I'm trying to decide if it would be better to simply set all of my distributions to zero.

Basically, I'm running a Flex/FCP, and am looking to build a system similar to Marquette or Nova in recent years (in real life).  3 guards, speed, passing, floor spacing, etc.   Almost all of my players have good PER or LP numbers, and I've been running an uptempo pace lately as many of the IQ's are "A" or "B".  My effenciency hasn't been terrible but I'm wondering if it would improve if I took away my current distribution settings (which are fairly even now 15%, 15%, 15%, 10%, 10%, or something like that).

My main line of thinking is that a distribution of zero would allow players to feel more free to take open shots instead of passing to fit the distribution averages.  I really want a flowing offense where any player can light it up on a given night.  I'm just not completely sure of how the engine works, though.  I might have things wrong, but just thought I'd ask some opinions.

I only have one team so feel free to check them out if it will help with your response.

Thanks in advance.

I don't know that I'd potentially want Schwieson, Uriarte, Rendon and Smith shooting as much as Randall, Losada, etc...

If you want a free flowing kind of offense, you might want to look at setting up a two-tiered system.  Your big scorers could be 10%, the guys you don't want shooting (as much, at least) at 2%.  Just a thought.  I don't remember seeing a whole lot of success with people setting their distro to 0 and letting the sim decide who shoots.  It sounds logical on paper, but you're really taking away a strategic option for setting up your team.  It's kind of like always running a 0 positioning and letting the sim change it at the half.

Thanks for the response.  I guess I hadn't thought about it that way.  I just figured the 0 setting would mean players would take good shots if available instead of forcing them to meet the distribution demands.

I have done that before, but only briefly.  (I was definitely running flex at the time; not sure of the D but it was probably FCP or HCP/zone).

It was maybe a couple of years ago  and I had just read a forum thread on the subject of zero-ing distro.  At least a couple of very experienced coaches talked it up.  At that time I had a middling roster and just could not decide who my top two to four scoring options were, so I started with zero across the board.  Some guys performed abysmally, so I took away their distro one by one.  What I mean is I would leave them at zero and give distro to everyone else.  So I started with eleven guys at zero; then it was ten guys at "1" and one at zero; then nine guys at "1" etc. until I got down to four or five.

I learned a lot from that b/c the guys who did best were not necessarily the ones I expected  (esp. useful for D2 or D3).  So I used what I thought I had learned and stuck with using 1, 2, or 3  instead of percentages for distro, which I still do now.  This also had the benefit of no longer driving myself crazy tweaking distros in the 10-20 % range.  I seriously used to sit here gripping about the difference between 10-12-15 etc.  Drove me nuts.

Posted by mlitney on 8/15/2012 3:26:00 PM (view original):
Thanks for the response.  I guess I hadn't thought about it that way.  I just figured the 0 setting would mean players would take good shots if available instead of forcing them to meet the distribution demands.

I'm not entirely sure about this, but I would still assume there are going to be distribution demands.  With a 0 setting across the board, if you have a 10 man rotation, that's probably the same as setting all ten guys to 10%.  So if player A has five plays run for him and player B has only had 2 plays, there is still going to be that increased demand for player B to get some touches.

Thanks for the response piper.  That actually sounds like a good idea that I'll try out.

I'm not quite sure how the distro works either.  I always figured it weighed each percentages for each play separately.  For example, if 2 players are set to 50% and player A gets a touch, then there is still a 50% chance for either player on the next play and the play after that.  Just over the course of a season, it averages to about 50% for each guy.

it uses the ratio of all the players on the court at that time (not everyone overall) in some fashion.

All 0s doesn't make them all even, it makes whoever the engine think is the best shooter take the most shots.  It only really makes sense if you don't have a better understanding of who your best scorers are than the engine does, though.

@ point_piper - I completely disagree with your philosophy of distro assignment (no offense).  A number of vets do a similar thing to what you do now - IE, use small numbers, or at least only a few set values that you're going to give to everybody.  That works just fine when your team is significantly better than the team you're playing against, but it's giving away a huge strategic advantage when playing teams of similar talent level.  The reality is that there IS a difference between 10, 12, and 15, and it's not really that insignificant.  The closer you go to assigning 100% of your total distro the more precise control you have over the shot ratios, and the better job you are at least theoretically able to do of maximizing your team's overall offensive efficiency.  There are MANY cases in which a 0,1,2,3 system wouldn't do a good job at all of encapsulating the relative ratios of shots I want my players taking.  Typically my two best scorers may have distros of something like 18 and 30 or 20 and 24.  You can't really capture those ratios ideally with 0-3 values, and you can't even get close when you then consider my lower-distro guys are typically in the vicinity of 1-5.  I want to have those small numbers to have control over who's doing most of the shooting when my backups are on the court, but still make sure those guys don't get many looks when they're on the floor with a couple of starters.  I just don't see how you can possibly get that same kind of control over shooting patterns based on small numbers.  There are few enough things that we can control in-game that I just can't conceive of effectively giving up one of them.

there was a claim at one point that the HD code some how got out (boy do i wish i played then), and all 0s was equivalent to setting everyone to 2. i am not sure if that might be true or not. when you set everyone to 0, it sure doesn't seem everyone is even. however, when you set 3 guys to 10, they sure don't take the same # of shots, either. the game naturally - even with the distro you set - compensates for game time situations. that is what makes distro setting so strange, and IMO, by far the hardest thing to get comfortable with. for example, you have a guy set one game to an 8, he faces a weak defender, and the engine decides he is going to take more shots. next game, he faces a strong defender, and takes less shots. im not sure to what extent the engine is messing around with who shoots. it would be interesting to spend half a season with all 0s and half with all 2s, and see if they really are the same.

my experience with 0 distro is that it is wildly ineffective in 95% of the cases i tried. however, i almost always have strong scorers, and guys who are very weak scorers, but very strong elsewhere. in that case, setting to all 0s or all 2s is going to burn you. the one season i had decent success, it was with one of the better teams ive had, one of the handful i felt hit that magic 50% to win a title mark. i couldn't get their distro right all season, they kept winning games but never by enough. it was one of the deepest teams i had like that, and i had a guy at sf with killer lp/per, which i never had before either. there were generally strong offensive players everywhere, but i felt some were stronger than others.

over the course of the season i got so frustrated, also because i could not pin down if my team played better with normal or uptempo (which had never been a question before, it was always normal). i finally got to switching between normal/set distro and uptempo/0s, going into the NT, i hadn't a clue which to play. i think i played both for each of the first 2 games, in a last ditched effort to decide what to do for the big games in the final weekend. in the end, i played the uptempo/0s and my team crushed the other teams, by like 26 and 40 points. my best guess is that i was over thinking things, it was either my 1st or 2nd really good team (50% or higher). the way the guys played, being so balanced offensively, its possible setting everyone to the same would have been best. or whatever the engine did with 0s, it just felt a little better. i mean, i know i said i kept switching back and forth, but partly because the 0s kept looking a little better, and i couldnt believe i couldnt do better myself. but i finally relented...

anyway, every other time i played all 0s, it was so horrible, at least a 5 point per game hit. so im not sure if it was that i had a team that was really balanced, and that made all 0s ok, or if i just did that poorly of setting distro, or what. i probably tried it for at least a stretch of 5 games or so, for a good 10 seasons, but then i stopped because i kind of stopped tinkering to that level. i never did a 0s vs 2s experiment.

Distribution is the aspect that gives the user the most control over what actually happens in the game. It's surprising to me how many coaches struggle to grasp it.

1. Understand what distro means. When 5 players are on their floor, their distros are added together and then a % is determined ( individual player distro divided by total distro on the floor). This is roughly the percent chance of each player taking a shot within the flow of the offense with those 5 players on the floor.

2. Know your depth chart and your rotations. Specifically who should be on the floor with whom. This is where you can maximize shots for players who are bench scorers. 10-15 minutes where their other deficiencies aren't overly exposed. You need to set up your rotation so this bench scorer is not in ( for the most part) with your other leading distro players.

3. Balance or overload? There are a million ways to look at this one. Most coaches want their best players taking the highest % of shots. Simple enough. Great in theory, but then your team becomes predictable and much easier to gameplan for. They can throw their defensive stopper with a low distro on your stud and your offense suffers as well as your NT hopes. Too balanced and your frosh with high potentials but low IQ ends up taking too many shots.

4. Know your personnell. You might love shooting 3s, but not have the talent on the perimeter to do so successfully. Win 10-12 games, or adjust and put yourself in a position for postseason play. Let the ratings dictate your strategy, not your fondness of a certain style

5. Set target % and constantly adjust distro until you meet that goal. Make sure your target % is realistic. You might want your big to make 45% of his shots (most likely all 2s). When he is above that %, you increase distro. More shots to take advantage of his high %, but realize that unless he is a stud his shooting % will most likely come back to life. Same approach applies to guards, just set realistic % for the talent you have.

This might be too simplified, but I hope it helps.

Posted by dahsdebater on 8/15/2012 5:50:00 PM (view original):
All 0s doesn't make them all even, it makes whoever the engine think is the best shooter take the most shots.  It only really makes sense if you don't have a better understanding of who your best scorers are than the engine does, though.

@ point_piper - I completely disagree with your philosophy of distro assignment (no offense).  A number of vets do a similar thing to what you do now - IE, use small numbers, or at least only a few set values that you're going to give to everybody.  That works just fine when your team is significantly better than the team you're playing against, but it's giving away a huge strategic advantage when playing teams of similar talent level.  The reality is that there IS a difference between 10, 12, and 15, and it's not really that insignificant.  The closer you go to assigning 100% of your total distro the more precise control you have over the shot ratios, and the better job you are at least theoretically able to do of maximizing your team's overall offensive efficiency.  There are MANY cases in which a 0,1,2,3 system wouldn't do a good job at all of encapsulating the relative ratios of shots I want my players taking.  Typically my two best scorers may have distros of something like 18 and 30 or 20 and 24.  You can't really capture those ratios ideally with 0-3 values, and you can't even get close when you then consider my lower-distro guys are typically in the vicinity of 1-5.  I want to have those small numbers to have control over who's doing most of the shooting when my backups are on the court, but still make sure those guys don't get many looks when they're on the floor with a couple of starters.  I just don't see how you can possibly get that same kind of control over shooting patterns based on small numbers.  There are few enough things that we can control in-game that I just can't conceive of effectively giving up one of them.

i pretty much agree with the whole, 1, 2, 3 doesn't give you the control part. i usually have my top couple scorers in the 10-18 range, i don't like to get that close to 100 because you risk going over 100, which creates a big mess, rebalancing everyone. but other than that, i totally agree. i think the engine's capacity to tweak things makes those 1, 2, 3 type setups better, but still, i have to believe its a disadvantage. although, in his FAQ, lostmyth basically posted he uses 1s and 2s for almost everyone, and then might have 1 guy at 4 and 1 guy at 8 or something. and apparently, it worked for him!

FWIW - My 1 title (on LL316) was with an all zeros setting.  My thinking was actually the same as yours.  Also flex/fcp.  I was mirroring the old Nolan Arkansas teams.  And it worked. 

lostmyth probably fits in that category of having a good enough team that he can afford to give away some advantages and still be heavily favored.

Ack, I wrote a whole long answer, almost done, then managed to delete it while answering the office phone.  If I was the boss I would reduce point_piper's distro right about now.

More briefly this time, I can boil my preference for the 1-2-3 (and very rarely 4) approach down to two things from coach_billyg's posts.  One, this:

when you set 3 guys to 10, they sure don't take the same # of shots, either. the game naturally - even with the distro you set - compensates for game time situations. that is what makes distro setting so strange, and IMO, by far the hardest thing to get comfortable with. for example, you have a guy set one game to an 8, he faces a weak defender, and the engine decides he is going to take more shots. next game, he faces a strong defender, and takes less shots. im not sure to what extent the engine is messing around with who shoots.

And two, this:

i think the engine's capacity to tweak things makes those 1, 2, 3 type setups better.


-----

I do realize he was not endorsing that approach, but those things are the reason I do it.  As a result of how the sim engine compensates for in-game situations, not only do three guys set on the same number on the floor at the same time take different numbers of shots, but guys on the floor together with different percentages do not reliably follow those percentages either.  How many times have we all been frustrated when the guy with 15 distro hoists up twice as many shots as his backcourt partner set on 20?

IMHO if you've got two guys, one at 20 and another at 25, there is no appreciable effect of that difference.  I used to spend a lot of time trying to control my offense that way and it just didn't work.  From unscientific but dogged trial and error, I have come to believe that no ratio between two players that is smaller than 4:3 makes any difference that can be observed or proven (that is why I will very occasionally have one guy on 4 if another is on 3).  Any effort I make to tweak things beyond that is essentially time wasted because "the engine's capacity to tweak things" is stronger than mine.

Other benefits:

It's a little easier.  I used to reduce the percentages to ratios in my head before anyway, but now I don't have to;

it's easier and more impactful to make adjustments (moving a guy from 20-25 on a hundred-point scale made no difference that I could measure, but moving him from 1 to 2 on a five-to-eight point scale sure does);

And it just takes less damn time.  I could barely begin to explain how much more complicated this game is than the first whatifsports game I tried (sim league baseball, December '01 I believe).  HD itself has become more complicated over the years too, with potential, fatigue vs. target minute subs, etc.  I enjoy the greater complexity, but life comes to seem too short to spend on distinctions without differences.

Lastly, I respect all the different opinions and neither take nor intend any comments personally.  In both sim league baseball and HD over the years, I have noted how oftentimes the best managers or coaches will swear by differing approaches; would be a lot less interesting if not.

Have I really been playing these games for almost eleven years now?  Damn again.