Powermonger

I'm curious to know how others feel about tactics and their various settings, does everyone have a clear understanding of what they all do or do you struggle with them?

Personally I still find their meaning and how the 2D engine represents them elusive, even after educating myself by reading many threads.

gubbs

The problem lies in the disparity between what the engine wants and what the end user is trying to achieve.

Once you learn the quirks, you can exploit the system the same as the A.i.

Sadly, a lot of people will loose a lot then decide they can't be arsed.

Which is why there was talk of 'difficulty' levels being introduced - basically so you can turn a sim into an arcade game for the xb0xorz.

Seagulls Forever

This is sadly an area where I find the game lets itself down. The wibble-wobble was unrealistic yes, but then so are the sliders. And the problem is that we have to guess at SI's interpretation of them. It seems so much guesswork to get a match played the way you want and while the answer to a problem should never be obvious, the use of a poor interface to create difficulty is not the way to set an appropriate difficulty level.

LFCrouchinho#15

I don't understand the tactics in FM...

When I hear people respond to 5-0 or 6-0 losses by saying they got the tactics wrong, or when I hear them say they have to change their tactics after five matches, it makes this aspect of the game seem very random. Almost as if you're trying to crack a code, which makes FM very different from real life.

DeathSpawn

dont reallly care much about it, i only use sliders in 3 positions, minimum,normal,maximum because everything else seems to always be the same...

DeathSpawn

one example that tactics are weird, i was using my tactic and was losing at half time, was playing 4-3-1-2 and then pushed MR nd ML next to the strikers and pushed DL and DR to ML and MR and so i was playing 2-3-1-4 and increased mentality to full offensive, guess what i won 5-3... as if this would ever work IRL

Seagulls Forever

The word is arbitrary, not random. Arbitrary is worse.

phnompenhandy

There's a whole forum for tactics where a group of very intelligent guys clearly disagree with you.

Jimbokav1971

I'm certainly no expert and don't ever go into the T&TGF so I'm probably waaaay behind many others, but I think I have a reasonable idea of how things work and more importantly WHY they work.

The FM08 match engine obviously favours certain things in exactly the same way that the FM07 match engine, (and every other engine before it), did.

In FM07 physical stats ruled the roost and in particular, jumping was a particularly key attribute. I designed tactivs that would allow me to exploit these areas of the match engine.

With FM08 it's a little different. Physical stats still seem to be key, but the jumping attribute for example doesn't hold the same sway as it did in FM07 and therefore the effectiveness of the Target man has diminished.

In addition, the introduction of what many perceive to be "the 1v1 bug", the type of chance that you create seems also to have gained more significance. If that doesn't make sense, think og it like this. If your speedy striker breaks the defensive line and attacks down the middle of the pitch, it is unlikely that he will score a high percentage of the time. If however the same player is player in as he attacks from the flanks then he has a far better chance (percentage wise), of scoring.

Sorry, where the hell am I going with all this ?

Yes I understand them, (I think).

SirWhale

These days, I'm so disillusioned by tactics that I don't bother with them at all. Same goes for any sort of analysis into the game. The thing with FM is that less is the same as more, and leaving the game alone as much as you can (not literally) produces around the same results as analysing tactics, players' attributes, opponents' weaknesses and strengths, at least for me.

It's just like betting on soccer. Do some basic homework and don't bother about advanced analysis, because things could go easily any way, and it's so random that you can say it is actually luck-based.

The game's just too arbitrary/random to be able to withstand consistent logical analysis.

In other words, in short, not bothering about analysing and microing the game tactically produces just about the same result as not doing so, assuming you've got the most basic fundamentals right.