trades very rarely happen in FM, but yes you can. It's called a "part-exchange". When you see a player you want, go to make an offer for him, then instead of putting money there, look to the bottom where there's something like player exchange and pick a player to send. You can also send some money along with a player...

FM

I've seen about 5 trades/part exchange in my first Malaysian season.

I think trades rarely happen in real life.

And in the MLS, trade are the only thing you can do once the transfer window is closed. I hate this rule btw.

Yes not scoring and on the flip side, no clean sheets. It's a deeper problem than that, but to be honest, I see it as part of the larger morale/conditioning issue that SI is looking into. I won't rehash the arguments that easily can be found in the SI forums, but I'll say that I tend to agree with the people finding the game unpredictable. I won't say too hard, because I don't find it that.

Side question for those playing with fictional rosters:


I'm finding quite a lot of players who have exactly the same rating for most of their abilities -- guys with an 11, for example, in all but a few of their area of skill. I don't recall seeing this before, but now it's comon - both with players on my own team and those I am scouting.

Is this a new appearance of the "fog of war" concept -- where these ratings will change once I get to know the players better?

Or is this some sort of shortcut used when generating a new universe of players - making plenty of guys just basically "generic 11" players?

Or something else I haven't thought of?

Woo hoo!

After several looooong months of sitting and waiting (after starting unemployed), I finally got hired to a Conference North team one point away from relegation with a huge debt and no transfer funds available in February 2006.

Wish me luck! :eek:

I don't know a whole bunch about the rules and a quick scan through the manual and hints guide didn't help (perhaps I missed the answer), but....just messing around trying to figure things out and I want to promote a striker from my under 18 squad, since his ratings look decent. He's 15, but every time I move him up the game marks him as ineligible. I've brought up a 16 year old goalie with no problems, but am not sure what is wrong with the striker. Is he just too young to be allowed to play?

Is he signed to a pro contract?

Some countries will not allow anyone under 16 years old to play in the the first team. I don't have a full list of countries though.

is there a good site for rules for each league in fm?

Lowest age allowed for a player at professional level in England is 16 years old.

You can, but football works differently to football (if you see what I mean).

In simple terms, In football (soccer) generally a team pays cash for a player, as there is no salary cap in the majority of leagues, no drafts, etc.

So when Newcastle signed Michael Owen, they paid Real Madrid (his previous club) £15m - no players went the other way. Owens old contract was scrapped, and he renegotiated with Newcastle. The players get a say - if they don;t want to join a club, they are not obliged to do so, and if they cannot agree terms, the deal will collapse.

Occasionally, players will move between clubs as part of a deal (e.g. when Michael Owen joined Real Madrid from Liverpool, Madrid paid £7m cash, plus a couple of Madrid players joined Liverpool for 'free'. But if these players didn;t want to leave, or couldn;t agree a contract with Liverpool, either the transfer would have collapsed, or Madrid would have had to pay more money.

Basically every player has a value, and if another club is willing to pay that value or more, often the bid will be accepted, and the player can then discuss terms and decide if he wants to move or not.

Hope that helps.

For a summary of most of the rules that are important, go to the league table screen in FM, and then in the top right hand corner there is a drop down menu - select 'Rules' and it will give a breakdown of some of the most critical rules you will need to know.

I find that if you're sensible with your half time/full time talks, you can keep morale up fairly easily, which I assume helps explain my good form.

My Leicester career is blitzing that even of the great Martin O'Neill - at the end of Feb 07 we are sitting in 6th in the EPL, 4 points clear of 7th and only 4 points off 2nd. Although we lost to Liverpool in FAC round 4, and my reserve side lost in CC round 3 to Hull, we have just trounced Lazio 6-1 ovcer two legs and now face Celtic in the 2nd UEFA cup knockout leg.

I haven't seen the massive losing streak problem - we lost 3 on the bounce, but then stuffed Liverpool 4-2.

Tbh I nearly lost it the other day as my mind told me: IRL we're crap in the Championhsip, in FM I still have 3 of the back 4, my GK as 1st choice, 4 other players regularly in the rotation, and the majoirty of the others as 1st/2nd reserves, how are we doing so well?

But then I thought, 'Fuck it. It's a game and I'm having a blast! :D '

I think there is a complexity to the morale system, but after I followed Mark's advice for awhile and thought it through, I started making my own decisions on the talks, and it has paid off bigtime. I've snatched a few victories I shouldn't have, and shored up some possible "ho hum we must be going now" defeats. I have felt that my secret was to get the team to trust me, which I assumed was happening once a few players started naming me as their favoured personnel, and then LAYING INTO THEM!! when they deserve/need it. If a guy puts up a 5 performance, I tell him about it. I also don't praise too much since they start getting big heads, saying "feels the club should be able to win without too much effort" -- SLACKERS! Once, I lost a game 6 - 0 in the most embarassing fashion. Man did they get a telling off for that one.

It's basically what you really would do if you had all of them looking up to you as a coach. You would hold fire a whole lot more than you'd let loose because you don't want to ruin their confidence. But a well timed arse-kick works wonders.

But not overpraising is just as important. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been "delighted" with the whole team in the last two seasons. I've said "fantastic result!" exactly twice. And over the last three years, I've had two spells of bad morale, but both were short lived.

There is one more thing.. somehow you have to "feel" when you are going to need the "don't let up in the 2nd half!" talk. If you use it when you don't need it, your guys will suck, apparently. I did that once this last year. But three times I did it and the boys played even better in the 2nd half, scoring more goals along the way!

So I wouldn't call the morale thing broke, I'd call it wicked hard to ride, like a bull in a rodeo. But if you hit the stride, look out.

My problem is rather the parts that are bugged. I've got two coaches, for instance, who were once players on my team. If I try to get them to actually coach something, though, I get a crash. Ow.. that's 90 pounds wasted.

But I'm loving this game so much, I didn't get to sleep until 5:30 this morning, and then I played it all afternoon just now!

And here's an extra little rant about why I love this game.

I had a young striker, very good at his job but still had some learning to do. I noticed when I redid his contract he was "demanding" a certain sum of money. Other folks just "want" a certain amount, but this guy.. so I had my eye on him, but he was scoring goals left and right. He was up to 23 goals about 2/3 of the way through the season. Then he decides he needs another contract, for three and a half times as much as he's making now, and he needs it RIGHT NOW or he'll do something by golley.

I didn't like hearing that very much. I loved seeing the options for me to click to respond to his demands. I chose the one that said something like "you aren't worth that kind of money, but if you think you are you can go get it somewhere else." Then I transer=listed his arse.

Oh, he was all apology afterward. He didn't mean it, he didn't want to go, he'd play for what he was making now, honest..

That was kind of satisfying!

As it happened, I was flush with excellent strikers, including the fellow who'd scored 30 goals two seasons before. Someone offered me 60K for him and I was, like, "seeya!"

And we did just as well without him.

I think you've hit on important point, that team cohesion is really important in FM06. It was somewhat important in 05, but new players usually integrated fairly quickly into the team. Now, I think it is key to keep the core elements of your team together and add in more talented players slowly. I think that was one huge mistake I made with Leeds. By the time of my resignation, I had one player from the original squad of three seasons earlier in the first team. He was also the only English player.

I took the Schalke position after a few months of just coaching the US team. I've brought in some good new players, but will try and work them slowly into the team. I've kept all the key players from the previous season, regardless of whether I think they have top talent or not. We'll see how it works. ;)

Yep, I'm managing an English team. Thanks. Now I've got to check and see if his birthday is coming up soon.

Anecdotally speaking, it appears that you'll win a lot more often if you are proficient with more than one tactic. My team has three, but I've only been using two for the last year and that has done pretty well. Now, mine are all variations of a 4-4-2, but they have a lot of differences, and it seems to be enough to keep the opponents scouts confused.

I haven't really noticed this. I've used the same tactic for 2 1/2 seasons (with very slight changes) for a Conference side that is now in a promotion battle in League One. I think as long as your tactics fit the abilities of the players, you should be able to do reasonably well.

I bought the digi-download last Sunday and last night when attempting to fire WSM up it says that I only have the evaluation copy...I've been playing for a week straight and this is the first time it's happened, so I tried the to get a new key with my order number and password but it doesn't seem to be working. Haven't really read through this to see if anyone else has had this problem but it's kind of irking me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

my advice to you would be to contact Marc Vaughan via PM with all of your details. He'll help you out...

FM

Since I wrote that note I tried sticking with one tactic for s string of games and that worked alright for me. I'm sitting at 4 wins, 1 draw, and no losses. I did notice that the first win was a blowout (I had used a different tactic previously) and the others were tight games. My players are much better now than in the past, too. Maybe once you've got good players and you put them in the right places, you'll win sticking with one tactic. But I also have a hunch that there is a benefit to launching with a surprise tactic, if your guys are proficient with it. I think the blowout win, against a team the media predicted to smoke me, might be pointing to that.

Ok, my start with this so far.

I have started a few different careers, tinkering around some. I really didn't want to start up a serious league on this laptop (the crappy one), because I am hoping to finally get my normal one fixed in the next month or so. But I started one up and I think I will be sticking with it as long as possible now.

I have all the English and Scottish leagues on normal, along with Wales and Northern Ireland. Anyways, I like to 'work my way up' and I figured starting in a lower prestige place like N. Ireland would be something different then a lower English or Scottish team. Boy oh boy. Can't say I am sure I recommend starting this way though, but it has been fun.

I gave myself Scottish nationality, and took over NI2 team Portstewart. No money to work with, $13,500 or so a month for salaries (yes I use $), awful facilities. They expectations for year one was a decent mid-table showing.

Right away I started trying to bring in better players, and right away I find out it is very difficult to get someone from England or Scotland to come to a NI2 team (and it turns out any NI team really). So, I move on with the roster I have, filled with some decent younger players but really I feel the only thing going for me is that all the other NI2 teams are just as crappy. Start playing some games, using the basic 4-4-2, sometimes moving to attacking and defensive to try those out. I am doing ok right away as I play in Intermediate Cup (I think that's what it called) for the lower division clubs. Then the league play starts and I go on. I found my key guys, brought in a few guys on free transfer from other clubs and went from there. Also, I found I could barely get any players from NI1 and NIP to come play for me. One thing I did do was get a good veteran (38 years old when I got him) DC/DM who also was a coach, he he played pretty good for me. That, along with getting a couple more coaches, really helped my younger guys.

So I keep plugging along and low and behold I find myself sitting in 3rd near the end of the year as I found a decent combo of players. With three games left I win one and draw one, and things fall just right that I go into my last game of the year against the second place team, Queens University Belfast, and I am down by two points. A win and I'm promoted. The game went great, and I won 2-0.

So into season two I go, now in NI1. The board is thrilled needless to say and they are glad they signed me to a 3 year deal before season 1 ended. I am expected to fight against relegation back down to NI2, although I get the impression they wouldn't care if it happened. I start lookingfor some new guys again, hoping the promotion will have helped getting guys in. I think it did a little, but it wasn't much. I brought in a couple guys from an English team's youth squad who didn't get signed by them, and then it hit me that once I got rid of a few guys I didn't want around anymore that I needed a couple more defenders pretty bad, since I had no depth there. So I was able to bring in a couple guys from the Albion Rovers who didn't re-sign with them. Still, my starting roster was going to be pretty muc the same.

I am into season two a good amount now, and I am amazed. At the end of season 1 I started messing around with the sliders for team tactics, and was getting good results so I kept it up and am getting much more comfortable with these. Even with the individual player instructions too. I am almost 10 games into league play now and have not lost a game. I started out with a couple draws, then got a couple wins. My team is sitting in 3rd and I think I may crap my pants if I find a way to get promoted to Premier after only 1 season in NI1. One of my newer players, a striker, has teamed up with te guy I considered my 2nd best striker from year one, and the two of them are tearing shit up. Also, my goalie is looking like he is going to be pretty good now. My only real weak spot seems to be DL, were I can't get real consistent play from my 2 main guys I use there. One the plus side, McInulty from Albion, who I brought in to contend for that DL spot (but he also plays ML) is doing pretty good at ML.

Not sure how long I can ride this thing out. I have no money still. But I upgraded my coaching staff between year 1 and 2 and that could carry me for a while I think as these young guys are getting pretty good. My only question is, as I lose about $10,000 a month, how long do the board take that? They don't seem to care right now.

Eventually they will restrict your wage budget to the point where you will be unable to sign or resign anybody half way decent. Unless they manage to secure a loan to pay back the debt, which you then have to make monthly interest payments on. After awhile, they should start mentioning to you that the finances need to be sorted out. The best cure for that (other than having a rich chairman buy out the team) is promotion and lengthy cup runs.

True. I think tweaks to a stable formation (as in one you use constantly) help quite a bit as well. I just beat EPL Birmingham with my League One side in the League Cup away, just by slowing down the tempo and playing more aggressively on defense than I regularly do in the league. It's not pretty, but it works :)

you know, I have not played FOF in almost a year (at least not really seriously) and that was maybe my main gripe about the game: the finances didn't seem to matter. I mean yeah, there was a salary cap and everything but I remember losing something like $20M a season for a couple seasons in a row and well and that didn't change much to my team planning and then earning $30M three years later and again, not much change... Try losing $20M in one year in FM, you'll hear about it...

FM

I think there is a benefit to switching tactics in-game. If you're up by a few goals, switching to a shut-down tactic will close out the game for you. I think you benefit more from sticking with one main tactic as your players are more comfortable with it.

Is this a 'for sure' thing to happen? Year one I didn't make any money either except at he begining when I sold a few guys. Oter then that I lost a good amount of money in year one, and in year two they raised my monthly salary allowance by $1500 which surprised me. Getting promoted from NI2 to NI1 hasn't done a whole lot in terms of attendance, so I am not sure there is much of a solution to this except enjoy it while I can and then sell guys off when I am forced to.

It's not how much money you are losing, it's how much money is in the bank. So as long as the bank balance is positive, or near positive, you're fine. The definition of "near positive" is obviously going to be different depending on the team.

well, are you still in the green overall or is the team's bank account beginning to dip in the red? I'd think that losing money isn't a big deal as long as you're not in the red overall...

FM

Desnudo summarized my explanation pretty well ;)

FM

So...anyone know a way I can find this in a store yet?

I picked mine up at Software Plus (suburban STL).

Is that the full name of it? I can't find it on Google.

http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product_id=646382

Enter in your zip code and see if it appears in any of the stores listed.

Thanks, that worked. I tried this a while ago, but I only looked within 10 miles. Turns out there are some 25 miles away.

As far as I know. As the others have said, it's based on your balance rather than your profits. Of course, if your profits are negative, your balance is eventually going to disappear. I was saddled with a 1.3 million pound debt at the start of my career, and in trying to put together a promotion team in the conference, my balanced had slipped to about -1 million just before I got promoted. The board had restricted my wage budget to 0 pounds, until we started making some money again.

On a side note, I signed a rolling contract that year for less than I was making because of the financial crisis. However, it just keeps the expiry of the contract one year from the current game date, thus the board has never offered me a new contract, even though we are now in League One and have over 1 million in the bank. Soon I'll be the lowest paid manager in the EPL. :(

I've wanted to try this game for awhile now but not knowing much about football (soccer) it seemed too much to learn the game and football at the same time. I have tried the demo and try and buy but could never really get
started, just felt totally lost. However since buying EHM and learning the SI style of gui I was looking to buy WWSM. Got up this a.m. and the wife needed to go to Mankato, Minnesota to shop of course and wanted to know if I wanted to go. Quick search on the net while she was out of the room revealed that the gamestop there had wwsm 2006 on hand. Snuck away from her in the mall and went to gamestop but only saw wwsm 2005. The store was crowded and the clerks were busy so I looked all over the place to see if maybe I missed it. Was about to give up when one of the guys at the counter appeared to be free. Asked him about the game expecting him to not even recognize the name. To my surprise he replied " why yes I do have wwsm I just put it on the shelf. So now old Dad is the proud owner of one wwsm 2006 and has the feeling he is about to be overwhelmed, not necessarily a bad thing :)

I won't get a chance to play now until tommorow but was wondering if anyone here has tried the game unpatched? On the SI board there are some that say the game actually plays better this way as the first patch seems to have unbalanced things. Here is a link..

http://community.sigames.com/groupee...1/m/6732008771


Anyway was just curious if anyone here had any comments on the patch issue?

Now I know nothing about football or the leagues other than looking through the lists of available teams in the try and buy menu. I selected Oldham to start my test career only because it sounded like a good old English name :)
From what I could gather this seemed like a mid-level place to start. Any comments positive or negative on this selection? Is there a better place to start? I'm open to any suggestions.

The disk is laying on the desk next to me and I am fighting the urge to "just" install it now and then go to bed. I know if I do I'll be lucky to get two hours sleep. So off to bed I go, I'll fire this baby up tommorow and see how much trouble I've gotten myself into.

Thanks for any replies.

Sweed

say byebye to your social life sweed.

personally i didn't play much before the first patch, but i havn't really notice it being unbalanced. i also havn't checked the SI boards for the specifics of their arguments though.

I wouldn't worry about the people complaining that the patch unbalances anything, over at the sigames board every patch will be met with a flurry of posts from people who want to call it crap. People like complaining, I guess.

For comebacks, all that's happening is that you can't just select a formation, stick in a few names you've read about being worth buying, then win the champions league. You will have to change formation and/or tactics in some situations. I'm just coming to the end of my first season and I've only seen one "odd" comeback game, they happen rarely in real life as well, so I'm not crying bug or unbalanced.

But then again, I'm going to get promoted after winning the Scottish First Division with Clyde, so I don't have anything to complain about :)

I've noticed one thing with training.......tactics and ball control training are important! I set up various schedules, GK, Defense, Midfield, Wingers, Attack. All of them have tactics and ball control training in the "high" range. After just a few months my players are all maxing their training ability, and the improved off the ball, anticipation, decision stats have really helped them to take off in the league. I'm playing Stromsgodset in the Norweigian First Division, am now at 13 - 0 - 1 and have a 6 point cushion. Scored 30 odd goals to this point and conceded less than 10 playing a slightly adjusted 3-5-2 attacking. God, I love this game.......

But the point is: Training. Tactics and Ball Control. And a coach for each category.

Oldham's a good place to start. The English League One is my favourite to begin a game in; its a competitive division, and most of the teams there have at least the potential to do something in the higher leagues (Oldham were last in the Premier in 1994, I think).

Here's an open question regarding database sizes (mostly addressed to Marc Vaughan but if you know the answer, please chime in): What is the real difference between database sizes?

I know it makes more players available in the game, but are there real numbers I can look at, like small has 15% of the database, normal has 40%, large has 65% and huge has 100% (these are hypothetical figures for comparison sakes)?

Thanks in advance.

FM

I just checked on Gamestop, and as of right now the closest store that carries the game on hand is 94 miles away. That is terrible when I live in Metro Cincinnati. FM2005 had a much larger release base for stores. I guess they are relying on the web for most of the NA purchases. :(

Its impossible to indicate such figures I'm afraid as the algorithm involved in the selection of players to retain is fairly dynamic.

For instance the Welsh league is fairly small in structure and so has less players associated with it than most leagues, as such with any database size you'll retain less players than say the English league with the same database size setting.

Also 'Oceanic' leagues retain all Oceanic players because the people who play in that territory requested it etc.

Generally Small is for people who are impatient, Normal is well 'Normal' and Huge is for people with the patience of a saint ...

(but thats just my opinion ;) )

hmmm, that's a fairly politicianish answer Marc ;) :p

Let me see if I follow you. The algorithm works in such a way that it retains the player from your selected leagues, then adds on a set of players from around the world depending on what DB size you've chosen, is that about right?

But then, for four games, each one whit a different db setting, say all with only England running, how bigger is normal compared to small? and large compared to normal? and so on...

FM

Have you guys ever had a deal that seemed to be too good to be true in FM2006? If so.. how'd it turn out..

Looks like I'm going to pick up a monster goalie from a 2nd division Argentinian club.. but there has to be a catch... that I can't see... the goalie is literally looking like he's world class, and I'm getting him for 1K (transfer listed, base value is 100K). If you check my Revs thread (Shameless plug).. I can't see any gotchas.. but looking to see what you guys think.

One more try... any thoughts on this? Just a shortcut to generate a lot of frssh players easily?

I looked at my game last night and it doesn't really seem to apply to my universe (fictional). Could have something to do with database size and the game trying to generate enough mid-quality players, a lot end up with similar skill sets? Otherwise, I'm not really sure what would cause it. Of course, I'm several seasons into my career, so perhaps it evens out later and I just didn't notice it early.

I had two deals like that. One was a striker that was valued at around 200K and I got for 1K and the other was a central defender valued at 120K and I got for 2K. Both signed for really low salaries too. The striker turned out great. He's scored 35 goals his first season and 30+ goals the second. The defender....not so good. Despite his great ratings, he just didn't perform. He wasn't a troublemaker or injury prone, just didn't play up to his ratings. I gave him a season and a half to prove himself because his ratings were so good (his rating over that time was probably around 6.3 or 6.4). Ended up selling him for 15K.