BuzzerBeater Forums

Expenses:
Player Salaries can be kept in check by not carrying a giant roster of 20+ players when you don't need them. For individual players salary can be an okay estimate of their general skill, but don't assume one guy is better than another just because his salary is higher; make sure you decide between them based on the skills themselves.

Staff Salaries depend on the level of staff and how long they have been with the team: each week staff gets a slight raise. Read up in the manual on what each staff member does. Their importance from most to least is probably: trainer > PR > doctor. You do want to upgrade from what you start with but remember there is a limit to what your team can afford at this division. Also note that the difference between levels decreases as you move up in levels: the difference between a 'basic' staff and a 'competent' staff is greater than the difference between an 'exceptional' staff and a 'world-renowned' staff, however the prices rise drastically as you move up in level. An 'advanced' trainer is probably the best value in general as far as what you get for the price. My own recommendation would be 'advanced' trainer, 'competent' PR, 'basic' to 'competent' doctor, depending on what you feel comfortable with paying in staff salary..

Each type of staff can have a couple different specialties, or no specialty. The game manual explains what each does. Having either of the two specialties on your PR guy is important, either one is fine depending on your preference. If you can find a doctor with the 'massage' specialty and a trainer with the 'fitness' specialty those are a nice bonus but probably not necessary.

Scouting is paid every week over the course of the season and then at the end of the year you get to see a list of draft prospects and what you know about them. You rank the players as you see fit and then during off-season processing the game determines how everybody in your league drafted and who you end up with. http://www.buzzerbeater.com/community/forum/read.aspx?thr... gives a decent overview of what to do once the draft list is released.

Because of the number of bots/inactive players in division V, I would recommend spending either 10k or 20k on scouting every week, even if you expect to finish near the top of the league and end up with a late draft pick: You will probably get one of your top three rated players even if you are picking 10-16, so it's nice to know something about the guys you're ranking. 40k feels like a lot to spend at this division given you are spending twice as much money for not much more information (4 players/week vs. 3 players/week) and because the draft quality can be a bit random, but people argue it either way.


Last edited by J-Slo at 7/17/2011 7:18:06 PM

Game Shape: a measure of how fit/ready your player is to play, game shape starts each season at 'respectable' and can improve to 'strong' and then 'proficient', or decline down to 'average', 'mediocre', etc. GS is affected by how many minutes a player got the previous week (total minutes accumulated over the season may also play a role): ~60ish minutes/week is considered ideal for getting GS to increase up to 'proficient'. Too many minutes (80+) or too few (<40) will often but not always cause a decline in GS. Try to find a rotation that keeps your guys within that 50-80min range each week.

Game shape has a pretty decent effect on how well your guys play so if you can keep your players in strong-proficient GS you will give yourself an advantage over an opponent whose GS is only 'respectable'. It is possible to train GS. You generally want to be doing training which actually improves a player's skills, but if you are going into the playoffs and your GS has room to improve, you could train GS to give yourself an edge in promoting, etc. Beyond that training GS is usually not a good idea.

Enthusiasm/effort: Enthusiasm is a sort of team-wide measure of how well your team will play in a given game. The standard enthusiasm is 5 and you can increase/decrease enthusiasm by changing the effort your team puts into games (effort is called 'attitude' in the set-lineup page, enthusiasm and effort can both be seen on the set-lineup page).

Normal is the standard effort and does not affect enthusiasm. Crunch Time is increased effort and will cause your players to play harder/better in the current game but will also cut your enthusiasm by half following the game. Take It Easy is decreased effort and will cause your players to not try as hard in the current game, but will increase your enthusiasm by a third following the game. Enthusiasm slowly moves back toward a 5 over time, and it moves more quickly the farther you are from a 5: it make take a couple days for enthusiasm to decline from 7 to 6, but it may drop from 14 to 13 or even 12 in just one day. (The same is true for enthusiasm moving upward from a 1 or 2 back toward a 5.)

A TIE at 9-10 enthusiasm is generally considered to be equal to a Normal at 5 enthusiasm. So managing enthusiasm/effort allows you to build up enthusiasm for big games: you can TIE against weak opponents (or very strong opponents you think you have no chance of beating) for several games in a row to build up your enthusiasm and then play a normal or CT with high (7-10) enthusiasm and give yourself an increased chance to beat a team that is normally better than you. It's generally a good idea to TIE against bots/inactive teams, and generally a bad idea to waste enthusiasm by using a CT unless you really, really need to win that game (determines home court for the playoffs, etc), and even then you need to consider whether having a high enthusiasm might not still be more valuable. If you are just trying to give yourself an edge against a rival, a normal with high enthusiasm is often enough to get the job done.

Tactics: these are generally explained in the game manual. One thing to remember though is that even if you want to be an inside focused team, or an outside focused team, it is still important to have reasonably decent players at your non-focus positions. Even if your big men are great, if your guards are terrible they will have a hard time getting the ball inside to your big men or making shots when the ball can't get inside, and it will cost your team victories. Having a balanced team also gives you the option of switching tactics to suit your opponent, or to create an element of surprise.

Last edited by J-Slo at 1/7/2011 10:45:12 AM

So, a quick recap of things to take care of when just starting out:

1) Determine what you want to train: bigs vs guards, 1 vs 2 position
2) Figure out who your trainees are: guys 'born' on your team, any extra guys you need to buy
3) Figure out who is worth keeping on your team: these guys will be similar to the sort of guys mentioned earlier that you will be looking to buy on the TL if you need to pick up any non-trainees---> 'average-respectable' in the main skills, not terrible secondary skills
4) Look for bargains to fill in any holes in the non-training positions on your roster.
5) Fire/sell all the extra guys on your roster who won't be getting any minutes
6) Improve your staff: 'advanced' trainer, 'competent' PR/doctor
7) Have a plan for what you're training each week and try to follow it
8) Make sure you are scouting 10k-20k each week
9) Improve your arena gradually (as you are able): don't overbuild but don't totally neglect it either. Look at other people's teams and get an idea for what is possible and what is not enough/too much. Set a goal for where you want to be when you promote.
10) Manage your effort, enthusiasm, and tactics to win games.

Following these steps and spending time reading up in the forums/game manual will help give you the foundation you need to get started so that you don't feel lost/overwhelmed, and then it becomes easier to slowly develop your team and your ideas about how you want to build your team, what works for you, etc. There is a ton more to learn about training, tactics, etc. but hopefully this helps things go more smoothly in the beginning. Good luck!

Last edited by J-Slo at 3/22/2010 12:23:20 PM