Yeah. they just went bot.. I was surprised, too...

My plan is to buy IM and/or wings and switch to passing training anyway for the rest of the season...

all my trainee forwards are or about to be magnificient.

Sweet! The Hattrick gods were with us yesterday, letting us counter to a 2-1 victory at the not-anymore series leaders to hop out of the relegation zone on goal difference. Still 1/3rd of the season to go, but it's good to see we finally got our first league victory of the season.

I ran a 5-4-1 for winger training purposes so we only beat one the weaker teams in my series 3-0.

But I am hoping that the series and auto-promotion does not come down to point differences anyway.

So I've managed to get a few interesting players into the Youth Academy now, and I'm wondering what my training rotation should look like. How do I best rotate training so that the guys I'm interested in reach their potential?

Here are the players I'm mostly interested in:

Leslie Johnson (15 years, 81 days)
???/Weak Defending
???/Passable Winger
???/Inadequate Passing
Weak/Inadequate Scoring

Ben Switzer (16 years 51 days)
Inadequate/Passable Defending
???/Weak Playmaking

Hugh Parrish (16 years 72 days)
???/Solid Keeper

Akash Gibson (16 years 75 days)
Inadequate/Solid Scoring
Weak/Weak Passing (not maxed yet)

Milton Cid (16 years 84 days)
Inadequate/??? Keeper
(just pulled him, scout says Weak all-rounder)

Luis Arellano (17 years, 26 days)
???/Passable Defending

Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to get any of the really interesting ones to Solid before they hit 17, but how do I maximize my potential return here?

I'm not very good with my youth squad. But I have noticed my best profits happen with solid 17.00 players and it's not even close. A passable guy or even solid guy at 17.70 is $50K or less but a pass/pass or solid 17.00 is $100K+.

Looking at what you have, I'd try to figure out what Hugh Parrish was this week. Train goalkeeping first and see if he's close to solid. Keepers still have some set value so even at 18, a solid keeper is worth- well, whatever a transfer compare shows you.

You can try to get Gibson up to solid scoring but he's going to be close to 18 and weak passing won't be the most attractive secondary.

Frankly, if not for the added fun of the youth academy, I would have ditched it a long time ago as it's not really profitable for me.

SI

Looks like the company that bought Hattrick is about to go splat. (ironically, about an interest payment due to the creators of Hattrick)

Zattikka struggles to meet loan payments | GamesIndustry International

We had a disappointing draw at home over the weekend, meaning we are back in second place on goal differential. I still think we win the league, but auto-promotion is most likely out of the question at this point. We play the second place team on the road the last game of the season, so I don't if we will be able to build up a good ToS or not.

Tonight we made a big leap towards relegation, losing 4-1 at the team that was below us. The good news is that we'll host the other team 1 point ahead of us in the last game. If we just manage a draw, we'll need the other rivals to lose by 3 goals to survive. It'll make for a rough last night of the season...

I'm in 2nd, down 4 points with 2 games to go. I have a match with the #1 team at their place this week and I'm MOTS'ing in the slim event to pass them up. I had a golden chance to make up points last week as they drew but I also drew while PIC'ing at home against a team I should have beaten. Still a huge long shot to win the series and have a chance to get back to II but not mathematically eliminated yet.

SI

Got thumped 4-2 and am locked into 2nd place

SI

Bummer SI :(

How long does it take for sponsors to get their panties out of a wad? I lost the two back-to-back matches at the turn against the #1 team in the series (the second being a close 1-0 match at home that we ended up with the better ratings), but have won every other match on the league table to the tune of a +61 goal differential. The sponsors are still at Irritated. I know they'll be reset at the turn of the season, but for future reference, what does it take to get them out of their funk?

Oh, also - sold out my first home match, and I'm sitting on nearly half a million dollars. Probably going to upgrade my stadium in the offseason, what are the going %'s for the different locations? Some cursory forum searches gave me approximately these numbers, but I'm not sure:

55% Terraces
24% Basic Seats
18% Seats Under Roof
3% VIP Seats

But I want to make sure I do it right.

Final game of the season against the #2 who beat me 1-0 in the first week of the season. He drew 0-0 in his last match to drop behind by 2 points and I own him on GD. I'm MOTS'ing and should manage at least a brilliant midfield with my team with some studly attack ratings. I'm so going to promote out of this crap V finally.

So damn happy about it!

Now watch me lose. :(

No jinx!

Tell

Jesus. Is your V one of the tougher ones? With how terrible my (and most that I look at) VI is, I figured that by the time I finish next season and sell a round of trainees that I'd have a team ready to compete for a V crown, but Brilliant midfield is probably going to be out of the question even with a nice spending spree.

It's not one of the toughest, no. Also, my team is not typical of a V team. I highly believe that my team is capable of winning a III series as it stands right now. I'm in V because I trained IM's and Keepers in defense for 2 season before switching to passing for the end of last and all of this and beginning of next.

My Brilliant midfield plus is a MOTS, after all. However, in the cup with WOC TS I can pull that brilliant midfield with a normal.

3x Titanic PM, 2x wingers with SN or WC PM, Defenders with Magnif and Brilliant PM, and a wanna be TDF that I'll train in PM when I switch back to it next season.

Tell

You know what's really sad? Figuring out "Make this the standard lineup for friendlies" is a Supporter only feature nearly a month after your supporter runs out.

Playing for the title on Sunday. We should have clinched it last week but gave up a 3 goal lead at home.

Depends- if you can throttle someone the next week, you'll probably stop bleeding sponsors. However, the "smart fans" are silly. I'd do a little diatribe on them but it would just be wasted typing.

SI

That's the thing, I am crushing the competition. 5 wins in a row, 8-1, 7-0, 7-0, 7-0, 9-0 and they're still at irritated. I'm not losing fans, still gaining them like crazy. My sponsors are at 'Irritated,' however. It's just a cosmetic thing, but it seems pretty ridiculous that with a 38-1 goal differential in 5 straight league matches that they're still upset about a 0-3 and then a 0-1 loss against the clear #1 team in the series.

I mean, when I finally give them a legitimate reason to be pissed, what's it going to take to get out of the doghouse? :)

Oh, wait! Your sponsors not your supporters? You need spokespersons on your staff, if you don't already!

You might be leaving money on the table, otherwise, as your sponsor money is probably low. I run a full 10 and my sponsors are up to "dancing in the streets" after about week 3 no matter how bad or good I am. But you have to make it fit within your 30 staff. I believe in lower levels, you don't want to go with a full 10 as you won't quite get the full benefit.

Hattrix-Ray has a sponsor calculator to see how many you need last I checked

SI

I have 2 I think. I'll look into Hattrix-Ray to see if I should have more.

Today had a pleasant surprise. Going into the last league match of the season, the league leader in scoring was on the runaway 1st place team with 19 goals scored. Today he was shut out, and my leading scorer Wilhelm Larsson managed four goals to pull into a 19-19 tie and get me a nice little bonus for the top scorer in the series.

I had two of the four players in my series that won the top goal scorer award. 20k me, yay!

Also won 5-1 and put up a brilliant very high midfield on the mots. Totally looking forward to owning my IV series, wherever it may be.

Tell

We got a dramatic late equalizer in the 80th minute to tie the match which meant we held out to win the series. It is my V title. The bad news is my best player is out injured for three weeks. The qualifier is winnable, but probably not with him out.

Looks my series finished as the 23rd toughest in V with two bots. Yikes. I would like to get out of it.

I have got about $4mil to spend to try to win the game, but I only want to buy players that have a future with the team. I am eyeing a WTM that will set me back at least 3.5M but I am not really sure if that will be enough to get the W on Sunday.

I also don't think the team I am playing will want to drop down into my division. Like I said, it is tough.

As an update, I didn't have any. I picked up two, and the sponsors are immediately better. Hattrix-Ray says I'd do better with just one but it's only a couple hundred dollars a week, and I will probably be better with two soon enough anyway. The auto-promoting team in my series had a big enough goal differential that I almost have to be getting a bot in return.

We escaped with a 1-0 victory!
Like true relegation survivors, we won 4 of our last 6 games, bouncing back after just 4 points in the first 8 winless games. :cool:

Congrats buddy!

We fired a 3.6M bullet on a WTM to try to help win our qualifier. It's going to be a close match and will probably depend on my form updates on Thursday.

Is anyone else playing a qualifier?

finished 3rd in v.130. Yawn.

May sell some foreign trainees and get new ones...

maybe chaneg to passing training after that

Nice! I think it's a good investment even if the qualifier doesn't go well. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

I know there used to be a promotion/relegation predictor - does that exist any more? I'd like to know if I'm getting a bot or a real team into my series next season.

Yes, hatstats just recently came back and has all the info you seek.

Awesome. Irony, thy name is Hattrick. The top team in my series looks to be promoting to V.25 - the exact series I began my hattrick career in back in the day as the Isla Vista Vandals. The series is just as tough as I remember it; even with two bot teams they come in at 43rd of 256 in terms of average ratings. One team is averaging well over 300 overall ratings and there are 3 more in the 250-range. My poor series mate (who caps out around 180-ish) is (un?)lucky enough to have two bots coming into the series with him, so he'll likely earn qualifiers for many seasons while getting his head kicked in by the much stronger teams in his series.

Good luck!

I restarted the Deacons yesterday. Started in VI.127 It looks like the only other human is about to have a qualifier.

So I've a second team that is in a VI league. Does anyone want to go to a new league so we have a few people and not a ton of bots?

Just pick a league number for us all to join with our VI league teams, and boom, we all go when we are able to.

I'm down for that.

Tell

An all VI series of FOFC teams would be cool, I would sign up for a second team.

What are the rules/restrictions on moving to a different series? I'd be ok with moving my squad to a different series.

As far as I know, it's just a matter of us picking a series number to go to and when series swapping opens up, we all choose to move to that series. I'm not sure when that happens, after qualifiers, I think. However, cursory look at the manual shows nothing that mentions series swapping. I just know that they opened it up for the USA in V and VI series two seasons ago.

Hatstats has a useful little page that shows all the series and how many bots they have in them. We could use that to find a new series to populate with all our FOFC VI level teams.

Tell

So, FOFC HT Braintrust, I need advice. I'm sitting on $610k, looking at a full season as the only team in a bot-filled division VI (if we don't move), and I'm already filling up my stadium of 12,000 with a fan club of about 570. I'm training scoring, and have 6 dudes at or about to pop Excellent (most right around 18 years old). I'm going to whale on my series next season, so I'm anticipating 19 fans per update. I'd expect to finish next season around 1,000 fans. I'm looking at expanding my arena to 20,000 seats (basing it on around an 800 fan club size)...but that'll cost me $600,000. I've got positive cash flow, so it's no big deal...but that's a hefty chunk of change. Should I aim lower, or actually wait longer and expand for a larger expected fan club size, since I'm going to wreck the place next season?

It's been a while since I've had to worry about this so it might be bad, old information. But it feels like when things are going well, you're going to overfill the stadium. So, this might be the best chance to take advantage of those higher attendance figures. Then when you're getting knocked around in V for a little bit, you might have a harder time filling it even with the 10% more supporters.

As an aside, I've always thought the spelling of "whale" in that context was odd (albeit correct). I just have this image of someone hitting someone else with a giant cetacean. And I would totally watch that in a 12K, 20K, or 40K stadium :D

SI

I would totally be down for bashing people with cetaceans. Probably sell out whatever sized stadium I could imagine :)

I figure that maintenance costs even upwards of 20k seats aren't so bad, so once I get to V (Season 54) and start to get knocked around, it won't be that big a deal. I just wonder if I should hold out a little longer and expand even further - 25k or so.

Looks like the time to move series is Thursday and Friday.

I am in VI.127 if we are thinking about a FOFC series... That is one to consider. But we need to start moving on it since we have only the next 2 days to decide.

I'll move my team to your series. Maybe others will to and we can have a few more. My team stinks, for the record.

Tell

That is ok mine is brand new. (Less than a week)

Anyone else for VI.127? Last day to transfer to the series and Deacon and me are there with another new team that started this season.

Tell

So I guess I can't join you guys? I was out of town for Labor Day weekend, and didn't get a chance to log in.

They only let teams move Thursday and Friday, so not this season.

There is always next, though, if it all works out again that we have teams in VI.

Tell

Lame. In an all-bot series, the chances of me still being in VI are very low. We'll see.