Quote:
Originally Posted by Nithoniniel
I really like what you are trying to achieve with this.
My initial reaction is that it's far too restrictive in many ways. I jumped into a game and tried to create a tactical set-up that resembles what the Toronto Maple Leafs use, and I don't even get close. I try different tactics, but I can barely get a line to be set up as it should. Forget having three innately offensive players on the same line, like JVR - Bozak - Marner (Edit: Found some systems that this worked on at least the first line). I always get forced to put one of them as a grinder. The team uses Nylander - Matthews - Hyman as a third line, but I just get told to put one of them as enforcers and the other two as two-way forwards at the best. I guess that can be worked around by putting them higher up in the lineup and just give them less ice time.
My feeling is still that you should stop trying to be so restrictive in what line does what. Systems rarely work like that. They don't tell you that the third line needs to be defensive and grinding, while the first line has to be offensive inclined.
As I said, extremely interesting but very cumbersome right now. I've spent ages on this without real success right now. A big problem there is that the tactic you choose gives you very little information on what kind of roles will be available.
Ideally, I'd suggest having an overall tactic like you have, but the ability to designate a line tactic. I might for example want a cycling system with two scoring lines, a shutdown line and energy line, or I could want the same cycling system with three scoring lines and a shutdown line (similar to Chicago setup). Both options fit under the cycling tactic, but give you more options on how to handle the lines without feeling handcuffed.
Oh, and something that just has to change. I barely know any system or team that actually uses an enforcer on a third line. It's almost an extinct role, and in the cases it's been used it's almost always on a fourth line. Yet even the Soviet-inspired systems try to force me to use an enforcer on my third line which is absolutely perplexing. Meanwhile, I haven't found a system yet that allows me to have three lines with roles that are at least balanced towards some kind of scoring.
Most of the league uses three scoring lines nowadays, but the game tries to push me into the old-fashioned two scoring lines, one shutdown line and a fourth line setup.
Here's what I would do:
1) Tactics for with puck and without puck like now.
2) Tactics for lines, perhaps loosely based on 1. You can have: Matchup line (a Toews line), Scoring line (Kane line), Shutdown line (Krüger line), Energy line (Typical bottom six line)
3) Depending on 1 and 2, you get roles. A physical tactic will likely have a grinder on each of those line types, while a Soviet-inspired system will almost always (not on energy lines) have some kind of playmaker or offensive forward there.
Most of the above applies to pairings as well. I don't see why a system would tell me that the first pairing will have two-way guys, but the second pairing will for sure have a defensive d-man.
Edit: Also, Injury Proneness doesn't seem to work. Everybody gets a 0 or 1 there, and it can't be edited. Joffrey Lupul is an iron man according to my game. Minor thing so I didn't want to create a thread for it, but I didn't see a thread for that kind of things either.
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We've been working on some ways to add more flexibility to the role selection. It was even more rigid than it is now at one point, which definitely wasn't my intention with the original design, for the exact reasons you elaborated on.
Bear in mind that some of the systems are more historical in nature, since their eras won't work properly without those sort of tactics - and Herb Brooks, for all his Soviet inspiration, also had no problem giving a decent amount of ice time to guys like Nick Fotiu, Basil McRae and Randy McKay (when McKay was still a 200+ PIM guy.) I considered restricting tactics to specific years, but in the end figured people would rather have the flexibility to choose an anachronistic system if they want it. It's made it a little trickier to keep the AI from making odd choices, though.
I think the editor view of injury proneness ratings is broken at the moment (in addition to the historical IP's also being wrong in the database), so that's probably the reason you're seeing the odd numbers. Lupul's definitely at the very high end of the scale.