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Here's what I think.

LI and LP statistically have a very similar shot selection and it's understandable considering that players are built the same way for both. At top level LI usually does better offensively for a couple of reasons: LP needs more PA to generate the same amount of inside shots and LP also generates fewer fouls. Going to the line in this game is worth a lot more than in the real world because TS% on other shots is generally lower than in the NBA, but TS% on FTs is actually in line. I don't know if anyone tried but it's possible that LP is better than LI if the big men have no DR/HA, decent to good PA and the guards have enough PA themselves to feed them on enough possessions: big men with no DR take more dunks, which may increase the overall shot efficiency.

Patient and PTB are next. These are tactics that exploit mismatches. They work if the opponent can be dominated or beaten at some positions. I would think PTB is generally better because with Patient you put all your eggs in one basket and if you play the shooter at PF or C you will miss out on a lot of stops. The problem with these tactics is that at top level they end up being frustrated by the fact that the opponent has no real weak link, so you need to offset the shooter in Patient and hope you can get enough rebounds. These tactics have a worse TS% of even outside tactics, but, crucially, as they seem to do better on the boards they may be a better choice than outside tactics. How close they are to inside tactics, depends on the mismatches.

Motion/R&G/Princeton. Again shot selection is quite similar, R&G gets more fouls and Princeton fewer (like LI vs LP). All of these tactics rely on Jump Shots and in terms of efficiency Princeton>Motion>R&G IF you can get an open shot (unlike inside shots, where PA affects the proportion of inside shots but not the FG% by any significant margin, here it actually affects more the FG% than the shot distribution). Fouling rates are worse for all of these tactics, R&G being slightly better. The key here is again possessions and R&G and Motion have a worse rebounding rate than Princeton. So Princeton with appropriate personnel should be better in theory, because getting open shots here matters more than for inside tactics.

BO is actually hard to judge because it is a tactic most people use when they have a sizeable advantage in talent and want to avoid getting GDPd. BO may well work as well as other neutral tactics, although it generally yields worse team ratings.

Isolations are the worst and I doubt people have really understood how they work and how to make good use of them. They both get over 50% jump shots and 3s at a penalty, so I am almost sure they are worse than anything else.

Based on the above I'd divide this way:
Tier1
LI
LP
Tier2
Patient (offset)
PTB
BO?
Tier3
Princeton
Motion/R&G
Patient (not offset)
Tier4
ISOs

Last edited by Lemonshine at 5/10/2019 6:24:50 AM

Interesting thread.I used to play this game back in the days but then got bored.

Having played similar manager games before i have come to the conlcusion that there is rarely a better offense.It's more about which offense will give you the best results with the players you have.I dont want to reveal too much but consider this : every offense has an algorithm that gives different importance on certain skills per position.

So offense A has a factor of 1.2 for SG jump range while offense B has 1.4 factor for the same stat/position.

Now the same offense A has a factor of 2 for PF passing while offense B has 0.6 for PF passing.

Same thing goes on and on for every skill in every position.

Now we dont know the formula.If we did we could easily calculate which offense is best for our team and the stats our players have.

Here's the real problem.When everyone trains their players the same,people start believing that Look inside is the best offense.That is true but only because all good guards have inside shot nowdays but no jump range.I have been trying to find some good JR passing combinations and seems like noone has that.

So nowdays every top team has a balanced player in each position and whoever has played the more/gathered the more money wins the title until a team that had been tanking for long enough comes along with more money to have more balanced players or bigger roster depth.

Players with a driving level of 1 can still be used efficiently in the proper attack where the factor of driving on that tactic in the specific position is the lowest.

The true beauty of this game is to find the way the formula works and suddenly start winning games with simingly worst roster just because your tactic suited you better and it seems to me like even 10 real life years later noone has actually come much closer to understand what every tactic needs in every position they just go for the all around players again.

Here's the real problem.When everyone trains their players the same,people start believing that Look inside is the best offense.That is true but only because all good guards have inside shot nowdays but no jump range.I have been trying to find some good JR passing combinations and seems like noone has that.
[...]
The true beauty of this game is to find the way the formula works and suddenly start winning games with simingly worst roster just because your tactic suited you better and it seems to me like even 10 real life years later noone has actually come much closer to understand what every tactic needs in every position they just go for the all around players again.

Well, while I agree that a lot of it is based on player composition, there is also a fundamental flaw with the engine in terms of outside offenses - shot selection appears to be too constrained by the engine. For example, if you look at my team, I am currently now in the top league in the USA - pretty fortunate to be there, of course, but fairly competitive because my team is obnoxiously highly trained in JR and SB. I almost exclusively face outside zones and outside predictions on GDP, and my team still shoots higher from 3 than from 2 (right now .362 from ouside vs. .358 for all shots). And yet, my team still attempts twice as many two point shots as three point shots, simply because the engine parameters don't appear to be flexible enough to actually let a team that is built exclusively to jack up contested threes do so other than the last minute of the game. And I think it'd be difficult to put together a team more likely to want to shoot threes than this - I wanted to see if it was possible to steer the shot selection toward threes and did everything I could to discourage any other type of shot.

Part of the problem, too, is that training inside scoring guards is easy. One on one training gives training to up to six guys, in handling and driving and inside shot if you go that route, at a high speed, and set up the elastic effect for other skills. Training outside shooting trains half as many players, at a low speed to boot, and then the elastic effect seems to hurt even more (based on my training my guys for their first three seasons in JR). And then when you factor in OD, well, JR + JS + OD is a surefire way to get into the SG salary formula, and if you get all three high the salary shoots up, while punting JR and DR + HA + IS plus ridiculous OD is much cheaper (and effective) on the PG formula.

But when you get past all of that, you also get a bonus to rebounding when you play an inside offense, and LI draws fouls at a much higher rate than outside offenses (which, to my eternal chagrin, do seem to also commit a lot of offensive fouls, even though I have guys who rarely otherwise commit a lot of fouls). I think there was a correction early on in the life cycle of the game, where it used to be outside offense was overpowered, and for pretty much the entirety of my time here, it's been pretty much inside or bust.

Well ask Manon or Teemo how they killed it in the B3 with high SB or how many titles Germany won with the same blueprint. As I said here or elsewhere, I trained a big with elite defensive skills (11/18/18 + nearly 18 RB also) and bigs who were elite offensively (16 JS, 20 IS, very high DR type of elite) would still score efficiently on him. Meanwhile my guard who is in the NT and has elite outside shooting is extremely streaky in outside offenses irrespective of who is guarding him.

This is without considering the baseline advantages that hrudey mentioned like higher team rebounding or the higher number of fouls drawn in inside offenses, easier training (or at least leading to a much higher overall TSP) AND lower salary.


Last edited by Lemonshine at 6/9/2019 6:30:10 PM

Here's the thing about SB I'm noticing, as well as ID.

SBing at a higher level than ID results in better usage of SB. I think most people believe that SB has to be equal to ID. Problem with that is GE tries to pick the best action based on the skills. In my observation, the GE will pick ID over SB. What that means is your player will get in position to defend, but then he won't necessarily contest the shot. When SB is higher than ID, the GE will decide to defend the shot rather than get into a good defensive position. This results in shots being blocked, but also results in SB going against the opponents offense to defend the shot which results in misses not seen as a statistic.

Because of this, I really don't think ID over 10 or 11 is needed. I forget what NBBA team it was, but several seasons ago there was a manager than had no more than ID of 10 on a big man. His theory is that ID above that resulted in very little additional defense compared to much higher levels. For example, a guy may shoot 60% against 10ID, but shoot 56% against 18ID. Those 8 additional ID pops aren't worth the time or salary.

On the flip side, if you have 10ID and 18SB, for example, the defender will get into position with 10ID, but the GE sees the best chance of stopping the shot with his 18 SB. Therefore I believe that 10/18 (ID/SB) could defend better than the 18/18 (ID/SB) because the SB will be utilized more based on the GE selection of skills.

Thats the issue with LI tactics. 60, 58 or 56% is still elite efficiency. Anything over 52 true shooting percentage in this game used to be elite. Nothing had changed since season 23 when i quited, slightly more skillfull players.

The only way to defend LI is try to minimize shots the C, PF and SF take. It could be done by having absurdry high OD stats on guards. But that could be countered by having high driving skills for centers. Thats the way players built had changed during 23 seasons. Higher driving for centers, everything else the same. Never bothered either to have elite ID or SB either. Had been playing div 2 with 12 ID 7-10SB centers, everyone kept rolling around 56-58%...around the same as agains 18ID...

Even the best Li guards tend to shoot bellow 50 % like 48,5 mostly, because high OD of opponents and low passing skills to make their salaries managable. Best bet to defend shot is to force not to take it. better force guards chuck bricks from midrange with 8 JR.

Last edited by Vilkai [LTU NT] at 6/10/2019 3:05:18 PM

The only way to defend LI is try to minimize shots the C, PF and SF take. It could be done by having absurdry high OD stats on guards. But that could be countered by having high driving skills for centers.

Well it's not only DR on big men is also guards with 18 and even 20 IS...which, remember, used to be FREE and it's still relatively cheap salary-wise.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 6/10/2019 4:35:46 PM

SBing at a higher level than ID results in better usage of SB.

I agree this could be the case, but unfortunately I concluded it's almost impossible to try this at top level because one of the points I made above: training.

Training a big man punting ID is very hard if not impossible, while training a big man punting SB/IS/RB is doable and much easier to do. Since nobody gives up RB (rightfully so) and you need IS in inside offenses, then the choice is between medium ID and elite SB or elite ID and no SB. The second option costs tens of thousands of $$$ less and is effective in limiting inside shots.

I tried as much as I could to figure out a way to have a big man with minimal ID and elite IS, SB and RB and I could not find any based on training simulators and CP. More precisely: you can do it at D2 level or below, but not at top level, while you routinely see players with 54 IS+ID+RB and 7 or less SB on the transfer list. There are some on the market right now.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 6/10/2019 4:49:46 PM

SBing at a higher level than ID results in better usage of SB.

I agree this could be the case, but unfortunately I concluded it's almost impossible to try this at top level because one of the points I made above: training.

Training a big man punting ID is very hard if not impossible, while training a big man punting SB/IS/RB is doable and much easier to do. Since nobody gives up RB (rightfully so) and you need IS in inside offenses, then the choice is between medium ID and elite SB or elite ID and no SB. The second option costs tens of thousands of $$$ less and is effective in limiting inside shots.

I tried as much as I could to figure out a way to have a big man with minimal ID and elite IS, SB and RB and I could not find any based on training simulators and CP. More precisely: you can do it at D2 level or below, but not at top level, while you routinely see players with 54 IS+ID+RB and 7 or less SB on the transfer list. There are some on the market right now.

I suppose you could find guys with 7 IS/RB/SB and 1 ID as draftees and train them, but that's something you pretty much have to go all in on yourself since you're not going to stumble across D1 ready guys with skills trained that way. Punting IS is a lot easier, of course, but that naturally has its own complications.

The problem is that IS and SB train ID as secondary skill and the effect from SB on ID in particular is stronger than other secondary training, so with that massive gap and the elastic effect on ID, it will grow quite fast and therefore it will reach levels that have an impact on salary.

At some point I can run again a simulation to achieve something like 18 IS, 18 SB, 16 RB and minimum ID with perfect initial skills (7 JS for IS elastics, 7/7/1/7 inside skills etc) and trying to push IS via 1v1 as much as possible.

The other problem I can see with limiting ID and having high SB is that you have to be lucky getting a trainee that doesn't foul, because I agree that such a player will guard more shots due to lower ID.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 6/11/2019 3:59:26 AM