BuzzerBeater Forums

Thanks furious. I registered at the site and BB-Mailed Coco. I should be on there soon.

Ade's totals are at 53, and pretty balanced:
JS JR OD HD DR PS IS ID RB SB
7 4 4 6 6 7 2 5 6 6

i picked up a Level 4 trainer.

Honestly, the Newbie Guide on this help forum is really helpful, but it seems there are a few things that it says go ahead and get (trainer, doctor, PR manager) that maybe others don't agree with. Overall, i feel comfortable about where to go for the rest of the season now. We'll see.

For future reference, try to set it up as follows:

7/4/4/6/6/7 2/5/6/6

If you decide to sell him, which is one decision to make, he will go for quite a bit of money. Since you probably want to train him after picking up a level 4 trainer, heres a bit of a guide of what i personally would do with this play. Please note, i said I personally. It may not be very fast.

For the remaining 7 weeks (assuming you have scheduled a scrim this week):

Jump Shot @ SF/PF for 7 weeks.

Reasoning Why

Jump Shot @ SF/PF for 7 weeks will do two things for this player. It will get him some offense on the jumpers, and it will get him some much need inside shooting. The difference between IS training and JS training in terms of their impact on IS is marginal at best on such a short player. the ID boost that Is provides is not particularly awe inspiring for you right now, you can find other more impactful ways to boost it. The BIGGEST reason i like this training method though is for the fact that handling doesn't move much at all except by random chance. The last thing you really want right now is to inflate this players HA. at 12 HA, which it might eventually get to after you train OD, PA, and DR, the salary and cap punishment becomes a little rough for what it's actually worth. You can train past 12 later and it will benefit the player, but i try to save that for the end as i like building up OD, PA, DR, IS, & JS before that.

I'll explain to you that the 2 he has in IS may not be a 2. It might be a 2.9, it might be a 2.4, it might be a 2.6, it might be a 2.0. Depending on where it is, you'll either get to 4 IS or 5 IS, and it might change how you do things starting next season.

I'll shoot you a PM if you want a more detailed training and team based strategy, but this should get you started.

JS SF/PF does not train JR at all and trains JS slower compared to JS guards or wingmen. Most trainers would therefore advise you against training it. True, it trains some IS, but it's better to get that through 1v1 forwards or even single-position IS training at C. It's just not worth sacrificing that JS/JR. If you want to train him at SF, definitely I'd say train him in 1v1. You'll get more for your training that way.

you dont understand the purpose of SF/PF. While it's true that it doesn't help range, i don't value range past a 6-7 as being worth a lot. I value HA staying lower as far more important. OnevOne forward training will end his handling closer to a 15 if he were to full on train for the next six seasons, and would kill most of his cap room that he needs to achieve a higher OD and PA.

SF/PF on a 2 HA player would be worthless, but with guys with inflated HA's, i actually think it serves a significant purpose.

also, if you have any direction on where I can see the salary formulas (or theories), i'd appreciate it.

There are five salary formulas, one for each position. The position a player is listed at is determined by which salary formula yields the highest result (so training a player can switch his position). The formula is exponential, here are rough estimates of how much each additional level in a skill will increase the salary of a player:

Edit: ok the formatting on this blows but I've already spent too much time on this post, ID/RB/SB are the second row.

Salary
 	JS	JR	OD	HA	DR	PA	IS	ID	RB	SB	
PG	3%	5%	8%	8%	4%	16%	 	 	4%	 	
SG	13%	15%	13%	 	 	 	 	 	7%	 	
SF	18%	9%	7%	 	 	 	 	6%	9%	1%	
PF	8%	 	 	 	 	 	12%	12%	12%	6%	
C	 	 	 	 	 	 	14%	14%	13%	7%

As you can see OD and JS are cheap on PGs, HA/DR/PA are all free for SGs, etc. There are a ton of free or low cost skills that have a huge impact. Basically you want guards who are as close to the line between PG/SG as possible (which means OD/JS/JR are in balance with HA/DR/PA) and have decent ID/IS, SFs who have plenty of OD/IS/ID/PA, and big men with good OD/PA and some HA/DR.

The fire all but 3 players tactic is to exploit the fact that as a new team you have no salary floor. If your roster cost 10k and you make 50k in TV money and you can make a good deal of money quickly.

I personally don't like that plan because one can make a good deal of money training players and selling them but to each their own.

The first paragraph is correct but I don't understand the second. What does one have to do with the other? Why not do both?

To the OP, if you don't care about competing this season you might as well make as much cash as possible. It's not likely any of the free players you got are really worth anything besides the trainee.

Personally I'd focus on things I control. I would train up some guys, maybe find a 3k+ Allstar trainee as a 3rd trainee and would start building up my arena. These are the sources of economy that you have the most control over... if you train highly sought after players; you can make quick, easy money. If you build your arena well and set your prices well then you will have a source of income for years to come.

A smart trainer working on a low budget can expect net around 250k per season from training after training costs (this is highly variable and unrealistically optimistic for a new user but bare with me). This number is value added so it still applies if you keep the player. A D5 team making 100k in revenue (TV+merch+gate before expenses, no clue how accurate 100k is) would make a bit less than 1.5 million in a season. So even with someone who is a very good trainer for a D5 manager, training is still gonna be roughly one seventh of their income on a season.

I think hiring a lvl 4 trainer if you have a 18yo superstar trainee isn't the worst thing to do. I wouldn't spent any money on any lvl above 4 though...

The key thing here is that if you look at the price difference between a level 3 and level 4 trainer, it's over 10k per week, or roughly 150k over a season. The difference in training speed is 4% to 5%. There's no way that an extra 5% training is going to be worth 150k each season to a newer player. That's around how much 100% of the training in the season is worth, so you would be overpaying by almost twenty times, and around ten times if you included other trainees.

Last edited by w_alloy at 1/15/2013 10:30:43 PM

you dont understand the purpose of SF/PF.

What is this supposed to mean?

I'm all for non-inflated handling as a general rule. But two things: (1) I'm starting to revise that position, as wozz's recent elastic effect studies seem to indicate that it is an extremely important skill for elastic effect, and players like Jacob Martinez and Robby Serrano among others seem to show that by training a lot of 1v1 at first, then training other skills, you can benefit from the elastic effect to get ridiculously skilled players. Serrano in particular did a lot of 1v1 early on, and ended up having 5-10 more skill points than most of the other SFs we've ever had on the U21.

(2) Handling beyond 15 is pretty much agreed to be empty salary, but handling up to 15 is not useless at all. So for a NT-caliber guard, you might worry about how to get super-high driving while keeping handling low, but with only 8 potential, this guy's never going to be a NT guard. So handling isn't empty salary at all, and if he wants to make a point guard, then handling would be probably the third-most useful skill, behind passing and OD. So not at all useless, and not just a cap-killer.

You can't say both JR and handling need to be kept as low as possible. If you have high handling, you should want high JR because it's very, very cost-efficient for PGs. If you have high JR, then he's a SG and handling is free up to a point. I also don't see why you don't value JR; sure, it's only useful in shooting threes, which are inherently low percentage shots at higher levels, but at his level in D.V, threes are definitely more than viable. Additionally, if he wants to run patient, then the player is going to shoot a fair amount of threes, and thus JR is very useful. Patient seems like a distinct possibility; if Casper is trained optimally, then he's going to be super-expensive and likely the only way to afford him will be to surround him with a weakersupporting cast, making patient the best offense. Also, the second point of not training JS forwards is it trains JS significantly slower too, and JS is probably the single most important skill for scoring as a guard.

I'm new here too, so I don't really want to give any ill-advised opinions.

But regarding going after promotion and building a salary efficient roster: Why not spend a season improving arena and training that 18y superstar player? And then go after building a roster next year?

He can spend this season figuring out things anyway.

This is a good question, and there are multiple reasons for it:

1) Winning in D5 is actually really easy unless you have some stud in your league. It's not like your situation where you start in D2, as winning there will take an expensive roster. I'm confident I could build a team from the initial 300k bonus that would win most D5 leagues and would still be reasonably salary efficient. You gain a lot more money and experience in D4.

2) Building a salary efficient roster takes a lot of time and experience. Especially for someone who doesn't want to spend hours on the TL every day, each piece could take substantial time to find. Also the only way to get experience is to practice, the sooner he starts trying the sooner he starts getting better.

3) He doesn't have to go all-in right away. He can start slowly with some 5k-8k salary players and work his way up. These players can actually win games at this level and winning will attract fans which will pay for the players.

Edit: Also I should add this really shouldn't be done to the exclusion of arena building, that is important as well. But again his situation is different than yours as a big arena in D5 is worth far far less than a big arena in D2.

Last edited by w_alloy at 1/15/2013 9:36:57 PM

The statement on purpose of SF/PF JS training is as it looks, except it's mostly with regard to this specific player.

His HA after Driving i'd guess will be an 8 or 9. add 1.5 for PA (11), add at least 2.5 for all the OD, and another 1.5 for JS. you're already at 15 on a superstar, he's pretty much used up a significant chunk of salary that would be better allotted to something else.

Additionally, i wasn't suggesting JS for SF/PF as a method of training JS. I was suggesting it because the difference between IS and JS for SF/PF is so small (i think it's roughly .05 points at level 4 trainer), that it's much more valuable to trade that .05 sublevel gain in IS and the limited ID that it provides for nearly a 3rd of a sublevel in JS.

If you look at this type of training at the basic level, then yes it clearly isn't as useful as many other areas. However, if HA is a concern coming up and you have such a short player, then the tradeoff becomes a much more realistic plan of attack.

Edit: I do value 3's, but Wozz put together a display of the percentages that makes me less interested in getting JR past an 8 on any player at any point in time unless he's already there. The differences between a 9 and 11 in JR really isn't a lot in the scheme of things.

Last edited by FuriousSK at 1/15/2013 9:39:40 PM

3s aren't high percentage shots at the NBBA level, but in D.V it's an easy way to make a killing. Second, despite wozz's percentage calculations, all the NT guards have 12+ JR with the exception of Nix, who is on there for his passing only. So it can't be that pointless. And like I said, in a patient offense you're going to need some JR. I'm not saying train JR, but letting it come up with JS would be a good idea, definitely salary-efficient.

I just don't think at the D.V level it's that important to train a guy to shoot 3's. I'm fairly certain he could find some decent high range players to help him win it rather than train it (directly or indirectly).

Again, the biggest reason i suggest JS for SF/PF has almost nothing to do with JR or even JS. It's just that i feel the value of added JS is greater than a very slim picking in ID. of significant value again is the fact that there is no HA gain.


Last edited by FuriousSK at 1/15/2013 9:49:24 PM