How to make a soccer manager match engine? Part 2

Even though it is part 2 (read part 1) we are still in the realm of very, very simple match engines, because understanding the basics is important to build another layer to your match engine. So far we were using the simple sums to determine which team had the advantage in the match, which is good enough for very simple game, but it leaves very little space for the human input. After all, this is suppose to be part of a game and game with minimal human input is... boring at best.

To move forward we need to introduce more player parameters than just SKILLS, because with just one parameter there is very little a player can do to improve his team than buying better players. The boring bit about it is that there is no decision to make before match than select the best players you have and each week they are the same players...

 

Soccer manager match engine C - the German

 

I called this one the German (I almost called it Ze German, but that is completely different story), because many of German soccer manager games were based around this formula. Not only German games of the genre (old British game Premier Division used similar rules), but it was particularly popular in German titles. Some of them were using similar rules even in recent years or in some online games. The trick was very, very simple - to the SKILLS parameter they added another one called FORM.

 

Parameter FORM works in really simple way - it shows in what disposition this player is in this particular moment. Now you can have a great striker, who will waste a lot of good chances because he has some personal problems or just doesn't feel well. You can have amazing goalkeeper, who will score an own goal, because his mind was preoccupied by something else. That's the theory behind it, but what it basically does is putting additional variable to the equation. Without FORM you always end up with same list of players in your starting lineup, because... their skills are always exactly the same. With FORM you should decide before each match if some changes are required to the lineup that you used before.

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But how exactly FORM influences the skills? That's the question you need to ask yourself as an author of the engine, but in original (especially German) games it was done very simple and very effective (typical of bloody Germans). For example in Anstoss the SKILLS were described using not and integer between 1 and 10, but using decimal number, so it is between 1.0 and 10.0. What difference does it make? You have two players with SKILLS on level 2, but one of them is slightly better and in fact he produces 2.2 points for the match sum.

It doesn't look like much, but this 0.2 difference could mean your team will win. And here is the simple and effective part - FORM was described as a value between 1 and 10 (sometimes 1 and 20), where 1 means the worst form the player can have. To make it even simpler I will change this and FORM is described by value between -0.5 and +0.5 (or f.e. -0.9 and +0.9). By that point it should be already obvious how simple and effective that is - you take the SKILLS value and just add the FORM modifier, so:

player 1, skills level 2, form -0.3 = current skills level 1.7

player 2, skills level 2, form +0.2 = current skills level 2.2

And that is it. It's that simple and depressingly effective. Bloody Germans!

The procedure steps:

1. calculate current skills level for each player (default skills level + form)
   
2. sum skills on both sides,
3. compare the two sums,
4. generate number of goals for each side,
5. determine win or draw.
6. after match re-shuffle the form level for players
   

Match engine C is basically a layer added to match engine A or B - you use not the default SKILLS level, but calculate the current SKILLS level and that makes all the difference. You can have player with good SKILLS, but long stretch of poor FORM will make his useless in some matches.

Pros:

• very simple,
• very effective,
• creates interactive element for the user,
  
• creates additional random element that will affect team selection - players are not a mass anymore, they become individuals.
  

Cons:

• random factor is still high, but FORM could be used in more than one way (what match engine D will show),
• does not make full use of other factors, like tactics,
• requires well planned procedure to recalculate form changes.