Fast Break Pro Basketball 2013 Released!

[Marmel]

I am just curious what people are finding to be the best trade settings?

I felt that the default settings were pretty good, but I've been able to create a super team by trading way up in the draft, twice. I had to give away a ton of assets to pry Stockton from the Jazz, but I was also able to move up to 3rd and 1st by giving up multiple picks that were pretty obviously not going to be anything other than 25+, to land David Robinson and Patrick Ewing.

I would basically trade every pick except the one first rounder I was not allowed to, plus a few good players, mostly 5th to 7th man types, to move into the top 3 of the draft on two different occassions. One of the trades I had to throw in SG Hornacek is is almost a max contract guy in my league, so that one felt fair at the time...2 firsts, 3 seconds, Hornacek and maybe 2 green/green guys for pick #3 which turned out to be Ewing. Seems OK until you consider the two firsts are probably just gonna be yellow type of players.

Then I rolled through the league with a 75-7 record with a lineup of:
C Robinson
PF Ewing
SF Jordan
SG - who cares
PG Stockton

Obviously this team could never exist. They are all fairly young and the cap and my budget will probably break these guys up in a couple of years, but I have to admit it is kind of cool seeing how dominate I can get.

[korme]

Not only changing the difficulty but you kind of have to house-rule yourself on a historic game. You have a distinct advantage over the computer in that you know what you're going to get out of each draft.

[HeavyReign]

******************************************************************************************************************
Version 3.0.17: http://www.fbbgames.com/FBPB3Update3017.exe
******************************************************************************************************************
Fixes:
*Age at time of retirement should display next to date of birth for all retired players.
*Fixed a bug that could cause the wrong offer to be cleared when deleting or changing a previous staff offer.
*Fixed a bug in the quickness generation for players with only one season of experience in the historical db.
*Fixed a flaw in PER calculation when factoring in team pace.
*Preseason standings should be displayed during the preseason.
*Draft preview was not showing traded picks for the correct season during the regular season.
*Recommended training was undervaluing 3p shooting for big men in its weights.
*Historical players shouldn't have attributes loading outside of the allowed range of (0-200).
*Draft preview projected order should not be blank during the editing period.
*Fixed a bug in SF future rating calculations (passing not being counted correctly).
*Human made arenas shouldn't get replaced in historical play unless the payments on the current arena are complete.
*Fixed a bug that caused the game to not automatically assign player photos to players when using a player file if the photo filename included the DOB.

Changes:
*The default photo name for players like J.R. Smith will ignore any "." so it would be jr_smith.jpg etc
*Added a 6th rating square color that defaults to purple for very elite players. This can be disabled by setting it to the same color as square 5 in the color editor under tools.
*More attempts to improve Most Improved award selections.
*Teams should value height slightly less at the forward positions.
*League leader titles will be included in the achievement totals summary.
*Added achievement totals summary to player html files.
*Added country info and flags to player html files.
*Added experience to the top section of the player html files.
*Added yearly cut salary and total salary to the team html files.
*Added efficieny stats the team stats leaders html file.
*Player of the Week, Player of the Month, and Rookie of the Month will be named for each conference.
*Added Output to MDB option to tools menu.
*Added an additional folder inside the photos folder that is used for random photos which will be assigned to ficional players.
*Decreased talent levels in the draft pool for lower prestige leagues.
*Added a force trade option under tools.
*Exceptions will no longer be disabled by default under the Hard Cap finances setting. They should be set to 0 if they are not wanted.

[Groundhog]

HR, changes to the foreign league talent look great! Thanks!

[Groundhog]

To get foreign players in FBCB draft classes, I've been manually switching all orange and above potential guys in foreign leagues over to the NBA draft classes in the current league editor. Doesn't take much time.

[whomario]

Originally Posted by Groundhog

To get foreign players in FBCB draft classes, I've been manually switching all orange and above potential guys in foreign leagues over to the NBA draft classes in the current league editor. Doesn't take much time.

how do you do that exactly ? Drawing a big blank looking at the screen here

as an aside: What´s the "best" setup you found combining challenge, realism (especially talent level not being off too much in either direction) and depth in terms of having multiple leagues ?

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by whomario

how do you do that exactly ? Drawing a big blank looking at the screen here

as an aside: What´s the "best" setup you found combining challenge, realism (especially talent level not being off too much in either direction) and depth in terms of having multiple leagues ?

Go into the current league editor, select 'draft pool', then select your league. Sort the players by potential, dbl-click on the guy, and switch his league to NBA.

I'm experimenting with HR's talent adjustments right now, but early impressions are that you could probably have 2 leagues with the 2nd tier prestige setting, 2-4 with the 3rd tier, and lots of 4th tier without the massive influx of talent affecting the game. I'm simming through 80 years with 4 foreign leagues active now.

[whomario]

Thanks Are you running with FBCB imports or fictional ? Were those leveled down a bit at some point ? (seemed to me that PF/C especially were too talented)

[Groundhog]

Yeah I think PFs/Cs are a bit too strong for FBCB draft files - lots of guys with high INS/REB/PSD ratings. I run a parallel FBB/FBCB league, but most of my actual FBPB playing has been with either historical db or fictional classes.

[korme]

*League leader titles will be included in the achievement totals summary.

Yes, thank you. It'll be nice to check achievement history and quickly see how many assist titles Stockton wins, etc

[korme]

Question: If a player completes a season in the NBDL, his experience goes from 0 to 1. Now, if that next season he plays his first season in the NBA, can he still win Rookie of the Year?

[Young Drachma]

Pretty happy with the force trade added option. Thanks HR.

[Groundhog]

Spotted my first purple!

[Izulde]

So I guess we can say the truly elite players are... Born in the Purple.

[bryce]

I'm FINALLY diving into this game for the first time. Quick question on cohesion - if it's poor, is there a way to find out who or what is causing the issue? Do we ever get emails? Does it have to do with the loyalty / winner / greed ratings? Something else entirely?

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by bryce

I'm FINALLY diving into this game for the first time. Quick question on cohesion - if it's poor, is there a way to find out who or what is causing the issue? Do we ever get emails? Does it have to do with the loyalty / winner / greed ratings? Something else entirely?

I'm basing this purely on assumption - winning, keeping guys together, and having few/no unhappy players. That seems to be the key to high cohesion.

[bryce]

That would seem reasonable but I just started a fictional league, creation draft, and right off the bat before a single game of history I have poor cohesion.

Edit to add I guess it's because these are all new guys playing together for first time. But that's by definition with a creation draft.

[britrock88]

Yeah, you and everyone else will have poor cohesion to start.

[Young Drachma]

Force Trade doesn't seem to work unless I'm doing it wrong.

[HeavyReign]

Originally Posted by korme

Question: If a player completes a season in the NBDL, his experience goes from 0 to 1. Now, if that next season he plays his first season in the NBA, can he still win Rookie of the Year?

The way it is currently set up he wouldn't be eligible. I've gone back and forth but I suppose it would make more sense to set it based on league experience. Arvydas Sabonis did get named to the All-Rookie team and finish 2nd in ROY voting.

[HeavyReign]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Force Trade doesn't seem to work unless I'm doing it wrong.

Bah I do see a few issues there. I'll post another build later today with that and a few other things fixed.

[dawgfan]

Wish list item Brian - how easy would it be to expose some control over generating fictional draft classes? I don't know if it's already currently possible via .ini settings; I know I can specifically edit, delete and create prospects with the League editor, but I'm more interested in more global settings.

I guess what I'm shooting for is a way to tailor historical league fictional draft classes to my liking. I figure that if I were to set the league prestige level to the most local setting, that will give me a pool of almost entirely red/red guys with a few orange and possibly a handful of yellow guys sprinkled in, and that would work pretty well for simulating the first few years of the BAA/NBA, but I'm not sure there'd be enough Joe Fulks/Max Zaslofsky type outliers, and especially as you get into the late '50's whether bumping up the prestige setting would give me the right mix of mostly yellow guys with the handful of blue and one or two purple dudes (the Wilt Chamberlain/Oscar Robertson/Jerry West outliers).

What I'd ultimately hope for is a way to customize the talent distribution in the pool.

[bryce]

Question on finances. If I go to the Players menu, under contracts, I see a team total of $56M in salaries (no cut salary and no luxury tax), but if I go to my Hot Seat, in the budget section it shows $63M in total salary.

I added it up manually and the 56M sums correctly.

What's the disconnect?

edit to add the difference is not coaching salaries, a theory I tested...

[HeavyReign]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

Wish list item Brian - how easy would it be to expose some control over generating fictional draft classes? I don't know if it's already currently possible via .ini settings; I know I can specifically edit, delete and create prospects with the League editor, but I'm more interested in more global settings.

I could basically give access to the settings I'm using to tweak the lower prestige pools right now. Maybe something that lets you customize those settings for each prestige level for each decade of play. While it will likely be contained in an ini file, I think this one would need its own screen in game as well.

[HeavyReign]

Originally Posted by bryce

Question on finances. If I go to the Players menu, under contracts, I see a team total of $56M in salaries (no cut salary and no luxury tax), but if I go to my Hot Seat, in the budget section it shows $63M in total salary.

I added it up manually and the 56M sums correctly.

What's the disconnect?

edit to add the difference is not coaching salaries, a theory I tested...

Most likely related to unused exceptions which count against the cap if you are below the cap. You can check the salary cap report under finances to see if that matches up.

[bryce]

Originally Posted by HeavyReign

Most likely related to unused exceptions which count against the cap if you are below the cap. You can check the salary cap report under finances to see if that matches up.

Ah, yes, that was exactly it, thanks.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by HeavyReign

I could basically give access to the settings I'm using to tweak the lower prestige pools right now. Maybe something that lets you customize those settings for each prestige level for each decade of play. While it will likely be contained in an ini file, I think this one would need its own screen in game as well.

That'd be a really cool tool to have - hopefully it's not too much extra work.

[bryce]

If I change the finances in the league options during the season (from hard cap only to full finances, eg), do those changes take effect immediately or is there a trigger at some point during the progress of a season that it kicks in?

[bryce]

next question: On the free agents screen, what is the difference between the guys in blue text and the ones in black?

[HeavyReign]

Originally Posted by bryce

If I change the finances in the league options during the season (from hard cap only to full finances, eg), do those changes take effect immediately or is there a trigger at some point during the progress of a season that it kicks in?

Immediately.

[HeavyReign]

Originally Posted by bryce

next question: On the free agents screen, what is the difference between the guys in blue text and the ones in black?

Black is a normal player not from your team that you haven't made an offer to that is still a FA. Blue players have signed with your team, teal players are ones you tried to sign but signed with another team, purple players are players that played for you last season, green players played for you last season and you have bird rights when trying to resign them, and orange players are players you have made a contract offer that haven't signed yet.

[bryce]

Originally Posted by HeavyReign

Black is a normal player not from your team that you haven't made an offer to that is still a FA. Blue players have signed with your team, teal players are ones you tried to sign but signed with another team, purple players are players that played for you last season, green players played for you last season and you have bird rights when trying to resign them, and orange players are players you have made a contract offer that haven't signed yet.

thanks. Not a big deal, but something seems off on the free agent screen then. 99% of the guys are blue, and by definition of being a free agent, aren't on my team.

[Groundhog]

For those interested, I've been playing around with foreign leagues trying to get usable foreign leagues. The talent reduction is definitely in affect and, if anything, may be a little too far the other way, but I need to do more simming.

Right now I've been toying with finances and automatic inflation to get the foreign leagues to a level where they can sign border-NBA talent but not be flooded with entirely orange or yellow Americans. I ran 30 seasons last night with 5 leagues active outside of the NBA, setting the 1990 salary caps to levels between $200k and $450k for the leagues. In 2012 that swelled them up to about $1.7m to $3.4m which is sort of the sweet point I was after, but I'm going to continue tweaking as I think it may be a little high.

Good news is that, considerable speed of sim issues aside, running with numerous foreign leagues is not going to cause a mass influx of talent to the NBA.

[bryce]

CBA trading question on this blip: "If a team is over the salary cap, then the salaries they are receiving must be no more than 125% of the salaries they are trading away plus 1/55th of the current salary cap."

Does that mean

125% of (trade away + 1/55 cap)
or
(125% of trade away) + (1/55 cap)

(How in the world did they come up with 1/55th? Sounds like tax legislation...)

[HeavyReign]

Originally Posted by bryce

thanks. Not a big deal, but something seems off on the free agent screen then. 99% of the guys are blue, and by definition of being a free agent, aren't on my team.

Are the colors I mentioned present in the legend in the bottom right on the FA screen?

[HeavyReign]

Originally Posted by bryce

CBA trading question on this blip: "If a team is over the salary cap, then the salaries they are receiving must be no more than 125% of the salaries they are trading away plus 1/55th of the current salary cap."

Does that mean

125% of (trade away + 1/55 cap)
or
(125% of trade away) + (1/55 cap)

(How in the world did they come up with 1/55th? Sounds like tax legislation...)

It is set up (125% of trade away) + (1/55 cap). So if we assume a salary cap of 55m and you are trading away 10m you can take back 1.25 * 10m + 1m = 13.5m rather than 1.25 * (10m + 1m) = 13.75m.

[HeavyReign]

******************************************************************************************************************
Version 3.0.18: http://www.fbbgames.com/FBPB3Update3018.exe
******************************************************************************************************************
Fixes:
*Fixed several issues that caused output MDB to fail.
*Fixed issue with team listing of traded picks in draft.htm when exporting on draft day.
*Fixed error 6 that could occur due to attendance being over max.
*Added code to hopefully eliminate non-elicense related issue with "Unexpected Error" on launch.

Changes:
*Eligibility for rookie based awards will be based on experience in that league rather than total experience.
*Added the option to set whether playoff seeding will place division winners first (pre 2006) or the top 2 records first (post 2006).

[JPhillips]

Just saw a game where I had three guys injured with broken cheek bones. I'd love to see the aftermath of that game IRL.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Just saw a game where I had three guys injured with broken cheek bones. I'd love to see the aftermath of that game IRL.

I've been reading some NBA history books lately, and 3 broken cheekbones in a game might not have been terribly unusual in those days - sounds like the game was a lot rougher, and with most of the owners being hockey guys, it was kind of expected that part of the entertainment of a basketball game was the inevitable fight(s).

[bryce]

Originally Posted by HeavyReign

Are the colors I mentioned present in the legend in the bottom right on the FA screen?

No, I don't see a legend...

[yeah826]

Here is a player I wanted to show off, I drafted him in the second round and he just made his first all star game.

A little back story about this team when I started to coach this Philadelphia team they were an under 20 win team who just screwed themselves over horribly with their number 1 overall draft choice(who later became a bust). When I drafted this guy I just got my team to an 8 seed level playoff team built around my all star level shooting guard(i.e only real offensive threat) so when I drafted this guy I only intended him to come off of the bench as a good perimeter 3pt shooter who can play excellent on ball defense. Well the SG ended up signing with another team because he wanted to play for a winner so I had to start this guy. This is what he blossomed into.

Now im gonna be a little honest I think his stats are kinda overrated my team runs a high pace inside scoring team my front court players are my best passers my PG along with Humes are my best 3pt shooters. I mean honestly I have my SF take the ball up the court and initiate the offense where either he drives and kicks (he averages 5.5 apg). He gives the ball to my PF who either scores or passes out to the wings (he averages 4.0 apg) or we just give the ball to my center who is my leading scorer, rebounder, and blocker (21.3 ppg 8.1 rpg 4.7 bpg 32.9mpg 53% fg) so he obviously gets double teamed a lot. I feel like Humes is just open all of the time and if I were to make him my number 1 option his numbers would plummet.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by HeavyReign

Are the colors I mentioned present in the legend in the bottom right on the FA screen?

Pretty sure they are.

[bryce]

attaching screenshot of my FA screen (no legend).

[Young Drachma]

Must be that you're not in the actual free agency stage, because that's when the legend shows up.

[Young Drachma]

I'm playing a random debut dynasty and it's been going on for about 40+ years and it's interesting to see these guys show up coupled with the fictional guys I have generating from my fictional dynasty. Mostly never done a random debut before and I like it, well it's sort of jarring at times, but in general, it's neat.

Also interesting having foreign leagues playing around the same time and I appreciate whoever mentioned upthread importing foreigners into the NBA draft prior to the start of it, because I never knew that before and have begun doing that now. Almost my favorite part of the draft process now.

[Comey]

You've got some big ladies playing in your league. Tanks at PG.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Comey

You've got some big ladies playing in your league. Tanks at PG.

Yeah you can control height, but not weight so they end up being umm...abnormally sized.

Actually (finally) playing with a dude dynasty though, that league was just already on FA so I could take a screen shot.

[yeah826]

So I was kinda curious about how good were some of my players were when they came out of high school by star rating since I run a FBCB import with my league here's what I've found.

6 -5 stars
5 -4 stars
3 -3 stars

Starting Line up
3 - 5 stars
2 - 3 stars

6th Man/Role Players
2- 4 stars
1 - 5 stars (This guy was the #1 recruit of his recruiting class also was is a former all star now past his prime)
1 - 3 stars

Bench
3 - 4 stars
2 - 5 stars

[rjolley]

Hey HR, when I change the trade deadline, the next season, it's always reset to the default value. Can we have it be sticky from season to season? Also, can you add an option to not have a trade deadline?

Edit: Figured it out. I had Rules set to Historical, so it reset the change every year. Could we have a way to lock the changes into place with Historical turned on? You could set the 3pt rule on in the 40s, but let all of the other changes occur as they did. Or set the 3pt rule to never come into effect.

[frnk55]

Quick question. Can you edit a players name (without exiting the program) like in OOTP and if so does the name change in the records book also?

I got the demo but can't seem to find it.
Thank you!