Team Strategies

[Clay Dreslough]

Originally posted by JNJ
Something to consider adding; Coach's tendency selection. Maybe on the League Editor's Team page add 3 radial buttons for whether you would like him to lean more towards a ground game, a passing game or even. Or are these choices already keyed in for each team? If not it would be nice to have any kind of control over what type of plays are actually called on the field, even if it's as broad as hiring a coach who calls a game the way you feel gives your team the best shot at winning.

We have features similar to this in Baseball Mogul, and would like to get them into Football Mogul. Other thoughts on the tendencies you'd like to see?

BTW, it's a good idea to post two different threads for two items (XP crash and Coach suggestion) as I use this forum as a checklist of things to fix, and with one post, the Coach suggestion got hidden inside the other thread.

Thanks,

Clay

[Miketay77]

Baseball Mogul style strategies are ok, altho I'd prefer hiring a coach as that is what GM's do.

Anyway,

Offensive Coordinator - run more, pass more, even
Offensive sets - run and shoot, pro offense, 3 wide, two TE, etc

Defensive coordinator - blitz more, less, or even
Defensive scheme - 3-4 D, 4-3 D, 46 D, Goaline, etc and their frequency.

[Brent]

Originally posted by Miketay77
Baseball Mogul style strategies are ok, altho I'd prefer hiring a coach as that is what GM's do.


I agree 100%. would love to see this in BB Mogul too.

[georgefc3]

Baseball has strategies such as hit and run, stealing and so on. These strategies are incidental to the main part of the game. Baseball is mostly about getting more hits and more homers than the other team.

Football is a game where the strategy is essential to the game. If you want a big passing game, you want a quarterback like Kurt Warner. If you want the running game to be dominant, you need good running backs and good blockers. So you would pick your staff differently.

Being able to work out a game plan and being able to set up the mix of running or passing plays I would think should be an essential element of a football game.

[freakbkg]

I agree wholeheartedly with team strategy. But in football it should be more than just pass vs run. For instance, on defense you could be playing the run over the pass and not all-out blitzes. On the other hand, you could have a nickel defense and run the corners and lb's in like crazy. Same as offense. You could go pass over run, but look at how many passing styles they have. West Coast, Run n Shoot, ....... I think for team strategy, their should be options like that. On offense, go with something like a slider. More pass or run or maybe go with a 50-50 balance. Once that is decided, choose a style such as short possesion routes and runs, or maybe hail marys and deep routes, or maybe pound it up the middle, and because of guys like Mike Martz, you need to add at least a slider for trickery. A few flea flickers and fakes can go along ways. Now for defense. Use another slider. But give the option for man coverage or zone. Blitz or play safe. Sliders could probably adjust everything well enough. Hope fully I'm not sounding to pushy.

[WhosTheBestCop]

Originally posted by Miketay77
Baseball Mogul style strategies are ok, altho I'd prefer hiring a coach as that is what GM's do.

Anyway,

Offensive Coordinator - run more, pass more, even
Offensive sets - run and shoot, pro offense, 3 wide, two TE, etc

Defensive coordinator - blitz more, less, or even
Defensive scheme - 3-4 D, 4-3 D, 46 D, Goaline, etc and their frequency.

Totally agree. There should be some kind of feature that lets you select these strategis and would be really cool if you had a head coach, spec team coach, and both an off & def cordinator. could add there salaries to team maintenance costs. And depending on how good the coach was would determine how well he was ableto follow and carry out the strategies. Then there could be a pool of coaches every year and you would be able to decide whether to stay with the same coach, get a college coach, or one from another team just like NFL teams do every year.

Furthermore, there should be coaching strategies for:

1. trick plays- some teams use them a lot and some teams never use them.
2. aggressiveness- being able to adjust the blitzing level is good but there should be an agressiveness scale that goes along with it. For example some teams blitz often but some teams get a little crazy and blitz safeties and cornerbacks. So those teams would be more agressive or more risky in their blitzing style.
3. on side kicks- simple more or less. Unless this is considered a part of trick plays.
4. Strategies when leading or trailing in a particular game- When leading do you play prevent defense? When trailing do you scrap your run and go all out pass?

[Sharob]

I would have to agree with something Miketay77 brought up, and that is the different schemes. I don't think its necessary to hire a coach that will game plan a certain way. I think it can be accomplished by how you as the GM draft, trade, and sign free agents. The players you select for your team will fit the schemes you'll want to use.

If you could program a toggle button on the offensive and defensive screens. On offense, you could toggle between the conventional pro set, 2 TE set, 3 WR set, and 4 WR (Run and shoot) set. Then by clicking auto sort, it would assign your best players to the apropriate positions. So, if you wanted to build a running team, you'd stack your team with FBs and TEs that can block like extra linemen. If you want to pass a lot, maybe you don't carry any TEs and keep extra receivers.

Same for defense. You could toggle between a 4-3 defense, and a 3-4 defense, and stock your team accordingly. In a 4-3 defense, you want your linebackers to stuff the run and your defensive linemen to apply the pass rush. In a 3-4 its the other way around. Linemen should stuff the run, and linebackers should pass rush.

This type of flexibility would allow you to give your team the type of personality you want by the players you go after, without changing the game too much and introducing things that are not part of being a GM.

Thoughts?

[MessiahRp]

I disagree that hiring a coach isn't important. I started thinking about it and FBM could avoid sliders altogether if they allowed you to find coaches and hire them...

Like with a Free Agent how you can view their stats, you can view the coaches wins and losses on the Pro and Collegiate levels (and any championships they may have won), What kind of Offense they use (West Coast, Run and Shoot... run based, pass based, whatever), What kind of Defense they prefer... all in the coach.

Then all FBM has to do is add a second Free Agents category, but call it Head Coaches. When you hire a coach the money should come out of your cash.

Seriously, if you want a coach that blitzes more and focuses on the pass, there would be a number of candidates in the Coaching Free Agent column and you can choose from them. Besides in real life teams have to pick from the coaches available. Those coaches aren't always perfect matches to what the team's goals are but they assume leadership and try anyways. A team strapped for cash isn't going to be able to be as choosy when it comes to a big name coach also.

Just a thought to figure a way around sliders and rather give the GM feel more creedance.

Rp

[Sharob]

I agree that having the ability to choose your coach would determine your team's personality. But I'm not convinced that it is the BEST way to go about it. Are we assuming there will be a lot of coaching turnover? Where will these coaches come from? Will there be 32 new coaches to choose from every year? ANd where will it end? Will we be hiring offensive and defensive coordinators? Will we be able to trade draft picks for the chance to sign a coach from another team like what happened with Bill Parcells and again recently with John Gruden?

Yes, hiring a coach is one way to go. But it may open up a whole other can of worms. I'm no programmer, so I don't know what all is involved. It just seems to me that the "slider" would be a simpler fix.