Mana Games

[Brecht]

Hi Manu,

I'm not so sure about this on a long term, but nevertheless I noticed it with rather young players (females, 15-20 years old, at incredible): they are ways much more tired after training than after matches AND tournaments. Training is tiring, no problem with this, I think the form % after a full training week is fine. But at a tournament, and especially at slams (2 weeks), even if they play singles and doubles and till the finals, and don't even take one hour to rest, they'll end with nearly 100% short term form ... quite strange and unusual (apart from S. Williams at slams of course ).

[Rob4590]

Well if the player has prepared properly for the tournament (ie not overtrained) then their short term form will be close to 100% going into the event, and this is fine to be maintained through it. In real life - all the players would be aiming to hit peak form for the slams - so imo, the game simulates this well

[Brecht]

Rob, I agree with you, but it is not my point: my "overtrained" players come to a slam (or any event) with "low" form percentage (let's say around 60%) but end after one or two full weeks near 100%. That's what it should be ... in an ideal world I think.

[manutoo]

Hello,

I once read an interview of a female player (might be Mauresmo or Henin) telling that Grand Slams were actually no tiring, coz only 1 match every 2 days.

And doubles isn't much tiring either so you can add 1 also...

For men, it's a different story...

[Brecht]

True, slams might be less tiring than other tournaments, if you're a top ranked player and have easy early rounds. But I'm not sure a player would say it's as regenerating as a vacation, which seems to be in the game. I mean, I still find it strange that a player can recover from bad form during a tournament - unless he/she's been ill of course. Motivation should increase (as it is the case), but form?

[Curtis]

When your player gets 8 hours to train between matches in the Slam, are you resting her, or training? I usually spar five or six hours and rest three or two, and my form deteriorates slowly throughout the tournament. If I rested eight, I'm sure my form would peg at 100%, but my skills would slide even faster than they do (which is pretty darn fast on Incredible).

[Brecht]

When your player gets 8 hours to train between matches in the Slam, are you resting her, or training? I usually spar five or six hours and rest three or two, and my form deteriorates slowly throughout the tournament. .

Hi Curtis, in those cases I mostly train, sometimes I do like you and rest one or two hours but not more. I use lots of yoga instead (one or two hours at the end of the day).
On the other hand, I need to make my players rest during training weeks. I manage to make two or three days of full training (means 6 hours) without resting only if their form is near to 100% at the beginning of the week. Otherwise I have to spend only 4 hours for training and 1 or 2 hours for Yoga or rest. And it's hard to maintain the short term form anyway in training weeks.

[Curtis]

This interests me. I see from re-reading your first post that you're playing at the incredible level.

When I have training weeks (non-match weeks), I usually spend twelve hours on physical conditioning, though how it breaks down varies depending on whether I'm in the early game (before the first tournament win — generally the first four months or so), midgame (roughly until she breaks rank 50 in singles or 20 in doubles) or endgame (when she's a fully mature player). In the early game it's two hours apiece on each of the six disciplines. By the midgame it's three hours apiece of four exercises, and by the end four hours apiece of three things, yoga always being one of them.

I also do three hours on each mental discipline during the early game for as long as her Experience points last, dropping to two each during the midgame and one after she gets pegged in the 95+ range. After that she rests long enough to bring her form back to 100.

The remainder of the training week is split between technical skills, sparring and rest. In the early game it's about 2:1 skills to rest, sometimes 3:1 depending on how tired she is (there being no good partners available). By the midgame it's split pretty evenly between the three, and by the endgame it's usually 2:4:3 or 2:4:2 technical to sparring to rest.

This all varies based on circumstance, of course. Sometimes there are no Experience points left to spend, and sometimes her physical skills are so finely honed that she only needs six hours of tune-up, instead of twelve. When she's jet-lagged more time goes to her mental training, and so on.

During tournaments I do almost exclusively resting and sparring. I like to spar so I can compare myself to future opponents and get an idea whether I'll need to spend experience (and how much) to get past them. I very much appreciated it when Manutoo changed the available partners to exclude those you might play in the next round. I thought that reduced a 'cheat' or exploit in the game that I had been taking advantage of. I also like knowing that I'm coming up in the world when I find myself sparring against Sabina Applemans during the early rounds of several tournaments in a row.