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I think this is a very interesting thread so well done in raising this topic however I disagree with your conclusions.

Doctor

Doctors don't do much but they are like insurance you hope to never use them but when you do you are happy. For a new team I think the critical thing is to get three trainees in place and try to promote from the bottom division in their first season even if it means geting relegated the season after. They will still get the promotion money, have had much larger revenue and then will potentially get a $1,000,000 draft pick. To do that they need their players functioning well. For that they need good game shape. New players that understand game shape and enthusiasm will wipe the floor of other new managers with much more expensive rosters. This is where a doctor comes in. One with massage speciality will help your players stay in top shape and that will give you more wins. Ever lost a game by a few points? A massage doctor could have changed that loss into a win.

So for any new team I would suggest getting a level two doctor with massage speciality. $5,000 or less a week.

PR

I doubt a new team is going to get good value out of the PR guy getting an increace in merchandising but again I think the specialities are gold. They should look at their schedule and see do they need help with home games or away games and get a CI or NA PR guy. I like winning games and I assume new players do too.

So for any new team I would suggest getting a level two PR with either national appeal or crowd involvement speciality. $5,000 or less a week.

Trainer
Training has been greatly devauled in the game by the crazy drop in player values but it is still one of the most fun parts of the game. It also binds players to the game when they have a particular player they identify with. There is little reason not to train unless you are trying to run a 5-7 man roster and just training game shape each week, New players usually don't do such pathetically unrealistic things (although the game rewards those that do but that is a different issue) so they should train. At the moment you can pick up a decent 19 year old with high potential or an 18 year old with good skills but low potential for basically nothing. Add in a level four trainer and you will be a very effective trainer and have a roster that by the end of the season is playing like players with a much higher salary.

Even better again there is the speciality. A lot of new teams buy old players. Skill drops are very painful. Why not reduce them with a career extention trainer. I don't like stamina drops so fitness is also great.

So for any new team I would suggest getting a level four trainer with either speciality. $10,000 or less a week.

In total this is $20,000 a week which is not peanuts for a new team but it will equal more wins and wins are what new teams in the bottom division should be about. Add in some improved game shape, less of a penalty for away games, less skill drops on your old players and the training on your young players and your team must be at least 10+ points better a game by the end of the season. Well worth it.

So for any new team I would suggest getting a level four trainer with either speciality. $10,000 or less a week.

I don't disagree with the majority of your post, but the odds of ever seeing a $10k or less level four trainer are extremely low and if such a creature does ever come around, it'll cost a ton to add them. But bump it to $15k or less and it's quite a reasonable proposition.

That is true. I haven't actually searched for a level four for a long time, the 10-15,000 range there are 132 guys for sale but under 10,000 there aren't any.

I don't see training as a waste of money but even with a level 1 trainer, you can still improve players quite a bit. There's only about a 25% difference between a level 1 trainer and a level 4 advanced trainer but you'll probably save $11-14,000 a week in the process.

And most new teams aren't training anyone that is going to be a great player so to me, while training is worthwhile spending on a better trainer likely isn't.

Trainer
I've heard it estimated that each trainer level leads to 5% faster training, which seems reasonable to me. Let's say that with an advanced trainer, over a 12 week season you have 3 players that each gain 8 skill pops. Let's say an atrocious trainer get 85% of the skill points and costs 15k less per week. You are then paying paying 50k per skill point, which seems like far more than one pop is worth on the transfer market for trainees that most beginning teams would have ((15k * 12)/(8 * 3 * (1-.85)) = 50k).

I'll give you an example...a team I'm mentoring bought a 1k P.allstar trainee and sold him for 397k three seasons later (21330456). Trainer was lvl4 with 14k initial salary. Trainee had low salary because he was giving him lots of secondary training (1 on 1 for SF/PF). Maybe this will help you redo your math.

He bought another player for 1k (23055333) that 3 seasons later is worth around 400-500k. To me, training seems profitable, but only long-term.

Last edited by Koperboy at 9/5/2012 9:32:37 AM

if you are getting 24 pops per season, are you making 1.2m in added value per season? If so, than more power to you, but I don't think these results are typical of DIV teams.

No player can get 24 pops in a season.

If i didnt have a pretty high level doctor the 2w injuries may have been 3-4w perhaps. Having two such players gone for such a long time is tough to handle. You'll end up losing a lot of games

And let's not forget how much time you need for those recovered players to get them to at least respectable game shape...

Second, in my admittedly limited experience, the more balanced a team is the more likely it is to punch above its salary weight. It makes sense because of the exponential nature of skill cost: a 10k increase in salary will buy a lot more skills on a 15k player than it will on a 25k player. Now of course there are viable tactics and strategies that make certain players more important that can be quite effective, and I'm not saying your top 8 players should always have the same salary. But I think that especially for newer managers, a more balanced approach will win more games for the same salary most of the time.

Absolutely brilliantly said. True every word you said here.

I had better performances with 30k starters and 20k reserves then when I had 50k starters and 5k subs. Last season I had 50k players on 4 positions and a center with 120k. Subs were around 5k each. I lost playoff game against a team which best player had only 28k salary. But the rest of the team was pretty balanced. So this season I'm returning to my old and proved strategy of 10 balanced players (or 9 + trainee). ;)

I trained six 18 year olds last year solely for the purpose of selling them. All Perr-all-star/superstar. Level 4 trainer with 2 position training. Bought all 6 for $54,000 total at begining of the season. Likely paid them salaries in the $250,000 range over the course of the season. Upgraded trainer from level 1 to level 4 likely cost about $150,000 extra. Sold them all from the middle to end of the season for a total of just shy of $1.5 million. Probably cleared $1.3-1.4 million after the tax. Profit likely in the $800-900,000 range or about $150,000 per player.

Certainly not as profitable as the early days but there's still some profit that can be made training. I think the biggest risk is with the older trainees (ages 20-23) as they've been dropping in price quite a bit the last few seasons.

Last edited by Beener not Beanerz at 9/5/2012 11:23:29 AM

I'll give you an example...a team I'm mentoring bought a 1k P.allstar trainee and sold him for 397k three seasons later (21330456). Trainer was lvl4 with 14k initial salary. Trainee had low salary because he was giving him lots of secondary training (1 on 1 for SF/PF). Maybe this will help you redo your math.

He bought another player for 1k (23055333) that 3 seasons later is worth around 400-500k. To me, training seems profitable, but only long-term.

Last trainee I had was bought for 51k and sold for 400k after just 8 weeks. Level 4 trainer, 1 pos training... But you have to know really good what to buy for training. So I guess training can be profitable even short-term if you don't cling onto your trainee and are ready to sell fast. If I would repeat this process for 3 seasons with same success, I would make profit of around 1,8 m $ (43,6k per week).