to how TC works. My guess is that this has worked this way going all the way back to FOF2K4, and it's just that no one tried putting in silly things like 1 minute for special teams until fairly recently.

gstelmack
09-23-2011, 07:21 AM
Film Room--Now THIS is where you can make some serious headway. If your QB is around what you think to be his max in formations, you can drop this all the way down to 1 minute with little/no consequences. In fact, I once had a QB *gain* a formation with only 1 minute spent. Usually, they just stay the same. (Obviously, if you have a young QB who needs to learn formations, you need to keep this where it is or even raise it.)

At one time (read: likely obsolete, may even have been from FOF2k4), I had a veteran QB LOSE formations across training camp when I dropped this down, thinking the same thing. Might have been a bug, might have been a freak occurrence, but since then I've been loathe to drop this TOO far.

Maybe I need to run some tests.

Ben E Lou
09-23-2011, 07:31 AM
At one time (read: likely obsolete, may even have been from FOF2k4), I had a veteran QB LOSE formations across training camp when I dropped this down, thinking the same thing. Might have been a bug, might have been a freak occurrence, but since then I've been loathe to drop this TOO far.

Maybe I need to run some tests.Oh, to be clear, they CAN lose formations when you do this. I've never had one lose more than one in a given year, and most often, they just stay the same. For me, having a guy drop from 15 to 14 just doesn't make enough difference to be any real risk.

scorp
09-26-2011, 04:20 PM
If you cut your film time by a significant amount to increase team functions. can your QB learn a new formation by having it in your gamplan all season?
Is the film room the only place a Qb can learn formations?

Dutch
09-26-2011, 04:56 PM
If you cut your film time by a significant amount to increase team functions. can your QB learn a new formation by having it in your gamplan all season?

That's never been documented.

Is the film room the only place a Qb can learn formations?

99.9% positive the only changes to formations happens after the TC stage is run.

aston217
09-26-2011, 05:16 PM
scorp, another thing is whether a formation is in your gameplan or not, the QB will never run it unless he knows it.

scorp
09-26-2011, 08:39 PM
scorp, another thing is whether a formation is in your gameplan or not, the QB will never run it unless he knows it.


Hmmm Very interesting I didn't know that. It changes some things then.