I'm skeptical that this would have any difference over trainee/trainee/trainee, but admittedly I have never tried leaving the training position blank. Also I'm not sure what would stop the GE from selecting one of the other backups to start at PG in your example and it's pointless to set C1 as reserve as he will not play garbage time at C with that setup.
In general I'm skeptical because players subbed in for 1 or 2 minutes can be both starters and backups (starters if there is garbage time and backups if there is no garbage time), which points to a more general issue and, in the example you gave I fail to see how EBW's setup would have any impact when you have garbage time (which is when most people experience problems anyway). It is possible that the selection by the GE is stronger when the position is left blank is stronger than the manual selection with strictly and this would improve things in non garbage time games, but it would need proper testing and these things are hard to check, because:
a. in D3 and D4 these issues should be avoidable and workable if the trainee has enough ST
b. this issue goes away anyway as the trainee gets better skills/stamina
c. you'd need a trainee that always gets subbed out and hardly ever fouls out in 48 minutes
d. it's probably beyond Marin's ability to create new sub patterns (the blank selection mechanics may be also bugged which could result in a stronger resilience for the automatically selected starter)
Observe what happens here with 7 players:
http://www.buzzerbeater.com/match/111773221/reportmatch.a.... Not 1 but 2 players (SG and PF, who were set as starter/backup/reserve) get subbed out in the last minute. The starting C goes back in at PF and the PG goes back in at SG. In both cases the difference in skills is significant, the PF is a bit better, but he also has low ST. You can see the gulf in the ratings as well.
Now here with the same low ST youngster and the player who replaced him in the game above:
http://www.buzzerbeater.com/match/110580843/reportmatch.a.... The scrub did not get subbed out, because the only backup was set at PF+C and the starting C was also very weak. You can see that something doesn't add up here too, because the starting C (McMurrich) gets moved to the PF slot and the backup (Rubio) goes in at C for 3 minutes. If I had a better starting PF (Anhui) this would have never happened and it's not supposed to happen: when that happened the starting PF should have gone back in. Of course in that case, the SF would have probably been pulled instead, as it happened in the previous game.
So you see, it's possible to 'bait' the GE into subbing other players and you won't need to use 5 man lineups, but unfortunately those players need to be even weaker than your trainees.
Last edited by Lemonshine at 7/7/2020 9:51:34 AM