Alright Boyz, here we go! The FM16 Thread
 

Game had it's full release yesterday, and I've already recreated my American Premier League mod for FM16:

Link: TinyUpload.com - best file hosting solution, with no limits, totaly free

Also available on Steam Workshop:
Description:
Steam Workshop :: American Premier League 1.0

This is a first release of the American Premier League file. This is designed to allow folks to play American teams without the salary cap management and general pain that MLS rules create.

Sixty Four teams are in this first release:

20 MLS teams in the American Premier League (B teams not allowed)
20 NASL/USL teams in the American Championship
24 NASL/USL teams (including B teams) in the American Challenge Division.

Prize Money and TV money in the top two leagues, life in the Challenge Division offers limited prize money and results based money (more if you win, but a little bit even if you lose).

Also included is a 64 team US Open Cup, featuring all 64 league teams.

This file will be updated with changes (I hope to add a fourth division, and expand the Cup competition.)

Comments and suggestions are always encouraged.

Can you use the new create a team feature with FM Classic?

I am going to resist buying this for now. Happy with FIFA and looking forward to the NBA2K16 patch hopefully ironing out a few issues of what is otherwise a stellar game.

Pretty sure i will catch the FM Bug around Christmas again, will see then if i stay on 15 or make the transition to 16.

Yes, although it's called FM Touch now.

I skipped last years purchase and so I am very much looking forward to buying this to play over my Winter Break.

Has anyone gotten deep into this yet? I purchased but havent gotten to the playing the games part yet. How is the gameplay and AI at this point?

There are a couple of teams I'm considering. I like the idea of taking an African side, like Melilla, and then promoting them in Spanish league until they get to the top league, and make them pertinent. Or take Bilbao, and keeping to it's principle of only having Basque players, take it to a European Championship

im in season 5 and it seems fairly tough. 3 of my 5 seasons ive struggled to stay above the relegation zone

Marc -When will the handheld version is going to be released?

I will be quite interested in hearing your impressions about all of this. I think I'm going to get it, but not right away. I haven't played a version, really, since FM10 (which I still play), and fifty bucks is rather steep for me.

It feels much more stable this year at this point than it did last season. I'm not quite sure how much of an upgrade it is over 15 but I'm pretty happy with it's current state. Biggest bug I've encountered so far is a failure to sub players in friendlies properly.

I'm seeing a LOT of offsides. In strange situations, like when one of my forwards is nowhere near the 4 defensive line players. I'm not sure if it's a bug or my lack of knowledge of the sport. Most likely the latter.

Another thing that I see is players receiving a hard pass will often stop moving, almost like they need to recover for a second before moving with it. This opens up to a possible takeaway from the defensive player. I don't notice that on regular passes.

So far I'm halfway done my first season and am in 3rd place in the Vanarama South division in England, my team was expected to be in 14th place.

Another cool thing that I saw for the first time was a player that I refused to loan out to another team. He came up to me asking to move, and I said no, with "x" reason. He actually called me out on it, saying that's not the reason I gave when I said no to the loan! He left the room in a huff, saying there was no use talking to me. That was cool! I guess I need to pay more attention.

I have noticed scouting takes a lot more time, you have to scout a player for several weeks before all the attributes show up. You get a good idea from the scouting report, (maybe 50% of attributes are exact, the rest are a range) but then if you find a few guys that you're interested in, you have to follow them for a while. I have absolutely no problem with that, it sounds like something that you'd need to do in real life.

I would say it's definitely worth a purchase. It's Football Manager after all, and the product is consistently great year after year.

Thank you!

Starting my second season with my beloved Internazionale. Won the league, and Coppa Italia in year 1. Im loving the constant interaction with my players who become unhappy when I don't play them as often as they like. The match engine is much improved in my honest opinion, and injuries so far are spot on. I just find myself on the edge of my seat more than I have been over the last few versions of the game. Team talks and shouts work really well if done right. The new tactics screen is much much more improved, and I can do everything on 1 screen which I love. I have had no trouble selling players that I list, as well as loaning my youngsters out with ease. Loving the new questions that you get asked by the media, and I don't mind taking the time in this years version to do so, instead of ''sending my assistant'' or asking him to do my half time and pre-match talks. I friggin love this game! Back in Champions League, and face Real Madrid, Man City, and Fenerbahce in the group stage. My board expect me to qualify, but dang is it going to be tough!

For those interested, greenmangaming.com has a 15% voucher, so you can get FM16 for approx. $42. Personally, I'm going to wait for the cost to come down a bit. I love soccer, and the game is pretty cool, but I always have such trouble figuring out tactics, what to look for, etc., that I eventually give up. When would I use a guy classified as an Evangelista, anyway (yeah, I know it's wrong but the position sounds like "evangelista" to me)?

If you have a SIGames account, this is for FM15 but it explains 95% of the stuff in Fm16

Lines and Diamonds: The Tactician's Handbook for Football Manager 2015

Started my West Ham game, as I always do first. Through 6 Europa League qualifying matches, Diafra Sakho has 18 goals.

If you buy from Green Man Gaming, do you have to download through them or do they just give you a Steam key?

I normally just monitor one these steam key price aggregation sites until its at a price I feel like paying.

Football Manager 2016 Digital Download Price Comparison

Steam key.

Thanks

Do all these sites give you a Steam key as well? Any concerns about some of them (I see some have three out of five stars)?

some of those linked sites seem sketchy (such as requiring VPN for the Russian version of the game ... Witcher 3)

I went 0 for 3 and decided to give up. The first sight's price wasn't the same as advertised, the second rejected my credit card for some unknown reason, and the third said they were out of stock. I guess I'll just be waiting for a Steam sale.

Good Old Games will reject my cards automatically because they're out of Cyprus, which is apparently a hot bed for stolen credit card activity.

Its not a big deal. It just means I won't be buying it today. Its probably better to wait until they patch it at least once anyhow. :)

I am weak ...

Now installing last years megapack and other graphics stuff like logos. Hope it still works, installing is painfully slow as is (without having to download it as well) ... Also found a couple neat looking Canadian Fantasy Leagues to go alongside the MLS, guess the norh american leagues and National Teams will be my stomping grounds for the first few weeks until the last kinks get worked out via patch(es)

That's a pretty great site. I picked up Sunless Sea for less than 3 dollars on GOG

I bought the game and I cant get more than a day without a freeze

From FM15, but I'm not sure of his agents valuation.

I hate this version.

Defensively Ive seen hundreds of very long passes somehow snake its way between 3 or 4 defenders to land right on an attackers foot for an easy goal.

Defense's just seem to have shut their brains off.

Then, while watching the game on Comprehensive, I can tell when the other team is due to score because all of a sudden they can dribble through my defender's animations, long passes are on a string, and defenders in the box stop marking people. Literally, as the highlight starts, I can call it from the first player on the ball's move.

"We've replaced all of FM's defenders with David Luiz. Let's see if anyone notices the difference."

Moan and you shall be heard ... ;)

tremendous timing because I was about to shelve it

I actually liked it way more than i thought this early in the cycle (fm for me was generally a 3-patch game before i got into it, now ive already logged 250 hours, even if a lot has been testing of db edits and such. Think i have logged 10 seasons over 3 saves)

in regards to the defense, i am now for the first time in ages actually playing with a defensive-minded tactic.

I have taken over Stabaek (Norway) in July 2015 and also added a revived "Royal League" (CL/EL like cup for the scandinavian/nordic countries) while giving the scandinavian leagues/teams a slight edge via the editor. Anyway, upon looking at the Roster for the first time i noticed that the team had not even a single striker that deserved the moniker, only 2 wingers that could somewhat-kinda play up front. With little budget i only managed to sign 1 striker, but he´s more of a work-his-ass-off guy than a goalscorer with just 36 in 160 career games (19 workrate, 20 agression, 15 bravery).

So i have now set up a really defensive 4-1-2-3 (1 DM as BWM-D, another BWM-S and a BBM in the centre) with long balls, hard tackling. 9 games into my managing career we have 4 wins, 4 draws and 1 loss with 8 goals scored and just 3 received. Of course the competition in Norway is not stellar, but it is still a nice change of pace compared to my usual 3:2, 3:4 games (with Portland i finished the last MLS regular season with 75-46 goals ;) )

And it's nice to see defenders actually frickin defend.

Does anyone know how population is calculated for the purposes of match attendance? Like does FM use the urban population, or greater metropolitan areas?

I'm curious as to how large one could conceivably grow a club (stadium size being an aspect) if you're on the periphery of a major metro, as opposed to in the metro itself.

It's a VERY complicated setup - it uses a large combination of factors including the City they're located within.

A fair proportion is the attraction of the club themselves, how they're performing, the location they're based in and the likely transport facilities within the region.

Some areas for instance have only one professional club in their region are more likely to have a larger fan base than you'd expect because they're within easy commuting distance of large population bases, others have several football clubs vying for attention within their area and this means that the smaller clubs might struggle for attention especially if they're seen as 'historical rivals' of the larger clubs).

There are loads of other factors involved as well the date (some dates are traditionally big football occasions in certain countries, Saturdays in England and Boxing day etc.), the period of the season (last game of the season is often a little better supported than others unless its been a dire season) ... suffice to say its modeled as accurately as possible and half the items going into it probably only make sense to us because we have spent far longer than is healthy looking into this sort of thing ;)

Disclaimer - I haven't looked at the PC code for this side of things since I last worked on it around 2008, I'd imagine its evolved and become even more involved since I wandered off to work full-time on the handheld games ...

Thanks for that detailed explanation, Marc - that's exactly what I was looking for!

For explanation, I'm going to start a new save and will be looking for a lower league club (somewhere in greater Europe) without a lot of history, but in a location where it can conceivably grow pretty big over time, so knowing more about the factors behind that growth (as you described) is very helpful.

I agree! Sometimes it's hard to take a lower league club and to see it "max out" in terms of growth potential. You're almost forced to go to another team to continue your ascent. I guess it is like real life, the little minnows may climb 1-2 leagues, but I don't know if there's been that crazy ascent from the non-league teams into the Premiership or anywhere near that.

I'm really struggling to get into a save. I've started 3 and haven't gotten past evaluating my team and starting my tactics. Such a bummer. I don't think it's the game, I'm just struggling with engagement at the moment.

Have a similar issue, especially since my Brazil save crashed and burned due to a scheduling bug (starting in 2019 i was suddenly scheduled to play in youth leagues with my senior team) [likely a result of the mod i was using. The irritating thing is that i holidayed for ten seasons before and that was not an issue in that test]

Now i have going a Portland save (lost interest kinda with the restrictions ...), a Stabaek save (on the fence) and now also have started a save where i have taken over Southampton mid season. That one has some potential as of now for a quick romp about ... A long term save with a good club but also a challenge might be in Spain, because Real and Barca are likely to keep being dominant with their TV deals, making the challenge for titles a big one. In a recent test, they continued to approach the 90 point mark 5 seasons in.

For my really long term slug i´ll wait for the EEE mod (si forums) for the english lower leagues and take over some random club in the 8th or 9th level.


I think as long as it´s not in totally rural backwater and in a non-Top 6 nation (where there is little national TV or prize money), you´ll be fine. There are plenty stories/updates around on the SI board that show that really not a lot is needed.

Besides, with the way the money distribution has developed, gate receipts have become much less important than even 2 or 3 years ago in many countries.

An example from one of my holiday saves, in 2015/2016 (in the FM universe) Borussia Dortmund had an Income of 280 mio, of which only 45 mio (less than 20%) were Season Tickets and Gate Receipts. And thats with Europa League instead of CL (which would have made the percentage even smaller) at the club with the largest attendance in Europe. Juventus only has a 40k stadium.

If you were to start in Germany, essentially every Western or Eastern 3rd division city (or 4th if you download a mod) has the potential to be a big market attendance wise (heck, most have decent numbers even in the lower league). Suggestions i would have: Preußen Münster, Rot Weiß Essen (they do have some history, but its waaaay back), maybe even Fortuna Köln as the ugly step child of FC Köln.

Other suggestions of clubs that i have seen become big in prior versions , which are admittedly not without history sometimes (more of the "fallen on hard times" variety)

Spain: Racing Santander, Cadiz CF, Real Murcia.
France: Strasbourg (good sized stadium and attendance, even some accolades, but semi-pro in the 3rd division)
Italy: Pisa, Lecce, Catania, Robur Siena

And this plan goes up in smoke since it doesn't appear to be on special anywhere and I'm too cheap to spend $50 on computer games anymore.

Steam sale is still going on, right?

FM2016 isn't part of the sale :(

Isn't it always eventually part of the sale?

My understanding is that the new steam sale model has all games on sale on Day 1. Am I wrong (he asks hopefully)?

Oh.

Not really im afraid. However, they left a loophole in a "well, if a publisher of a really big title came to us with a different approach, i am sure we would find a solution" ...