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**bbjygm** · 05-29-2019, 04:21 AM

Hi. I had an idea that could help keep retired players somewhat relevant and could increase the control that team management would have on how they want their team to play. My idea is to introduce a Coach player type to the game.

Intro
What: Coach player type
Who: Retired players can have the option to continue on as a coach to help influence team stats
When: Coach eligibility would occur after a prerequisite number of seasons played (10 for example) and when a player is retiring
Why: To allow retiring players to stay in the league a little longer and to let team management have more control over their team play style
How: Coaches would increase stats of player on the team they work for by a small amount, using their build to specialize in the stats they help increase

Influence and Builds
Each coach has a build like players do, but this determines how much they influence other player builds they coach over. My idea is that the build a coach starts with is the same build that the player had when they were at their highest applied TPE. In the case of a tie (same TPE applied with different builds, due to regression or reallocation) it would default to the most recent build. Instead of earning TPE to train their stats, a coach may earn TPE reallocation credit so they can customize their build while keeping their overall TPE the same. This would incentivize players who want to be coaches to earn more TPE with their regular players, and also rewards hard-working players with the possibility of being great coaches. The builds would be updated during normal update times once a week to hopefully reduce the effect of coaches hoarding reallocation TPE and changing builds quickly to throw off future competitors. Or, possibly, changing stats could require more reallocation TPE each time a stat is changed, resetting after each update.

With their player build, a coach increases team player stats by a certain percentage. My idea is that each players' stat is increased by 0 to 10%, proportional to how many levels have been earned in the coach's stat between minimum level and 99. For example, if a coach has 85 skating with their build, they have earned 45 out of 59 possible levels (regardless of if it was their strength or not). Thus, the coach adds a 10%*45/59 = 7.63% increase to each player's skating stat, truncated down in the simulator just like normal. A player with 81 3/8 skating would have an 81.375*107.63% = 87.58 -> 87 effective skating level in the simulator. The normal stat cap of 99 will be in effect, which seems realistic since a player that's maxed or near-maxed in a stat doesn't have much to learn from the coach in that aspect of their play.

Positions
In order to allow for skater and goalie players to coach, there will be several coaching positions available for each team. An offense coach (forwards), a defense coach (defensemen), and a goaltending coach (goalies). Each coach build only influences whichever players they are coaching, so the forward players can't benefit from a defense coach's build and vice versa. This can also help increase the demand for coaches so not so many players are left out because the best of the best have a monopoly on the coaching positions. The coaches could also be placed on team rosters in the simulator so they are properly credited with their influence on the team when looking back through indexes.

I think there should be a limit of 1 coach per position on roster so that they can't be changed out constantly to slightly adjust team play style on the fly between games. They'll have to be straight up fired and a new one hired to change coaching influence, or help sponsor their build reallocation.

Costs and Earnings
Each team will have an increased salary cap to accommodate putting several coaches on their payroll and they can be given salary and contract offers and be managed by the GMs. In order to be on a roster, coaches will have to purchase an SHL Coaching License and renew it each year they are on a roster in order to continue coaching. This should likely be a high-cost license to help prevent a much larger supply of coaches than demand, and good coaches can demand higher salaries to help compensate for the license. There could also be earnings for good seasons entitled to coaches that contribute to that team, but that grading could get convoluted. Perhaps coaches on teams that get team awards can claim a certain set amount of money for their good work.

Aside: another philosophy on this could be not requiring a license so really anyone with the player experience and whose player is retiring can be a coach on a team, allowing for a larger coaching pool to select from just like inactives in the FA pool. I was just thinking about the license because coaching might get popular, but there's only so much room on teams so it'd limit supply. However, there's really not much harm to allowing a bunch of coaches that aren't on teams in a sort of coach FA pool. It could even be a good strategy for some to allocate a smaller portion of their salary cap for coaches and just pick from the middle of the pack to cover holes or something. I actually think I prefer this idea more, but I'll leave both up for everyone.

Tenure
There should be a hard limit to how long a person can be a coach. I think something like 5 to 10 seasons could be a good limit, considering many coaches won't be coaching every season they are a coach due to license costs and/or roster availability. I was also considering a team tenure, but it seems reasonable to allow a coach to stick with a team that they work well with for most (if not all) of their coaching career.

Conclusion
Pros:
- adds incentives to sticking with your player for the long haul
- gives users some extra time with their player once they hit regression and decide to retire
- adds some more customization for GMs to influence their team's play style while adding a bit more management complexity
- helps add a real hockey role to the SHL in a meaningful way
Cons:
- more work and complexity for updaters with two different update types (TPE allocation and TPE reallocation)
- a bit more work for simulators to calculate effective player levels, although this could probably be automated at some point
- change to the league could be unpopular
- historical player records could be viewed as incomparable to post-coach records because of their stat influences (certainly team stat records will be)

I'd like to know other thoughts on this. I've heard interest from a couple people I've shared it with, but the implementation could be too much work for little gain depending on how popular it is.

Grapehead · 05-29-2019, 07:36 AM

A lot of people do roleplay their character into management roles, but having an actual influence on your team in the sim would be pretty fun. I do like the idea, but just don't see it taking off in the SHL though, for a few reasons. The con of "more work and complexity for updaters" would likely kill this idea with most users on its own unfortunately, because of the outstanding issues with updating as it is, and people's general aversion to complexity. This could also turn off the crowd who opposes situations where they feel the "rich get richer", where awarding successful teams is viewed as only damaging parity in the long run. Also, I dunno if I just missed it, but would a player be able to recreate a new player while still coaching with their retired player?

Segi · 05-29-2019, 08:29 AM

What if coaches couldn't be updated? Let's say, once you retire, you get to do a limited TPE distribution from your player. This will be your coach build as long as the coach stays active. That way coaches are more limited in what they can do and there is only minimally more work for updaters.

*Tomen* · 05-29-2019, 08:51 AM

there are actually coaches in STHS and they do have an impact but we just have them turned off.

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nour · 05-29-2019, 10:55 AM

05-29-2019, 08:29 AMSegi Wrote: What if coaches couldn't be updated? Let's say, once you retire, you get to do a limited TPE distribution from your player. This will be your coach build as long as the coach stays active. That way coaches are more limited in what they can do and there is only minimally more work for updaters.

I like this idea a lot, that way once your player retires, your re-allocation is almost like choosing your coaching “style” in a way (hyper offensive, 2-way, grindy, speedy etc.). Then, you can fill needs around the league based on what teams need to fill what roles. You reallocate your TPE as a coach in to Scoring for example, and a team that wants a scoring boost can seek you out since your style compliments their direction

And maybe for the sake of flexibility without burning out updaters, maybe you could re-allocate once every 1-3 seasons? That way if you wanna alter your coaching strategy and which stat bonuses to give to a team, youre not locked in to your build forever, but updaters still dont have to update coaches every week? just some thoughts

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**bbjygm** · 05-29-2019, 11:34 AM

05-29-2019, 07:36 AMGrapehead Wrote: A lot of people do roleplay their character into management roles, but having an actual influence on your team in the sim would be pretty fun. I do like the idea, but just don't see it taking off in the SHL though, for a few reasons. The con of "more work and complexity for updaters" would likely kill this idea with most users on its own unfortunately, because of the outstanding issues with updating as it is, and people's general aversion to complexity. This could also turn off the crowd who opposes situations where they feel the "rich get richer", where awarding successful teams is viewed as only damaging parity in the long run. Also, I dunno if I just missed it, but would a player be able to recreate a new player while still coaching with their retired player?

- More work: I was worried about this. Adding more complexity could also alienate new players more. Another suggestion of forgoing the updating process altogether and just having the coach build stay stagnant could avoid this, though.

- The 1%: I agree with this, too. I was hesitant to add monetary rewards because it could help create a monopoly of great coaches who then don't have to ask for higher salaries. That rewards part could just be skipped over completely. As for having coaches with more TPE, that's just a result of hard work by the initial player so I don't see any way around that.

- Recreates: I was on the fence about this before because playing with a player and a coach could get tedious if they were interested in TPE and money for both players and could also present a conflict of interest with the coaching build being set up to suit their recreate's build, but with the other suggestion of forgoing the update process altogether and combining it with no need for a coach license, I could see people having their coaches and their recreates playing at the same time. In this case, coaches become fancy power packs for GMs to recruit and use without much agency for changing builds to selfishly boost up their own recreate.

ztevans · 05-29-2019, 11:35 AM

05-29-2019, 08:51 AMTomen Wrote: there are actually coaches in STHS and they do have an impact but we just have them turned off.

I'm thinking if you went this route, this would be the much easier way to go about it. Would be interesting to see what more people think about it.

**bbjygm** · 05-29-2019, 11:36 AM

05-29-2019, 08:29 AMSegi Wrote: What if coaches couldn't be updated? Let's say, once you retire, you get to do a limited TPE distribution from your player. This will be your coach build as long as the coach stays active. That way coaches are more limited in what they can do and there is only minimally more work for updaters.

I like this idea. It could be combined with no monetary cost to upkeep a coach (get rid of the coaching license idea) and then the coaches become fancy power boosters for GMs to negotiate with and manage for their team's sake. It could eliminate most of the extra work for updaters and reduce conflict of interest in coach builds changing to suit their recreates, opening the door for being able to recreate with a coach active.

**bbjygm** · 05-29-2019, 11:37 AM

05-29-2019, 08:51 AMTomen Wrote: there are actually coaches in STHS and they do have an impact but we just have them turned off.

I did not know that, I haven't fiddled with the simulator yet. Do they make use of the Experience, Leadership, Morale, and Potential stats?

Edit1: I found some info in the STHS manual with coach stats:

Coach Ratings

PH = Physical
DF = Defense
OF = Offense
PD = Player Discipline
EX = Experience
LD = Leadership
PO = Potential

Edit2: And what they do:

PH - Physical Style - How good the coach is on creating physical strategy.
DF - Defense Style - How good the coach is on creating defense strategy.
OF - Offense Style - How good the coach is on creating offense strategy.
PD - Player Discipline - How good the coach is on player discipline.
EX - Experience - Experience of the coach.
LP - Leadership - Leadership of the coach.
PO - Potential - Potential to become better.

charlieconway · 09-05-2019, 07:44 AM

I don't know what the policy is on bumping sort of old threads here, but this is a really cool idea.

05-29-2019, 08:51 AMTomen Wrote: there are actually coaches in STHS and they do have an impact but we just have them turned off.

Is there a particular reason that they aren't used? For instance, I could see avoiding it if they act as too much of a multiplier on player TPE levels.

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