Alright boyz, here we go!!! FM 2006 First Impressions

[MrBug708]

The computer controlled Ivory Coast just beat the computer controlled Mauritania by an incredible combined score of 21-0. The first game was only 5-0. The second was a blow out in the IC by 16-0!. Drogba was the leading scorer obviously but damn. The IC used all three subs in the game and all but 3 players received a 10. The GK only could manage a 9, one sub got a nine, and another sub got an 8

[MrBigglesworth]

Originally Posted by RPI-Fan

As I mentioned in this or another thread, I overburdened my computer, and 8 years or so into the game it is pretty much unplayable because it is so slow.

So why does the game slow down as you get more years into it? Is this only a problem in certain circumstances?

[SirFozzie]

I don't have any similar problems on mine.. even with my monster config ( I have something like 110 leagues running, just about every nation).. it's slow during transfer season, but I don't care.

[Marc Vaughan]

If you find the game slowing down on your PC then consider the following options which might improve things:

* Increasing the free-space on your hard-disk. If you have a low spec PC then its very likely that FM will use virtual memory, if you have a reasonable amount of free-disk space and a defragmented hard-disk then virtual memory access will be faster than on a crowded fragmented disk.
* Delete surplus packed match files (details on sibase on sigames.com) - these are historical match files which allow you to watch old matches. On slower machines, especially those will older file systems having a large amount of these can slow the game down considerably.
* Check if you're running any surplus items at the same time as the game, I have loads of stuff which auto-launches on my dev machine which will slow down any games I run (for instance the Incredibuild daemon etc.)

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by ausonny

I played against Carey in High School, Nice to see him doing well!

LOL! I went to high school with him, was a class ahead of him. I liked him much better than Ross Paulie at the time, but I never talked to either that much.

Man we had a hell of a soccer program back then...

EDIT: Which high school did you go to?

[ausonny]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

LOL! I went to high school with him, was a class ahead of him. I liked him much better than Ross Paulie at the time, but I never talked to either that much.

Man we had a hell of a soccer program back then...

EDIT: Which high school did you go to?

I went to Harding, and played against Ross as well. In the district tournament I had the, um, pleasure of marking Ross for a game. He got a goal late, but other than that I feel like I played him pretty well.

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by Crapshoot

Grrr...
Is anyone getting the free kick marking bug ? All my midfielders and forwards are set to "Form Wall" - all the defenders to man mark - I know this for certain as those are my pre-game setting. Lo and behold, on a free kick, all the defenders are in the wall. For some reason, the sitting of the midfielders has been set to default and the defenders to form wall (when I check back) - which results in a 9 man wall, and the opposing team scoring easily. This happens at least one a game, and is immensly frustrating ( I have to manually adjust all of them). I don't mind losing when I'm outplayed - repeated bugs like this drive me nuts.

Sorry, I know I sound like I'm beating a dead horse on this, but is this just for me ?

[Marc Vaughan]

not something I've heard about before - I'll see if I can reproduce it.

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by ausonny

I went to Harding, and played against Ross as well. In the district tournament I had the, um, pleasure of marking Ross for a game. He got a goal late, but other than that I feel like I played him pretty well.

I can understand how that feels. For a time I think Ross held the MLS for fastest goals scored or something...

That team we had was absolutely stacked. Starting my senior year, they won 3 straight state titles I think...

[Shepp]

Sorry if this has been covered already but does anyone know exactly what "Other" covers in the Finanace->Expenditure screen? I have looked over on the SI boards but haven't found any conclusive answer.

[ice4277]

Originally Posted by Shepp

Sorry if this has been covered already but does anyone know exactly what "Other" covers in the Finanace->Expenditure screen? I have looked over on the SI boards but haven't found any conclusive answer.

Miscellaneous expenses that a team can incur. Things like taxes, paying the club's non-coaching staff, etc.

[RPI-Fan]

Originally Posted by MrBigglesworth

So why does the game slow down as you get more years into it? Is this only a problem in certain circumstances?

I've actually been playing that save game lately. It's not so bad, since going into it I have the attitude that it will move very slowly. I'll get up, watch TV, hit continue, repeat, etc.

[sabotai]

Sorry if this has been asked before (don't really feel like reading through 50+ pages right now. ). I took over East Stirling and all of my players maked 1k-4k per year. If I were to bring in a player (who would be a superstar relative to this level) and pay him 30k per year, would that have any bad effects on my players? Would they all start demanding very high salaries or get unhappy?

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Sorry if this has been asked before (don't really feel like reading through 50+ pages right now. ). I took over East Stirling and all of my players maked 1k-4k per year. If I were to bring in a player (who would be a superstar relative to this level) and pay him 30k per year, would that have any bad effects on my players? Would they all start demanding very high salaries or get unhappy?

I have no clue about the other players, but would your team board even allow you to offer one player that much money?

I have heard of players asking for better contracts, but they usually talk about getting paid as much as their equivalent in the series I play in, or saying they are really not paid enough compared to others in the series, not necessarily in the team...


FM

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

I have no clue about the other players, but would your team board even allow you to offer one player that much money?

Yeah, I can offer up to 35k a year I think for a "Key Player".

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Sorry if this has been asked before (don't really feel like reading through 50+ pages right now. ). I took over East Stirling and all of my players maked 1k-4k per year. If I were to bring in a player (who would be a superstar relative to this level) and pay him 30k per year, would that have any bad effects on my players? Would they all start demanding very high salaries or get unhappy?

Possibly - if they respect the player and believe he is much better than them then maybe not, however it is likely they'd be looking to improve their contracts at the very least.

Obviously if you bring in such a player and up their contracts then they'll take his arrival fairly well

PS> I try and make FM behave realistically as much as possible - so in most cases just try and consider how you'd expect people to react irl ...

[MikeVick7]

Do the top leagues in Italy and Spain, for example, play reserve team games? It seems to me that only England does.

I started a career in England and then have switched over to Italy and Spain and both have reserve teams, but do not play any games. Do I have to have those countries on a certain detail level to have those games included or do they just not play them?

[Karim]

For those of you with ample budget, how many coaches do you employ?

This is one area where I think FM could be improved. I have yet to see a coach be in charge of more than one area and still retain 4 or 5 star quality. As a result, as soon as I was financially able, I brought in a coach for each training area. This meant 8 coaches and an Assistant Manager.

Now that I'm in the EPL with a large squad, that's been increased to 10 coaches plus an Assistant Manager. Frankly, that's too many but I haven't seen any adverse effects and I know of no other way to maintain 4 or 5 star coaching in each training area.

Also, how does reputation impact non-playing staff? Some of the staff have increased their reputations to World Class during my tenure but others lag behind. I've also noticed that some 'World Class' staff on other squads have distinctly average attributes and I'd be hesistant to hire them. I've got 'Local' staff with better ratings.

This is one area of the game that is unclear to me.

[Critch]

Originally Posted by MikeVick7

Do the top leagues in Italy and Spain, for example, play reserve team games? It seems to me that only England does.

I started a career in England and then have switched over to Italy and Spain and both have reserve teams, but do not play any games. Do I have to have those countries on a certain detail level to have those games included or do they just not play them?

For Italy there's no reserve league in real life. If a player is too old for the youths and not good enough for the first team, they don't play. That's why there's so many loan deals.

In Spain teams have a B team that's part of the league structure. They can't be promoted to the same level or higher than the first team, but they can be promoted and relegated up and down the other levels. So in FM your B team won't play a full schedule unless you're simming far enough down the league structure to get to the level the B team is in.

[tanglewood]

Originally Posted by Karim

For those of you with ample budget, how many coaches do you employ?

This is one area where I think FM could be improved. I have yet to see a coach be in charge of more than one area and still retain 4 or 5 star quality. As a result, as soon as I was financially able, I brought in a coach for each training area. This meant 8 coaches and an Assistant Manager.

Now that I'm in the EPL with a large squad, that's been increased to 10 coaches plus an Assistant Manager. Frankly, that's too many but I haven't seen any adverse effects and I know of no other way to maintain 4 or 5 star coaching in each training area.

Also, how does reputation impact non-playing staff? Some of the staff have increased their reputations to World Class during my tenure but others lag behind. I've also noticed that some 'World Class' staff on other squads have distinctly average attributes and I'd be hesistant to hire them. I've got 'Local' staff with better ratings.

This is one area of the game that is unclear to me.

Well for some real life comparisons, after looking at the various club webisties it seems that Chelsea have 2 assistant managers and 5 coaches of various descriptions, Arsenal have 1 assistant, 5 coaches and two 'youth development personell' which I suspect is a fancy name for 'youth coach', Liverpool have an assistant and 3 coaches, but that doesn't include youth team coaches. I looked at the Spurs and Man Utd websites but they didn't seem to have any information of the coaching staff. So overall, it seems that around 6-8 total staff is realistic which is fairly close to what I use in FM when I can afford it. Of course, the big difference is that in real life you have a goalkeeping coach and fitness coach and the others are more general, whereas in FM you have specilised coaches in every discipline. I suppose that is just a side effect of being able to see the raw attributes when in real life you can't.

[MikeVick7]

Originally Posted by Critch

For Italy there's no reserve league in real life. If a player is too old for the youths and not good enough for the first team, they don't play. That's why there's so many loan deals.

In Spain teams have a B team that's part of the league structure. They can't be promoted to the same level or higher than the first team, but they can be promoted and relegated up and down the other levels. So in FM your B team won't play a full schedule unless you're simming far enough down the league structure to get to the level the B team is in.

Thanks Critch.

Anyone know what a "Sporting" personality means?

[tanglewood]

Chivalrous, fair, honest.

[FrogMan]

I had "fairplay" in mind if that helps...

FM

[Shepp]

Originally Posted by Shepp

Sorry if this has been covered already but does anyone know exactly what "Other" covers in the Finanace->Expenditure screen? I have looked over on the SI boards but haven't found any conclusive answer.

Originally Posted by ice4277

Miscellaneous expenses that a team can incur. Things like taxes, paying the club's non-coaching staff, etc.

I understand that but I was kind of hoping to find out exactly what some of the major expenses are. I am barely at the end of November in my current season and have nearly 2 million in "Other Expenses". At that rate I will be bankrupt by the end of the season. My hope is that if I can figure out which of these "Other Expenses" is costing me the most I may be able to cut some corners. Dave C over on the Si board mentioned in several posts that Marc V had given him a run down of what other expenses were, but had since lost it. I was hoping Marc would share that list again here.

[Celeval]

I believe sending injured players to specialists counts under there as well.

[Shepp]

I guess I'm choosing injections for blown out knees from here on out then

[Crapshoot]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

not something I've heard about before - I'll see if I can reproduce it.

Thanks Marc. I'll try and show you a before and after screenshot.

[Johnny93g]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

* Delete surplus packed match files (details on sibase on sigames.com) - these are historical match files which allow you to watch old matches. On slower machines, especially those will older file systems having a large amount of these can slow the game down considerably.

I looked on your website for this, and couldnt find it. Any more detail as to where these details are?

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Johnny93g

I looked on your website for this, and couldnt find it. Any more detail as to where these details are?

I was also unable to find it in the SIBase but I found this utility on sortitoutsi called FM Savegame Cleaner. I allows you to clear the old matches, player history, injury history. I backed up my game first, then tried it on it, only clearing the old games (the pks files) and the utility was able to cut 68mb from my 201mb file, that's quite a big saving if you ask me. The savegame file seems to be acting normally, nothing funky about it, but it's loading much, much faster.

FM

[Johnny93g]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

I was also unable to find it in the SIBase but I found this utility on sortitoutsi called FM Savegame Cleaner. I allows you to clear the old matches, player history, injury history. I backed up my game first, then tried it on it, only clearing the old games (the pks files) and the utility was able to cut 68mb from my 201mb file, that's quite a big saving if you ask me. The savegame file seems to be acting normally, nothing funky about it, but it's loading much, much faster.

FM

Wow, that sounds great, ill give it a try. Thanks!!!

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by BreizhManu

Let me guess : Kristoffer Kittel ?

Yes. I take it this is probably cheat-like since you knew the name right away? I don't follow everything so I didn't know the name and that he would be available and probably usually is.

Damn, kind of taints my game a little now if hat is the case. I had him for that one year only, then couldn't resist selling him to improve the future of my Albion Rovers. Between him, and my right winger I sold off because he wanted out already, I made almost $3 million.

I will have to put it behind me though, and continue on with the game I think. It's not like it opened up a whole new world or anything. Crap, I still can't get players to come to my team despite having the money to buy them and pay them.

Overall update....season 2 in SD1 I finished in 5th, down from 3rd with Kittell and my right winger who left. I was only able to sign a few guys to come in an replace them, none of whom had a huge impact. A new French forward I got was pretty good though, and after the fans worrying about him when I signed him he led the team in scoring and was voted Fans Player of the Year. My problem was once again, a very slow start to the season.

I am into season 3 of my SD1 years right now, and my start has been better then the last two years, hopefully this means I can get a top 3 spot again, maybe even that #1 spot for promotion. The key to my team is having the same old players. Once again finding it very hard to bring guys in, my team is still improving. All my young players (my whole team basically) is getting close to tose peak years. My defenders are becoming very good, although my main center back got injured right at the begining of the year, after break, so his ratings have dropped like a rock. Have been able to cover for him though.

I have a couple Forwards developing nicely, including the Frenchman. I am ver excited though as I just got Irishman Tommy Coyne to come over. I had him on loan my one year in SD2 and he was what gave me that extra edge to get promoted, he was just outstanding. So after two years without him, I got him to finally come back. The season is young, so not sure how things will pan out yet though.

[Karim]

Originally Posted by Johnny93g

I looked on your website for this, and couldnt find it. Any more detail as to where these details are?

I actually wrote this down the first time it was passed around:

1) load your saved game
2) go to Start->Run
3) type in "%temp%" without the quotes
4) go to Worldwide Soccer Manager 2006 folder
5) delete all the .pks files

[vex]

My team F.C. Metz in the French 1st League was down 0-5 sadly enough in league play against Caen. Well, we still lost but almost pulled off a monumental comeback as we lost 4-5. What a game.

[BreizhManu]

Originally Posted by Cringer

Yes. I take it this is probably cheat-like since you knew the name right away? I don't follow everything so I didn't know the name and that he would be available and probably usually is.

Bah since I don't go to FM forums anymore, I don't know if he is very well known but I often see him in my games since one I played in Wales. The guy is quite good and always accept to come to even crappy clubs.

He is one of the 2 really good players that do that, the other one being a MR/ST from cyprus.

[Shepp]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

I was also unable to find it in the SIBase but I found this utility on sortitoutsi called FM Savegame Cleaner. I allows you to clear the old matches, player history, injury history. I backed up my game first, then tried it on it, only clearing the old games (the pks files) and the utility was able to cut 68mb from my 201mb file, that's quite a big saving if you ask me. The savegame file seems to be acting normally, nothing funky about it, but it's loading much, much faster.FM

I just downloaded this and its pretty slick. The last cleaning option is for "indexes if any" does anyone know what these are?

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by BreizhManu

Bah since I don't go to FM forums anymore, I don't know if he is very well known but I often see him in my games since one I played in Wales. The guy is quite good and always accept to come to even crappy clubs.

He is one of the 2 really good players that do that, the other one being a MR/ST from cyprus.

He is indeed good, that's for sure. He was dominating for me in fact. I should have tried to keep a hold of him longer then that one season. I had my club making money, just not a ton so selling him set my team up to be comfortable a little faster then it would have taken.

Now he is getting limited playing time for an EPL team (who I got a draw against in my friendly with them I am happy to say).

That one season got him listed as a Albion Rover favorite even, the guy would have been a superstar.

And my team isn't crap!

[Bea-Arthurs Hip]

Question for Marc or anyone who can answer...I downloaded a user created media comments pack and installed it before I began my current career. I am now really regretting using this. Is there anyway I can go back to the default pack that was included in the game?

I recall seeing an option to "refresh media comments", what does this do?

Applogies if this has been asked before but a search turned up nothing.

[ice4277]

Originally Posted by Bea-Arthurs Hip

Question for Marc or anyone who can answer...I downloaded a user created media comments pack and installed it before I began my current career. I am now really regretting using this.

Just out of curiosity, what's wrong with it? I've always thought about using one but haven't bothered to yet.

[Bea-Arthurs Hip]

Originally Posted by ice4277

Just out of curiosity, what's wrong with it? I've always thought about using one but haven't bothered to yet.

The comments appear like they were put together by a 6th grader. My real issue was I decided to give a possitive comment about a rival manager instead it showed up plus was recognized by my team and the opposing team as a negative. So I also assume it wasn't done correctly....

I found it on SortitoutSI and saw a few good reviews/comments on it .

[Bea-Arthurs Hip]

Originally Posted by ice4277

Just out of curiosity, what's wrong with it? I've always thought about using one but haven't bothered to yet.

The comments appear like they were put together by a 6th grader. My real issue was I decided to give a possitive comment about a rival manager instead it showed up plus was recognized by my team and the opposing team as a negative. So I also assume it wasn't done correctly....

I found it on SortitoutSI and saw a few good reviews/comments on it, I will never trust those reviews again.

[QuikSand]

Unrelated question... I have just signed a 20-year old defender on a transfer, and he will join us in July after his current contract expires. His skills look okay for a defender, but just sensational for a forward/striker. I did a search, but couldn't find out how to try to train him into the new position.

(1) Is it advisable to try to train him, at 20 years of age, into playing a new position? The differences in skills is just startling -- hs has 18-20 in several things like finishing, heading, and off the ball... but his ratings in positioning, tackling, and marking are all pretty pedestrian (8-12 or so).

(2) If so, what is the best way to do this? I can't even find the option in the game to set him to shift positions... and I don't know whather I ought to be placing him into my reserves lineup at the new position to learn.. or what. I'm happy for a link to something already written - just couldn't find anything with a quick search.

Thanks for any input.

[Easy Mac]

I've tried that on a few guys in their late teens/early 20's. No matter what I tried, they all hated it. And as soon as you try to put them on regular training, they lose the position. I too had a defender who was horrible at all the defensive stats, but could shoot and pass with the best of them, but he was constantly unhappy with learning a new position.

[tanglewood]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Unrelated question... I have just signed a 20-year old defender on a transfer, and he will join us in July after his current contract expires. His skills look okay for a defender, but just sensational for a forward/striker. I did a search, but couldn't find out how to try to train him into the new position.

(1) Is it advisable to try to train him, at 20 years of age, into playing a new position? The differences in skills is just startling -- hs has 18-20 in several things like finishing, heading, and off the ball... but his ratings in positioning, tackling, and marking are all pretty pedestrian (8-12 or so).

(2) If so, what is the best way to do this? I can't even find the option in the game to set him to shift positions... and I don't know whather I ought to be placing him into my reserves lineup at the new position to learn.. or what. I'm happy for a link to something already written - just couldn't find anything with a quick search.

Thanks for any input.

I did this with a 19 year old DM I sa. He had great pace and decent finishing so I trained him up as a striker. Took about 9 months to get him to acomplished. If you play them regulary in the position you are training them to it helps them adapt quicker (I didn't really with this one guy, he played about 5 or 6 games all season). Go to their training screen and on the box in the top left just pick a new position from the drop down box.

[QuikSand]

My reserve roster is such a wasteland that this might be a good way to go for this guy. Thanks... I think I'll give it a shot.

[Butter]

Should work ok with a player under 21. As tanglewood said, you'll find the option to switch positions on the individual player's training screen. Set the new position, and forget it. Eventually, he'll show as trained on his official position listing... I usually find out that my guy has successfully trained for a spot when I order my players by position, and the guy has moved up or down the order to his new spot. Again, as tanglewood said, it will probably take an entire season for him to be fully trained, but it works fairly well.

[tanglewood]

It wasd all worth it too when in the second game of the new season after his training was complete he scored 4 and assisted 1 in an 8-0 rout of one of our key league opponents. Yes, I felt like a genius that day.

[Cringer]

The more a guy plays in matches at the new position, the faster he will learn the new position you have him training for.

[MrBigglesworth]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Unrelated question... I have just signed a 20-year old defender on a transfer, and he will join us in July after his current contract expires. His skills look okay for a defender, but just sensational for a forward/striker. I did a search, but couldn't find out how to try to train him into the new position.

(1) Is it advisable to try to train him, at 20 years of age, into playing a new position? The differences in skills is just startling -- hs has 18-20 in several things like finishing, heading, and off the ball... but his ratings in positioning, tackling, and marking are all pretty pedestrian (8-12 or so).

(2) If so, what is the best way to do this? I can't even find the option in the game to set him to shift positions... and I don't know whather I ought to be placing him into my reserves lineup at the new position to learn.. or what. I'm happy for a link to something already written - just couldn't find anything with a quick search.

Thanks for any input.

Do people not train new positions frequently? I constantly have people learning new positions. I like my midfielders to be able to play LRC in case I need them there because of injury or conditioning or whatever, and my fullbacks to play DC if they have to. Every month or so I go into the training screen, view 'position training', filter 'all schedules', sort by level, and switch everyone at 'accomplished' to a new position, if there is one left I would think they would be decent at. I think it's a lot easier though to train someone into a more defensive position than a more offensive one, but I've trained guys in their mid-twenties to new positions.

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by MrBigglesworth

Do people not train new positions frequently? I constantly have people learning new positions. I like my midfielders to be able to play LRC in case I need them there because of injury or conditioning or whatever, and my fullbacks to play DC if they have to. Every month or so I go into the training screen, view 'position training', filter 'all schedules', sort by level, and switch everyone at 'accomplished' to a new position, if there is one left I would think they would be decent at. I think it's a lot easier though to train someone into a more defensive position than a more offensive one, but I've trained guys in their mid-twenties to new positions.

With my current career, I am dealing with mostly young players so I do train them into other positions often.

I get a MC, he will always be trained for ML or MR, sometimes AM or DM. I like my fullbacks to know more then one spot, always centre back and one of the side spots. The only thing I will usually leave along are my forwards, though I could throw one out at a winger spot once in a while.

[Karim]

I have had very limited success in training "raw" players, who all tend to be central defenders. I'll inevitably fiind a young central defender, who is unconvincing at the position but has no ability elsewhere. Yet, his attributes are outstanding for some sort of offensive role. I'll try and train him at a new position and while he'll eventually learn the new position, I'm always guaranteed he'll lose attributes right across the board, including in "personality" areas like bravery.

I haven't had much luck training players in new positions IF they don't already have a 'Natural' position. Otherwise, it's fairly easy to re-train. I had a 17 year old WB L who was described as an attacking full back. Since I don't use wing backs, and I'm cautious with my fullbacks, I trained him as a ML. He's now on his way to becoming English Young Player of the Year. With 12 games to go, he's amassed a 7.67 AvR.