BuzzerBeater Forums

My team is 38397. I've read all manuals/tutorials I could find. Questions after day 2:

1) General economic feeling. I know in Charazay you're supposed to kick out everybody you own and quickly replace them with some 16yo starlets (because very little skill is needed to win the lowest division), while amazingly good older players also won't mind joining you almost for free, albeit on a ridiculously high salary. How is BB?

2) Do I understand correctly that I'll be training 1-2 talented players all the time and absolutely ignore everybody else? I already have a talented center in 32444986, should I just buy some 18yo PF to pair them up in training, then only keep my 3 best outside players (or maybe even buy 3 cheap vets instead?), and play them all 48 minutes? Would this not murder their game shape? There is a thread for noobs called Game Shape that says 96 minutes per week = constant decrease in game shape, thus suggesting I need a roation of 7-8 methinks. But will they train as effectively in an usual (30-38mpg) rotation? Also, do I even bother selling my players 4-10, or just fire them like I did with the absolute losers?

3) Now I'll assume for a minute the extreme above scenario is wrong, and I should just complete a team of 10 to be semi-entertaining for the fans. Still, struggling to assess players. Do I understand correctly it's salary, salary, and then salary? If I'm wrong, is it their DMI, potential, skills, or market price I should look at the most? Two examples:

- Should I keep 32444979 or 32444978 as my backup center? Both are 21yo, one has a higher DMI (8100 vs. 3900), the other has a higher potential (perennial allstar vs. starter).

- Who's my backup SF in the long run? 32444992, 32444989, 32444988?

4) Arena expansion. Right now I have 4500 bleachers, 450 low tier, 50 courtside, 0 VIP's. Bleachers 60%-100% full, everything else always 100%. I read somewhere 2 VIP's are a good idea. Should I also add 200 low tier and 25 courtside for a total of around $200,000?

5) Staff. Do I ever need a better doctor as long as everybody is healthy? What level of trainer and PR guy do I aim at? Should I already fire the basic guys while I'm searching for replacements?

6) Nationality. Will players/fans be better/happier with local talent, or maybe an exotic import instead, playing for his obscure national team?

7) Salary floor. How high is it going to be?

8) Promotion. There are 16 3rd division leagues in my country of residence. Will only the 16 champions, and all 16 champions, be promoted?

9) Player role. Is it going to be set automatically after my rotation plays their first game? How does it matter?

10) Defensive tactics. Where do I look up how my opponent plays?

11) What if I can't/won't field 5 healthy players, or I field 5 and 1 fouls out?

12) Player market = transfer list = there are no unemployed players in BB?

13)I've been advised to ignore scouting at this stage. Correct?

14) How can I decide who is training & how much? I chose a training for centers. There are 3 centers and 2 PF's on the roster. In my team overview if shows my starting center is training 27 minutes, and my backup PF - 21. Wtf?

15) Is there a chance to have a second team in another country at some point, as long as their paths never meet? I'm an expat, so I'd love to play in my home country in the future too!

16) Very general: what else do you guys play? I'm an NBA addict living on the wrong side of the pond, plus been addicted to CM=>FM for 2 decades now, later to PCM in cycling too. Can't believe I never found this gem before! So, and 2k Association Mode fans around? WBM maybe? What else is out there? I'm very curious, being a non-profit game designer myself: thus far I have created basketball-simulating board game (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/115321/hoops-on-fire) and an übergeeky CBA-simulating NBA fantasy league (http://www.profsl.com/smf/index.php?board=1034)

Last edited by Garfield at 11/22/2013 3:55:44 PM

Thanks for your feedback!

The 16 champions of the playoffs will promote along with some runner up teams to replace abandoned "bot" teams. The 8th place teams will be demoted to a lower division along with the 6th and 7th place teams who lose their regulation series. You will likely be in a regulation series so you need to make a decision if you want to try to stay in division 3 or move down to 4.

Actually I think I'd like to fight to stay in 3rd. I'll still play against the three weakest teams, so could even finish 5th and avoid the additional 6-7 playoff. So apart from buying a second and third potential trainee at some point, maybe it makes sense to quickly bring a couple of vets to salvage the season? It shouldn't be too expensive, looking at a guy like this: http://www.buzzerbeater.com/manage/transferlist.aspx

(Or am I missing something?)

Last edited by Garfield at 11/21/2013 4:11:10 PM

Just read some people draft really short centers to become their franchise PG's after a lot of training. Which begs a question:

17) Is position:
a) a completely irrelevant label given at birth?
a) a completely irrelevant label that adapts over time?
a) a somewhat important limitation given at birth?
a) a somewhat important limitation that adapts over time?

1) The economy has changed a lot in recent seasons, but yes, it's a similar model to follow. Old players can hold tremendous value. I'd also imagine now more than ever is ideal for beginners to replace their generated teams ASAP. But for you in particular, someone who has no chance at promotion this season, there shouldn't be much urgency. You can spend most money on arena expansion.

Also, do not ever fire Antuma, he can be a key piece for you to train.

2) You should probably keep 9-12 players. You can train up to three players 1-position training or six players 2-position training. There is also team training (all players) and it consists of stamina, free-throws, and game shape. Team training is not necessarily recommended for new teams, especially in 3 game weeks.

Training takes place on Friday. Players get full training if they receive a full 48 (seen as 48+) minutes at the position(s) you trained that week. Additionally, aiming for ~48-70 total minutes on players is best for their game shape.

3) Again, 9-12 players is probably ideal. In non-trainee role players, their skills are simply most important. Salary is generally an indication of skill, though it can be deceiving. Multi-skilled players tend to be better than their similarly salaried mono-skilled counterparts, but they take longer to train and thus cost more to purchase.

Again, I'd look to replace players as you see fit. Antuma, Koolhaas, and Gerrits may potentially be valuable enough for you to keep.

4) I was always told bleachers were most efficient to build. But I don't know. Just expand, expand, expand and you'll be happy regardless.

5) Cheap competent (3) doctor and PR manager, competent or advanced (4) trainer might work.

6) They're happier with local talent, especially home-grown or national team players. I wouldn't go out of my way for foreign national team players.

7) Salary floor should be listed at the very bottom of your economy page. It should be a comparable figure next season.

8) There will be 16 league championships. Additionally,the teams with the best record and then point differential who failed to win the league championship may also promote on bot promotion. Bot promotion takes place if teams in a higher league do not have human owners.

9) Yes. Player-role has no effect on things, or may have a minor effect on merchandise?

10) You can look up individual games on opposition schedule pages. Additionally, sites like http://www.buzzer-manager.com/ list that information.

11) You must dress at least 3 players to avoid walkovers (automatic losses). "lucky fans" will fill in for your team if it dresses less than 5 players, and they're about as bad as you might expect.

12) Yep. Free agents or fired players that meet certain skill requirements will be listed on the same transfer list as players that are for sale.

13) I may be in the minority, but I'd advocate for scouting. At this stage in the season it's unlikely you'll be able to scout and draft a stud, but there's probably a fair chance you'll at least break even in value with your drafted players.

14) Explained above. Players receive training if they played at the position you're training, regardless of their listed position. For example, you can train at point guard at centre if he receives his minutes at centre. You decide what to train in the training page.

15) No. This will likely never happen.

16) I'm down to only BB on the computer. I do play 2K on the PS4 too.

Position can be important. Each position has a different salary formula and position is determined by whichever of these salaries is the highest. 98 times out of 100, a draftee centre will have extremely crappy secondary/guard skills (and may not even have great primary/centre skills). There is zero predictive power in knowing skills of scouted players so drafting short centres with the intention of turning them into guards is probably not a viable strategy. Buying short centres with the requisite skills (namely high IS, ID, REB, OD, PAS, etc) and turning them into guards, however, can be an effective strategy.




Last edited by Stajan at 11/21/2013 5:57:55 PM

Welcome. Since you mentioned Charazay, I'd like to point out that I have read that game's user manual before when deciding whether or not to sign up for that game, and noticed two big things that I believe give BB the edge; season length (17 weeks is too long imo. 14 weeks is just right), and specific player skills (outside scoring/defence and inside scoring/defence require two completely different skillsets in BB). But anyways, to answer the questions;

1: Your starting crop in BB can be useful, especially since 'youth' players aren't readily available like they are in other manager games. Whilst it's still a good idea to fire the crappier ones almost immediately (unless you want to keep them as scrimmage fodder), some players in the initial crop, especially young players with good potential like Antuma, can last you several seasons. As for economy, it's driven mainly by weekly player wage, making the best bigmen in the world very cheap to buy, but very expensive to keep, whilst the opposite is true for a well-rounded small forward.

2: Yes, training in this game revolves around focusing on a select group of prospects, whilst ignoring the rest. However, you only need to play a trainee for 48 minutes TOTAL each week in the position you are training them in. Hence, it's not that hard to keep them close to the ideal 60 minutes playing time each week to keep their game shape high whilst training...

3: Keep a 12 man roster, and play a scrimmage each week. Scrimmages give your reserves a chance to catch up on the minutes they need to maintain their game shape, and with a 12 man roster the math works out perfectly for each player getting an average of 60 minutes for the week, which is ideal. And whilst salary is usually a good indicator of who the better player is, it shouldn't always be relied on, especially once you start training players. Instead get familiar with the actual player skills to make a more educated decision on who gets more playing time in your league games.

4: Arena expansions, especially when you still have the initial 5,000 seats, are a good investment. You stand to make all the money you spend back within two to three seasons, and from there it's all profit. Try not to over-expand though.

5: A good doctor will reduce the chances of your player being injured for long periods of time when they do get injured. That said, injuries aren't that common anyway, and for the sake of your finances I can only recommend getting a Basic doctor with low wage, and the massage speciality if you can find one. Same goes for your PR manager; the Crowd Involvement and National Appeal specialities both give your team a bit of an extra edge in games so it might be worth getting one. The trainer is the only staff member type that I recommend hiring anyone better than Basic in right now, but only if you want Antuma to train faster. This might not necessarily be a priority for you...

6: Same nation players will earn you more merchandise than equivalent foreigners, but I believe that an U21/senior NT players generates a merchandising bonus too, even if he's playing outside his home country. That said, NT players of any country are probably outside your price range this early on.

7: It's tied in to your TV contract. In division III, the weekly floor is exactly 100% of your weekly TV contract. The % is higher in higher divisions, and lower in lower divisions.

8: Yes, for the most part, only the champions of each league promote to the next division up at the end of the season. However, sometimes automatic bot demotions result in a leftover spot/s in the league pyramid, and if this happens, these spots are filled by the team/s with the best regular season record across the entire division, who did not become champions of their respective league.

Reached the character limit, I'll answer the remaining questions in the following post...

9: I would not worry about that feature too much. It's mostly there to let people know at a glance, which players another manager prefers to use in league games. Speaking of which...

10: Go to your opponents team page, and look at the 'games' sub-page and the last few fixtures they've played. If you're noticing a pattern in their tactics, you can potentially adjust accordingly. With that said, Man-To-Man defence usually works alright, regardless of the tactic you're facing, and switching up your offensive tactics to exploit the opponents defensive shortcomings can backfire if your team cannot play both inside and outside offences effectively.

11: You only 'need' to field 3 players really to avoid a walkover, and players can foul out freely without causing a walkover. If you don't have 5 players available to play for or during any game, the game fills in the remaining positions with 'Lucky Fans', who ensure that you still have 5 players playing at all times, but have absolutely dreadful skills.

12: In BB, getting fired from a team usually means instant retirement. The better players are allowed to temporarily become free agents if they have enough skill (determined by salary), but free agents go to auction just like players that are being sold do, and if no-one wants to pay the reserve price (which can be up to one million dollars for 100k+ players), the free agent doesn't get a second chance and must retire, just like their less skilled counterparts.

13: Since you joined late in the season, not doing scouting this season is probably for the best, despite the early draft pick you're likely to have. You can save the points you have for next season, and this will help you get a good look at the draft if you decide to scout then (which may or may not be a good idea, depending on which route your franchises takes over the next three or so months).

14: It depends on who is actually playing in that position on the court on game night, not who is listed as being in that position. So, if you want to train a certain player you have to actually play them in the position your coach is slated to train that week. 48+ minutes of playing in the correct position for the week gets you 100% training for that player.

15: In short, N-O. You'll have to choose between keeping this team but staying in your current country, or starting all over again if you want to play in another country.

16: No other basketball manager games for me right now (Reading the user manuals before signing up turned me away from both Basketsim and Charazay, because their seasons take too long in real life). I would probably be playing 2k14 right now if I had money to spare, but I don't have money to spare so I'm afraid you're out of luck. An online football manager called ManagerZone is my thing right now, aside from BB of course. My team is actually doing pretty good there (I have one of the best teams in my country at the time of this post)... but I've actually found myself investing more time into BB for a good while now despite my team here being at nowhere near the same level right now.

17: The 'player position' provided by BB has it's uses, particularly in training salary efficient players, but should by no means be used to determine which position your players play on game night. Feel free to play someone listed as a PF at C, or even someone listed as a PG at SF, if you think their actual skills make them useful in those respective positions.

I know that I've said a lot, but that's only because you had a lot of questions to answer. Hope these posts helped ;).

Big thanks to everybody to posted back or sent PM's - now everything is becoming very clear! It's amazing how realistic this game feels, yet how quickly you guys helped me to grasp almost everything. I guess from now on my questions will only get more specific. Here's one:

18) Thus far I understand that the player's true value is in his skills (but not sure how close to a simplistic sum of ALL skills), while both the salary and the preferred position are deducted from certain specific skills. Which model would you say is the correct one:

A) There are primary skills & secondary skills & irrelevant skills (e.g. inside D for PG's, range for C's)
B) There are primary skills & secondary skills (i.e. everything counts)

Following B, I'd say the perfect to buy 18yo trainee has literally everything at average+, because that's just the minimum salary/skill ratio, while size and position are irrelevant. Following A, I'd need to exclude the irrelevant skills.

Similarly, should a perfect vet be half-decent at everything in order to limit his salary, or (since I won't train him) should he be really polished at every single big/small man skill (regarding his size and/or position) and atrocious skills outside his role won't hurt at all?

19) Maybe it's a bit far-fetched, but I'm curious: how balanced does my team need to be?

Say, I decide to pound it inside all the time. My SG is decent has absolutely no range. Does it mean that I better pair him up with a PG with range, because otherwise the AI defense will know to collapse completely?

Another example: I love my center, but he is all offense. Should I specifically target a defensive-minded PF for rim protection, because otherwise the opposition will quickly realize they want to drive every time?