Soccer Star

On the previous post, Dave vaguely suggested the idea of customising your tactics. It hadn't really occurred to me, but it might be workable, so I'd like opinions on the following please.

Instead of a set of simple tactics, e.g 'Play for a win', 'Play for a draw' etc (there are 5 of them so far), you could instead have 3 tactics for each situation, e.g 'When winning play X' (x being offensive, balanced or defensive), 'When drawing play Y', 'When losing play Z'. This would allow you to totally customise your own tactics, at least for this basic 'Desired result' type tactic.

Two things I don't like about it. A) It's 3 options instead of one and one is easier and far more intuitive. So for example, 'Play for a draw' will obviously play defensive whilst you're winning or drawing and offensive whilst you're losing. It's just so much simpler. B) It could lead to people playing bizarre tactics just to out-guess their opponent (e.g play defensive when losing and offensive when winning, just to trick the other manager).

On the other hand, it does give you more control over your team and allow you to engage in a bit of out-guessing your opponent, which I believe is one of the things that people currently enjoy about SS1 tactics.

When playing offensive when losing could this include bringing on a Mid or Att instead of a defender or if winning bringing on a defender or Mid instead of an attacker.

Re B) in your 3rd paragraph some managers might want to push for a 2 goal margin to consolidate their lead or damage limitation if they went defensive whilst losing although the defensive option is less likely

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Dave
SHEPS SS ARMY
Inter Southampton (OPAL24) Yth Lge champs S9,S31,S32,S35 SLFA cup winners S15. Div 1 Champions S36. Joosters Cup winners S36.
Sylvan Lake (OPAL17) Div 1 champs S19,S29 SLFA cup winners S32
Chapel North (OPAL18)
Southern Vipers (OPAL48)
Olympic Moston (OPAL38)
Barnstoneworth United(OPAL60)
Bembridge FC (WPL29)

Yes, well using subs tactically is itself an option. Mainly, the tactics will change the way your team plays (basically if you're playing defensively, you'll get defensive bonuses and attacking penalties). But if you set the subs to be brought on tactically then yes, it'll try to bring on a defensive sub (a defender or a midfielder) for an attacking player (attacker or midfielder).

I haven't done this yet, it's what I'm working on right now, hence the need for some opinions before I wade in.

This sounds interesting. I can see your concern about keeping things simple (like SS1) but also giving some managers the extra control they may wish for.

Could this be a case of having a simple option (so that offensive equates to playing offensively in all three situations) but then you can opt to click on 'advanced' or 'custom' tactics so you can drill down to extra detail, if you are that way inclined? A way to hide the options but to still have them available in particular matches/situations - or when time allows.

Programming in the advanced options sounds good - you don't have to reveal that they are there yet, if you choose to not include them?

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Allestree Allstars nsa35
Dark Alliance nsa10
Duffield Dynamos opal39
Yorkshire Patriots rh7
Melwood moa4

That's a very good idea actually, I hadn't thought of that! There could be the 3 boxes which you can select individually, or you just hit a 'Play for win' button next to the boxes and that fills in the boxes for you.

Damn you, that's perfect, it covers all bases.... but now I have to program it in

I can do ideas, I just can't do the programming stuff (well, not very well).

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Allestree Allstars nsa35
Dark Alliance nsa10
Duffield Dynamos opal39
Yorkshire Patriots rh7
Melwood moa4

Keep chucking em at me, sometimes I can't see the wood for the trees. The more ideas I get, the better. Worse comes to the worse, I just don't use em.

I like the idea of the basic tactics with and advanced button for the detail then you can play as detailed as you wish

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Cheers
Dave.
Barton Blitz......WPL 53 Mancs F.C......WPL 64 Wigan Wildcats....Opal 58
Swinton Pirates ....ELZ 24 Dinamo Petrovac....ELZ 54
Manchester Dragons...RH 17 Stonefield Cobras ...RH 26
Luosto Tunturi...WS 7 Locomotiv Leigh. ...NSA 18 Limone Sul Garda .....BS26
Trafford Rhino's ...MOA 10 Tyldesley Panthers ...MOA 38

I might be getting a bit carried away with 8 customisable sections (2 up, 1 up, Draw, 1 down, 2 down, winning with 10 to go, draw with 10 to go, losing with 10 to go). I might cut that down to just the first 5 although I kind of like having an option to shut-up-shop with 10 minutes to go or go all out for a win/draw at that point. For example, if you're going for a draw, you could continue to play defensive, even when 1 goal down and then just go offensive towards the end. It gives lots of little options but it's definitely more complicated.

Of course, there will still be the simple 'Play for a draw' button that you can just click and it'll fill it all in for you, so I think it's probably ok. It's optional so I don't think it matters if it's 3, 5 or 8 options to select.

I should point out that each of the boxes has 5 options, from 'Very defensive' through to 'Very offensive'. So there are a lot of choices but again, I think that 1-clicking the main options will suffice for almost every situation. If you want to tweak, you can but I don't think you'll need to.

I also think this sort of tactic is very good for a game like SS, where you're not viewing the match 'live'. It's better than SS1 I think, because it's fairly straight-forward... if you've chosen a tactic that demands offensive play (e.g you're losing and you've chosen to play offensively in that situation), then you'll get a simple bonus for attacking play and a penalty for defending play. It's basic but it works and it's easy to understand.

The downside being, it's more to balance. It might be too over-powered and people might find it easy to gain the result they're after just by using the right tactics (I'm still very heavily in the 'ratings first' camp). But I can balance it during testing.

It's also occurring to me that '2 goals up' and '1 or more goals up with 10 minutes to go' are sort of similar, as in, they're basically the situation where you might want to go defensive. If I have them separate, it might be a bit confusing when the 'Last 10 minute' options start to over-ride the others. 'Winning, 10 to go' doesn't specify how many you're winning by and I don't want even more options.

So I'm thinking that '2 up OR 1+ up with 10 to go' would suffice as an all-encompassing option, since I feel that they're similar situations.

I like the options, as I said before gives people the choice of going into more detail if they want but not forcing them too.
As for the right tactics, I thought that was the point of the game, it's sort of like that now if you're playing a better team on paper you can still come out with a result.

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Cheers
Dave.
Barton Blitz......WPL 53 Mancs F.C......WPL 64 Wigan Wildcats....Opal 58
Swinton Pirates ....ELZ 24 Dinamo Petrovac....ELZ 54
Manchester Dragons...RH 17 Stonefield Cobras ...RH 26
Luosto Tunturi...WS 7 Locomotiv Leigh. ...NSA 18 Limone Sul Garda .....BS26
Trafford Rhino's ...MOA 10 Tyldesley Panthers ...MOA 38

Well it's partly the point of the game, but ratings will always be more important. However, as we've discussed before, most teams have fairly similar ratings anyway so tactics become very important. But team-building is still the central part of the game. In SS1, I feel that it's lost some of it's impact since it's easier to 'complete' your team now, but that's one of the things that'll be fixed in SS2.

Still, tactics are 'important' however you look at them, even if they were only 10% as important as the player ratings.