Tactics

[bruins72]

I haven't seem any talk about how we'll be able to set up our team's tactics. Will it be set up like it is in EHM or would we be able to be a little specific? For example, could we specify a player to camp out in front of the net like Neely? Could we have a guy hanging back ready to make a breakaway? Any other ideas on this topic?

[laskey 16]

I think we need a complete rehaul of tactics, as as you have mentioned EHM didn't have enough specific options.

[Ogilthorpe]

I agree, a complete overhaul of tactics would be great.

[ArtVandelay]

I'm glad you posted this.

I have a lot of thoughts on tactics (anyone surprised?).

Firstly, regardless of the tactics a coach imposes, a player still has freewill. Stubborn, selfish players will play how they want to play and, if they get positive results, you may see the coach alter his tactics or just live with the primadonna.

I have no idea whether any version of EHM ever thought this way or if it just tried to fit everyone into the chosen tactics. I suspect it's the latter which is extremely unrealistic.

So I see 2 topics here:

1. How to handle tactics as a coach
2. How tactics get carried out by players

For #2, it's a combo of the player's personality (ego, coachability) against the respect he may or may not have for the coach. For example, Jagr wouldn't likely alter his game for any coach. However, he might be more likely to comply if that coach was Scotty Bowman. Make sense?

For #1, I think the "tactics" in freeware EHM were more like "schemes". Hit & Grind, Neutral Zone Trap, etc. I think there's a place for that and actually like it MUCH more than the tactics in EHM 2007. In EHM 2007, it's really detailed to be useful for overall tactics. Details are for when the coach calls a timeout and says stuff like, "draw the puck back to the left defenseman . Get into position next to the left post so you can deflect the shot." Otherwise, all I've ever experienced and heard are things like:

1. Cover #22 and don't let him get too far from you.
2. I want you to crash the next and block the goalie's view at every opportunity.
3. Get the puck back to MacInnis/Iafrate (or any other Al) and let him just fire away at every opportunity.
4. Hit them and then hit them some more!
5. Clog up the neutral zone - I want all the forwards to hang back.
6. Hey Adam, shoot more! Stop forcing passes!

Thing is, I think a lot of what are tactics in the hockey games we've been playing are really things that are sorted out in practice. If a coach wants his guys trapping, then he's gonna practice it before the game. This is a key point. In EHM (free and 2007), you could throw together any old tactics you wanted in the middle of the game and see if they worked.

Really? That can't be realistic! A team that has never practiced the Trap simply won't be able to execute it very well if asked to do it mid-game. It'll be a bloody mess.

So I think much of what we know as tactics should really be practice and schemes and the stuff we can change during the game would be specific instructions to specific players or units.

[bruins72]

Excellent ideas, Art!

I totally see you logic on these point. I wonder if dabo would consider a "coachability" attribute that rated how well a player can take coaching direction and an "ego" attribute that in conjunction with a coach's reputation would determine if that player would "buy in" to that coach's system. That could be VERY interesting to see in action. Also, that "ego" attribute could also determine how a player reacts to their ice time, what line they play on, their player status (Key, Core, and so on), and their salary. This could make thing VERY interesting because you'll have to manage players as people more than just a bunch of attributes. I'm sure "professionalism" would tie into how they respond to "ego" influenced situations.

You point about not changing tactics/scheme mid-game is spot on. I believe in EHM 2007 tactics are supposed to work better if they've been practiced for a while and used for several games. But I agree with you that you shouldn't be able to just easily switch tactics mid-game. This is getting a bit away from just tactics but I wonder if the Practice setup should be broken down into areas like Schemes, Weight Room, Skating, Power Play, Penalty Kill, and Skills. You would then allot time to the various areas by using percentages. 50% to schemes, 15% to PP, 10% to PK, 5% to Weight Room, 10% to Skating, and 10% to Skills. Then you could set up which schemes/tactics you are practicing. Say there are 6 schemes/tactics types. You could be 80% proficient on Hit and Grind, 30% proficient on Trap, and 20% proficient on Crash the Net. In game, you could switch between these and you only be as effective with that scheme as you are proficient with it. You might start out crashing the net, build up a lead, and then decide you want to play the trap. This way, it might actually make sense.

[dabo]

Tactics will be fairly simple in the first couple of versions. I feel implementing everything you want would take quite some time. But please continue the discussion.

Excellent ideas, Art!

I totally see you logic on these point. I wonder if dabo would consider a "coachability" attribute that rated how well a player can take coaching direction and an "ego" attribute that in conjunction with a coach's reputation would determine if that player would "buy in" to that coach's system. That could be VERY interesting to see in action. Also, that "ego" attribute could also determine how a player reacts to their ice time, what line they play on, their player status (Key, Core, and so on), and their salary. This could make thing VERY interesting because you'll have to manage players as people more than just a bunch of attributes. I'm sure "professionalism" would tie into how they respond to "ego" influenced situations.

I am open to add more hidden attributes if you think they are needed. Visible attributes however are pretty much final otherwise I will have to keep changing the GUI all the time; I can make exceptions for crucial attributes of course. Since coachability would be a hidden attribute I would be ok adding it. Do we really need both a professionalism- AND an ego attribute?

[ArtVandelay]

Tactics will be fairly simple in the first couple of versions. I feel implementing everything you want would take quite some time. But please continue the discussion.

By all means, keep it simple. Like I said, I prefer the free ehm tactics over the other versions.

As for ego, I didn't mean to make it an attribute. It may well be derived from other existing attributes. I just used it to male the point about how tactics are really implemented.

[laskey 16]

There needs to be more flexibility, especially for powerplay situations. As people have already mentioned you should be able to put people in front of the net, and the usual W-C-W D-D formation should be changeable. Systems like this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_system - should be available, although it should have advantages and disadvantages (personally I think from experience that's a pretty dumb tactic but apparently it's big in Sweden)... maybe you could even drag and drop players around to create custom positioning, if that'd work... so say in the final 30 seconds on the PP you could throw everyone forward.

Edit - of course I'm being an optimist here and thinking about my perfect management game, not necessarily what I should expect in the early days of this project. If simplicity is needed at first then that's fine.

[Alessandro]

1. Cover #22 and don't let him get too far from you.
2. I want you to crash the next and block the goalie's view at every opportunity.
3. Get the puck back to MacInnis/Iafrate (or any other Al) and let him just fire away at every opportunity.
4. Hit them and then hit them some more!
5. Clog up the neutral zone - I want all the forwards to hang back.
6. Hey Adam, shoot more! Stop forcing passes!

But you can set up all these things in the EHM tactics
1. You can set a specific player to follow for any player.
2. That's perhaps the only thing that might be added
3. Set all players of the unit to shoot rarely and Iafrate on "shoot on sight"
4. Raise aggressivity and hits bar
5. Change your defensive settings
6. Set him to normal/barrage shooting

[bruins72]

Tactics will be fairly simple in the first couple of versions. I feel implementing everything you want would take quite some time. But please continue the discussion.

I totally understand keeping things simple to start. I almost wonder if Art's ideas about tactical scheme being used (and having to be learned in practice) might be more simple than the current setup in EHM.

Excellent ideas, Art!

I totally see you logic on these point. I wonder if dabo would consider a "coachability" attribute that rated how well a player can take coaching direction and an "ego" attribute that in conjunction with a coach's reputation would determine if that player would "buy in" to that coach's system. That could be VERY interesting to see in action. Also, that "ego" attribute could also determine how a player reacts to their ice time, what line they play on, their player status (Key, Core, and so on), and their salary. This could make thing VERY interesting because you'll have to manage players as people more than just a bunch of attributes. I'm sure "professionalism" would tie into how they respond to "ego" influenced situations.

I am open to add more hidden attributes if you think they are needed. Visible attributes however are pretty much final otherwise I will have to keep changing the GUI all the time; I can make exceptions for crucial attributes of course. Since coachability would be a hidden attribute I would be ok adding it. Do we really need both a professionalism- AND an ego attribute?

Good point about the GUI. You've got your layout decided and you don't need to re-work that constantly. These attributes would definitely be hidden ones. I'm not sure if we need both ego and professionalism but I think ego would determine how easily these things affect the player's morale and professionalism determines how they react to that. For example, Tim Thomas was the Bruins #1 goalie. Tuuka Rask took his #1 position over the course of last season. Thomas' ego rating might be a 14, so he's pretty upset about losing the starter's job. But Thomas has a 16 in professionalism, so he doesn't demand a trade and he doesn't cause problems in the locker room. Another player with a high ego and a lower professionalism might have demanded a trade and started talking to the press or making waves on the team.

[dabo]

I like that.

[Lith]

I couldn't find a topic to fit it in, since it has more to do with roster management than tactics, but here seems the best one.

How about just having a checkbox, or a drop down one to rotate your goalies or set a ratio. 1:1, G1 and G2 alternate game for game. 2:1, G1 get 2 in a row 1 night off. 3:2, etc, you get it. So you don't have to micro manage the roster every game.

[dabo]

I guess that could be done.

[bruins72]

That's an awesome idea, Lith! I'd love to have my goalies in a rotation. Maybe an option to allow or disallow a goalie from playing back to back games too? This would be really helpful when I'm running my AHL affiliate (in addition to the main NHL club) and don't want to spend too much time messing with that team.

[JMFJ]

Not sure wether it's tactics or simply coaching... But playing EHM due to my tacticts it seems my fouth line often ends up playing like 30 seconds or not at all. I think it'd be cool if I could just press a button to put a specific line on the ice. On EHM you basicly have to go into tactics > unit tactics > choose the line > change shift length. It'd be so much easier to have some kind of buttons that's easy to access that says 1st Line, 2nd Line, 3rd Line, 4th Line and 1st Pair, 2nd Pair, 3rd Pair. These could also be highlighted during the game to see what line is playing. I don't know about others but I'm somewhat a statistics freak and statisticly it looks weird to have players like Niklas Hagman, Joel Lundqvist and Matt Cooke logging 1:29, 4:07 and 2:46 and they're all playing PK

[Manimal]

I would like, when you pull your goalie, the PP-formation comes on. I hate when the coach puts out the fourth-line with just a minute left

[ArtVandelay]

I would like, when you pull your goalie, the PP-formation comes on. I hate when the coach puts out the fourth-line with just a minute left

In EHM, when I'm down by 1 or 2 with about 5 minutes left, I usually change to using just 2 forward lines and 2 defense pairings and load those lines up with my best players. Then, when I pull the goalie, the rotation will only include my top players.

[Manimal]

I would like, when you pull your goalie, the PP-formation comes on. I hate when the coach puts out the fourth-line with just a minute left

In EHM, when I'm down by 1 or 2 with about 5 minutes left, I usually change to using just 2 forward lines and 2 defense pairings and load those lines up with my best players. Then, when I pull the goalie, the rotation will only include my top players.

Good point! Why didn't I think of that?

[Peltsi21]

I know this topic has been quiet for some time and also I understand that the games first released versions are going to be simple and made sure that they are stable to play. But I thought some things over about the tactics when I was playing EHM 2007 and was thinking about these things:

1. When you enter your practice screen there is player development, by this I mean how your players attributes have developed over time. Also there would be these sliders or buttons like in EHM where you can set the percentages of practice areas ( General, PP, SH). But should there be also a place where you can see how well your players execute they play book you have designed to your team. Some kind of percentages like your first line executes breakouts at 75% efficiency and 2 line at 68% efficiency this thing could also show you things like how comfortable are players when executing your playing style. And also same for the neutral zone play and also the final third. And this also could be added to those areas of practice. like you would do 30 % personal hockey skills and 10% PP and 10% SH and 20% of playbook practice and 30% of weigths and conditioning in the off season and during the exhibition matches. And when the regular season starts you would obviously make the percentages different and personalised how you want your team to practice.

2. I would like to see that you are able to design your playbook completely, meaning that you can set your breakouts working like you want them and then also neutral zone and the attacking zone tactics. This would really bring in the differences between managers and how well they design and organize the play. Also this would have to include a creative freedom of players conserning the playbook. I know that all players despite having your teams playbook won't be playing like you have told them to do and that's only natural. Like someone earlier said older and experienced guys won't be changing their basic way of playing hockey anytime and also younger guys they have the basic way they play I understand it but this would be in my opinion a great addition to the game and would make it a bit more difficult to get a perfectly working tactic that guarantees title win every year.

3. Designing your line up and by this I mean player chemistries for example players who dislike each other end up in the same team and can't figure out a way to solve their personal problems and if a manager ignores that and puts them in the same line it could cause some issues on that line and their practice of playbook and stuff like that.

These were the things i could come up right now and I know game is going to be released simple first and then additions will be made after that. By the way dabo great work on this project and I absolutely love this project and I'm having my fingers crossed that this is going to be a great game for all us hockey fans.