retired_flower115

wow, I've just read all that and I must say your dedication is inspiring!

I think I may have to print this off and read again - there goes my evenings and weekend - my g/f will not be impressed!

retired_janellewood86

Excellent thread, and I love the way everything is layed out in such an ordered way. TT&F has always been my starting point for tactic building and experimentation in my own games, and it's nice once you've not kept up with the thread in a while to not have to sift through 42 pages of incredibly insightful but long descriptions and hypotheses. Once again, superb.

Quick one for you though.

I've noticed that in setting up your team and your tactical approach you're not afraid to go to the absolute extremes of the sliders. Indeed, your mentality framework for home attacking and away defending are about as extreme as one could get (without perhaps experimenting with a very negative "rule of minus one" or whatever).

However, I'm quite a conservative in my approach, and I feel I'm somewhere inbetween Slider Apathy and Rule of One/Two, and I'd like to hear some thoughts.

Personally, I spread my mentalities pretty evenly (one or two notches at a time) between the lowest setting of normal and the highest setting of normal, with the centre backs my only real exceptions. From there, I use pretty much the same closing down, creative freedom, width etc. systems as TT&F have advocated since the early FM2006 days, with modifications based on what comes up in my game.

My main point is, I think the extremes of the sliders are there for extreme situations. I can't argue with your logic on a results basis, nor on a stylisitc one; in terms of playing style and defensive solidity or attacking power you seem to be reasonably faultless. However, I feel that slider settings of less than 5 or more than 15 are extremes. Not that they should never be used, but a normal team in normal situations should look to base itself within these borders.

Now, I will gladly admit that my results are far from perfect, but in trying to impliment this "fear of the extreme" (or the "Tory" system as it should probably be called) I have got progressively better. My tactics are probably closer to your conservative home and attacking away approaches, and in most cases my losses have come from not paying due attention to the game and reacting to the AI rather than any fundamental tactical failure (playing against Tottenham Hotspur seems to be the exception. Still to find out why...).

The system I use takes very little changing in terms of the individual instructions once I have them as I want them. From there, all my changes come from changes of personel (pace to break them down, a tall guy to stop the aerial threat etc.) or team slider changes.

Is your use of the extremes of the sliders based on what appears to be quite a mathematical and mechanical approach to the match engine, or do you genuinely believe it is the right way to go, producing realistic, exciting and ultimately winning football? I ask only due to my fear of the extreme really, but also a genuine belief that if you start off in the extremes, you really have nowhere to go.

I'll close by saying excellent post. I cannot stress enough how much of a help these threads have been over the countless hours of playing FM, and I hope these continue for FM08 and beyond!

retired_mgavlick

@ Millie: In 06 I always stayed away from extreme settings and it took me a long time to try them out in 07. My early experimentation with the home system was so good that I didn't really need to adjust it in any way. I did play with split mentality forwards for a little, but there wasn't much difference in performance. All in all I stand by my league results over four seasons. Having been predicted to come 17, 24, 24, 15, I posted a W60, D28, L4 record over the four completed seasons while playing/testing early variations of the RoO frameworks. Despite my early doubts the results won me over.

However, that is not to say you can't split from my frameworks and design an 'in-between' tactic. There is no reason to stick to my mentalities and a mentality framework running from 12-18, or 10-16, with matching theories should work just as well. It is very interesting to note how sound my defensive record has been at home over the four seasons. I have only conceded 50 goals in 92 home matches, despite the high mentalities. Slightly lower mentalites should reduce this further, and would work well if you have a striker who is guaranteed to bang in the goals. As I mentioned before, the extreme defensive framework is only really effective when you are outclassed man-for-man, so the extreme settings in that framework can be dangerous. However, I have no issues about the settings of the home framework. They are mathematical as you pointed out, but in keeping with my aim of offering up 'across the board' frameworks for tactical development, they have to be. That is not to say people shouldn't experiemnt with having one FC at 14 in the high mentality framework, or one at 15 on the away framework, even if it is just to see what happens.

Hope that helps.

retired_flower115

What do you mean by FC 20 for e.g.? Is this the number of times you click the slider? If so I'm sure the slider only goes up 19 clicks.

Not questioning the great man, I'm just a bit confused.

retired_adriana6

slider starts on 1, so if you click 19 times you will be on 20

retired_flower115

Right. Thanks swash. I cannot see my floor now for crumbs of humble pie!

retired_Markpdoody

I applaud your effort wwfan. The effort itself deserves an accolade with or without the material. It is fantastic that such a composition is made to help while it excites. I just could not imagine if you had put it into pictures. Create a web simply for FM tactics, might as well. None of that download tactic web but all theories and pratice. Probably all the tactic gurus should finally get together and create a decent web purely for tactical analysis.

:cool:

retired_abelin

Absolutely marvellous stuff. You've done it again. Hats off for you.


Time to shelf the apathetic approach for a while and invest a couple of long evenings being a tad more sophisticated me thinks :cool:

retired_janellewood86

Excellent. I can totally see where you're coming from, and obviously I wansn't trying to suggest that these things should be set in stone. It's just, like I say, I do have quite an aversion to extremes on the sliders, simply because that's not really my way of doing anything. However, if I come unstuck, I at least have a few alternatives to try and experiment with.

Another question.

You talk at length at how you set up individual instructions and your team instructions apart from one crucial point - team mentality.

Now, when I first started using RoT and later RoO (or, like I say, somewhere in between) I always left the t. ment. slider slap bang in the middle. Do you do the same? I ask because since discovering that t. ment. overides (sorry, compliments) i. ment. in terms of the overall feel of the side, I've not really felt the need to overly change my individual mentalities once I've got the spacing right.

Do you use the team mentality slider, or are you more happy solely using individual instructions to attack and/or defend?

retired_Hwells34

Yep purely brilliant,

i have read the Experiment thread about two weeks ago and have since then laid off any other system.I played the two (home/away) versions of his (PAGEY124) system and had moderate to good succes. then deviced 4 extra systems (less att/less def) for myself (you could device up to 16 different versions) and was happy about the way my BCFC played, but something was missing. The way you set up passing gives much more flow to my team (it was equal for all players and they only had the shorter option), giving Defs somewhat longer and Atts shorter really uped my game. The coherence of passing/width and tempo is obvious. PAGEY124 played a wide (20) width throughout his tactics, this will stretch the team out to much, but there is a point to be made for wider formations as narrow (3-4) away formations will give up the flanks, giving FBs higher CD can nullify this, but i will go with you on the pass/width/tempo sliders. Your settings on CD,marking,tackling,forwruns,timewaste,crossing,sw apping,teamtalks are really helping. As you have stated yourself in Variations i would go for a higher CD for FBs putting pressure on the wings.
I am missing (or have misread) the Team Mentality settings, am i right to say that it links with the Defline settings ?

So thanks where thanks is due, Cleon for setting me up with playing as a team (sheffield project), PAGEY124 for his wonderfull experiment, and WWfan for his perfection of this system and taking the amount of time for putting this into words (and finally giving me back my sleeping hours as i was pondering night after night to perfect my system).
:thup: