I just played a exhibition game with the settings set for target minutes and if you take a look at the play by play the engine does not sub for players that are tired and very tired.  It seems to me that a computer program would be able to figure out much better substitution patterns to reach all of the targets without reducing the players abilities as a result of playing to long.  I never play target minutes with either of my teams, however this year I am doing it with Hawaii Pacific and the engine seems to do a much better job of substituting in that world than the Francis Marion engine.   Does anybody have any comments or tips on how they determine which way to go.  Does each world have a different engine simming the games?  I thought the target minute option would best allow me to meet my obligations with the guaranteed minutes etc..

I'm probably one of the few that actually uses target minutes, but even I have to concede that using that setting with a FCP team is probably asking for disaster.

If you use target minutes, the engine will try to hit your spread, especially for your starters...if you've got a guy set for 24-28 (which it looks like you had a lot of your starters set to do in the Mars Hill game, which is the one I assume you're referencing above)  and said player picks up three quick fouls -- easy to do in an FCP -- and he plays just 5-6 minutes of the first half, the engine is still going to try and get that player to 24 minutes, in this case by playing them 18-19 minutes of the second half. The same goes for if a player gets injured in the first half "but can return later" -- when he returns, he's going to try and get to his minutes allotment regardless of how tired he is. 

My suggestion if you're using target minutes is to under-allocate (i.e.-keep your team total to UNDER 200 minutes). I try to keep the high end of the spread near 180 minutes and don't set anyone higher than 19-23 unless I have a stamina stud. This allows the engine the excess minutes to "play" with...in close games, they go to your starters, if you have the "give time to backups" box checked, they'll largely go there in games you have comfortably in hand (or that you're getting blown out of the water in, if you have the when losing box checked in your team gameplan as well). At 180, that leaves 20 minutes of "play," which breaks down to 4 min. per starter, so in a close game, they'll play into the 24-27 min. range if needed and if fresh enough. 

That said, even as a target minutes proponent, I don't think I'd use them with a full court press team as I think the dangers just plain outweigh the benefits. 

Speaking of target minutes, since I have a 'user' on the line so to speak. . . how do you translate stamina into a minutes range?  

Having experience with the FCP (and I'll say right now I just returned from a year away so possibly something else has changed) you can use target minutes or fatigue with equal success...when first introduced there were glitches but now I think it is fine.  I generally run fatigue unless I have a promise to fulfill and then sometimes it is easier to use the minutes.

I have seen what you reported in the past.  rednu has a good plausible theory and in some cases I think this explains it.  But I'd also suggest you examine for game stoppages; one thing I have seen is defenses running press fatigue faster (obviously) and if the interruption of play interval is too long then your player can get overfatigued (especially if they are marginal on stamina) before having a chance to sub out.  So it can look like an engine issue but in fact is simply a product of the flow of the game.  I'll leave it to you to look and see if this is possibly the case.

Posted by a_in_the_b on 3/1/2011 7:37:00 AM (view original):
Speaking of target minutes, since I have a 'user' on the line so to speak. . . how do you translate stamina into a minutes range?  

If you're asking here "what minute setting do I use if I want a guy to not play below (fresh/fairly fresh/tiring) level?" I can't offer a clear table. Early on I was tracking players and minutes and fatigue with the hope of making some sort of correlation, but with just one team, I wasn't getting enough data and then the engine change came along and rendered what I had moot anyhow. Since they keep messing with it /tweaking and I feel comfortable with what I've been doing, I haven't bothered to try again.

In general, I can get away with a stamina in the upper 60s and be fresh/fairly fresh at 14-18 min. almost without exception, 19-23 will definitely see the tiring/tired bars on a regular basis. Stamina's in the low/mid 70s seem very susceptible to the quirks of whatever computations go into determining fatigue level and I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a clue on what the pattern might be. I've had 71's go into the 20-21 minute range and never go yellow, I've had a 76 go yellow after 17 minutes since the 2/3 tweaking...go figure. Low 80s/high 70s will play into the upper end of the 19-23 setting before tiring toward the 23 end of the spectrum. Like I said, I don't specifically set for 24-28 often, but I'd be wanting a player to have a stamina of 86+ probably if I were going to do that (and if I had a lot of these high-stamina guys, I'd definitely go fatigue settings as my means to play them big minutes...using the 24-28 minute setting and higher is really asking for a train wreck in my opinion).

These numbers are based on my desire to keep players playing at green/blue (fresh/fairly fresh) as much as possible. If you don't mind a player going into tiring, obviously you can nudge the minutes upward from what I said here. If you play a press or uptempo style, you'll have to nudge the stamina numbers up a few points to get the same minutes performance. When divvying up minutes, my observation has been that the minutes setting seems to favor players at fresh/fairly fresh when determining how far into the four-minute spread it lets a player play (i.e.-19 minutes vs. 23 minutes at 19-23) and also when handing out any "excess" minutes you've left over, so if I have a kid that's consistently playing to the top end of his minutes or over the minutes of his spread, I take that as a subtle hint that I can safely bump him up to the next 4-minute increment if I want/need to.

Generally speaking with a 12-player team (no walkon/redshirt/mopup-only players), I'll set the two guys I want on the floor the most at 19-23 for minutes. My other three starters and my top guard off the bench will go to 14-18 and then the rest of the bench will get 9-13 or 4-8 and that'll give me an upper-end total in the 180-185 minute range. Through the season, as I become more comfortable with my teams and add to starters at the top, I'll try to match it with an reduction of someone on the bottom end to keep the high end minutes around 180.

Don't know if that answers the question you were asking and I definitely make no claims that it's the "best" way. Just one man's observations and method to my madness.

As an example, if this was your starting five's stamina. . what would you set them to?

Posted by a_in_the_b on 3/1/2011 2:57:00 PM (view original):
As an example, if this was your starting five's stamina. . what would you set them to?

 

Name	Class	Pos	Health	GP/GS	MPG	PPG	RPG	APG	ST
Mark McLeish	Sr.	PG	100	1/1	28.0	12.0	0.0	6.0	89
Ray Parke	Sr.	PG	100	1/1	24.0	10.0	2.0	5.0	81
Bruce Hill	Jr.	C	100	1/1	21.0	3.0	7.0	1.0	74
David Field	So.	C	100	1/1	20.0	10.0	6.0	0.0	71
James Shulman	Sr.	SF	100	1/1	18.0	15.0	7.0	1.0	77

MM - 24 - 28

and the rest 19 - 23?

 

For purpose of my answer I'll assume normal tempo, zone/man D and a non-fastbreak offense.

McLeish should be safe to set at 24-28...even if he picks up a first half injury or fouls, his stamina will allow him to "catch up" to the low end of that range in the second half without too severe of a negative effect in all but the most extreme of cases. Parke could go 19-23 or 24-28...I think he can play into the lower reaches of 24-28 without being tiring/tired too much (I'd expect to see him hit at least yellow some, though). Personally, I'd set him at 19-23 and trust some of my leftover minutes to go there in close games, but you could definitely make a case for going 24-28 to see how the engine handles it. With the former, you risk losing a minute or two where the guy is still useful, with the latter  you risk having a tiring/tired player out there for 2-3 minutes if the engine decides to send him to the higher side of 24-28. I've made my motto that, when in doubt, I'll go with the lower range, so for me he'd be 19-23 unless I had some pressing reason (no depth behind him...favorable matchup offensively/defensively) to override the norm.

Shulman and Hill 19-23..might see some yellow at times with Hill if he's in for the 23 end. Field is again a borderline call like Parke, except now you're on the 14-18 vs. 19-23 border. Again, I'd go low with 14-18 and trust the engine to pull him up with my leftover minutes, same caveat as before.