What does "playcalling" mean for your FOF coach?
 

If you create your own game plan, and (presumably) govern the style of plays that the team will call in various situations... what do we think that the "offensive playcalling" and "defensive playcalling" ratings for your head coach are used for?

Seems to me there are a few possibilities -- and there may be some hints in the game documentation that I'm not seeing at the moment -- but here's a non-exhaustive list:

- they govern the sort of gameplan you get if you ask for the staff to manage it (which is to say it means nothing if you do your own)

- they govern the team's adherence to the gameplan that is in place (a weaker coach will call more plays in a fashion unlike what you want)

- they determine the specific type of plays being called within the classes you decide via the gameplan and dice-rolling (your gameplan dictates short pass here, the coach decides what exact short pass play is called, and a better coach makes better choices here)


Any ideas?

I wonder if the game log notification that "The Defense seemed familiar with that play" is factored by these ratings somehow.

I was going to start a thread like this. I think it could be that a good coach at calling plays could effectively change the gameplan on the fly, as I've seen some calls made where in my gameplan it's set to happen at 0%.

I think the most likely thing though is that the coach playcalling attributes are universal modifiers to the offense and defense, respectively.

[quote=MrBigglesworth]I was going to start a thread like this. I think it could be that a good coach at calling plays could effectively change the gameplan on the fly, as I've seen some calls made where in my gameplan it's set to happen at 0%.QUOTE]

That does seem to happen. I mostly let my defensive coordinator call the defense. His defensive playcalling is 'good', yet he seems to have major difficulty realising that a team with a strong running game, winning by 13 points late in the game is not going to throw the ball on every down, despite my very clear gameplan for these situations.

I've always thought the answer was Option 3, though Option 2 would explain a lot of oddities in FOF. In the HFL, Miami has historically had trouble getting the ball to Reeves (pay attention if you're reading this, KeyWest), and it may be because of the coaches.

I've never tried to doing any testing, but this is what I've always thought.

You know? there is another possible answer that i wouldn't like at all, but possible:

- The "offensive playcalling" and "defensive playcalling" ratings are just an X factor to be applied to the dice roll when calculating the good/bad outcome of a play. Not having anything to do with how smart is the virtual coach choosing one play or another from the gameplan.

Why would that bug you? I kind of always figured this was how it worked. A good playcalling coach is better at the details: disguising the defensive coverage, shifting the offensive formation, etc.

The following from the help file seems to kill off option 2:

I've always thought it was the last one.

My thought was that it affected the opposing coaches ability to guess the play (pass/run) correctly. But I have no idea.

Yes, I've always assumed this was the answer.

More specifically, the range of possible outcomes for any given play is a column of numbers with the best for the offense (worst for the defense) being at the top of the column--that is 'high rolls.' The offensive coach rating is added to the die roll, while the defensive coach rating is subtracted.

There pretty much have to be 'result tables' in the game, and this concept would fit perfectly--much as it does in board war games, for example.

To follow the wargame analogy, there could be 'column shifts' instead of, or even in addition to, die roll modifications. An example would be an 'H' runner whose results are taken from column 'H'. This column averages out to (say) 3.5 yards per carry. Column shifts would raise or lower this column average by 0.1 per carry. All the other ratings in the game could be expressed as either die roll modifications or column shifts, with the defensive ratings further modifying the result.

The 'Second and Ten' series of replay games uses the column shift concept to adjust ratings at the beginning of the game, and the adjusted results columns are used for the individual game. That could be in FOF, too.

It could be that when Jim says a rating has a 'minor impact' it could be a +1 to die roll on a column with forty possible outcomes, for example.

I have no idea how it works, but know that the two ratings are darn important.

My question is why are they more important (or highlighted, at least) for the head coach than the coordinators?

I've always assumed the head coach calls the plays.

And my take has always been a combination of QS - choosing the 'right' play in a situation - and the +/- x to the result (disguised coverages, motion, etc).

That's what I'm assuming, too, based on skills highlighted in the staff information screen. I often wish my coordator's rating in their respective playcalling catagory made some impact, too. I have no idea whether it does or not. Seems like maybe it should. But ultimately, as in RL, the head coach has to answer for whatever plays are called anyway.

This topic came up again... and I just feel completely empty. I don't even see a real way to test this -- though I suppose one could create a rigid gameplan structure, and see how closely different coaches adhere to it. (I've had other slippery problems with gameplans in this sort of testing, so there might be some noise in there, regrettably)

Was hoping for more discussion here.

I think that a lot of us are stuck on the extreme difficulty of testing for this. I really, personally, have nothing to add. I try to get high ratings here when I can, but have no idea what effect it is having on my team.

I almost never have anything useful to add. :)

What do you mean, almost? :p

A little exchange recently at IHOF which might shed a bit of light here:




That sounds to me like your coach is ordinarily expected to vary from your directives in the gameplan, and his degree of skill might guide how good those deviations are. Interesting.

I'm not sure I understand. Is the coaching skill in reading the opponent's gameplan?

Thanks for sharing that, QuikSand. That's very useful information.

I'm not claiming I know anything. The relevant segment of the conversation is excerpted above.

One person (paraphrased here) says "but you're just stuck with whatever gameplan you submitted" and Jim responded "quality of coaching staff matters there" -- make whatever inferences you like from that exchange. I took it to mean that perhaps your coach (or staff) actually are expected to alter your gmaeplan based on the game situation -- and that presumably abetter coach will do a better job of this. That would be, if true, at least a partial answer to the question originally raised in this thread.

Just brainstorming here, but it could mean that your disadvantage when playing a run defense when the team passes is lessened with a coach with good playcalling.

I read that differently, Quik. What I *thought* Jim meant was that a good coach does a better job of altering gameplans to adjust to extreme gameplans by the opponent. I base that on VV's last comment of: I read Jim's response as specifically responding to VV's last few sentences, but I could be wrong. [Morgado]shurg[/Morgado]

One thought - does a better playcalling coach increase (or decrease) the odds of getting the "The defense looked very/extremely familiar with that play." event? That seems to be key to managing odd gameplans (for sake of noting, the Fort Worth - North Plainfield matchup where teams combined for 139 passes had 26 "very familiar" plays, exactly twice as many as any other game this season).

Highest amount of "familiar" plays:

26 - Fort Worth at North Plainfield, Week 8, 2011
18 - Outer Banks at Boulder, Week 6, 2007
14 - Fort Worth at Chesapeake, Exhibition, 2009
13 - Anaheim at San Luis Obispo, Week 11, 2011
13 - Vicksburg at Fairbanks, Week 16, 2009
13 - Springfield at Gothenburg, Exhibition, 2008

Are you pulling that data manually?

I think there is a direct correlation with that and the defensive playcalling rating for the coach.

I also feel now that in game, the offense picks a play (using the offensive playcalling rating it makes adjustments due to tendencies of defense in the game), then the defense picks a play (using the defensive playcalling rating) at guessing/stuffing the offensive play. Of course, purely a guess, but my exc. defensive playcalling this season seemed to get a lot of "familiar plays" in the second half, especially teams that ran or passed a lot.

As a follow up, you can see it in game, when you may pick a very, very high run expectancy on defense, but if the other teams decides to air it out, if you look at the logs, you will see that the defense will start playing the pass more. Or maybe I'm dreaming.

I think we're on the same page -- maybe you're right and the coach improvises inly in extreme situations, or maybe it's just a matter of degrees and happens to some extent all the time. Either way, it might be a partial answer to the original question posed here. I don't have any basis for saying authoritatvely, it just seemed worth adding here, since this thread really never got anywhere.

grep is a useful tool.

(so, yes)

Interesting discussion.

Just for clarification, my comment was in reference to teams drastically deviating from their previous game plans, and whether or not there was any type of in-game adjustment. For example, suppose you're playing a team that has been about 50/50 run/pass throughout the season, and the GM suddenly submits a game plan to throw the ball 99% of the time against your defense. In real-life, this foolhardy strategy would quickly be adjusted to, but my impression in FOF was that you're pretty much stuck with the defensive game plan that was submitted.

I've always thought that Playcalling improved the average outcome of your plays. So for example if a runningback games 4.50 yards/carry in a given situation with an average offensive playcalling coach, he might gain 4.75 with a very good offensive playcalling coach.

I think that my hypothesis is a lot easier to test than yours(that playcalling relates to staying true to the preset gameplan). Just hold as many factors as possible constant and then sim a few thousand game and graph the average outcome of pass plays and run plays on the y axis vs the coach rating on the x axis.

i always took a simpler approach to that rating - the coach will adhere exactly to your gameplan but its the actual calling of the individual plays where he plays a factor. what i mean by that is knowing where you have the advantage and where the defense has the disadvantage - say, you have a VG rated WR going up against a FAIR rated CB - i would expect my coach to stick to my gameplan but know to expoit that CB by calling my VG WR's number often. i would also say that his playcalling acts as a multiplier to the play outcome formula. your gameplan + opposition's expectation + your player's rating + opposition's player rating x coach's playcalling. i kinda looked at it as an "all things being equal, my coach's excellent playcalling should help decide the outcome in my favor in any given scenario".

this is the disadvantage of Jim not explaining his game in full. he's trying to encourage people finding things out on their own, but without saying how something is intended to be/work we don't even know if there are bugs or if something is broken. a lot of stuff in this game can be chalked up as filler, cuz if i don't know exactly how it works then it'll be something i just don't pay attention to. but that's just being nitpicky. i don't have any probs w/ FOF.