I'd be curious to see the number of people that have purchased FM/WWSM because of this thread and other similar threads in past years.

Creating a new forum would limit the number of people who stumble upon the game. I know I found out about the CM series through this board way back.

That said, I agree a separate forum would be convenient and easier to navigate the numerous discussions that go on in this thread.

I wonder if it would be possible to do an RSS feed from the Off Topic forum to populate a FM/WWSM forum. That way the threads stay in Off Topic, but there would be a separate forum where the threads would be aggregated.

That just seems way redundant to me.

Though I do think there's enough FM fans here to make a good strategy/tips/whatever forum workable. Especially since the quality of SI's boards is, well, shit. :) It'd be nice to have a good one.

This is a good idea too.

I am playing as Stevenage Borough (The Boro) and need some advice from you guys.

Okay so I picked up some key signings in my first season and once my team settled we clinched the BSP title with 3 matches left.

Already aquired in the 1st season -
Joe Tillen AML (he and Cole split time at ML)
Sheku Kamara DM (plays great but needs more stamina)
Colin Nicholson GK (I overpaid salary for him but he is my keeper for many more years to come but also one of the reasons I am loosing money)
Liam Atkin DRC (I am not convinced he will make it in League 2 and Lawrie Wilson is pushing him hard for the DR spot)
Steven Reilly DL (Again he played well in BSP but I am not convinced he will hack it in LG2)

That is it for my previously carried out permanent signings - I was able to set up a parent team with Arsenal (hated to do it as a Spurs fan but my only other option was Fulham -- bleck) I had some key and not so key loans during year 1 especially at MC (Henri Lansbury) and ST Rhys Murphy.

I need help figuring out how to make the transition to League 2. I have always played as Spurs in years past and have always had a hard time getting into the lower league stuff but this version has me hooked on lower leagues as it seems more immersive than before in those leagues.

I have never taken a lower league team and gotten promoted (mostly because I have never stuck with a LL game that long). Any advice about how to keep moving up the ladder toward The Championship and/or Premiere League would be helpful.

Should I turn over most of my team except the few outstanding players?

I know I should continue to make shrewd loans for great players that will come to me but what positions do you prefer to get on loan?

Should I keep some of my reserve guys around that never play just for depth or just pray for a decent greyed out player if I need depth in order to save salary?

Do I scout the league above me/below me for good players or just stick to scouting "nations" and "regions"? - Last season I scouted League 2 and English Under 18s and Reserves and found some good guys that may help me if I can get them on a free this offseason.

Those are just some of my questions... Any advice about how to keep things rolling as I move up a league would be appreciated.

I posted this in a seperate thread so you can feel free to offer advice here or there... http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...48#post1634648

Here is the picture of the kid who was labeled as one of the best of his generation

Look at the current Euro Championship Brackets. Group B is a killer group, but look at England's bracket

ROTFLMAO

I am far from an expert, but I will give my two cents based on moving the Albion Rovers from the SD3 and am now finishing out my 2nd SPL season after moving them up the ranks.

First off, I dig deep for talent. I will look through the complete list of players in the game, looking at one position group at a time. I sort by contract so I am looking at guys out of contract first. You may not want to go to this depth, especially because it can be a crap shoot sometimes when you only have a few of a guys ratings to look at.

Anyways, one thing I did was I would grab 18-19 yr old English kids who's teams never resigned them. I have a few of those guys who have trained well enough that they went from SD2 with me all the way up to SPL and are still part of the team. Being an English team I would think it should be a little easier for you to grab some of these guys, some of them just don't want to go to Scotland. Search the high levels U19 teams for guys to grab, and their reserves for guys to loan. No shame in having your top 2-3 players be loan guys if it is getting you wins. Go from team to team in the EPL and Champ. League looking for guys who you would want. Throw out a lot of offers if you need to and pick and choose from the guys who accept.

Make sure you can train your guys as best as you can. From what I am seeing, whatever the number of coaches your board limits you to, you can actually go 5 over that before they stop you.

It sounds like you have a tight budget, and the things I have done (except maxing out the coaches you have) are usually cheap ways to bring in some talent. Hope it helps a little.

edit: as far as how much turnover you have that is up to you. I would usually try to keep it low, but I know when I jumped from SD2 to SD1 i ended up with a lot of turnover. Same when I moved from SD1 to SPL. It makes it rough at the begining of the season but if you actually upgraded your talent it will help in the end and you can stay up.

Thanks. I will keep looking at young guys and see who I can come up with. My goal is to develop young/cheap depth players that may turn into something down the road and get rid of all the mediocre 24 and up players that I rarely use. I keep trying to look for guys that have solid physical stats and some key stats for there position that are solid as well. I hate that when I send my scout to look at someone for a "report" it doesn't reveal the ratings. They have to see them play for that which is hard when I want to look at a guy after the offseason has begun...

Anyone know when you get prize money for winning the league and TV money for the upcoming season?

I believe you get it in installments the following year, which blows at the beginning of the season when you have no funds available for new players but you know there is a ton of money on the way.

Going for good physical stats is a good way to go. I like the fastest defenders and strikers I can find on lower levels. A speedy striker with a decent finishing rating can do really good for you even if he isn't so hot in other areas you would normally like him to be, just because he can blow by a not so fast defense and get more chances for shots on goal.


I could be wrong when it comes to English leagues, but I would think your money for winning the league would come not long after the season ends. It might be right before the new season officially starts though. Your TV money should be right when the new season officially begins.

Can anyone tell me about player value in this game? Is the dollar amount game generated? Is it dynamic? If so, does the value change once a year or more/less often?

I'm just about to start my dynasty with Cambridge City of the BSS and I have a couple of youngsters that have values in excess of $15,000 and I just wonder how that figure was generated and if I can even get half of that if I try to transfer them out.

it's game-generated and dynamic. Not sure how often it changes...but it doesn't change like on a schedule or anything as far as I can tell.

what you will get for them depends on how in-demand their position is by teams with money and how talented they are vis-a-vis the other available players and the perception of how eager you are to get rid of them (transfer-listing a player will usually net you less because the perception is that you are eager to get rid of them)

SOmething I have wanted to know. I know the game is in control of the value listed for a guy, and it can move up or down. It usually tends to drop some if a guy is nearing the end of his contract, just because there is less reason for a team to pay top dollar for him. Overall though I have no idea what causes movement.

As far as going up, I have always wondered what drives it. I had a kid who from the time he was 16 was doing well. He quickly went from the Irish U19 team up to starting on the regualr Irish national team before he was 21. SPL and EPL teams all wanted him. His value never went up as much as I thought it should though, and I was only able to sell him for $500,000. I am thinking his value never got higher because teams knew being a small team $500,000 was still a good chunk of money for me.

Since being in the SPL though, I have seen guys go up in value as they do well on a bigger stage. I had one guys value shoot up to $2,000,000 recently.

As far as trying to transfer guys out, it is hit or miss. The more time on a contract the more money you can get for a guy then if he only has 6 months left or so.

I've noticed that player value flucuates as theuy play more in the season. At the end of the year, if a talented player is left out of the starting lineup for most of the year, he seems to have less value

You can also change that player value anytime yourself, but i only do it when i want to make a huge raise to one of my stars players that is being followed by other teams to steal him from me, and that way i can get less transfer offers for him, or in case i get one, it might be good enough to make change my mind about not wanting to transfer him.

You can change the value?? I thought you can only change the asking price, a different figure...

Oops, true my bad, i mixed things up.

I've just won the English Premier League and got the prize money right after the final league game of the season. 20.5mil pounds.

From memory you get a chunk of cash just before the start of the season for season ticket sales, then the TV money over the season.

p.s. Count this as a vote for MrBug's strange formation. Trying it out with Chelsea they won the EPL by 19 points (1 defeat all season, 0-1 home to Man Utd), won the League Cup, won the FA Cup and reached the semi of the Champions League (lost to Valencia, the Chelsea squad was seriously bashed up by injury).

I've decided that the biggest issue with that tactic and the positions is that it's often hard to find great WB's for it. What's cool is that after a certain amount of time, the greatest eleven for the team changes to this formation. I was worried about that because I had Rhoys Wiggins as the greatest DL when I had a few great WB's until it switched over and he was no longer part of it.

Just chiming in with my support of the forum request. One thing I'd like to point out is the fact that unlike any of the other non-FOF text sim developers, Marc Vaughan has been posting regularly at FOFC for years. I think that should tip the scales when contemplating the implementation of an FM forum.

So what was the final decision about a sub-forum or combination with the Hattrick Forum? I see that we are discussing quite a few things over there now, but the title is still just "Hattrick".

I guess it was changed to Hattrick/FM for a bit last night and then SD changed it back for some reason.

We are talking FM over there now anyways. Not sure what the deal is but might as well get some use out of the space.

Now I am trying to think of what can take over the PC/Console Game forum. :)

Amazing!
 

I've never seen anything quite like this kid.

Keep in mind that I always play lesser teams and work my way up in FM/WWSM. In this case, it's Danish team FC Nordsjælland, who I've taken to the Premier League level. But we're still talking relative obscurity, with typically weak youth pulls.

Now along comes this Finnish kid, Hannu Karlsson. Looks like pretty standard fare for us...nothing to get excited about. Until he sees the field. Now look at his stats!

Wrong forum :)

Solid stats. But it's non competitive games?

U-18

WSU - let me know if you're interested in 08 - I still owe you one...

How accurate are a scout's assessment of potential signing?

I'm playing with attribute masking off as I get used to the game and how football leagues work in general. A player I have my eyes on gets a fairly negative assessment from my scout, though I like his ratings. Should I trust him? I'm running a small team (Spanish Second Division) and my scout has above 10 in the relevant attributes for estimating ability.

wrong forum. We have taken over the hattrick forum for FM

One major problem i have with this game is when you start with an alternate universe, which i love doing so i dont have any pre-concieved plans or players, salaries do not shift like players attributes. For instance, with Manchester United i had pretty terrible reserve players making 11 million a year and valued at 40 mil. Not only would no one pay even 1k for him, he wont take a lesser contract. So most of my wage budget is tied up in useless reserve players my scouts think are potentially average coca-cola championship players. Its frustrating to say the least, especially when you have guys in the U-18s making 4-5 mil a year despite being youth players and never playing.

Ok so I just started my first career with Oldham in FM 2008 with the latest patch. I began with two scouts and have lost both of them in a matter of three weeks, before our season even began. I read about others having this problem in their careers but I thought it was a bug and was fixed by the latest patch. What gives?

please see the hattrick / FM forum

Can this game be played on an American xbox 360 or an American PSP or is it British versions only?

I'm not sure about the 360 - but I know the PSP is region free and can be played on a PSP from anywhere in the world.

(same is true of all PSP games incidentally - its only the movies which are locked, I believe the same is true of the PS-3 although I've only imported ISS so far)

huh, I can play a PSP game on the PS3?

No - although I never understood why they didn't put a UMD drive on the PS-3 for this and movie playing purposes.

More that if you import a PS-3 UK game I believe it'll work in other regions PS-3's, be warned though while I know 100% that this is true with the PSP I have only tested this theory with one game for the PS3 but that worked fine.

PS3 is completely region free on games, but not movies. You can play any game from Europe or Japan on a North American PS3.

Cool thanks for affirming that - I thought it was, but was a bit leery of saying so without knowing 100% :D

The PS3 is only region free in HD, if you still use an SDTV you may run into problems.

I am region free in any mode or format. Just FYI.

Display shouldn't matter. You can play any game on any PS3 using any TV that you can connect to.

It does matter as NTSC and PAL have different resolutions, and a NTSC PS3 will not be able to display a PAL game on an NTSC display as it is not set up to cope with the extra lines. I don't know how this affects TVs that can handle NTSC/PAL output.

This link explains it better than I can.

Nearly all PS3 games have adjustable screens where you can stretch or shrink the size of the display. That should take care of those issues.

Out of interest is this still the case with HD modes or just SD?

(as I'd have hoped they'd have matched up for HD modes at least)

If the comments in Ryan S's link are right, the PS3 doesn't seem to have a scaler. Without a scaler, it can't force 576i into 480i. I don't know anything about the PS3 specifically, but it would need a scaler to output anything besides the game's supported display(s), wouldn't it?

The PS3 is definitely region free in HD.

The PS3 does have a upscaler in it, but it goes from 480i to 720p. So in the case of 576i, it would be a manual stretching or shrinking of the image (bigger or smaller) rather than a true upscale/downscale of that image. In that sense, you're technically correct.

sorry for abusing this topic, but :

Could anybody send me the "aurora" skin for FM 2006 via email or upload them somewhere ? Have tried to find it for the better part of today, no luck with a working link.
Just reinstalled FM2006 and had my old save game on a CD, too. Just was the idiot for not storing the skins somewhere ...
mail : [email protected]

would be great .


in adition : Any advice on how to make the game run faster ?