Rocking Rackets tips and questions

[collegesportsfanms]

So I just rediscovered this awesome game and I know there was a tips thread for it at one time. Does anybody still play this? I'm curious about some things.

Specifically the game speed and tournaments. Can someone explain the different tournaments to me? In World 1 I hired a 15 year old that is ranked in the top 200 on the junior circuit. Should he be playing junior tournaments? Future? Amateur? What about practice tournaments? I also hired a 20 year old in World 1 that appears to have not played a match yet.

I just joined World 3 so I haven't hired anybody there.

Also can someone explain the game speed? World 1 appears to be normal (1 day/4 hrs) while World 3 is fast (1 day/1 hr). What exactly does that mean?

Also if anybody has any other tips for a rookie player let me know, thanks.

[britrock88]

First rule of thumb is to register your players for some kind of tournament every week.

Juniors should play junior tournaments unless/until they're so good that they breeze through them without picking up enough fatigue/experience to make it worthwhile. But even then, it's fun winning titles.

As for game speed, the rate is what you explain. More practically, to micromanage effectively, you want to be able to check in on your players weekly (in game speed) to ensure they're getting enough play in. Normal worlds progress at the rate of 1 game week/real day; Fast worlds at the rate of 1 game week/6 hours (Saturdays/Sundays are half speed).

[Brian Swartz]

Just to add on to this, form is key. You want to play the minimum amount of competitive tournaments (i.e., not practice) required to keep a developing player at 15 form or above. Below 15 they don't get as good of experience. During their prime years it's more about having them in the peak performance 20-25 range during the key parts of tournaments, but that's not most of their career.

Practice tournaments are what you use for weeks you don't want to add points to their form. If you want to be serious about the game, get the best older player you can ASAP and start working on making them a trainer. That's far more effective than friendlies for using that extra exp. And endurance is the most important stat in the game. Did a full breakdown in one of the old threads but I can answer more specifics if you're going to make a real go at it.

[collegesportsfanms]

My biggest question right now is knowing what type of tournament to play in. What are the differences between major, challenger, future, and so on?

[britrock88]

Majors are the world circuit--the only tournaments you would see on TV in real life. They're meant for players in the top X of the world (X being the number of registrants), with the following descending order of priority:

GSLs, worth up to 2000 ranking points
MSTs, worth up to 1000 ranking points (mandatory for the Top 32)
500s
250s

Most top 16 players don't bother with anything but GSLs, MSTs, and 500s to get to the ~20 tournaments/year or so they need.

Challengers are for players ranked 33rd-200th in the world.
Futures are for players ranked 201st-1000th.
Amateurs are for players ranked 1001st-plus.
Juniors are for players 18 and under.

You can always play up--a 15-year-old can register for senior Wimbledon, say--but it's rarely a good idea unless you're close to the dividing line between one tier of tournaments and the next.

[Brian Swartz]

All good info. Just to add to that, it really pays to be patient and wait until you're ready to graduate from each level.

** Juniors for as long as you can.
** Amateurs, futures, challengers until you are no longer eligible for each.

Doing it that way, you'll go farther in those tournaments and won't have to play as many, leaving more weeks open to practice events. This is much more effective long-term than playing more and going for a short-term rise in ranking. Until you reach the Top 32 (graduating from challengers), your ranking isn't something you should focus on - it's all about getting the most improvements for your players. The rest will take care of itself.

[britrock88]

The rhythm of fatigue is an important thing to manage (the extent may vary based on the game speed you choose). Players recover 50 fatigue/day, so they have a baseline of 350/week which you can use to gain XP to improve your players. Practice tournaments help regulate this somewhat because your player cannot start a noncompetitive (friendly/practice/training) match with >300 fatigue. To Brian's earlier point, friendly matches (against random CPU opponents) are much less efficient from an XP:fatigue standpoint than either practice matches or training sessions.

[collegesportsfanms]

So I'm confused, what is the best thing for my players to do? Regular tournaments? Practice tournament? Should I enter my players into something every week? I hadn't really taken fatigue into question yet but it's definitely something I'll have to learn how to manage. In the 2 worlds I'm in, 3 of my 4 players are under 20, with 2 of them being 14-15. The 4th player is 33 and I hope to make him a trainer.

[Brian Swartz]

Absolutely enter something every week. Doubles and singles both at the same event. As many practice tournaments as you can get away with, but you need to enter competitive (everything else, amateurs, juniors, etc) events periodically. How often you do that depends on how often you need to keep form at 15 or higher so you don't have an experience hit from it being too low. That's another reason to be playing at a level you can be fairly successful at and not push up too fast, because if you make, say, SF or better consistently you're getting several tournament matches (several form points) and can then take more practice weeks off. If you are losing in the first round all the time, you have to keep playing more competitive events to deal with your form, and then get friendlies or whatever the rest of the week because after that loss there's no more matches to play. All of that is very bad for your player's progression.

The idea is basically to use all your fatigue. If it ever hits zero you've done something wrong, because that's a missed opportunity to gain experience and improve.

One thing you could do is post the stats for one of your developing players, maybe a screenshot of their recent schedule, and I could give you feedback based on that if you want a more tailored/specific approach.

[collegesportsfanms]

One more question before I work on screenshots.. do you prefer playing in normal paced worlds or fast or blitz paced? I see advantages and disadvantages to both. Right now I'm in a normal world and fast world.

[law90026]

I used to play fast worlds. I didn’t have the patience for a slow world like Brian personally.

You just need to plan ahead more for a fast world and it really helps to have a premium membership.

[britrock88]

I have dabbled, but ended up in the slowest worlds the site hosted. Then the site condensed its worlds and I now play in RR1, which is Normal, and the slowest speed on offer.

[Brian Swartz]

I preferred slow worlds. It takes longer but if you have things planned out right you only have to spend a few minutes once or twice a day. Particularly with my work situation at the time, I was working long blocks of time at once so I couldn't check in every few hours. You really have to do that to play well on a faster world.

[g0ldenboy27]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

I preferred slow worlds. It takes longer but if you have things planned out right you only have to spend a few minutes once or twice a day. Particularly with my work situation at the time, I was working long blocks of time at once so I couldn't check in every few hours. You really have to do that to play well on a faster world.

Hey man, started to play several weeks ago and just now got to know this forum, got some questions if you guys can answer:

1.
15 form is the minimum value, but there a maximum value? And you guys said that practice are good to not add point to form right?

2.
Ive read that 400 fadigue is the “maximum good value”, so when its getting close to this should I make my player not enter in any tournament next weeks? Or can I play practices? How many weeks should my player sit out to get fadigue to a good value again? I know each day equals to 50, but for example, if my player is with 300 fatigue, then next week in the middle of tournament he can reach above 400 and that’s bad right?

3.
Is this still the Form to calc future attributes?

Strength and Speed
*
Current Value / % of Age =*Max Value
*
Endurance
*
Current Value / % of Age / % of Age = Max Value

And

-- Skill * 0.95
-- Service * 0.515
-- Strength * 0.19
-- Mentality * 0.175
-- Speed * 0.17

Still best rating calc?

4.
Ive read somewhere that -5 is the better value to age factor when we try to get best talent as possible, but how can I know the “peak age” os something?

5.
Last thing, I read a lot about trainers, but the truth is I don’t understand a thing lol is it better to have trainer or just play practices?

[britrock88]

Welcome!

1. I believe 45 is the max form. That said, the returns diminish quickly over 30, so you shouldn't find yourself flirting with max form.

2. I haven't used 400 as a marker for fatigue. Givens are that recovery is 50/day, you cannot start a practice/friendly at >300 fatigue, and there are 7 days in a week. So I focus more on these ideas:

- making sure no fatigue recovery is wasted (eg, by getting through a practice week with >150 fatigue)
- getting to the start of a tournament with fatigue as close to 0 as possible. Mind your byes.

3. I truthfully haven't calculated ratings prediction formulas at all. I still use the TESS as a rough-and-ready current strength formula.

4. Lower aging rates give you longer to develop skill before reaching your peak. In practice, your player might be at their best when reaching ~90% on the downward curve. Players with positive/above 100% age rates tend to have better junior careers and age more quickly into doubles players/trainers. I don't recall the formula for peak age, but it may be in Brian Swartz's dynasty thread.

5. The short summary: trainers are better than friendlies, worse than practices.

[g0ldenboy27]

Originally Posted by britrock88

Welcome!

1. I believe 45 is the max form. That said, the returns diminish quickly over 30, so you shouldn't find yourself flirting with max form.

2. I haven't used 400 as a marker for fatigue. Givens are that recovery is 50/day, you cannot start a practice/friendly at >300 fatigue, and there are 7 days in a week. So I focus more on these ideas:

- making sure no fatigue recovery is wasted (eg, by getting through a practice week with >150 fatigue)
- getting to the start of a tournament with fatigue as close to 0 as possible. Mind your byes.

3. I truthfully haven't calculated ratings prediction formulas at all. I still use the TESS as a rough-and-ready current strength formula.

4. Lower aging rates give you longer to develop skill before reaching your peak. In practice, your player might be at their best when reaching ~90% on the downward curve. Players with positive/above 100% age rates tend to have better junior careers and age more quickly into doubles players/trainers. I don't recall the formula for peak age, but it may be in Brian Swartz's dynasty thread.

5. The short summary: trainers are better than friendlies, worse than practices.

Thx for all you answers man it Will help a lot. If you dont mind i still got some questions.

2. So i need to plan ahead, more than the 3 weeks i can register, cuz in mire importants tournaments i need to be at a good fadigue, right? So like 1 week before is better that i play just practice or dont play anything at all?

3. What is a good TESS for a 14y player then?

5. But then, traineirs are good when i got knocked off of a practice tournament then my player will use the "off time" with trainers?

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by g0ldenboy27

Thx for all you answers man it Will help a lot. If you dont mind i still got some questions.

2. So i need to plan ahead, more than the 3 weeks i can register, cuz in mire importants tournaments i need to be at a good fadigue, right? So like 1 week before is better that i play just practice or dont play anything at all?

From a form perspective, this will depend on where your player is in their career. At the AMA/FT levels, there are enough tournaments going in any given week that you can monitor your form and sign up for tournaments when needed. At the Major level, you're required to play MSTs, which fill most of your schedule. Juniors are a combination of the two. Challengers can pick and choose what CH tournaments and low-level major tournaments they need to fill out a schedule.

From a fatigue perspective, it's a matter of knowing how much fatigue your player picks up from matches (a function of endurance). Based on that, you may decide to have a player only participate in singles (or doubles) practices the week before a tournament if they have lower endurance. You should certainly sign up for something every week, but you can have an easy or harder practice week based on playing both or only one of singles and doubles.

Originally Posted by g0ldenboy27

3. What is a good TESS for a 14y player then?

For a player of any age, using a player's age percentage, you can calculate their peak TESS as (Talent/Age%) + (Endurance/Age%^2) + (Strength/Age%) + (Speed/Age%). You'll get a major-level player out of someone with a TESS >14. Talent and endurance are a bit more important than strength and speed from the perspective of gaining XP, but strength and speed are the traits that help win you matches. I tend to look for players with peaks of 4+ talent and endurance and 3+ strength and speed.

Originally Posted by g0ldenboy27

5. But then, traineirs are good when i got knocked off of a practice tournament then my player will use the "off time" with trainers?

You don't get knocked out of a practice tournament, per se--you can play up to one match per day in singles and doubles, but may not get a matchup if your player is over-tired (or someone else in their group is). If participating in a practice tournament does not use all of your player's fatigue allotment (350/wk or 50/day), you can top up with your trainer. A trainer is also useful when your player gets bounced from a competitive tournament in early rounds (though you should try to avoid that).

[g0ldenboy27]

Originally Posted by britrock88

From a form perspective, this will depend on where your player is in their career. At the AMA/FT levels, there are enough tournaments going in any given week that you can monitor your form and sign up for tournaments when needed. At the Major level, you're required to play MSTs, which fill most of your schedule. Juniors are a combination of the two. Challengers can pick and choose what CH tournaments and low-level major tournaments they need to fill out a schedule.

From a fatigue perspective, it's a matter of knowing how much fatigue your player picks up from matches (a function of endurance). Based on that, you may decide to have a player only participate in singles (or doubles) practices the week before a tournament if they have lower endurance. You should certainly sign up for something every week, but you can have an easy or harder practice week based on playing both or only one of singles and doubles.



For a player of any age, using a player's age percentage, you can calculate their peak TESS as (Talent/Age%) + (Endurance/Age%^2) + (Strength/Age%) + (Speed/Age%). You'll get a major-level player out of someone with a TESS >14. Talent and endurance are a bit more important than strength and speed from the perspective of gaining XP, but strength and speed are the traits that help win you matches. I tend to look for players with peaks of 4+ talent and endurance and 3+ strength and speed.



You don't get knocked out of a practice tournament, per se--you can play up to one match per day in singles and doubles, but may not get a matchup if your player is over-tired (or someone else in their group is). If participating in a practice tournament does not use all of your player's fatigue allotment (350/wk or 50/day), you can top up with your trainer. A trainer is also useful when your player gets bounced from a competitive tournament in early rounds (though you should try to avoid that).

Nice, thx. I know that the secret is to keep form above 15 and fatigue less than 300 to maximize exp gains, but theres a way to me calc how much form i gain each tournament? Or a number to how much fatigue i got from any days of practice? I feel like my players always are with more than 300 fatigue, and i read here that you dont want to not play anything in a week, and i dont understand how maintain the fatigue.

And also, mondays are the 'newgen' days right? But not every monday? Im keeping track of this for a day and always 0 players with no cost comes up.

[britrock88]

Players gain form at the rate of 1/competitive match. Their form decays at the rate of 8%/week.

An easy example: your player starts the week at 15, plays 5 tournament matches--this gets his form up to 20. When the week rolls over, his form decays by 8% to 18.4.

The best way to see how much fatigue your players gain in practice matches is to click the match reports and get that info. This matters a lot on a player's endurance level. Based on the seven-day week and the five-day practice tourney setup, you want to target ~70/day fatigue in practices, whether through one or two matches. Typically, young and old players should only practice in singles or doubles, whereas mid-career players have the endurance to practice in both.

I believe Mondays are the newgen days, yes. Practically speaking, the newgens you want are probably those that cost 60 points.

[g0ldenboy27]

Originally Posted by britrock88

Players gain form at the rate of 1/competitive match. Their form decays at the rate of 8%/week.

An easy example: your player starts the week at 15, plays 5 tournament matches--this gets his form up to 20. When the week rolls over, his form decays by 8% to 18.4.

The best way to see how much fatigue your players gain in practice matches is to click the match reports and get that info. This matters a lot on a player's endurance level. Based on the seven-day week and the five-day practice tourney setup, you want to target ~70/day fatigue in practices, whether through one or two matches. Typically, young and old players should only practice in singles or doubles, whereas mid-career players have the endurance to practice in both.

I believe Mondays are the newgen days, yes. Practically speaking, the newgens you want are probably those that cost 60 points.

thx a lot man, again!

any monday or like week 1 of a year?

[law90026]

Any Monday.

For TESS, it’s typically 15+ to have a chance at a star player if I remember correctly and even that is subjective because if it comprises largely physical stats, those do tend to deteriorate. You should check the tips thread that was active a while back for a discussion on this, I found it to be largely accurate.

For the age factor, I don’t care as much about it, it’s all about the TESS. A player that matured faster also gets more xp when younger coz he goes further in tournaments sooner, especially at junior levels. One of my players who flirted with the #1 spot was a +3 or 4 for age, but he was regularly pushing far into the junior grand slams at age 18. That’s a lot of xp there.

[Young Drachma]

Getting immersed into this slowly, this thread and the old one were pretty useful. Still getting my bearings, but really like how fast it moves.

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Getting immersed into this slowly, this thread and the old one were pretty useful. Still getting my bearings, but really like how fast it moves.

I can imagine you would enjoy the speed!

If, by some circumstance, you find yourself in the slower RR1, make sure to look for the Anilophiles club.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by britrock88

I can imagine you would enjoy the speed!

If, by some circumstance, you find yourself in the slower RR1, make sure to look for the Anilophiles club.

I'm in there too! I joined it! [I'm quarterback over there]

[britrock88]

Great!

[ntndeacon]

I've just starting back myself with two 14 yr olds in World 1

[GeraaG92]

Hi guys!

I am a relatively new player in the game, who understands a lot about the form of the players and how it is important to hire a player with a high level of talent and stamina. The only thing that I have not been able to understand very well is the TESS formula in practice. Mainly with players of 14, 15 or 16 years old.

For example, I saw a 14-year-old player with the following attributes, could you help me perform the calculation to better understand from now on? Thanks a lot.

14y40w (60%)
95% (age factor)
Talent 4.5
Endurance 0.7
Strenght 2.2
Speed 1.7
Mentality 2.4

[britrock88]

Sure! First off, TESS is calculated with respect to a player's ratings in these categories at their physical peak (100%). Note that players tend to peak in Skill/Service on the down-curve of their physical peak, usually at ~90%.

Talent is fixed and won't change with age. So T = 4.5.

Endurance changes as a function of the square of the peak percentage. Today's 0.7 for a player at 60% will become 0.7/(.60^2) for E = 1.944.

Strength and speed change as a function of the peak percentage in a straight-line fashion. The current ratings of 2.2 and 1.7 are divided by the peak percentage (.6) to yield Str = 3.667 and Sp = 2.933.

(Mentality, while excluded from the straight TESS formula, works the same was as Strength/Speed, so expect a peak M = 4.)

Summing up, you have:
T: 4.5, E: 1.944; TE = 6.444.
Str: 3.667, E: 2.933; SS = 6.6.

Your total TESS is therefore 13.044. That's pretty respectable. However, the endurance will be this player's limiting factor, for reasons you likely understand! (For context, I tend to use 3 as a baseline for Endurance.)

[GeraaG92]

Thanks Britrock!! You help me a lot!

About, TE & SS, do you recommend a minimum and a great number for each? TESS minimum is 14 right? To find a good player.

[britrock88]

It's pretty tough to find auto-generated players with TESS scores better than 14. (VIP-created players tend to be better.) But that's a good number to shoot for. I tend to consider TE more important than SS.

[ntndeacon]

My two players are
Octavio Aimar 15 yr old from Chile TESS (15.087)
T 4.5
E 2.0
Strength 1.9
Speed 2.8
Age 101% (71%)


Mammaduli al Hamadani from Uzbekistan TESS(13.347)
T: 4.2
E: 1.2
S: 2.3
S: 1.8
Age 97% (65%)

[Young Drachma]

I need to generate a TESS excel spreadsheet because I've just been sort of mixing and matching strategies through trial and error. It's going fine, but I bet it'd be better if I were actually doing something logical lol

[Brian Swartz]

FWIW I never needed a TESS spreadsheet. I just went for the best I could get, and then obsessed over maxing them out. I also think, as others have mentioned, that TESS is a bit misleading. It's a good tool, but Endurance>Talent, both of which are significantly more important than Strength >Speed.

What is 'good enough' depends on what you have access to, but if you want a Top 10 player and endurance isn't above 3 (3.5 really, and preferably higher) ... pass.

[law90026]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

I need to generate a TESS excel spreadsheet because I've just been sort of mixing and matching strategies through trial and error. It's going fine, but I bet it'd be better if I were actually doing something logical lol

I had my own spreadsheets, primarily to check on the TESS of the new 14 year olds and also to compare my players current skill levels to the rest of the players in the world to see roughly where they would be in the grand scheme of things and to figure out tournament entries.

[law90026]

Just restarted on world 2. 2 14 year olds but one has better TE and the other has better SS. Assuming I stick with both, I’ll see whether it’s true the one with better TE goes further even though his TESS is lower than the other one.

[Young Drachma]

I'm playing in a few worlds right now trying different strategies out and it's been mostly engrossing. There's a part of me that wishes he the game designer had a level that simulated HS or college tennis. It wouldn't need to have recruiting, just allowed you to recruit the teens in the game and then play them against other managers in a H2H way because honestly, while I do it in real life, it'd be fun to play in a text sim that way too.

[Young Drachma]

I'm playing in a few worlds and it's been fun though I've kind of slowed down and didn't play for a week and I will eventually cut down many of the worlds I'm playing in when my time runs out in each. Anyway, I've been trying different strategies. I kind of like employing experienced players because the building players from youth thing is fine sometimes, but I don't have the patience for the slow churn of some of these guys and get ruthless about dropping them if I have to [though not anyone I create myself, I just stick those out.]

[law90026]

Well mission accomplished with the restart.

Had one of my players reach world #1 on world 20 at age 27. Wasn’t sure he would get there but his results since he hit age 25 or so have been solidly consistent.

Lucked out and managed to pick up 2 14 year olds who has high TESS, around 16 or so, so it really boiled down to managing them right. Probably not as efficient simply because I didn’t get a VIP pass so I didn’t get a coach early on to help with training so there was a fair amount of time when my players were not maxing out their training, especially in a fast world.

I’ll probably put the game away once these 2 guys are done with singles. Either that or play doubles with them and see how many titles they can win.

[Young Drachma]

Damn that's awesome on the No. 1 player congrats!!! I kinda got bored, but it was a fun diversion for a bit! Doing it without VIP is even more boss. Props to you!

[ElCuriosoJr]

Hey to all. Does anyone still play this game?


Have read trough all of the posts, The Sri Lanka Journey (fantastic btw), but couldn't find the thing i search.


How do I know, when young 14 year old players are created. I know on Mondays, but how can I see, who are they, without scrolling trough the whole list? (Cost?...Age?)



Thank you.

[law90026]

Originally Posted by ElCuriosoJr

Hey to all. Does anyone still play this game?


Have read trough all of the posts, The Sri Lanka Journey (fantastic btw), but couldn't find the thing i search.


How do I know, when young 14 year old players are created. I know on Mondays, but how can I see, who are they, without scrolling trough the whole list? (Cost?...Age?)



Thank you.

Every Monday, filter by 14 year olds and cost. The newgens will be 0 cost.

[1738]

Everyone, please join the RR discord.


Here is the link.