Exclusive FM2011 blog with Miles Jacobson day 20: How the stars of tomorrow are created.... today

By Miles Jacobson in Football Manager 2011

Published 11:00 04/11/10

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In this morning's blog, Riz spoke about the newgen templates for Football Manager 2011 . Now, we go “beyond the templates”...

Part two: Beyond the templates
Another key improvement with regards to newgens is the modelling of youth recruitment for the clubs. Previously we only had information for the club youth facilities and a possible youth academy in the database and this information was used in combination with the club reputation to decide what level of newgens would be generated for the club each year.

Naturally this caused a bit of a problem in the long term games, because even though winning trophies and being a highly reputed club with state of the art youth facilities can help you lure more promising players to your youth teams, it still cannot overcome some limitations set by geographical details such as the club catchment area and the real life talent pool available around the club.

So to better model these aspects that the club has less control over, we’re now also modelling a youth recruitment rating for the clubs in the database.

The new youth recruitment rating helps us better model small clubs with established grass roots youth systems who have a pedigree of producing players that end up moving to bigger clubs, as well as modelling the big clubs who may be well funded and have a strong first team based on players bought from elsewhere but are struggling to find quality first team players through their own youth systems.

Clubs will naturally have less control over the youth recruitment factor as it is not entirely based on physical facilities or available personnel, but is also linked to the regional talent pool etc. However the rating is not static and if you do well enough in the game and gain more reputation for your club, the board can expand your youth recruitment networks to make the most out of the improved club stature.

With the introduction of the youth recruitment rating, we have naturally also revised the way newgen players get their potential ability calculated. The improved code has allowed us to better model the distribution of potential star players and to create more balanced youth intakes for different levels of clubs.

There is now also a much greater chance for the odd potential star player to start out at a lower league club only to be later on picked up by a bigger club as they start to show what they are made of. The new system also enables us to model smaller differences between clubs of similar standing when creating their youth intakes.

Each year there are also numerous smaller improvements to the way newgens are created and the way they develop within the game. With regards to the development of newgens (and real players alike) we have improved the way the game keeps track of the match experience gained by the players.

This means that getting your promising young players first team action is more important than ever and loaning out players who don’t yet fit into your first team plans to get some competitive first team football a step down the ladder will be much more beneficial to their development than just playing reserve or youth team matches. And the newly revamped training module now allows AI managers to train their players more efficiently, resulting in more lifelike development.

There has also been a lot of fine tuning this year to the way newgen player names are created, with a lot more variation now in the use of common names for Brazilian newgens for example. Not to mention a lot of work that has gone into improving the modelling of players turning into non-players as they age, end their playing careers and move into managing, coaching or scouting roles.

All in all, we hope that FM2011 will again provide you with numerous memorable newgens along your careers.

Huge thanks to Riz for writing the twi new gen blogs. It’s not long to go now til the game is released!

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