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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?

20) Doesn't seem to cost me anything to place people at the transfer list, neither in terms of cash or player's mood. Should I then regularly place some of my guys on the list, above their true value, to see if I get lucky and, in that case, quickly reinvest this money elsewhere?

18) Every skill is relevant, as it adds to a player's ability to perform, but not all skills are equally important. It's never a bad thing to have high secondary skills, as they add no salary. You can ask yourself wether it's worthwhile to pay a premium for it on the market, or spend extra time training those skills though. It also depends on your team strategy; if you're employing an outside minded attack, Jump range on your center can add to your team's performance.

Generally you'll want high secondary skills as they make your player more efficient, but the question arises what to prioritize when you have limited resources (which is always). The resource training time usually dictates the amount of time you can spend on training secondaries; if you have a center with atrocious jump range, it will take very long before he'll be able to contribute to your team's outside offense. If he starts out with mediocre+, it could be wortwhile. I think you can discuss the ideal build for a player for a long time and not reach a definite answer.

Of course you want all skills to be as high as possible for your draftee, with maybe an exception to rebounding on guards as they do raise salary, and is the least effective on that position (still it adds to performance). Height does certainly matter, as it dictates what skills train fast and which don't.

19) Opinions differ on the matter of balance, and with the recent changes to the game this is surely to differ depending on who you ask. I'd say balance is important, especially in higher leagues, because opponents will exploit your weaknesses. If you have no outside offense at all, teams will use the tactics prediction (seen in scrimmages) and adjust their defense to gain advantage over you. Still it could be wortwhile though, as having no jump range on your guards lower their salary, so you can have higher defense for the same salary, compensating for their gained advantage. For a long time, look inside strategies have been dominant, so there will be plenty of people who will argue balance is not needed. This is because the game engine (AI) doesn't really adapt well to it, because if you use a 2-3 zone, the passing lanes will open up so you won't get much advantage. However, with the new features of being able to predict your opponents strategy, this might change.

On defense, it's the same dilemma you face. You can indeed choose to pair another offense big, giving you an offensive advantage, but leaving your defense weak. It's not very easy to say what's better, and that's the beauty of a strategy game; there are multiple valid options.

20) Indeed it doesn't cost you anything to place players on the transfer list, and certainly there's money to be made working the transfer market. However, there are some downside on day-trading; players drop in game shape when they are purchased, so they'll be less effective to start out. Also, there is a transfer fee that is highest when you just bought a player, and will gradually drop to 3% after you own the player for about 1 season.

Thanks! Happy to see my questions are becoming slightly less obvious :)

21) Buying oldies - quality or quantity? Do I want to spend a 100k fee + 20k weekly salary for some old geezer who'll help me prevent relegation? Or should I rather accompany potential trainees with 4-5 cheaper dudes, while firing my original players in the process?

Edit: somebody just told me that the 50k beginner bonus only comes in as long as you don't trade at all. Is he correct?!

Last edited by Garfield at 11/22/2013 11:00:46 AM

Nope you get 50k for 4 weeks, no matter what.

I don't think you can relegate, leagues 4 are probably bots.

I don't think you can relegate, leagues 4 are probably bots.

Where can I confirm this? Kinda crucial before deciding whether to buy oldies, or just trainees!