BuzzerBeater Forums

Along the lines of the other new forum posting, I thought I would see if there is interest in conversation on strategy as well (so the way managers work their team, rather than the way the game engine works the games).

I know that most of these are well known . . . but there are some managers who may not know a couple things:

1) Single position training is MUCH more effective than 2 position training. If at all possible, get your team to the point where you can focus on single position training 2 or 3 players instead of 2 position training 5. For example, when I have focused on single position training for OD, I try to make sure that I only have 2 or 3 players that I am going to train for that 8 week block of time. If there are other players who I will not be able to fit into a training schedule, I will sell them and focus on 2 or 3. Through single position training, you can get two/three 19 year olds to bump a skill 8 times in a season (not includng the bumps on secondary skills). During that same period, by training PG and SG, you could get 5 players to bump 5 times. Yes, the potential 25 pops is more than the 16 or 24 pops through single position training . . . but 'wonderous' OD is 500% better than 'prolific' OD (whether you are going to use that player or sell that player).

2) Home court advantage, higher enthusiasm and higher gameshape are critical. All that said, if you must choose between losing a game at home, or losing a game on the road . . . lose at home. If you lose on the road, your fans will be grumpy and you will not sell out your next game (which will be at home). However, if you lose at home, your fans will be pissy while you are on the road . . . which doesn't impact your attendance.

3) This game is all about money . . . increase your arena every chance you get. Do it in small pieces . . . do it often, do it constantly. Many a team have been promoted to D.III only to figure out they can't make enough money to survive. Yes the TV revenue is much higher, but so are the payers salaries. I was dumb lucky that I invested in my arena when I was in D.V. - and I have not touched it too much in the last couple seasons. I have been averaging over $155K per home game for the last several seasons . . . that has been a HUGE part of my success (and why I can carry a ridiculously high payroll for a DIV team).

5) Pick your staff well . . . paying a PR manager who specialized in crown involvement $25K per week is well worth it if he ensures that your seats are full (obviously if full seats means more than $25K per home game!!). I believe a high level doctor is very important as well . . . I am always either training a young buck to sell for millions or relying on old veterans to perform for my team. In either case, if I have a lot of injuries on my team - I will not only lose games . . . but I will lose weeks of training / gameshape / etc. To me, having an exceptional or world-class doctor has been very important over the past 2 seasons. I also try to always have a trainer who is at least superior, and with fitness specialty; that is until the last couple weeks of the season. Usually with a couple weeks left, I will fire my trainer and focus on gameshape (if necessary), stamina or free throws until the beginning of the next season.

6) Dont underestimate the power of high free throw ratings!! There have been many a game that I have won because I shot better at the line than my opponent. I HATE training free throws (because it does not increase the value of the player), so I look for high FT skill when I am looking to buy.

7) Don't always focus on your team strengths when setting a lineup. You must consider the weaknesses of the team you are playing. Hopefully, you have some strength in an area where he / she has a weakness. But look at the ratings / strategies / etc of your opponent. If you have $25K guards and SF, but R&G every single game . . . I can plan for that. But if every once in a while you run a motion offense, or a base offense, or whatever . . . that makes things more interesting. That makes it more difficult to pick a strategy to use.

8) If you want to get better / enjoy this game more . . . get involved!!! Absolutely get a mentor . . . find someone who is willing to take time to discuss thoughts / strategies / look at your roster / help plan / etc. I have been very lucky to have access to a couple of people from the start of season 8 . . . and it has been massive. Participate in the forum more - talk about ideas (whether we think they are crap or not!). Learn little things here and there, but don't get frustrated when your team isn't 'great' . . . focus on trying to get better! Every once in a while, blow your team up . . . take the cash and do something different (train bigs instead of guards, or vice versa, etc.).

Last edited by Coach Dawg at 06/02/2011 01:10:28

oops..well I included some of this in the other post..though I'd like to add a few things..

1) In training...remember to account for size, while most of us will know this I still believe that it needs to be re-emphasized..

2) When picking your line-up make sure to go through the match-ups. They gave us the option of having our guys guard other positions for a reason!

3) Remember to cut your rosters down. Try not to hold more than 12 players MAX (just like in real life). If possible even have 9 or 10 would be best.

4) Experience- I've many mixed feelings about this piece of the meta...while it does affect the game engine I also want to touch up on the Transfer list (will post about that later though). In other games I play its impact is so huge that I prefer to get older guys with tons of experience for a few seasons rather than get younger guys to play...the thing is in BB experience has too small an effect (at least from what I've seen) for that to be worth it. Experience does increase performance but the difference between none and Wonderous has increases centers (the largest impact player imo) by only 1.5 (rating) this is great... and there are even hidden factors here like less fouls....less turnovers etc. But I still believe training up and using your players is the better option right now.

I have really struggled keeping gameshape at proficient for all my players when I run fewer than 12 players . . .. the ideal range is something like 50 to 68 minutes per week to maximize gameshape . . . that 68 cap is tough to stay under with only 10 or 11 players.

Great call on the experience thing. I continue to struggle with how much of an impact experience has outside of the last 10 seconds of each half. For example, there are some teams that will have 1 absolute stud . . . such as a $145K SF, and then surround him with 15K players. In that situation, since the game engine looks to 'put the ball int the best player's hands', the SF will take 60 - 80 percent of the shots and will touch the ball more than all other players. But what if one of the scrubs has a higher experience rating than the monster SF? Does that mean that the GE will have the higher experienced player take the last second shot for the win? Does it mean that if the scrub happens to take the shot, he will have a 'success boost' to his skill levels?

For who gets the last shot it's a combination between experience and skill. If it's close the Exp gets it but in the case of the SF and the scrubs it'd go to the SF. And yes he does get a "success boost" for taking shots in the last few seconds based off of exp (if it's low then it's a subtraction though.)

Just a few words. I find 11 players is the sweet spot for me. Every time I try to carry 12, that 12th player just doesn't get the playing time he needs.

Also, about Stamina: I think there are two ways to deal with the stamina issue. One is to train Stamina or buy players with high stamina, but the other is to use substitutes and have high quality subs. If no one is being asked to play a 48 minute game, having low stamina doesn't seem to be too bad.

That, in turn, leads to 2 position training. By rotating starters and using subs, I can get 3 guys 48 minutes in my league games, without sacrificing how I play, and then get 2 guys 48 minutes in my friendly (by playing them for the whole 48). If I did 1 position training, I'd be forced to either train 2 players, or have everybody doing the whole 48 at a significant hit in performance -- or I'd have to train stamina, which would cost me whatever gain I was getting from 1 position training. If you can dominate anyway, like the Dawgs, it's worth it; otherwise, winning games is connected to making money in this game, and money lets you buy better players and keep better players.

Also, I agree with the assessment that Wondrous is much better than prolific when selling a player. However, when factoring in the cost of the players salaries, etc., I don't think it's 500% better than prolific for purposes of actually playing that player. In fact, I think there are diminishing returns with each level, in terms of how your team plays, once your player is just slightly better than his opponent. And having a few players be Wondrous, while the rest are less than prolific, gives you less flexibility to play different offenses than a more balanced team would, which has advantages as pointed out earlier. And having a Wondrous guy is more expensive than multiple prolific types salary wise.

That was more than a few words, wasn't it? Great thread, though.

One thought about your Wondrous bit... One possible (and probable) out come of doing that is you lose less games. What use is it to have 10 average players over 2-3 Prolific? If most of your starters are above the cut then you're more likely to win games. If you try and balance things out like you were mentioning....well then you'll have a roster who is as good as everyone else's scrubs. If you have a guy with a higher level of training he sells for more...making you a lot more money (perhaps 10 x as much) which in turn allows you to *shudders* buy players.

Oh, I think you should train your best players to make them even better, and I'm not suggesting you train a different 5 guys every week or anything like that. My comparison was between between having 5-7 prolific players (including some you buy) vs. 2-3 wondrous guys and 9 average guys. The latter has exploitable holes, and is vulnerable to people choosing defenses against those particular players. And there's a higher salary cost. Anyway, I'm sharing what's working for me, and working pretty reasonably so far I think, to be where I am in my 3rd full season. Hopefully there is more than one way to win in this game.

I also think it's more fun to play guys who have been on your team for a while, and much more fun to see people pop in training when you know you're going to keep them. YMMV -- I'm sure for some people the big thrill is selling a player for millions. Or having someone on the NT. Or lighting up the league leader board. That's a prejudice that has nothing to do with strategy.

Nice! You hit on my favorite part of BB . . . that there are so many ways to be 'successful'. And I mean that in two ways; first, there is definitely no single strategy that will get a team to the highest levels - which means that a manager must consider all of the variables (players ages, skill levels, level of competition within the division / league, etc, etc, etc) to be successful over the long haul. Additionally, there are soooo many potential goals to go after. For me, I would absolutely love to get an 18 yo MVP or higher and develop him into a U21 player and a NT player. I think that would be really neat. Other managers could not care less if they have an NT player.

When there are so many ways to set goals and then work to achieve them, everyone seems to be involved. I think that some of the people that try BB and drop out do so because there is SO MUCH to the game. Not that it is complex, but that there are so many things that you could do (build a massive bankroll, win the Cup, get to the NBBA, win B3, become a NT manager, and so on). All those possibilities could be a bit overwhelming.

The other topic that your guys are hitting on is a tough one . . . the Studs & Scrubs strategy vs. Stud & Subs strategy. Again, there are a lot of considerations that go into what is 'right' for any particular team (current payroll, current cash, what could player bring to the team, training, level of doctor, and so on).

When I made my roster changes last week, here is what I was thinking (part of it is relevant to this topic). Looking at my roster, I was at a point that I needed to either continue training guards, or shift to training bigs. If guards, then I would have sold Weltmann and Jones and probably picked up about $1M Going that way, I would have used the cash to get 1 or 2 bigs that were good enough to get me at least through the next 3 seasons without training them at all. Gruttadauria is great, and Dunn and Rangelov are incredible backups . . . but they are 32, 30 and 34. I would need 2 players to come into the lineup as they start to lose skill points. If I would have done that, I would then have focused exclusively on Subasi for the next two seasons. The problem with that plan would have been that Del Real and Santamarina were great offensive players . . . but they were not strong enough defensively to help in the next couple seasons.

I decided that focusing on bigs makes a lot more sense, because I knew I could get some cash for Subasi, Del Real and Santamarina (actually I ended up getting much more for the latter two then I thought I would). I then took the cash and purchased players who were skilled enough in OD, passing and JS to start on the DIII level . . . that way I don't need to worry about training them at all. Casanavate, Raden and Snut are older players . . . but between the three of them, Ghitti, Coroado and Jones I should have the guard and Sf positions covered for several seasons. Finally, knowing that I am focused on training Weltmann and Jones this year and next, I found a couple young high potential players that I will work into training so I can sell them for a profit later. Vazgelevious and Seward may not be on any national teams soon . . but I will probably be able to turn a 500K profit on them in two seasons.

Was the purchase of Casnavate, Raden AND Snut overkill when I know that Ghitti is an A+ starter for the next 4 seasons? Probably. But I don't want to run the risk of having 1 or 2 (or God forbid 3) injuries hit my squad during a run at possible promotion. I have a lot invested in my current run, and I want to have the depth and flexibility to deal with injuries, another team buying 2 100K salary studs, etc.

That said . . . at the end of next season, I will be done training Weltmann and Jones (Weltmann will be going on 25 and Jones only has allstar potential). So I will be making another similar decision at that time (which will make Vaz and Seward all the more important from a financial perspective).