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Old 07-30-2015, 03:48 AM   #80
Brian Swartz
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: May 2006
You're welcome, and I'm glad I was able to help(particular since we aren't competing in the same game world, although I've been toying with the idea of joining a second one ... ).

Anyway, your last post has the best idea. If you want to stick with the game longterm which it certainly appears that you do, yes get a trainer. You can't max a player out in terms of their potential without it. Dump the weaker pair of players, get an experienced one in their place that you can make into a decent trainer quickly, then after you do that you can replace them with a younger talent, etc.

A 3.0 trainer is of minimal benefit, but you should be able to find much better. To do so, if you look at the oldest age bracket(27+) and leave the sort on Cost, look for guys who are at least in their mid-30s on the first couple or few pages of that. That should give you some idea of what kind of players are available. The younger ones who are available are probably not going to be very good, require more work, etc. Anil Manohar is a great example from my game. I don't talk about him much because he's simply training and playing FT3s(exciting stuff, that :P). But his career best ranking is 238th, I didn't pick him up until midway through his career, and he literally didn't play at all in juniors or early in his pro career, was never hired by another manager, so he blew a lot of his potential out the window. And he's over a 4.1 trainer equivalent right now with several more years of training available. The higher you go the harder it gets to improve -- he's near the end of the point where doubles training is best(at about 3.6 there) and will be switching to service/doubles alternating soon, but the point is he'd be a solid trainer right now and has been screwed up/undeveloped for a large part of his career and wasn't that talented to begin with(1.3 endurance right now, a pedestrian 2.9 at his apex).

I found a guy near the top of the list who is 36y28w, 68% aging(on the downslope here of course, basically the same as an early junior but on the opposite end of the career). 4.3 skill, 3.5 serve, 5.0 doubles. By my calculations(remembering that doubles doesn't suffer the aging decline that the others do), if he just saved the xp payment required to be a trainer and cashed it in right away with no more training he'd be a 5.0 trainer right now! It's rare to find players that good, he already has service and doubles maxed out and was dumped a few months ago by a manager who has ... only a 4.7 trainer. Why??? But I digress. Finding players who can be turned into a 4.5 trainer or higher quickly is pretty easy in my game world and so I'd assume probably would be for you as well. The difference between a 4.5 and a 5.0 is still something, but a lot closer than either of us are right now and getting a couple of them in pretty quickly would help Kazic/Tanner develop and give you some experience with the process. Or you could be a little more patient and spend a few years getting a player all the way up to maximum before retiring them as a trainer. Either way you'd be set to max or near-max your next 'youth project', and then now with some more experience with the game would have a much better chance of really making them great.

One more point in this excessively long-winded post about margins at the top. Another thing you could check in your world of course, but here's how my uni sits:

#1(Bjorn Benda) -- 5.0 skill, 4.1 serve, 3.9 str, 3.3 spd, 3.6 ment

#10(David Alvarez) -- 4.9 skill, 4.0 serve, 2.8 str, 3.6 spd, 3.7 ment

#20(Oliver Challenger) -- 4.5 skill, 4.0 serve, 3.7 str, 3.1 spd, 3.9 ment

Challenger actually understates the situation because he's falling like a sinking ship and isn't playing like the #20 player in the world anymore. But look at the difference between Benda and Alvarez. A pretty small athleticism and virtually non-existent technical gap. The difference between 'great' and 'excellent' is miniscule(Benda has won 86% of his matches on the season, Alvarez 80% but the rankings points gap is nearly three to one) -- and by the way the next couple of generations of players look to be even more competitive. Raising a champion is about creating, via proper management, miniscule advantages over your opponent.

I read a study about the recently ended real-life 'reign of terror' by Rafael Nadal at the French Open. While dominating the event for a decade, he proceeded to lose 44% of the points he played(including the early-round matches against players he could thrash with his eyes closed practically). Winning another half-percent of points is an enormous advantage in tennis, and thinking about this as I've developed a strategy for RR over time has really focused me on maximizing. Proper management, the gaining of very small bonuses over time, has a monstrous cumulative effect.

Getting a trainer, followed by a new carefully chosen youth player, would let you reach much greater heights -- no question about it. Good luck!

Last edited by Brian Swartz : 07-30-2015 at 04:03 AM.
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