A Beginning Guide to Training Camp
Dec 26, 2015 2:35:30 GMT
Minnesota, Piraeus, and 3 more like this
Post by Sarawak on Dec 26, 2015 2:35:30 GMT
A Beginning Guide to Training Camp
If you have been a part of ABCA for more than a season or two you have either experienced a good or bad training camp (TC) for one of your players. While many GMs feel that training camp is completely random, there are some ways to either minimize risk or maximize the chances of a "jump" in TC. I will be using my team for screen shots to illustrate some of the approches you can use, give you what I have found to work well for me, while of course keeping a few secrets for myself. Before we begin let's review a few things from the game and from the boards that will be helpful for you in understanding TC and Player Ratings.
Understanding Players Ratings
At a base level, Piraeus and Mikawa gave the basics in this thread for player ratings here: ultimateabca.proboards.com/thread/343/fbb-ratings-letters-numbers
For the attributes:
These reflect the ratings for individual ratings (Inside, Outside, Handling, etc). Many of these ratings are based upon multiple subratings, which we will cover a bit later.
5 = F-
6-10 = F
11-15 = F+
16-20 = D-
21-25 = D
26-30 = D+
31-38 = C-
39-52 = C
53-60 = C+
61-65 = B-
66-70 = B
71-75 = B+
76-85 = A-
86-95 = A
96-100 = A+
For the potential:
Potential indicates the room for growth a player has. It is pretty much that simple.
00-20 = F
21-40 = D
41-60 = C
61-80 = B
81-100 = A
What Colors mean in terms of Current and Potential Ratings:
As a general rule Purple players tend to be elite or at the very least an amazing combination of height and athelticism for their position. Blue players tend to be productive ABCA players who can run a range from bench players to all stars due to the large number of ratings in the blue category (115-149). Green players tend to be decent backups and starters in the right situations. Yellow players tend to not get minutes on any competitive team.
Below 100 is yellow
100-114 is green
115-149 is blue
150+ is purple
Understanding Skill Ratings, Coaching Staffs and TC
But what doe these ratings actually mean. The FBB Guide (found in game under Help) does a good job. Below is directly from the Help File:
Player Attributes
Inside Scoring: Helps determine the player's ability to create all shots as the ability to get inside will open up outside shots as well.
Jump Shot: Affects how likely a player is to make shots away from the basket.
Free Throws: Affects how likely a player is make a free throw.
3-Point Shot: Affects how likely a player is make a 3-point shot.
Handling: Affects how likely a player is to commit a turnover
Passing: Affects the quality of a player's passes.
Offensive Rebounding: Affects the player's ability to get offensive rebounds.
Defensive Rebounding: Affects the player's ability to get defensive rebounds.
Post Defense: Affects the player's ability to defend inside shots.
Perimeter Defense: Affects the player's ability to defend outside shots and prevent drives.
Stealing: Affects the player's ability to steal the ball.
Shot Blocking: Affects the player's ability to block shots.
Quickness: Has a small affect on driving, rebounding, creating shots, and defense.
Strength: Affects play near the basket including rebounding, shooting, and defense.
Jumping: Helps determine the player's ability to get to the basket with drives.
Stamina: Determines how quickly players get tired during a game. Tired players will have decreased performance.
Inside Scoring: Helps determine the player's ability to create all shots as the ability to get inside will open up outside shots as well.
Jump Shot: Affects how likely a player is to make shots away from the basket.
Free Throws: Affects how likely a player is make a free throw.
3-Point Shot: Affects how likely a player is make a 3-point shot.
Handling: Affects how likely a player is to commit a turnover
Passing: Affects the quality of a player's passes.
Offensive Rebounding: Affects the player's ability to get offensive rebounds.
Defensive Rebounding: Affects the player's ability to get defensive rebounds.
Post Defense: Affects the player's ability to defend inside shots.
Perimeter Defense: Affects the player's ability to defend outside shots and prevent drives.
Stealing: Affects the player's ability to steal the ball.
Shot Blocking: Affects the player's ability to block shots.
Quickness: Has a small affect on driving, rebounding, creating shots, and defense.
Strength: Affects play near the basket including rebounding, shooting, and defense.
Jumping: Helps determine the player's ability to get to the basket with drives.
Stamina: Determines how quickly players get tired during a game. Tired players will have decreased performance.
Team Staff
The team staff consists of the General Manager, Head Coach, 3 assistant coaches, and the team scout. Staff members are rated in the following skills:
Scouting Current Ability: Used to determine the player's current ability.
Scouting Potential Ability: Used to determine the player's future potential.
Coaching Inside: Affects inside scoring and rebounding.
Coaching Shooting: Affects free throw shooting, jump shooting, and 3-point shooting.
Coaching Handling: Affects handling and passing.
Coaching Post Defense: Affects post defense and shot blocking.
Coaching Perimeter Defense: Affects perimeter defense and stealing.
The skills of the coaching staff will have an affect on both player performance during games as well as development of skills. For each coaching category you can assign up to three staff members on the staff window. You will get a rating based on your coaching skill of one to five stars. Scouting of players is done by the scout only. The scout will rate players multiple times per season and will adjust their evaluations of the players based on a combination of previous scouting results and the current evaluation.
The team staff consists of the General Manager, Head Coach, 3 assistant coaches, and the team scout. Staff members are rated in the following skills:
Scouting Current Ability: Used to determine the player's current ability.
Scouting Potential Ability: Used to determine the player's future potential.
Coaching Inside: Affects inside scoring and rebounding.
Coaching Shooting: Affects free throw shooting, jump shooting, and 3-point shooting.
Coaching Handling: Affects handling and passing.
Coaching Post Defense: Affects post defense and shot blocking.
Coaching Perimeter Defense: Affects perimeter defense and stealing.
The skills of the coaching staff will have an affect on both player performance during games as well as development of skills. For each coaching category you can assign up to three staff members on the staff window. You will get a rating based on your coaching skill of one to five stars. Scouting of players is done by the scout only. The scout will rate players multiple times per season and will adjust their evaluations of the players based on a combination of previous scouting results and the current evaluation.
What do all these ratings mean?
First it means a good way to avoid bad TCs is to have a good staff. There are many ways to build a good staff but it all starts with your Head Coach who counts for more towards your ratings in each category than your assistants. As a general rule it is a good idea to either have the head coach and one assistant be highly rated in a category or two assistants. Below is a screenshot of my current staff that illustrates a fairly balanced approach to a staff. You can also build a staff to help a current type of team. Say for example you have a team with fully developed bigs but young guards. You might sacrifice a bit of coaching in post play to hopefully gain more development on the perimeter.
It is important to think about how you train players, what different categories areas are impacted by trainings, the skills of your staff and your own training philosophy. There are 3 specific types of training camps in my book. The Agressive, the balanced and the play to strengths philosophies. I am going to use Sam Jones off of my team to illustrate these and talk a bit about them.
The Aggressive Training Camp
As you can see I have poured a lot of my training points (40%) into inside scoring. This is what you do when you are either hoping to create a jump in a player or trying to really develop a skill that is lacking or way far away from reaching their potential. The upside is this philosophy can lead to more jumps. The downside is ignoring other categories seems to lead to more declines at times. In my testing of Sam Jones this philosophy led to a few jumps and a a few declines so I decided in this case to move away from this philosophy.
The Balanced Training Camp
Aptly named the balanced screenshot derives out of the theory that spreading your points out in a balanced fashion is a good way to see some development and avoid major TC declines or deaths. The downside is you don't necessarily see many jumps with this philosophy. In the case of Sam Jones, he is already a very good player, so while a jump would be excellent, a balanced approach which minimizes the risks of a death and increases the odds of incremental development makes sense. Basically the reward of a jump isn't worth the risk of a death given that Jones is already a very good player. So I choose to this approach for Jones and as you can see am still focusing a bit more on areas I would like to see more improvement (Inside scoring).
The Play to Strengths Training Camp
As shown above I am focusing on Jones outside shooting and perimeter defense mainly while still trying to spread out the remaining points to avoid deaths. The theory here is so max out the strong suits of a player quickly in their career. It is a straight forward camps.
Training Camps Odds and Ends
As players age (ie get near or past the age of 30) I increase the amount of time spent on conditioning (CND) in Training Camp. Once a player loses enough of their athletic ability their production will start to decline (esp. with guards) so it is not uncommon for me to invest 5+ points into conditioning for a vet.
Vet players also are unlikely to develop up a lot so think hard about playing to strengths/maintaining existing skills in camp.
I personally rarely use less than 2 points in any category. Even in a PG with D post defense I will put at least 2 points into PSD. The reason is I think not putting points into a category can increase the odds of a death.
Use more points if you are weak in an area. Say you have a young big who is C+/A in Inside and you only have a 3 star staff in Inside Coaching. I would considering putting 1 or 2 more points than you normally would to offset the weakness of the staff.
Don't totally ignore areas that are fully developed. Still put points into a PG's handling even if they are a stud in that area. Protecting key attributes for a player can be as important as growth.
TEST training camp. In game you can set your training camp, save the game and then hit the Training Camp button. Do several camps and look for trends. Then adjust individual players as needed. If a guy is dying a lot in TC, go ahead and balance out his points more and try again. It can take several sets before you find a stable one. Even then there is still a chance of a death.
Recommend is neither good nor bad. It just makes it more random than other ways imo. The game sometimes makes very strange decisions in TC when hit recommend. Putting 10 points into the Post Defense of a point guard for example so at the very least hit recommend and the adjust as necessary.
Conclusion
In conclusion there is a lot to take in with running TC. Know the ratings, know your staff, test your results and adjust towards you go. Feeling aggressive? Go for it and try to create guys that jump. I tend to do that with fringy players or role players. Stars I tend to be either balanced or play to their strengths with their approach. This is just a starting guide, get into the game and test things out. Let me know what you find!
This should give people a general overview tho
