New player with several questions

[Northbound]

Hi, I hope this is the right place to post this. I've read a lot of posts and guides to get me started and I think I've got a good idea of what to do, but I'm having some problems that I couldn't find the answers to. I know they're in a thread somewhere, and I apologize if I'm just blind or dense.

Right now I'm playing as the Florida Panthers in a fantasy draft, at the end of the first season. This was mainly a test to see how my players developed. I have a good mix from good prospects to solid young players to grizzled old veterans. I noticed most players developed well but rarely ever develop in the Mental area.

Question 1.) How do I get my players to develop most of the Mental attributes?

Question 2.) I have turned off Head Coach takes control of practice, and set my own custom practice settings but after a day or two they get changed. Not all but most go back to General. How do I stop that from happening?

Question 3.) I set my Coach and Assistant Coaches to my desired practice settings (for cond, skat, tact, shoot, etc) but occasionally the Coach decides he wants to do everything and the other coaches aren't doing anything. How do I stop that from happening?

Question 4.) If I'm simulating through a season pretty fast and a player gets injured and is put on the Injured Reserve, how do I get the coach to take him off automatically? I noticed if I don't stop to check every two weeks some players will sit out months even though they're healthy.

Question 5.) Form; how does it work exactly and what do the numbers mean and what influences them to change? I'm assuming the higher the number the better.

Question 6.) Prospects. I've drafted some great players over the years and I make sure to scout them with different scouts to try and get the best opinion. When I scout my farm club at the start of a season my head coach will tell me to sign terrible players (with red attributes through out technical) immediately. Should I be doing that? Or fire the coach? I always try and get the best coach available with high JPA and JPP (85+). I've had amazing Scouts with high JPA and JPP tell me that players with horrible attributes could make an immediate impact on my roster. And I already have issues trying to find good players a roster spot in the top 8, let alone top 6.

That's it for now, I apologize for the wall of text. If anyone has answers to any of those questions I'd really appreciate it! I'm loving this game so much, and the community here looks pretty helpful. I think I'll try and participate in the next challenge when it's available.

[Joe]

1.) Mental attributes develop very slowly with experience and you may only see a slight increase over their whole career. Some mental attributes may never change.

2.) I haven't played the new EHM very much but on the old EHM if you send a player to the AHL and then recalled him his practice is reset to general. Not sure if that's what you have going on.

3.) Not sure about this one.

4.) I'm pretty sure you have to do it manually.

5.) Form is on a scale of 1-10 how well a player played in that game. Yes, the higher the better. I'm sure everyone has their own opinions but I've always felt 7 was the benchmark for a player playing well. Of course you have to take into account position, age, stats,and ice time.

6.) Just ignore the coaches. Sometimes they say things that don't make sense. But I also wouldn't fire them. Sometimes if I'm not sure about a player (whether to sign or call up/demote) I will ask for a coach's report and scouting report to help me decide.

[Northbound]

Thanks for the reply Joe!

That's unfortunate about the mental attributes. But definitely sheds some light; I noticed over a span of three years that only two players out of my entire roster had improvements (and only in one category each) there. It's startling as some players have very low values.

Regarding the sending players back to the AHL; I do that occasionally but only due to injury or trade (I let players play if they're not scoring in the hope they develop and improve). I've had the vast majority of my players reset their practice routine after a week or two with no changes to the roster. So I change their settings back and a day or two later only a handful retain the choices I made. It's annoying. I actually fired my coach the first time that happened. Can you discipline your coach like your players?

Funny story there actually. I started a Vancouver team and wanted to skim the fat, so I attempted to trade the Sedins. I had several offers for Daniel, and agreed to a few teams offers. Mainly Daniel <> random 1st rnd draft pick. But he declined the trade due to his NTC. But I kept at it and later he accepted and poof, he's gone. So I tried to deal Henrik, but for the next two weeks he declined every time. So I started disciplining him; at first just a warning. Then I attempted to trade him again. Decline. More discipline, this time with a week fine. And he says he feels like he's being forced to leave the team (you think?).

I felt sort of bad but at the same time, it felt like justice. I finally offloaded him for a 2nd and 4th round pick. Woefully inadequate, for both trades. It was the start of the season too. But I wanted to get rid of them and open up the top 6 and figured they'd retire soon anyway.

[Joe]

I'm pretty sure you can't discipline a coach unless they added it to the new EHM.

As far as disciplining players, you have to be careful forcing a trade like that. Sometimes teammates take exception and will get mad at your for being unfair to other players.

[Northbound]

Unfortunate about the coaches.

I am making sweeping changes, upsetting players and management along the way. I plan on either retiring or getting fired soon. I even named my GM Brian Burke, just to be sure I wouldn't keep playing as this GM. I'm going to bring in a fresh GM once I'm ready. Admittingly this franchise is more to have fun and do silly things, and see how things pan out in the long run.

It's a good way to figure out a lot of the things I don't know. I appreciate the feedback!

[RomaGoth]

Interesting issues you are facing. I have not seen these problems so far, and really not at all in EHM07. For me, the mental attributes always improved for my players, some more than others. I also have never had an issue with practice resetting. You have to make sure to change the setting to "NO" for Head Coach Takes Control of Practice and click OK at the bottom of that little screen.

[Northbound]

Yep, did that. It's all disabled. Practice is still being changed atm (running with latest version on Steam with most up to date TBL rosters).

Joe also seems to have difficulty with players developing mental attributes. I, or we could certainly be doing something incorrectly to get such a result however. I honestly wish I knew what it was. I've had all other attributes improve.

[CJ]

Aggression, Consistency, Dirtiness, Flair, Pass Tendency, Injury Proneness, Adaptability & Determination are the attributes that never change.

[Joe]

Yeah I wasn't saying I was having difficulty just that they don't change much. I read somewhere on here that if you make young players the captain or assistant captain that it seemed to boost their leadership attribute faster. I'm not sure if it's the best idea to appoint young players as captains but it's an interesting concept to try. I suppose if they already have solid leadership attributes it could work out.

[RomaGoth]

Aggression, Consistency, Dirtiness, Flair, Pass Tendency, Injury Proneness, Adaptability & Determination are the attributes that never change.

I have seen this mentioned before and it is actually not entirely true. In EHM 2007 I noticed Robert Lang's determination actually increased from 6 ----> 7/8/9/10. I saw this happen with him several times and with other players as well. I have also seen aggression and consistency increase at times.

Dirtiness, pass tendency, injury proneness, and adaptability are all hidden attributes and unless you look them up in the editor there is no way to know if they go up or down. I suspect they do, however, since all mental and physical attributes seem to by dynamic; just not for every player.

[Asher413]

Are you going on vacation? It sounds like (such as IR, I haven't seen an automatic placement of a player on IR) that you are going on vacation. When that happens, the coach/AI does a lot of things.

[Northbound]

In regards to question 4, Asher, yep. I am going on vacation. My question was in regards to being able to set the coach to take players OFF of the IR himself instead of needing me to stop simming to do it.

It isn't possible apparently, much to my despair.