When do you use one over the other?

I've only used fatigue, I find it easier if you have a few solid bench guys you want in just set the starter to 'Fairly Fresh' and the other way if you want to keep a starter in longer set to 'Getting Tired'

I would never use target minutes in any circumstances. Fatigue is definitely the best way to go. They do a pretty good job of keeping your best players on the floor and not leaving bench players out for too long with fatigue. If you want someone to stay on the floor longer, set their fatigue setting to "Getting tired" in the depth chart page. Be careful not to give too many players that setting, unless you whiffed on recruiting and only have 7-8 guys (like Syracuse in Phelan :))

Back in the day- there was only target minutes.  The problem was it didn't adjust well to foul trouble, pace, etc, and you'd have some players getting red in one game, and fresh in the other, with the same settings.

Fatigue was added, and they basically just left in target minutes.  Use them at your own risk.

Posted by asher413 on 2/11/2011 5:26:00 PM (view original):
Back in the day- there was only target minutes.  The problem was it didn't adjust well to foul trouble, pace, etc, and you'd have some players getting red in one game, and fresh in the other, with the same settings.

Fatigue was added, and they basically just left in target minutes.  Use them at your own risk.

Not true

Back in the day when there was only target minutes it worked great.  Players would play the amount of minutes you wanted unless they got into foul trouble.   You only got in troule if you set the minutes to high for their stamina.

Then .......
they introduced Fatigue substitution and changed the logic for target minutes and COMPLETELY f-cked it up.  Now players easily run into fatigue situations based on fouls and other in game issues and the new engine doesnt adequately account for that.

The only time I've used target minutes was in my first season, when I tried to fulfill a recruiting promise.

I won't do it again.  Basically you're telling the player "I don't care how tired you are, stay in the game".

With some practice and trial, you can almost as easily manage minutes through the fatigue settings.

Posted by ethan66 on 2/11/2011 6:30:00 PM (view original):
The only time I've used target minutes was in my first season, when I tried to fulfill a recruiting promise.

I won't do it again.  Basically you're telling the player "I don't care how tired you are, stay in the game".

With some practice and trial, you can almost as easily manage minutes through the fatigue settings.

You can avoid this problem largely by under-allocating your minutes so that they add up to fewer than 200 for the team. The engine distributes the "extra" minutes as needed (starters in close game situations, bench players in blowouts) and you dodge the problem of playing into extreme fatigue because the player has a low target number of minimum minutes, so they'll still sub in/out when they start to tire. 

If a kid picks up three fouls in two minutes and he's set for 19-23, then you might still have an issue, but outside of those extreme cases there's an easy way to dodge the problem using minutes.