Mana Games

[Spicer]

I spent 3 full seasons as a Junior, and life seems really difficult

First season, I played 0 tournaments, spent all my time training 3 days a week using the default (Rallying + Serve + a bit of Mental when school's out)
2nd & 3rd season, I played only Grade C, plus Roland-Garros where I got a wildcard to get into the qualifiers.
In the whole of Season 2, I won only one game, and about a year later in season 3 I managed to win another game.

All other games were lost by 2 sets to nil, usually with only 1 or 2 games to my name.
In my 3rd season, my rallying skills are up around 18-22% but even then when playing as a 16 year old against new 13 year olds with skills around 1-3% I get trounced 6/2 6/0

Tell me Manutoo that something's not quite right

[manutoo]

Hello,

you have to keep your motivation high. To do so, you have to play 1 tournament per month from the very start, and other relatively logical things...
You also need to find a good balance between Potentials and Skills, as the higher your potentials are, the faster the skills train.

[Spicer]

So, I've gave it another go and followed your advice:
Started again as a 13 year old Junior
Played 1 tournament per month (approx.) for 3 full seasons, both Singles and Doubles to get more matches.
Set my training schedule to 3 days a week, doing only potential
The result is the same
First year: Wins: 0/8
2nd Year: 1/10
3rd Year: 1/10

I only managed to get motivation to very low, (maybe it went up to Low, once)
I still get trounced by newcoming 13 year olds with skills at 1%

One thing that could explain why you get better results (apart from the fact you're likely a much better coach!): Do you have a coaching staff at your academy?
Because since I'm starting my coaching career with the Junior, I have nobody on my staff

[Spicer]

For those who follow my clumsy attempts at being a coach, I started over again but this time decided to travel to tournaments with my player!
Straight away I noticed a difference. I wasn't loosing 1 & 0 anymore (or worse!) but 3 & 4 and even had a tie-break in my first year.
My motivation was also noticeably higher, which according to Manutoo is a crucial part of winning games.
First Year: 0/8
2nd Year: 1/10
3rd Year: 6/12

So, I was foolishly trying to run a tight budget but the impact is obvious and not worth saving 10K a year

[manutoo]

I did a test in Junior difficulty :
1st year : 1/8
2nd year : 6/10

And yup, I wasn't a heartless monster so I didn't let my player travel all by herself to foreign countries...

From the end of 1st year and after, I tried to pick only tournaments not too far and only on hard courts.

So it made me think we should be able to pick our 1st court in the training center, as it's determinant for the tournaments we can play during our 1st years.

Also, the WTA Tour seems to have way better junior players than the ATP ones, so I think I'll raise a bit the potentials for our girls to even the field.

1 last important thing : your player needs to rest during at least 50% of a week every 10 weeks (ie: get some holidays ).

Else, to play better than what I did, it's important to micro-manage a lot : favor potentials for a couple of months, then skills, then back to potentials ; ideally, we should be upping the skills before entering a tournament.

[Spicer]

Thanks for the hints. Didn't think about letting them have holidays!
On the contrary, when my junior is on school holiday, this is where she gets extra training, just because I *am* a monster!
Excellent idea to be able to choose the starting court surface.

Regarding the micro-management aspects, all are very valid points ... but it gets in the way of testing
But I'll make sure to do that once I start my *real* game


I was wondering about the tournament locations.
If you choose a European base for your academy, it's just about possible to pick tournaments not too far in the first couple of seasons but you probably still need to cover from Finland/Estonia to Turkey/Lebannon/North Africa, but you can't then be picky about the surface you play on

I doubt if NorthAmerica or AsiaPac would be any easier.
I've not really looked at modding tournaments (I only tried to see if we could add the Petits As tournament but that seems way too difficult and probably not possible with the current engine) would it be feasible (i.e. no hard-coded limits) to expand the number of Futures & Type B & C?

[manutoo]

Yes, Europe & Central America are likely the best places for the Coach Center. Most other regions are obviously less good but should still be somewhat ok.

You can add as many Junior tournaments as you want, but the issue will be to have more Junior players.
At 1st, I considered adding some players that would retire before turning Pro, but it seemed a bit overkill. If it's really too hard as a Junior, I'd rather just raise the Federation Funding so traveling around would be less penalizing, and/or make traveling less tiring for the Junior players.

[CobraGuru]

Hi, I just start the game and I made a big mistake as I entered all future tournament possible and lost all my money in travels.
I'm at week 9
But in single I won 2 match R1 for 5 losses.
and got up to quarter final in double in 1 tournament after qualifying (was luck I guess :p ).
I'm 1269 in single and 930 in double.

And I don't know how I'll be able to earn back moneys

[CobraGuru]

After week 12 I decided to go back to training and worked for 4 weeks, then after one new tournament to work again for 7 weeks.
I entered Tunisia F2, lost in final in double and won the final in single
and at same time I completed the sponsor objectives so got back a little bit of cash.

Our player needs physical, mental training as well as technical training. So a mix of each and regularly enter in tournament even if the result is a defeat in 1st match to earn some experience

[Spicer]

@CobraGuru: You're not talking about Juniors here are you?

[CobraGuru]

Sorry My big mistake

When I started the game I just enter the competition and got a player at 17. I thought she was junior, but you are right I just notice it by starting a new game that junior start at 13

my bad

[Spicer]

Not a problem. Just wanted to clarify things

[jordqc]

Playing one tournament per month sound hard when travel expense isn't cheap.
What happen if you run out of money?

[manutoo]

jordqc,
you just have to pay interest to the bank, there's no bankrupt.