HD Poll - Playing Time by Fatigue or Target Minute Topic

I've been coaching on HD for awhile now and I have always used fatigue for setting up playing time.  I've always been curious about using Target Minutes, but as they say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" so I never made the switch.

I am curious what other coaches prefer to use, Fatigue or Target Minutes, and hopefully provide an explanation on why they choose to set up the playing time/substitution that way.

Anybody want to weigh in?



4/2/2013 12:47 PM
I think the resounding response will be fatigue.  Don't understand why someone would want to use minutes instead, unless they are a really young team that had some promised starts/minutes.
4/2/2013 12:53 PM
I tend to go back and forth between minutes and fatigue, depending on the team makeup, the time in the season, the opponent, and a million other factors.

Most of the time, however, unless I have a team stacked with upperclassmen, I tend to use target minutes. I'm not typing the reasons why again, but I'll refer you to a thread from a while back (most of it still holds true in D2).

Target Minutes: An Argument for trying them.

4/2/2013 1:11 PM
I started using target minutes, then for the sake of "learning the game" used fatigue when I picked up my second club. I've gone with fatigue ever since.

My biggest reasons for preferring fatigue would be as follows:

1. Player performance in games is based on fatigue levels...so setting your playing time by fatigue rather than minutes is the most efficient means by which a coach can avoid having players on the floor who are performing less than 100 percent because they are getting tired/tired/very tired. Sure, you can control fatigue through minutes as well, but you have to do the math with your players, their stamina ratings, the tempo you plan to play at, etc. Why do all that work when you can simply sub out for fatigue directly? Simple is better.

2. Target minutes opens the door to a unique problem that doesn't exist under fatigue. Say you have a starter who picks up two quick fouls and has to sit for the bulk of the first half. Under fatigue, in the second half that player will continue to sub in and out as normal. Under target minutes, in that same situation, the AI will continue playing the player in an attempt to reach the target range set -- this might mean the player plays tired and very tired for extended stretches without subbing out, suffering performance penalties as a result. This gets really annoying from a coaching standpoint.

3. Substitution patterns...under target minutes, you get a lot more of what I call "hockey-style" substitution patterns where groups of players come in and out of the game at similar times. Yes, this happens under fatigue as well due to similar stamina ratings, but it diversifies a lot more under fatigue than under target minutes it seems. Obviously, this is advantageous as it avoids your entire second string from rotating into the game all at once as often.

Target minutes were great when getting started in the game for ensuring that I met minutes promises to kids, but once you get accustomed to the game and understand the relationship between fatigue and playing time/sub patterns you can use fatigue without concern and still meet those minutes promises without worry.
4/2/2013 1:15 PM (edited)
p town - often the best strategy in the game is developed by bucking convention.  sometimes, a mistake in the game program will even change something that is considered a forum fact, and many times, forum facts are wrong.

I would consider the use of fatigue over target to be a forum fact.  Yet, I would highly recommend using FATIGUE, unless some pretty convincing evidence comes about saying otherwise.

I'd say about a year ago, I set all ten of my teams to target for about a month.  The results were somewhat inconclusive, my teams still won about the same number.  The biggest issue I saw, was when someone played out his minutes early, he did not come back in, which sometimes caused a sub to get very 'RED' or tired.  Also, target handles foul trouble poorly, again, subs getting very red.  Another issue, is target does not handle 3rd string players well, usually playing out the second string's minutes prior to letting the third string guy play at all, which might mean the only time 3rd string guys play, is at the end of very competitive games.

Some or all of this may have changed since I last tried it out.  Maybe it works great.  I will say without a big sample size, and without knowing what you're looking for, it will be hard to tell a big difference.

Hope that helps.

4/2/2013 1:34 PM (edited)
I've always used fatigue.  I feel like fatigue makes a lot more sense for a pressing team, because depending on the circumstances different players are going to get tired faster (or slower) in certain situations (depending on the tempo of the game, the talent level of the opponents, etc.) something that I can't predict as accurately with target minutes.

That and I can still manipulate things in a way to have my star player playing 30+ minutes a game if I want to and I still get most of my players the amount of playing time I want them to.  (Though I usually run a rotation that has at least 10 men getting 10+ mins a game)

4/2/2013 1:30 PM
I'm pretty new but I use target minutes. When I first started my thought process was what if I have a great shooter who lacks in other categories that I don't want to start but want to come into the game to provide some quick offense for maybe 10-15 mins a game. But what if my starter has a ton of stamina. Then my shooter would never get into the game and his ability would be wasted. So to me target minutes seemed like a better way to give out playing time.
4/2/2013 5:33 PM
All experiences with target minutes have been poor. Results wise they have no purpose. Good only for limiting minutes of non-durable players in exhibitions or clear blow-out games ... IMO.
4/2/2013 10:29 PM
HD Poll - Playing Time by Fatigue or Target Minute Topic

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