35 replies to this topic

[Pompey_Dan]

Some of you reading this may have downloaded my previous attempt at creating a calculator for developing training schedules in FM10. After a bit of work I am now ready to release a BETA version of my calculator for this year's game but I need YOUR feedback to make the necessary improvements to it.

In a moment I will give you some instructions on using the calculator and display some screenshots of it in action. But first a bit of background on how I've developed this tool.

I strongly believe that the best way to train your first team players and develop your young talent is to do so using tailor-made schedules. Each position and duty on the pitch require a player to have different essential attributes and so I believe the correct training schedule should take into account the on pitch position and measure the individual player against the required essential attributes. Typically FM managers create a set of "one size fits all" training schedules for each general pitch position - e.g. fullbacks or central midfielders. The problem with this generic approach is that it ignores the fact that two players in the same or similar positions may have different attribute scores and therefore different strengths, weaknesses and training needs.

In previous editions of the calculator I received feedback that the schedules it created often resulted in overly heavy workloads - that has now been addressed and furthermore I've added a feature to account for the effect a players age may have on his training capabilities (older players struggle to maintain strength and aerobic attributes).

Using this calculator you will be able to create individual schedules for each of your first team players - I hope to release a "youth" version in the near future. Each schedule you create will take into account the individuals strengths and weaknesses in accordance with the chosen position. At times the schedule may seem counter-intuitive but the game dictates which attributes are key to each position and this calculator follows these definitions religiously, I have not used any "artistic" licence in deciding which attributes are important!


HOW TO USE THE CALCULATOR

You can upload the calculator using the link at the bottom of this OP, but you will need Excel 2007 to run the calculator (although it may run on earlier versions - I'd been interested to know if this is the case?).

Once you have opened the workbook, enter your player's chosen position, duty, age and attribute scores - I suggest that you set the intensity to MEDIUM to start off with.

Once you have entered the player's details you'll be presented with two graphical representations in the lower half of the screen. The first just quickly illustrates which areas your player should be trained more heavily in...





The second shows you how to set up your schedule, the bar and number tell you how many "notches" or "clicks" to move the slider along for each discipline when creating the training schedule...





If you feel the workload is too high - or too low - then you can alter the INTENSITY level, this will increase (or decrease) the number of clicks on each individual training discipline thereby effecting the overall workload.

In the working example below I have chosen Ricardo Rocha from my Portsmouth save. Rocha plays as a central defender with a defend duty.

The essential attributes for this position are STRENGTH, JUMPING, DECISIONS, POSITIONING, HEADING, MARKING, TACKLING, CONCENTRATION and COMPOSURE and as you can see he is average in most of these areas - except POSITIONING (17), CONCENTRATION (16) and COMPOSURE (7).

 TRAININGCALCULATOR.jpg (209.14K)
Number of downloads: 601

Furthermore, at the age of 32 Rocha is unlikely to improve and needs to work harder at maintaining his strength and aerobic attributes.

Therefore the suggested schedule sees Rocha's STRENGTH, AEROBIC and SHOOTING training increased to focus his attention on his STRENGTH, JUMPING and COMPOSURE attributes - key for his position. Equal attention is given to Rocha's DEFENDING and TACTICS training because of his other key attributes - equal despite each category having more essential attributes as these attributes are neither extremely low (like COMPOSURE) nor harder to maintain due to age (like STRENGTH and AEROBIC).




In game the schedule looks like this...

 Screen shot 2010-11-10 at 16.00.48.png (169.05K)
Number of downloads: 562


BUT REMEMBER!

This is very much a work in progress and I need your help and feedback to make this the indispensable tool I believe that it can be! Please post your thoughts, feedback and suggestions in this thread and you will help develop later release's of the calculator - in the meantime I promise to keep the link in this OP up to date with the latest version.

Thanks for your help and GL




DOWNLOAD HERE ONLY:


 Pompey_Dan\'s Training Calculator (v3.0.2).rar (237.89K)
Number of downloads: 1367

Edited by Pompey_Dan, 10 November 2010 - 06:23 PM.

[Daniel]

Brilliant tool, will download this and try it sometime, top work

[Melmmer]

Brilliant effort mate and I am glad somebody has gone to the trouble of releasing a calculator which can do all your training needs.

Only query I would have though is, what about the individual training routines? Does the calculator incorporate that as well or is that something that you leave alone or do at your own discretion?

[Pompey_Dan]

Daniel, on 10 November 2010 - 04:59 PM, said:

Brilliant tool, will download this and try it sometime, top work

Melmmer, on 11 November 2010 - 06:11 AM, said:

Brilliant effort mate and I am glad somebody has gone to the trouble of releasing a calculator which can do all your training needs.Only query I would have though is, what about the individual training routines? Does the calculator incorporate that as well or is that something that you leave alone or do at your own discretion?

Cheers guys... it is a WIP so keep the feedback coming!

@Melmmer: I haven't incorporated anything in the calculator for individual focus, but it could be done by identifying the key essential attribute with the lowest score. As well as the in-game indicator I included a list of the essential attributes for each position in the "rough guide to training" on the main site. (Btw, I know I've broken some of the guidelines set out in the rough guide with this calc but it was written as an article to give the uninitiated an overview!)

I'll look at that for a later release, with fixes as well as including goalkeeper and youth training.

[Melmmer]

Pompey_Dan, on 11 November 2010 - 07:47 AM, said:

Melmmer, on 11 November 2010 - 06:11 AM, said:

Brilliant effort mate and I am glad somebody has gone to the trouble of releasing a calculator which can do all your training needs.Only query I would have though is, what about the individual training routines? Does the calculator incorporate that as well or is that something that you leave alone or do at your own discretion?

Cheers guys... it is a WIP so keep the feedback coming!

@Melmmer: I haven't incorporated anything in the calculator for individual focus, but it could be done by identifying the key essential attribute with the lowest score. As well as the in-game indicator I included a list of the essential attributes for each position in the "rough guide to training" on the main site. (Btw, I know I've broken some of the guidelines set out in the rough guide with this calc but it was written as an article to give the uninitiated an overview!)

I'll look at that for a later release, with fixes as well as including goalkeeper and youth training.

Makes perfectly common sense, if you have done this much already though I can see it coming in a future release as not too much of an issue to be fair.

Will download this later on and give it a whirl and give some proper feedback when I have the time

[Damian]

Are these based on the SFraser's training guide over at the official fm forum?

[Refeto]

Pompey_Dan, on 10 November 2010 - 04:57 PM, said:

Once you have entered the player's details you'll be presented with two graphical representations in the lower half of the screen. The first just quickly illustrates which areas your player should be trained more heavily in...

Hi,

I entered all detail but the graphs doesnt change and stayed blank. Did I do something wrong?

[Pompey_Dan]

Refeto, on 13 November 2010 - 08:35 AM, said:

Pompey_Dan, on 10 November 2010 - 04:57 PM, said:

Once you have entered the player's details you'll be presented with two graphical representations in the lower half of the screen. The first just quickly illustrates which areas your player should be trained more heavily in...

Hi,

I entered all detail but the graphs doesnt change and stayed blank. Did I do something wrong?

Have you chosen the right position and duty? If you select two that do not go together - like central defender and attack - then it will not return any data.

Damian, on 13 November 2010 - 08:07 AM, said:

Are these based on the SFraser's training guide over at the official fm forum?

No mate

[Joaquin Bibi]

This looks likes a very good idea, not one that I've personally seen before. I'll est it out for you and give you some feedback, if I remember of course.

[clonerohin]

Fantastic stuff. Very very convenient for someone like me who likes to make individual player schedules, at least for my youth talents...

I have a request though. Can you explain the theory/principles based on which the calculator assigns workload to specific training groups?

I mean are is the training notch value decided based on number of attributes in that training group (for e.g. 3 notches in shooting = 1 Unit, 5 notches in Aerobics = 1Unit) like SFraser's training theory. Or, are you using the number line theory of Fantastic, i.e., three notch levels - 8 (maintain), 14 (grow normally), 20 (growth at maximum rate). Or is it something totally new. Would love to hear it. I've seen your schedules last year received very good feedback and I'm definitely excited by the prospect of this calculator. Will send feedback as soon as I have some results.

[clonerohin]

Hi, check your PM...

[ireland]

Hello everyone,

@ Pompey, I wanted to ask you something but at the end of the season the players will have an 'extra year, and probably changed some parameters, you must re-enter tweety the skills of the player, to correct the training?

...... and thanks for the reply. hello

P.S.
sorry for my English

[Rob Sol]

Great tool but it doesn't let me input any numbers?

[mantralux]

Dan, there's slight issue with the example given:

"Therefore the suggested schedule sees Rocha's STRENGTH, AEROBIC and SHOOTING training increased to focus his attention on his STRENGTH, JUMPING and COMPOSURE attributes - key for his position."

Every notch/step on a slider increases the chance of one or more attributes in the category being increased. The higher the slider setting, the higher the chance that attributes will be improved. Every attribute in a category has the same chance of improving.

Now, if you put a central defender on Shooting training, that means you will have to lower his other categories so that you won't overload the workload for the player. But it would be far more efficient lowering the shooting training to zero, beefing up strength and aerobic and putting the player on an individual focus of composure.

That way you will increase the chance of strength and aerobic attributes being increased, without losing the composure training.

[Pompey_Dan]

ireland, on 16 November 2010 - 02:34 PM, said:

Hello everyone,

@ Pompey, I wanted to ask you something but at the end of the season the players will have an 'extra year, and probably changed some parameters, you must re-enter tweety the skills of the player, to correct the training?

...... and thanks for the reply. hello

P.S.
sorry for my English[/colcor][color=#888888]

Hi there, personally I would look to re-assess progress at a sensible interval, either yearly or perhaps six monthly.

Rob Sol, on 16 November 2010 - 09:09 PM, said:

Great tool but it doesn't let me input any numbers?

Not sure why... Are you using excel 2007 or did you open as view only perhaps?

[Pompey_Dan]

mantralux, on 22 November 2010 - 03:01 PM, said:

Dan, there's slight issue with the example given:

"Therefore the suggested schedule sees Rocha's STRENGTH, AEROBIC and SHOOTING training increased to focus his attention on his STRENGTH, JUMPING and COMPOSURE attributes - key for his position."

Every notch/step on a slider increases the chance of one or more attributes in the category being increased. The higher the slider setting, the higher the chance that attributes will be improved. Every attribute in a category has the same chance of improving.

Now, if you put a central defender on Shooting training, that means you will have to lower his other categories so that you won't overload the workload for the player. But it would be far more efficient lowering the shooting training to zero, beefing up strength and aerobic and putting the player on an individual focus of composure.

That way you will increase the chance of strength and aerobic attributes being increased, without losing the composure training.

I agree that thought around individual focus needs to be included in the next release.

Interesting that you would chose to train on composure and beef up strength training since the only strength attribute that is essential to a DC is strength itself, a 1 in 4 chance of improvement, whereas composure is a shooting training attribute and is 1 of only three in that category. Not disagreeing but it pre-supposes that strength is more important than composure, could equally put the individual focus on strength and up shooting training.

That said the calc does still need some work still, I am actually quite surprised that the default schedules this year don't seem so bad!

[mantralux]

Pompey_Dan, on 22 November 2010 - 06:49 PM, said:

Interesting that you would chose to train on composure and beef up strength training since the only strength attribute that is essential to a DC is strength itself, a 1 in 4 chance of improvement, whereas composure is a shooting training attribute and is 1 of only three in that category. Not disagreeing but it pre-supposes that strength is more important than composure, could equally put the individual focus on strength and up shooting training.

No no, I only used your example. For a central defender I'm not sure I would focus on either Strength or Aerobic too much, I was just using them as example of removing workload of a category to make way for others, and instead using individual focus to reach the same goal.

Regarding the "1 in 4 chance" - that's not how it works. Composure doesn't have a 33% chance of being increased if training Shooting. It has a 100% chance of being increased, and then that percentage is lowered by the countering score that is calculated from coach ability, hidden attributes, fitness, morale, training facilities, etc.

The attributes aren't competing for space, they will all increase. The question is just how much, and other factors control that.

Maybe we're saying the same thing here, but to me it looks as if you're saying that only one attribute in a category will be trained, and the chance it's that specific attribute is a 1 in 3 chance (if using Shooting as the example).

[Pompey_Dan]

mantralux, on 22 November 2010 - 07:02 PM, said:

No no, I only used your example. For a central defender I'm not sure I would focus on either Strength or Aerobic too much, I was just using them as example of removing workload of a category to make way for others, and instead using individual focus to reach the same goal.

Regarding the "1 in 4 chance" - that's not how it works. Composure doesn't have a 33% chance of being increased if training Shooting. It has a 100% chance of being increased, and then that percentage is lowered by the countering score that is calculated from coach ability, hidden attributes, fitness, morale, training facilities, etc.

The attributes aren't competing for space, they will all increase. The question is just how much, and other factors control that.

Maybe we're saying the same thing here, but to me it looks as if you're saying that only one attribute in a category will be trained, and the chance it's that specific attribute is a 1 in 3 chance (if using Shooting as the example).

Sorry, I misunderstood and completely agree - I started by building on the work I did for FM10 and of course IF wasn't available then but I have already started to consider the changes needed to implement this.

I appreciate that I [incorrectly] over simplified the training system to make a point that as it turns out was the same as yours! The only thing I'd add to your description is that whilst attributes increase through training (or conversely decrease from a lack there of) I believe sometimes the increase is so small as to be unnoticeable - i.e. Increase is less than one whole attribute point.

[Pompey_Dan]

Just wanted to give this thread a bit of a bump onto active content as I'm still keen to get some feedback on the BETA version.

There have been a far few downloads now and I'm really interested to know what people have thought and how easy they have found the training calculator to use.

I'm looking at releasing an update in the next few weeks that will include suggestions for "individual focus" so keep watching, are there any other ideas for inclusion in a future release?

[ireland]

hello I'm looking forward to your latest update, because I'm very interested, I tried the above but does not seem to produce the desired effect because there was no growth in players.
when you think your ready to be updated? thanks in advance