The Official TBL Practice Thread

[Satyr]

Could it be a case of each of the options in practice to concentrate a certain percentage to training. Like could all training set to intensive be the same as everything at medium?

Whether that's the case or not - wouldn't it be more beneficial to have players work on certain areas more than others. There's only so much PA to go around, and I would rather "spend" a majority of those points in the more important attributes for each player in question.

p.s. I'm fairly new to hockey in general (been following the Blue Jackets for about a year) but at what ages to players start to decline in EHM? I'm used to Football Manager players to decline mid 30s. I expect the better players to last longer, but I wouldn't mind a heads up to when the physical attributes are likely to go down.

I always set all my players to a costum build schedule:


Condition never drops below 95, except in August.

ps: In FM attackers start to decline as early as 27 years old, midfielders at 29 en defenders/goalies peak around 31

[Don Roshi]

Could it be a case of each of the options in practice to concentrate a certain percentage to training. Like could all training set to intensive be the same as everything at medium?

Whether that's the case or not - wouldn't it be more beneficial to have players work on certain areas more than others. There's only so much PA to go around, and I would rather "spend" a majority of those points in the more important attributes for each player in question.

p.s. I'm fairly new to hockey in general (been following the Blue Jackets for about a year) but at what ages to players start to decline in EHM? I'm used to Football Manager players to decline mid 30s. I expect the better players to last longer, but I wouldn't mind a heads up to when the physical attributes are likely to go down.

I always set all my players to a costum build schedule:


Condition never drops below 95, except in August.

ps: In FM attackers start to decline as early as 27 years old, midfielders at 29 en defenders/goalies peak around 31

Isn't that schedule exactly the same as the default General practice schedule though? I've used a schedule that concentrates on physical attributes for the younger player in my first pre-season (September), and it completely killed those players conditioning. They were between 30-50% conditioning, whilst everyone else was at 100%. Based on this pittance of evidence, it shows me that the level that you set each portion of practice is based on percentages. If you set conditioning to intensive and everything else to none, then that would be infinitely more tiring that everything set the same.

I could be completely wrong, but from what little I've seen it makes sense to me.

[jeppe951]

you maybe right or it's just completely broken anyway I use the same practice type as Satyr but I feel like my players don't improve even tho it says so on the attribute screen in practice

[Cres]

Hi folks, latecomer to the party, recently discovered EHM through Steam and loving the grand strategy take on hockey...

Practice is really messing with me. I feel like I've read everything on the Internet about it. There are so many guides out there relating to intensities and schedules and coach choices, with distinct strategies being held up as superior. (Conditioning first! Not too many exercises per coach! Enough coaches per exercise! Don't multitask your goalie coach!) And then, at the same time, there are other resources, posts and this thread (which I've read back to back) suggesting that none of it makes any difference at all.

What is this nonsense? Is this still the case? This thread hasn't been posted in in 6 months and last it was discussed it seems people were saying "hopefully they'll patch it". My actual questions:

1. Is part of the issue the fact that there are so many versions of the game out there? It's a really strange environment where you look up information and you have to do cartwheels just to find out if what you're reading applies to FHM 2005, FHM 2007 or FHM:EA. Speaking of which, FHM:EA? Why is it being called "early access"? Isn't it obviously going to no longer be "early access" one day? Shouldn't it be differentiated by something else than the fact that it's temporarily on early access? Why even talk about the older versions anyway? Isn't the new version the best one?

2. How could thousands of people play this game, which has existed for what, nearly 20 years? And the community still doesn't know if the entire practice component is even implemented or not. That just blows my mind as something so implausible, wouldn't the thousands and thousands of seasons played have revealed that pattern one way or another? How could we not know?

3. How could a game developer invest time and resources into revamping a game that already exists, and then fail to implement an entire section of the game which they bothered to design an elaborate UI for? And then if that somehow happened, how could that problem remain 6-12 months later after (I would assume) countless players have pointed out to them, "hey, seems like you forgot an entire part of the game". Did this not get addressed to them? Would they not patch that afterwards?

Please don't take offense from the combination of my tone and my 1-post count. I'm not criticizing the game (which is the deepest sports simulation I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing) or the community (without which starting my season would've taken 10x longer) but last night I was answering questions from a friend I showed the game to, who has even less experience than me... and he started asking me about practice, and as I answered what I knew it became clear pretty quickly that my understanding of it made no <SNIP> sense.

Would appreciate any direction!

[Tasku]

Is part of the issue the fact that there are so many versions of the game out there?

It may be the issue when reading old guides and posts -- although some of it may still be valid, a lot has changed. They aren't actually "out there" anymore. There's just this one version: EHM 1 -- all the rest are history.

Speaking of which, FHM:EA? Why is it being called "early access"? Isn't it obviously going to no longer be "early access" one day? Shouldn't it be differentiated by something else than the fact that it's temporarily on early access? Why even talk about the older versions anyway? Isn't the new version the best one?

FHM is a different game -- Franchise Hockey Manager. This is EHM. It is no longer called EHM EA, although some people still use the "EA" abbreviation to differentiate it from the earlier non-steam versions, for the lack of a number behind it -- like in the case of EHM 2005 or EHM 2007.

2. How could thousands of people play this game, which has existed for what, nearly 20 years? And the community still doesn't know if the entire practice component is even implemented or not. That just blows my mind as something so implausible, wouldn't the thousands and thousands of seasons played have revealed that pattern one way or another? How could we not know?

Thousands of people for 20 years might be a bit of an over statement. The first commercial version of EHM came out in 2004, so we've had a bit more than 10 years. And before EHM EA came out this forum had only about 4000 members, most of whom were not active anymore. So most of the 15 000 members we have now arrived just recently.

3. How could a game developer invest time and resources into revamping a game that already exists, and then fail to implement an entire section of the game which they bothered to design an elaborate UI for? And then if that somehow happened, how could that problem remain 6-12 months later after (I would assume) countless players have pointed out to them, "hey, seems like you forgot an entire part of the game". Did this not get addressed to them? Would they not patch that afterwards?

They did not fail, all aspects, including the practice, has just gone thru tweaking, and in between there was no development for a good 8 or 9 years as the series was shelved, with no progress being made. There are posts all over the place regarding player progression and the effects of training. If they failed to implement it, there'd be no effects on training. If someone said it has no effect, you've been reading a frustrated player.

Please don't take offense from the combination of my tone and my 1-post count. I'm not criticizing the game (which is the deepest sports simulation I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing) or the community (without which starting my season would've taken 10x longer) but last night I was answering questions from a friend I showed the game to, who has even less experience than me... and he started asking me about practice, and as I answered what I knew it became clear pretty quickly that my understanding of it made no ****ing sense.

I did find your tone a bit crude. Also we don't allow bypassing the swear filter here, as you did at the very last part of the quote above.

[Koekenbakker]

Training works fine for me, tips:

Coach:

- high determination (14+)
- high motivation (14+)
- high working with youngsters if needed (14+)
- high discipline (14+)
- high skill in whatever you need, for skating/defense/offense/shooting/goalie I usually want a technical coach. For fitness I use conditioning coach.

Schedule:
- 2 or 3 skills on intensive, rest medium, goalie can be useful for players as well cause it trains positioning if I'm not mistaken

Coaches preferences:
- I tend to look for coaches who have the same mindset (attacking/matching lines etc.). I have no proof it helps, but I felt it did and ofcourse it makes the game more realistic. A team driven by 6 coaches who all have different opinions is imo likely to fail.

Other tips:
- Set training to be handled by head coach. He will then select the best coaches for the job. Compare their skills and see why some coach should train defense or shooting. Then set training back to manual and voila, you have the best coaches training their best skills (according to AI).

[Cres]

Koenkenbakker: Thanks. Most of that seems to be part of the consensus view among people who believe the practice module to be implemented. A lot of it reminds me of what's in malhotra44's guide. I do like your idea of letting the AI take the lead, though! Interesting to see what the AI at least thinks is best and go from there. I'll give that a whirl.

Tasku: First, thanks for replying. Second, sorry for bypassing the filter.

Regarding the nomenclature, actually just confirming that this version of the game is called EHM 1 is already helpful. And yes I had come across FHM and actually wrote it by lapsus, just to show how confusing the landscape can get.

Regarding the practice being implemented, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with the assertion that because player progression takes place, training necessarily works. The player progression could very well take place unaffected by practice or, more realistically, be affected otherwise than how it was intended.

Now I would never simply make that assumption myself based on, what, anecdotal evidence. But multiple players have told me that it's understood among the players that training is broken and although the UI is there and although much earlier versions of EHM had it right, this current version has no impact on attribute progression and a dysfunctional impact on player condition.

I obviously have no opinion one way or another, I'm just a noob who's curious to find out if I waste my time tweaking my practice routine. But in this very thread, on just the previous page, you have radiskull explaining in detail the experiment he performed to assess the impact of training choices. I don't see anyone disagreeing or explaining why he's wrong. There are even a few people who corroborate his observations as they relate to player condition, and others wondering if future updates would/had fix/ed it. He used an editor and what seems like sound methodology. I don't really have anything better to go with. And this was a year ago.

As recently as Feb 29th 2016, someone wrote a guide for EHM in which they say the following:

You’re now shown, down the bottom, the intensity level of 7 or 8 different training sections. You’ve got 4 options: None, Light, Medium and Intense. Set everything excluding “New Position” & “Goaltending” to Intense. This may not make a great deal of sense – and it shouldn’t. Practice is broken right now and I have no idea when it will be fixed up/improved. Ultimately, this new “General” schedule will bring your players’ fitness levels up, maintain them and begin to have an effect on their attributes. Looking at the rest of the screen you can see what the intent of the practice section was meant to be…but it just doesn’t work like that. Take advantage of the glitch for the time being and we’ll revisit if a patch ever makes changes.

Cleon is clearly a new player from the way he wrote the guide, but he didn't randomly guess that intensive on all exercises is what makes sense. It's completely counter-intuitive. Someone -- an existing player -- told him to do that because practice doesn't work. So I guess the bottom line is:

1. Does the Practice screen work as radiskull/Cleon81 stated, or not?
If no, is there any evidence available?
If yes, do you know for a fact whether the developer even knows?
I ask because they somehow never even finding out doesn't seem that much more implausible than deliberately leaving that feature broken for a year while selling $700k of EHM on Steam.

Again, I appreciate the help. This forum seems to be the de facto authority on all things EHM!

[Tasku]

Well, I too am just going by what I've read here, because I don't really handle training myself, I leave it for the coach. I just have a hard time calling it "not implemented", I'd say more like "in need of work / tweaking". The latest patch changed the way players get tired, and therefore most users feel it is no longer duable to put all your players on intense practice. And if there have been many posts over the years claiming that practice should be intense, for it effects the players' progression in the most positive way, this indicates that it has an effect, it just might not be quite "there yet". Although I do remember someone also claiming he's still sticking with the intense practice regime without a problem... But like I said, I leave my practice to the head coach and just stick with lines and tactics and the GM stuff.

I ask because they somehow never even finding out doesn't seem that much more implausible than deliberately leaving that feature broken for a year while selling $700k of EHM on Steam.

The game is developed by pretty much just one man, who is also working on a much bigger project: the Football Manager game series. He invests the time he has left into his favourite child, EHM. So you must be patient.

[Cres]

Fair enough. If that's all that it is, then I'll gladly just be patient because otherwise this game is everything the NHL series is not. I just hope that the reason this isn't fixed isn't because no one told the guy. That would be a... disappointing assumption to make.

Thanks for all your help!

[Tasku]

People have definitely told the guy.

You can do it yourself too, if you like: http://community.sigames.com/

[Asher413]

In a hurry, so I can't find which notes- but it was a bug that Intense was not adding fatigue, and it has been changed in a recent patch (I want to say two patches ago?). I know it was because I'm still trying to find the balance of intense practices (2 seems to be too much for 1st liners) since, where before they were always 100 percent.

[Cres]

Ok cool, so the lack of fatigue consequence for intensive practice was a bug and been addressed.

What about the lack of impact on player growth? Here are the key points radiskull made:

- player performance/rating doesn't impact growth (this could totally be deliberate)
- being injured or poor condition doesn't impact growth (that seems unlikely to be deliberate, but maybe not implemented yet)
- coach distribution doesn't impact growth (identical results regardless of 1 or 2 or all 6 coaches on each exercise -- definitely not deliberate)
- actual games played doesn't impact growth (that can't be deliberate, it's basically the #1 factor in real life)

Again this analysis was performed on page 16 of this thread, by treating identical players differently to measure the impact of each variable, which seems like the right approach. I guess I'm asking in general...
1. is anyone convinced that the above is incorrect? evidence? at least anecdotal? or is there a consensus
2. Do you think he knows these specific details? and yes I might add my feedback to the pile but want to see what you guys think before I say a bunch of nonsense.

[Tasku]

Well, Radiskull's post on the previous page is from May 2015, which would've been quite early in the EA phase. I don't have the time or energy to (re)read all that, and can't recall the details, but during the Early Access phase patches came out every two weeks. A lot of changes have happened. The post is outdated. Those tests would need to be redone to say one way or another.

[Shindigs]

This post is now outdated. Some of the information is still very much correct. But if you scroll down to my next post you will see the "correct" assumptions about trainers and what schedules to use. All the stuff about squad management and condition management from this post still applies though.

My pool of data isnt' big enough to be conclusive yet. And I haven't used the editor to setup a 0 outside influence testing case. But so far from 2ish seasons of closely monitoring attribute changes 3 times a season on ALL my players (even that 15 y/o in the U-20 team). Once at June 1st. This one give me feedback on how much influence won awards/playoff has given the player. Once at September 1st. This one gives me feedback on how much ONLY practice has done in the off season. And finally once at January 1st. This one gives me feedback on how the player has done with a mix of gametime and practice in the first half of the seasons. The things I've noticed in no particular order are the following:

- Some players ONLY improve while getting steady game time and solid practice, they show little to no improvement in the off-season.
- Other players do fine either with only practice or only gametime with random poor U-20 practice.
I manage in Swe-2 so I can get in A LOT of young players to stick in my U-20 team. If they do well there (as in at least 5-10 total attribute points per time of recording attributes (about 4-5 months apart) I let them stay there, if they do not I bring them up to the main team and have them get little to no game time while sitting on the same practice schedule as my normal players. If this still doesn't let them grow I toss them in the U-18 team as a last resort until they improve or their contract runs out.
- Having a Coach with only "Good" Coaching Forwards coach Shooting/Offensive skill shows a completely reasonable growth.
I always found the "both off and def coaching affects all technicals" in Malhotra's Guide to be incredibly counter-intuitive, and since I was seeing little to no growth when I used that guide I decided to scrap all the gamey illogical bits, and keep the rest while filling in with what made sense to me. One being that I use a coach with good off/def and conditioning style for skating, a technical based only good offense for shooting & Off. Skill and a tech based with only good def coaching for Def. Skill
- All players have different windows where they will do most of their growth/decline.
One of my young guns on the 1st line was showing absolutely no improvement (relative to his linemates) until he turned 19, then Boom! +14 attributes in 4 months just like that. He won the top goal-scorer for the entire league his rookie year, and saw puny growth in the 4 attributes per year region. It simply wasn't his time yet. Another one of my youngsters who was drafted 22nd overall to the NHL and is rated as "like Evgeny Kuznetsov" by all 7 of my scouts, even the grumpy one that doesn't like anyone. She (yeah regen with a girl's name) showed almost no improvement in her first year with my team. Then in the first half of her 2nd season she pulled a +10 in 4 months growth spurt, her window wasn't until she turned 18. Much like my other wonderkid that got drafted 6th overall in the NHL draft. As soon as he turned 18 he took off like a rocket. 16->20 speed in 8 months. a total of +40 attributes in 1 year. And this is with the second rate coaches I can muster in the second tier of swedish hockey. He is one of those players that show very little growth in the Off-season (except that one time), and fairly limited growth in the first half of the season. But when it comes time to hand out the trophies and he won: Top Rookie, Top player, Top Passer, Top Point Scorer he bumped up by 13 attribute points just like that. This isn't absolute proof that doing well = improving a lot. But it sure points towards that being a great help IF and only IF it's during the growth window of that player. The Goal-scoring machine that wasn't ready yet showed nothing for his Top Goal-scorer award. I get the feeling stuff like getting a lot of ice time and winning trophies are percentage based modifiers, if your base growth during that period was going to be good. It's now x% better. If you weren't meant to grow much that period x% more of nothing is still nothing. In the other (older) end of the spectrum, players like Jagr can keep going til they're in their 40s, meanwhile my 50 point per season (52 game season) machine lost his mojo at 27, and is now like watching a slow over-paid trainwreck as his attributes nosedive regardless of what training I put him on, or how well he does. He's just one of those players with a short career, sadly.
- Having Technique based Coaches for Shooting, Off. Skill and Def. Skill outperforms* having a 2-3 points higher avg. rating non technique-based coach.
* Incredibly limited sample size, due to swapping from "high" rating non-technique based to "low" rating technique based after only 4 months (1 set of logged attributes)
Just earlier today I put in all my "report cards" in excel to another sheet and checked the pre and post coach change attribute gains. Obviously there are 1000 different incidental circumstances that can skew these results, and no doubt have. But the fact that swapping to a much worse coach with technique based style (beggars can't be choosers) I still saw about a 16% gain in defensive attributes. When I did a straight swap from one coach with about the same attribute to another that also was technique based on the offensive side of things the rate of gaining shooting attributes (Def, Sla, Wri) increased by a whopping 161.1% and the gain of offensive attributes (Dek, Fac, OTP, Pas, Sti) increased by a more reasonable 41.7%. Maybe having a technique based skating coach would also be better, but when my current conditiong based one takes not one, but TWO 16 speed players to 20 speed in less than a year. I see no reason to improve on that formula, even though it would make logical sense for a technique based to be even better. Not like I had a choice in the matter anyways, in Swe-2 you have like 2-3 Technique based coaches in total at any given time to choose from, and 2 of them will no doubt be goalie coaches. I got super lucky to find my offensive skilled coach in the off-season.
- Having a 2 Intensive, 2 Medium, 2 Light Training setup means you never have to put your players on resting*, while still seeing impressive gains (2/9 young players have gained OVER 40 attributes in a year under my regime, the others are "only" 5-20ish)
*What I mean by this is that your players will replenish at about the same rate as if they were on resting, or even faster. One of my players regenerated CON at a rate of 4 per day when resting (except under the "tired" effect) and regains 8 per day while on this training routine. Most normal players regain 8-10 per day while resting and 6-8 on this routine. I only ever rest players with the "tired" effect, and only do so during the season. In the off-season there seems to be a bug making players immune to injuries, this seems to turn off right around regen day (late Jul/early Aug when you should be swapping to the stock "General" schedule anyways).
I've played around with putting some of my more demanding roles (defensive defensemen and power forwards) on 3 Int, 1 Med and 1 Lig. But this made them regain condition way too slow, without showing any more gain in attributes. If you want to keep your players working out every single day you need to learn which tempo your individual players can handle. I know that my 1st line right wing (16 Sta) can handle playing on "high" in the 1st line and on "low" in PP-2, while the center (17 Sta) has to play on "normal" and "very low" unless there is a 2+ day rest between games. I aim to not let my players drop below about 85% if I can help it. Far as I can tell, if you have fast players giving them less ice time on high+ tempo will give you more bang for your buck than giving them more icetime on normal or lower, since they won't leverage their pace unless you "unleash" them.
- 1 Coach per area is plenty for Conditioning, Skating, Shooting and Off. Skill. It seems to not be enough for Def. Skill and Tactics though. Goalies still TBD (I use older goalies cause I don't like losing)
I haven't run the exact numbers on the physicals gain per period. But having had several players gain 3-4 speed, 1-2 acc, 2-3 Sta etc. under my regime with 1 coach on both Conditioning and 1 on Skating, one of them doing ONLY Skating, and the other doing Conditioning + Tactics (cause I couldn't find a remotely capable coach with technique based+good tactics/Determination/Man Management/Working with Youngsters that wanted to come to Swe-2. Chocking, right?), I didn't see much reason to go into details. It works so well I really don't have to. With technicals I've been seeing much less impressive growth, so there I wanted to delve a bit deeper. Using only 1 coach with less than stellar ability (think 12 coaching forwards and ~14 in the "mentals") my players on "intensive" shooting have an average gain PER attribute of 0.43 per period (1.30 per year) in the shooting department so that is an average of +1.3 Deflection, Slapshot AND Wristshot per year. Which will put my 16 y/o's all at about 15-17 in all three attributes by age 20 unless they hit their PA caps. In the Off. Skill department I'm currently seeing an average gain across all players with "intensive" Off. Skill of 0.56 per period (1.7 per year), this will give them +6.8 in Deking, Faceoffs, OTP, Passing, Stickhandling from when I find them as 16 y/o's until they hit their 20th birthday. Since most "good" offensive minded regens will have about 8-11 in their offensive attributes (except stickhandling, cause reasons) this will essentially put them at or near their PA cap by the time they are 20 barring unforseen circumstances. You'll have a whole team of Connor McDavid's before long if your scouts weren't lying to you! (hint: they generally are) The reason I'm less enthralled by the 1 coach approach for Tactics is that I see little to no correlation in my excel sheet between the tactics training and the teamwork attribute, which apparently is supposed to be what it improves. I see more of a change in mentals based on how the player is getting on and on the attributes of your captain(s). Players that often get called up to International duty (even in the U-20s) seem to grow more mentally as well. But that is incidental at best, since they also happen to be my best players so they are supposed to be growing more in the first place, but maybe if I had more capable tactics coaches I'd see more of a change there? When it comes to my worries with 1 coach on Def. Skill, the numbers say it all; the gain in the Checking, Hitting, Pokecheck and Positioning department is only 0.14 per period (0.43 per year) for a total gain of +1.75 from their 16th to 20th birthday. That would only make them 11-13ish in their defensive attributes at age 20. No wonder I can never find good young defensive defensemen! (hint: the real reason for that is that they are all in the AHL being farmed to the high heavens with competent coaching staff and salaries that aren't mainly consisting of gift cards)

I'm too tired to remember all the other stuff I was supposed to bring up. So here's a picture of my "report cards" for my first line. The 1st one is the 1st line Center, sadly I started recording these cards just after he gained 24 attribute points over the summer. Since then he really slowed down a bit, for some frame of reference on the attribute totals at the bottom of each of their cards. Taylor Hall has 392 @23, Connor McDavid has 358 @18, Nail Yakupov has 337 @21 and Iiro Pakarinen has 319 @23. The 1st player here is 18 (potential: Like Evgeny Kuznetsov), the 2nd is 19 (potential: Like Brendan Gallagher) and the 3rd is 20 (potential: poor man's Rick Nash), the second is the one that just would not grow until he turned 19. As you can see at the bottom I have recorded which training schedule was used when, he tried several (the one he gained 14 with, he gained only 2 with the first time around). It just wasn't his time yet! The third, oldest, player only had 225 total attribute points @19 when I got my hands on him. Clearly he hadn't gotten to his "window" yet. But just look at him go! in april 2016 when I finished scouting all of these and acquired them Onni Ventelä had a total of 248 and Håkan Bergman a total of 225, now they have 294 and 284 in January 2018, for a gain of 46 and 59 over 22 months. For Onni there was an exact 40 attribute year at the start of that period that did most all of it, and for Håkan a gain of 42 points over the last year leading up to this point. Based on history I'm expecting Onni to gain around 15 points again once he wins the point and assist league, and potentially player of the year. Håkan on the other hand grows very well from off-season training so he keeps a more even pace. Know your players!

P.S. On a somewhat unrelated note, I just found a 14 y/o defenseman in sweden with 263 total attributes. Yeah, 18 work rate, 17 determination and 14 passing at age 14. This can only end well, 7 points in 10 games as a d-man with barely 20min ATOI agrees with me, and I have him on a contract until he inevitably goes straight to NHL at 18, score!

Edit: After having put together some more stats from the "report cards" I think I've found a constant. The average total attribute gain of a player in both the 1st and 2nd year was exactly 10.38889. It could be a coincidence of epic proportions. Or it could be the cap of how much attribute gain my coaches can muster. If the latter is true this would mean that the total amount of avaliable attribute points per year is decided by the quality of your coaches; the CA, PA and if the player is in his "window" would then presumably only decide how much of that pool said player would be allocated. But again it is still way, way too early to tell. But if my players average 10.38889 attribute gain by the time I finish year 3 the odds of it being coincidence is pretty much not a thing. And figuring out if swapping coaching staff will increase this cap (if it even exists) will give good feedback on how much schedules and coaches actually change the effectiveness of training. I really hope it doesn't work that way though, since it would mean a team with a lot of very even good players would only show very small gain to all players (everyone takes an equal portion of the "pool") whereas having 1-2 amazing players on a team with so-so talent would give them the option of taking home absolutely monstrous amounts of the attribute pool (if such a thing exists). This is all hypothetical of course, but it does make some semblance of sense if applied to real world hockey; a player forced to carry his team will get huge amounts of game-time and have a very large responsibility to grow and keep putting up the numbers, if he doesn't the team just fails. Whereas a team with a very deep roster can cause complacency due to there always being a "backup" to take the heat off if your superstar player is off his game for a while.

In other news, this is how the split of when my players have gained their attributes looks like:
On the far left you have how many attribute points have been accrued (on average) each month within the given time period: Early(Sep 2 - Jan 1), Late(Jan 2 - Jun 1) or Off-season(Jun 2 - Sep 1).
In the middle is the total amount of attribute points gained in each period (on average). And finally on the right is the highest gain in each period recorded by any one player; Håkan Bergman from the previous pictures and examples hold both the Early and Off-Season records, very impressive of him.
Also note that the numbers are correct in relation to eachother, however they are way too low due to the fact that out of laziness (mostly) I didn't bother to filter out the old and inactive players that are way past making any increases. Thus there are a lot of 0s lowering the average gain per period, as you could probably guess based on the very sizeable difference in the top gains per period compared to the averages of the same period (far right bar vs. middle bar)

Another interesting thing, to touch upon the 10.38889 average again, is that in the two "early season" periods recorded by myself so far. The second period with the new technique based coaching staff was showing 28% more gain than the previous one. But even with that 28% gain the total amount gained over the 1 year with lower early season gains and the latter higher one was the same (10.38889). Which I can't fully explain without my "pool" hypothesis.

Edit 2: The Hypothesis was thankfully wrong. Got an average gain per player of 14.92857 on the third floating 1 year window, so at the very least there is no set cap that ignores your coaching staff/player potential/training routine. My coaching staff has improved ever so slightly and I've gotten rid of some older players, which makes it logical that the average gain per player went up. The average age of my roster is now 19 years old. Still had a >80% win rate in the league though. Can't get promoted though since the game engine cheats to the high heavens in the playoff matches, it's not even subtle about it:/

Edit 3: Slightly OT, but since condition management and training go hand in hand; if your captain is doing well in a game he slows down the condition loss of all players on the ice together with him. I noticed this by accident when I made Onni Ventelä my captain, all of a sudden I could up the Tempo of everyone on the first line by one step and still have them use less Condition in a game than before, the obvious downside being if your captain doesn't do well in a game and you don't check often enough; everyone on the first line will be completely wrecked after the game and will need to sit out a game or two. In other news Onni went to the KHL and Håkan to the SJ Sharks leaving me short 2/3 of my first line in the Off-Season.

Edit 4: If you make sure to maintain your players in the 85+ Con range like I mentioned before, your "injury prone" and "fairly injury prone" players will essentially never be injured. As long as you keep their con that high you can just ignore that on their scout report. It will never come into play.

[CJ]

Great stuff Shindigs!!

[Shindigs]

Edit: After having used the schedules for some seasons now, I've come to the conclusion that Tech Focus during the season works very close to what it should; expected average gain = 1.82, actual average gain = 1.85 for early season and 1.93 for late season. However during summers it's only showing a 1.45 gain, and surprisingly enough Phys Focus is showing horrible results for early season (-0.75), acceptable for late season (1.57) and a very underwhelming 0.36 for summers. To be fair I mostly use Phys on older players to slow their losing of the legs, which skews the stats, but still. I have created a 3rd schedule that will essentially replace Phys, It's very good at maintaining the peak of older players and slowing down their decline, while also working well in the summers for just about everyone (still need some more seasons of data to say that with a high degree of certainty). The new schedule that I simply call Tech Focus2 is now added with the others later in this post.

Edit2: After running a full summer on Tech2 on just about everyone I've come to the conclusion that it's absolutely abysmal for any player who is still growing. However it does do a very good job of maintaining attributes where they are at. most of my older players that were declining fairly fast on Tech or Phys are slowing their decline considerably, despite being one year older, with Tech2. Next summer will be almost everyone on Tech again. That has worked well in the past for almost all my younger players.

TL;DR Training for EHM 1
The first step is setting up coaches, assuming your roster is 30 or less players (not accounting for goalies) you only really need 1 coach per training field (conditioning, skating, shooting, etc.). Avoid having the Goalie coach doing anything but working with the Goalies (that is the leading theory at least, and I’ve never seen a goalie grow with a multi-tasking goalie coach) all other coaches can handle up to 4 areas at once, but generally speaking due to how these different requirements work you will mostly end up with one coach for Conditioning+Skating, one for Shooting+Off Skill, one for Def Skill, one for Tactics and one for Goalies; for a total of 5 Coaches. This means you can have a 6th coach that only has superb mentals and judging skill/potential and Tactical knowledge as your head coach without him needing to actually handle any of the on ice training, meaning his goalie/forward/defense training skills can be however low you like. This can be helpful if you’re not in a big league and getting good all-round coaches is nearly impossible.

The Conditioning Coach should have the following things:
• Conditioning based training style
• High Defense or Forward training; the highest one is used.
• Good “mentals”; Determination, Motivating, Man Management, Discipline and if you have youth players (<24 y/o) also Working with Youngsters.

The Skating Coach should have the exact same things as the Conditioning Coach, in fact it will almost always be the same coach on both duties.

The Shooting Coach should have the following things:
• Technique based training style
• Attacking tactical style
• High Forward training
• Good “mentals”; Determination, Motivating, Man Management, Discipline and if you have youth players (<24 y/o) also Working with Youngsters.

The Offensive Skill Coach should have the following things:
• Attacking tactical style
• High Forward training
• Good “mentals”; Determination, Motivating, Man Management, Discipline and if you have youth players (<24 y/o) also Working with Youngsters.
Note: He does NOT need to be Technique based.

The Defensive Skill Coach should have the following things:
• Defensive Tactical Style
• High Defense training.
• Good “mentals”; Determination, Motivating, Man Management, Discipline and if you have youth players (<24 y/o) also Working with Youngsters.

The Tactics Coach should have the following things:
• Technique based training style
• High Tactical Knowledge
• Good “mentals”; Determination, Motivating, Man Management, Discipline and if you have youth players (<24 y/o) also Working with Youngsters.

The Goalie Coach should have the following things:
• High Goalie training
• Good “mentals”; Determination, Motivating, Man Management, Discipline and if you have youth players (<24 y/o) also Working with Youngsters.

 
If you don’t want to get into the nuances of training your players and setting up a lot of personalized schedules for your more fickle players, you only really need two training schedules. These two are the two most balanced and highest gaining (on average) from the statistics I’ve gathered over about 4 seasons. Each season was split in 3 parts; early, late, off-season. And attributes were recorded at the end of each part. This gave me 180 iterations, not enough to be super accurate. But due to players aging, differing results in games over seasons and a whole lot of other variables your players will never improve in a vacuum anyways. This means that even if you put a player on a good schedule he still might not grow based on what point of his career he is in. While using these two schedules for all my players (except the goalie) only two players reacted badly to it. One was a player who is very fickle with training. He only ever improves/maintains while on a specific schedule, the same goes for another player who needs another very specific schedule. These are two forwards age 27 and 30, which means they have more or less peaked and now just need to maintain that peak for as long as possible, which will generally require personalized training schedules. But if you aren’t into tracking stats for that and just want two super easy schedules you can put all your players on all year long and then forget about it, here they are:

Tech Focus (this one will be used by almost all your players)
Conditioning: Intense
Skating: Light
Tactics: Medium
Shooting: Medium
Off. Skill: Intense
Def. Skill: Medium

Phys Focus (this one has the highest average total gain of attributes, but it will mostly be Physicals For now I'm replacing this with Tech2 on all my older players, their decline seems to have slowed down)
Conditioning: Intense
Skating: Intense
Tactics: Light
Shooting: Medium
Off. Skill: Medium
Def. Skill: Medium

Tech Focus2 (Good for summers, as well as maintaining peaked/declining veteran players.)
Conditioning: Intense
Skating: Medium
Tactics: Light
Shooting: Medium
Off. Skill: Intense
Def. Skill: Medium

Tech focus has a slightly lower average and median gain than Phys Focus, but a lot more of it goes into tech, which tends to be more useful since most players tend to have much better physicals than tech on average. Some players (example: August Gunnarsson) have comparably high tech and poor Natural Fitness (hidden attribute) and as such will need to be on Phys Focus to avoid declining. But apart from needing to keep an eye on if their skating is declining on Tech Focus you can just put all your players, except goalies, on that schedule and then just forget about it. If you want to put in a little more effort it might be a good idea to have everyone on Phys Focus during Off Season, and then swap them to Tech Focus at the start of the season. Since Tech Focus is a bit lower on the physical side it will result in very few injuries in training. Which means you can skip the ramp up general->skating/fitness->normal schedule phase that is proposed in Malhotra’s Training Guide. Using this your players who still haven’t reached their full potential will have a very even gain of at least 1 attribute point per month until they reach full potential. At Swe-2 level where I normally play this means that your standard good Swe-2 level prospect who starts with 200-225 total attribute points at age 16 will hit their peak 275-300 total attribute points at around age 22-23 at the latest. At that point you just have to try and maintain their peak for as long as possible, which swapping back and forth between Phys Focus and Tech Focus does a pretty good job of.
For the sake of completion, I will add the two “special” schedules that were needed for my two trouble players (Christopher Fish and David Åslin):
Fish has to sit on the Schedule I call “Power Fwd” to maintain his peak.
Power Fwd
Conditioning: Medium
Skating: Medium
Tactics: Light
Shooting: Medium
Off. Skill: Intense
Def. Skill: Intense

Åslin has to sit on the Schedule I call ”Off Fwd” to not just maintain, but grow at age 30.

Off Fwd
Conditioning: Medium
Skating: Medium
Tactics: Light
Shooting: Intense
Off. Skill: Intense
Def. Skill: Light

These two schedules came about as my original schedules that I used on all my forwards, if they were two-way or more defensive minded players I put them on Power Fwd, and the finesse players all went on Off Fwd. When I swapped from having these custom schedules for all roles to the Tech Focus and Phys Focus (18 Players on Tech, 9 on Phys) I saw an increase of about 35% in attribute gain.

Prologue: For those who wonder how I came up with the Tech and Phys Focus schedules; I put together all the schedules I’d tried over several years and then took the average and median of how well each field (con, ska, sho, etc.) had done on the different modes (Int, Med, Lig). Since some fields increase more attributes than others I then created an Index where all fields were normalized around only improving 3 attributes each (which Con, Ska and Sho already do by default) to see how much comparative gain you get per attribute in each field on light, medium and intense. Then I simply put together one schedule with the most overall increase possible (Phys Focus) and one with the most balanced increase. The reason Phys gives more overall is that Intense Skating gives a lot of attributes, but since your players tend to get really good skating anyways due to it being one of the easier things to get an incredible coach for, you don’t need to have huge gain in it. I have several 18-19 y/o’s who are up against the cap (20) in acceleration and speed, while having very sub-par tech. So while dropping Skating from Intense, to Light massively decreases the gain in Skating attributes. It also essentially doubles the increase to Off. Skill and lets you maintain Tactics. On Light all your players will slowly lose Teamwork. On Medium it is essentially frozen in place. And on Intense it’s still essentially frozen. Which means Intense Tactics is a huge waste. Medium is a good way to maintain, and light leads to slow decline, but lets you squeeze some more tech out of your training. The only things, as previously mentioned, you need to keep an eye on with tech focus is that some players will lose acc, bal and spe while on the schedule. If that happens just put them on Phys focus in the Off season, they will gain back the lost attributes over summer while still normally keeping most if not all of the tech they gained during the season.


The collected results of my statistics, and the indexed gains of both Tech and Phys Focus, due to the big outlier I put more stock in the Median than the Average.


One of 5 players I've lost to the NHL in the last 4 seasons, first picture being from the latter part of his first season with me. He only had 1 blue tech when he joined. The second image being from his first season overseas with the Preds.


The collected results of Tech, Phys, Tech2, J-18 (Under 19s), J-20 (U-21s) on All players, Players up to 26 (players start declining somewhere between 27 and 35 depending on hidden attributes) and all players who are young enough to have been able to play in the J-18 or J-20 under my reign (up to about age 23 in my case).


For reference, these are the coaches I am using while recording these stats. You can expect to be able to get about 18-19 score on NHL level coaches, but in Swe-2 you take what you can get and roll with it. So the numbers I'm getting for these youngsters are much less than you'd expect with top notch coaching staff. I only have adequate training facilities too if memory serves me right. I'm also playing with hidden attributes (only show them 3x a year to record stats) and I limit my scouts to doing "realistic scouting" as in scout league x. Not "search literally all of europe for left wingers who are 16, have more than x in attribute y" and so on. Cause that would take forever and be quite silly. As a result this save has much less impressive high end player growth than the one I was pulling data from in my first post, where I was using every filthy trick in the book to get the most overpowered new-gens and regens.

[marksbros6]

Wow.

Quality mate!

I usually coach lower-down the leagues, so will try these out.

I like your idea of fewer catch-all schedules as well. Will be interested to see how they work developing 'lesser' players in my next play-through.

[Ferretferret]

Two questions: I read the above, but, was unable to ascertain whether or not the practice schedules listed above really did show a notable increase over the "all intense" practice schedule. Are we sure variance between different facets of practice types assists player development? (i.e., some on intense > all on intense)

Also, are year-round games a viable way to develop players? I usually make extra money by scheduling exhibition games every two days throughout the summer while keeping them on an "all-intense" schedule. Condition usually drops to 15-25%, but, I rake in money hand-over-fist, and players are rarely injured. Has anyone done any testing on this?

Thanks!

Edit: I'm performing some experiments of my own. Preliminary testing has indicated that the "all intense" schedule MAY result in higher attribute gain relative to "Tech 2" and "all intense + games every 2 days", for offseason development, with no significant differences between the latter two. That was, however, during a 2-week period, which isn't anywhere near the amount of time required to test such a thing. So, I'll be trying to extend the studies to the entire offseason, post-draft.


Results: Well... They were not fully anticipated, to say the least. Indeed, the "Tech" and "Tech 2" practice schedules yielded, ON AVERAGE, a slightly higher average of attribute increases versus the "all intense" manner of practicing. This was especially true for younger players who were already developing precipitously.

However, the highest average rate of development was found in the "games every 2 days/all intense" category. Again, this was especially true for younger players already developing quickly. Interestingly, however, the number of games played against one's AHL teams had NO effect on the development of players on these AHL teams.

i have not yet run a "tech 2/games every 2 days" condition. Further research is necessary, with actual numbers and figures besides the little transcripts I've put into the journal adjacent to me.

[Shindigs]

Yeah, from what I've found game time (as seen from the J-18 and J-20) is the end all be all way to improve the physicals at least. Depending on who you play the exhib matches against that will probably be the best for tech too, honestly. The thing here is that I personally am not trying to min/max training entirely. I'm trying to min/max it within the confounds of what is "realistic". And quite frankly playing exhib matches every 2 days for the entire off-season simply couldn't be done IRL. Especially not if you share the arena with other teams who actually play proper games during the hockey off season. Honestly in many many regards this game isn't a finished product, which means there are bundles and bundles of oversights and bugs that you can abuse IF and only if you want to play this game as you'd play any other game. Which is totally up to the individual, but personally I think the game is plenty easy as is without abusing all the questionable mechanics. As mentioned I play with hidden attributes, limit myself from dropping players on frees (cause you can abuse that a lot in swe-2), only scout on a per league basis, have my coach do all the lines and tactics. That way it at least becomes slightly more realistic, and holds some semblance of challenge. But that's just my approach.

The reason I started posting my findings here is so we can start having multiple players with different styles add in their 2 cents until we find out as much as we can about how training works. Because honestly this game has been around long enough that the community should have figured it out by now. But if no one shares their findings we never will truly understand it. Also add in the random event stuff that can happen, causing a player to drop 10 attributes in a month for no reason (none the game in any way shape or form hints about at least) and tracking stats becomes so hard, there are so many unknown variables that can completely skew even reasonably high iteration findings one way or another. And the more people add in with their findings (not their "i feel like x works well") I've felt like all these schedules have worked well in one place or another. But they can still be 300% apart, because when you are looking at 30ish attributes on a screen and don't record them once every 4 months you will "feel" a lot of incorrect things. At least I have, even with having logged attributes the way I have. I have one D-man who's been with my team since he was 16. I thought he was developing poorly, cause it felt like he was. Then I put his gains side by side with my D-men who felt like they were doing the best. Guess what? The one doing poorly had grown considerably more in the same time-span, he just happened to start off with less attributes since he clearly has his peak later than the other two.

[Ferretferret]

Yeah, every two months of game-time, I create a new save file, which I preserve on my SD card. This allows me to return to any period and examine what's changed over myriad time-points.

And, it's the NHL, so, I don't think I share the rink with anyone. XD Maybe I do, but, I wouldn't know. Honestly, I don't really know anything about hockey, but, I adore management simulator games, and examining the intricacies of them. I'll probably stop the exhibition trick at some point, but, for now, it's a rather exciting game mechanic, in my opinion. XD It also seems to be helping me keep my training on par with the AI's, who maaaaay be growing faster than it seems possible for me to. (I haven't examined that closely enough to make a definitive statement, however) I'm in the middle of final exams (and applying to medical school), so, I don't really have much free time, at the moment. XD

I actually don't do anything with the money I gain from exhibition games, aha. My player budget and final cash collected totals are tens of millions above what I could actually spend, as far as I can tell; it's just to maintain my players' development.

[Tasku]

There are shared arenas in the NHL. New York Rangers' Madison Square Garden is also used the Knicks and other events. The LA Kings Staples Center is used by the LA Lakers, to mention a couple.

[Ferretferret]

There are shared arenas in the NHL. New York Rangers' Madison Square Garden is also used the Knicks and other events. The LA Kings Staples Center is used by the LA Lakers, to mention a couple.

Huh, I never knew. I lived in Green Bay for most of my life, so, I'm a huge Packers/NFL fan at heart; I'm not really used to the idea of shared arenas. XD Or, such small arenas. I've gotta say, though, I've been getting really into the NHL.


Also, I just tested attribute changes across training camp. Apparently, there were none, regarding players actively on my team (some of the "open camp sign-ups" did improve a bit). o.0 That seems a little strange. You'd think at least ONE of my prospects would have improved a single skill.

[RomaGoth]

Huh, I never knew. I lived in Green Bay for most of my life, so, I'm a huge Packers/NFL fan at heart; I'm not really used to the idea of shared arenas. XD Or, such small arenas. I've gotta say, though, I've been getting really into the NHL.

You should check out some AHL games sometime, you have a team in Milwaukee. It isn't the NHL, but is still a decent product.

[Tasku]

Also, I just tested attribute changes across training camp. Apparently, there were none, regarding players actively on my team (some of the "open camp sign-ups" did improve a bit). o.0 That seems a little strange. You'd think at least ONE of my prospects would have improved a single skill.

Training camp is more a way for the coaching staff to tell who to offer a spot in the line-up, not so much to train. It's a very short time period, so I'm not surprised nothing happened during.

[Shindigs]

Yeah, most players won't really show any gain in that short a period of time. I picked 4 months apart cause that seems to be around the time it takes for youngish players to gain enough "experience" for a +1 to any attribute. Honestly, it would be better to play with alternate (1-100) attributes to get more granularity in the attribute gain. Cause some attributes (like teamwork) tend to grow/decline so slowly that random happenstance makes the statistics on those attributes really really volatile. Did one player randomly hit the point where it went -1 (which happens like once every 3 seasons) while you were testing that new schedule? If it did that messes up the stats for a very long period due to how small the actual gains in it were. Some players need 8-12 months to get an attribute to a new step. But once they do they generally improve in like 5-10 attributes almost at once.

I have some players like that, they always pop a bunch of attributes at end of season, then nothing for the next two recordings of attributes, then 5-10 again next end of season. This makes it seem (in the stats) like the training schedule they were on for summer and early season did nothing, whereas it actually gave them ~33% of 5-10 attributes, just not enough to make any one of them hit a new number in the 1-20 attribute system. But since most of everything being discussed around EHM uses the 1-20 system, not to mention that is what the game uses even when you have it set to show 1-100, it makes you a bit of a pariah. Cause your numbers won't relate to what anyone else is seeing. But it would make tracking the trends in training much easier.

You could even do monthly tracking at that point, if you ignore how much freaking time that would take. Gotta have the game actually flow a bit too, unless you are making a save purely for testing out training. But then you'd just save at the beginning of each month, reload and replay said month like 10-100 times (the more the better) to get some reasonably low outside influence numbers. But that would be like 120-1200 replays of months to get a whole year out, and that would take forever and be so darn boring. You'd essentially need to share a save to like 12 people and do one month each at that point. Or have one really really manic person with way too much spare time do all of them. Any volunteer?

Some other issues with the exhibition spam during summer: You'd need to actually have other teams to play. Most, if not all, teams won't be up for playing in the off-season. They have other priorities during that period. If you'd ask them to play an exhib in the middle of summer, they'd probably think you were drunk and tell you to go away. But there is no system in place for that in EHM so they just go "sounds good!". Not to mention there probably wouldn't be many fans willing to show up for pointless exhib games every 2 days all year round. Which means at some point you'd play for empty stands while still having to pay for maintaining the ice in the summer months where you'd otherwise be able to both save the money from not doing that, and (if your team owns the revenue) gain money from renting it out to other teams/artists/other events. So if you were to do it in real life it would probably come at a reasonable financial hit. Not a gain like in EHM. And if you don't own the revenue, but just rent it (which is fairly common in Sweden, at least) you'd just not rent it in the summer months, again saving a hell of a lot of money in doing so.

I don't entirely know how it works in hockey. But going by FM your players will actually have holiday in the off-season. There is such a thing as over-training. If you never ever give your players time off there will be both physical and mental backlash due to being constantly overworked. I'd argue that keeping your players on any schedule with team scheduled training every single day for off-season (which is the norm in EHM) would probably not be a good thing. I only played up to junior level, but we only had like 3 training days a week in the summers.