Well, then ... 'we' had a good sleep tonight and a new idea popped in our mind.
So we thought to post it here as an additional proposal to add to the current implementation, because to me 4-5 seasons is really a long time and then the whole meaning of skill drops is a little bit overkill, since we think that most managers will swap coaches sooner or later in that rather long period if they want another training program. With this proposal, we can even overcome the need to swap trainers at all, if you don't want too.
What if skills could drop each season (starting after 2 seasons), but you have the ability to
'train the trainer'. In-game explanation: he could be sent to the CSCS (the famous Cycling SuperCoaches School) to follow some classes, he could buy books (Popomundo style
to study new tactics, he could follow an international conference about new sprint techniques with respected colleagues from all over the world, and so on ...
In practice this would mean that you can educate your coach in a skill of your choice, as long as it is not exceeding 20 on that skill (off course). This gives a lot of possibilities: when a skill drops, this is not final, but can be brought back up again by training him. And when you don't need training because your initial skills are still 20 (or again 20) or you want to abandon a dropped skill (f.i. if you had fitness 20 and will not use that in future anymore), you can even send that coach to train a new skill in the weeks that he is 'free'.
With a user interface that lets you decide on a weekly basis in what skill you want to train your coach 1 skill level, this can give you new long term opportunities. Off course, apart from the 7 skills, an 8th option ("train none") should be available.
But let's be clear that in this case, I'd propose to force a skill drop of 10 each 16 weeks (so abandon the 'half' of highest skill, always take 10), since you can gain 16 levels in the same time, which means that after 3 seasons you can make a double coach almost a triple coach. The period of 2 'safe' seasons is also kept, so not changed to 4 or 5. (Still to be decided in our minds: maybe only effecting skills that are above 15, so 'minor' coaches and scouts don't loose skills)
Some
examples to explain you the options and opportunities of this proposed feature:
- In the first 2 (stable) seasons, you could already prepare new skills to make your single skilled 20-0-0-0-0-0-0 flat coach (who will drop on his main and only skill after 32 weeks) a multifunctional coach in advance with for instance: 20-20-0-0-12-0-0 in week 32. After week 32 this will change in a 20-10-0-0-13-0-0 or 10-20-0-0-13-0-0 (we take this one to continue this example). From that moment on you have still a 'full speed' training skill, and you can use the remaining 16 weeks to build up the other skills. You can regain skill in the dropped skill and after 10 weeks have him in full skill again, or you can concentrate on the sprint skill (in this example) first and have a 20 hill 20 sprint from week 8 on (allowing you to switch training program) and then continue on flat to reach 18-20-0-0-20-0-0 at week 48. One of the 20 skills will drop the next week (but you train 1 level in another skill), let's say 19-10-0-0-20-0-0 is the result of week 49. This gives you the possiblitiy to use him as sprint 20 trainer the next week, or as a 19 flat trainer again. And the next week, he is fully operational at 20 again.
- This strategy allows you to slowly switch training skills, put new accents, regain lost skills, expand the number of skills he has (or decrease them), and, if managed well, will never let you down with a coach you cannot use anymore and needs to be replaced. The skill that drops will still be a random factor (and maybe even not affecting only the 20 skills, but let's say that from all skills that are above 15 (IP likes that more) one skill is chosen and dropped by 10.
- Another advantage: if a 'newbee' started with a bad 4-7-2-0-6-0-0 coach because he misinterpreted the training process, then this is not lost money, but a basis to make him a better one each week. After one season he could for instance be trained to 6-20-2-0-6-0-0. The next season he can be a 20-20-2-0-8-0-0, one week later a 10-20-2-0-9-0-0 and so on ... (PS: if under 16 the skills are protected, then this training program goes remarkably faster off course)
- You can turn a monoskill flat coach (because you had no money for a multiskilled one in the beginning of your carreer ) into another monoskill (you want mountain on the long term for instance) by training him to let's say 20-0-15-0-0-0-17 in 32 weeks, but don't go higher than 15 to protect the mountain skill that you badly wants. Either the fitness or the flat skill will loose 10 levels the week after, and you can continue to train on flat (if fitness dropped to 7) and 4 weeks later have a 20-0-20-0-0-0-7 coach. If flat dropped, you have in week 33 a 10-0-16-0-0-0-17 which allows you to train fitness at 37% or mountain at 16 instead of 20. You loose a little bit of training speed then for a few weeks, but again 4 weeks is nothing (and 16, 17, 18 and 19 are still very high training speeds), and he will be a full 10-0-20-0-0-0-17 after that. From week 6 on you can already think about the next skill you want to go for, since 10 weeks later, another skill will drop and it might be your mountain skill. You then have the option to try to protect it with a 20-0-20-0-0-0-17 which has a chance of 1 to 3 that mountain will drop, or prepare a new skill with a 10-10-20-0-0-0-17 with now a chance from 1 to 2 that your mountain skill will drop, but more future options, with hill and flat ready to be trained to 20 in the upcoming seasons.
- You can start this game with a 10-0-0-0-0-0-0 coach to leave you with more money to buy new cyclists, and slowly make the investment to train him to a 20-0-0-0-0-0-0 coach from him, when you have won some races or sold some trained cyclists.
- If you keep a monoskilled coach and don't spend money and effort in his training program, you will (virtually) loose him (drops to 10 in fact, not really loose him). Still, you can decide to fire him and hire a new monoskilled one (for instance in another skill), which will be faster to switch and less complicated, but more expensive.
You can see that I was carried away a little bit by giving some examples, but I just feel there could be a basis among the users for this kind of addition to the, in my opinion, still needed skill drop for coaches and scouts.
Off course there should be a
drawback to this system. I see 2 possibilities, both
financial ones:
-
(optional) Training costs you money for each week that you take. Books, training programs, conferences, flights, are not for free.
- The wage of your coach is always brought in line with his current abilities (and mood off course), so changing each week. Some weeks you overpay him, because you also pay for the at that moment not usable skills-in-preparation, but you avoid the cost involved with hiring a similar coach from day one. And in week 33, 49, ... you will see a remarkable wage drop too. It even allows you (by not training your 20-20-20-20-20-20-20 coach at all) to lower his ridiculously high wage.
The need to add TtT-training costs per week will depend on an thorough investigation first. It is important that hiring a new and skilled coach should be cheaper than hiring a minor one and training him, but training one should be cheaper than firing him and hiring another full skilled one. This has to be balanced yet.
PS: Off course, I see a similar system with your
scout. Though the effect here will be a little different, since you cannot overtrain your scout and have to wait for 'the drop' before you can send him to training. As you can see, this gives a little more variation in the new continuous flow of scouted cyclists.
- If your 20-20-20 drops in current ability, your scouted cyclist will have more chance to end up with low current ability.
- If your 20-20-20 drops in future ability, your scouted cyclist will have also lower future ability (on average off course), but still be very sellable, especially if sold when your scout page again says 20-20-20 after 10 weeks of training.
- If you have the bad luck that the perceptions is dropped, then your 20-20-10 will still deliver high quality (on average) cyclists, but he will not find one each week anymore. Though, while training him, you can easily increase the chance of finding one each week again.
Again here the same story: if you had only money to hire a 5-5-5 after half a season, you can keep him and train his skills accordingly to a full scout after many many weeks, going over week 32 with a 7-20-20 for instance, over a 7-10-20 the week after, to a 13-20-20 and eventually to a 20-20-20 in his 5th season. If you don't have the patience for that (or can't bear a 20-20-10 scout after his drop) and have the money, you are off course still entitled to replace him immediately by a 20-20-20 colleague.
So, what do you guys think about this?