College Hoops 2K6 Legacy Simulation Guide by Doug Dorval If you have anything you'd like to add, suggest, or would like me to put in the guide, please e-mail me here, at dougdorval@gmail.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revision History 1.0 (3/29/06) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About this guide: I know there must be some sim fans out there who picked this game up. After a few seasons playing I'm sure you wanted to see what a real career would look like if you simmed all the games instead of played them (that's what simmers do!). Or maybe you're playing through the season but would like to know the best way to recruit? Anyways, here is a quick guide I wrote up to provide some insight on on successful strategies to get to the top quick. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents #1. Selecting a team #2. Organizing your team #2A. Rosters #2B. Coaching Style #3. Recruiting #4. Coach Attributes #5. Job Offers #6. Schedule Making -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #1. Selecting a team If you choose the Career mode, there are a total of 40 bottom-of-the-barrel teams you can select from to start your dynasty. I usually like to randomly select a team as to vary my course, but if you're looking for a team that will get you started off on the right foot I'd have to recommend Jackson St. They have a high 70's point guard who's a junior, so he will keep you competitive at least for the first two years, and play in a very weak conference (The Southwestern) so you will be able to rack up a good amount of wins. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2. Organizing your team #2A. Rosters Ok, this consists of two important things. One is your roster management. I generally just hit the RS button (right stick) to automatically set my starting lineup, as the computer does a good job at this. But if you want to manually set your own rosters. I would put the best player at each position in at each spot. For each position a player is listed at, he can play more than one generally, here's the list PG - PG, SG SG - SG, PG, SF (rare) SF - SF, PF (rare), SG (rare) PF - PF, C, SF (rare) C - C, PF (rare) indicates to only play a player at that position if he is much better (5+ points) then the next available player #2B. Coaching Style The next important part of organizing your team is your Coaching Styles. This is where you can determine a lot of what your career path will look like. As far as recruitment priorities go, feel free to mix it up. I generally use a mix of 1. Intangibles and 2. Skills, but I haven't experimented a lot with this. Press frequency is important. Select "Always" and you will give up a lot of fast breaks and easy points, but this will also give your team more chances to score, so you could end up with a conference player of the year or something similar. But, if you really want to focus on winning, I would select "Desperation" or "Never" Now, the most important part of the entire game. The Sliders. I'm at work and don't have the game in front of me right now, but I believe the sliders go something like this, Tempo, Fast Break, Crash Boards, Pressure, Bench. Now, excluding the Bench slider, the other four work this way: If you slide them all the way to the right, your team will score more points, be less consistent, and have a better chance of beating better teams, and better chance of being upset by poorer teams if you slide them all the way left, your team will score far less points, but be *very* consistent, meaning they will almost always beat worse teams, and have a very little chance to beat teams much better then them. But this consistency is important for a reason. The reason consistency is important when simming is that once you start upping your coachs attributes (section 4), the first one you will increase is "Training" So once you get training to A+ status, (1 or at most 2 years), your players will improve year-to-year much better than other players on other teams in your conference. So once you've been with a team for four years, all of the players have trained to their maximum potential, and in theory, you should be one of the top (probably THE top) team in your conference. So, if you are the best team in your conference, and you have your sliders all the way to left, it is not uncommon to have a conference record of 14-2 or 12-4. Also this will give you a better shot to win your conference tournament and get into the NCAA's. So again, for win's sake, trust me, all the way to the left. Your first year with a team, if they are markedly worse than other teams in the conference, will be rough, I'm not going to lie. But by the third year, you are getting close to guranteed 20 win seasons (if you follow my schedule guide). One note: Setting the sliders all the way to the left is a stat killer for all the players on your team. Your team averages less than 60 points a game, and it is very difficult to get Conference Player of the Year or Conference Freshman of the Year (both of which give you a coaching attribute point). What I would suggest, is once you have an established team that is much better than the others in your conference, and you have a player that you think might be able to nab POTY, (Mid 70's for a small conference, low 80's for a mid-major, high 80's for Power), slide all your sliders to the right for a year and see if you can get it. If all you have left to gain is 5 attribute points, and it's because you've never won any of the player of the year awards, you might as well go for it. The Bench slider. This one is another one I will leave up to you, but in theory, if you keep it around 50, you will keep more people on your bench happy, and not transferring away. If you keep it around 70, you will probably play your best basketball, but anger more of the lower guys who might transfer away. Also, I've found that if you keep it at 70, you will get more players who want to transfer to *your* school because they see an oppurtunity for the playing time they want, but you don't see many transfers at 50. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3. Recruiting Ok, probably the most sought after piece of this guide. I have a general rule of recruiting that I like to follow. And it has to do with what caliber of recruits you should be willing to sign. Here's my rational Small Conference - Sign 2*'s and above Mid-Major (and Major) - Sign 3*'s and above Power - Sign 4*'s and above Ok, now how do I determine who to go after? Well, first, I have a qualification players have to meet before I go after them. They must have an 80% interest in me. Personally, if they aren't at 80% with me, I won't bother, I see it too often as wasted recruiting points that could be going to good underclassmen who could favor me in the coming years when they have to decide where to go. It's up to you. But here is my 'algorithm' of recruiting. 1. Look who is over 80% interested 2. Any 5*'s interested? If so, recruit them 3. Any 4*'s? 4. 3*'s? (Mid-major's and Small's only) 5. 2*'s? (Small only) It should be noted: if nobody fits the qualification of 80% interest, and the correct caliber for your size of conference, DO NOT make offers to anyone! If worst comes to worst, in the last week of recruting, you can always make an offer to some lower caliber players. So, if I have 3 scholarships to give out, and I have one 5* senior who is 82% interested, I will go after him no matter what. But say I have four 4*'s who are all over 80 (82,84,88,89) in interest for me, who do I give the other two scholarships to? I look at what other schools they're interested in (RS button), and if no one else has given them a scholarship offer, than I will offer one. Or, if someone has given them an offer, but their interest in me is higher than the school that did, I will still offer them one. So say both the 89 and 88 recruits have offers from St. Joes and they're 100% interested in St. Joes, but no one has offered the 84 and 82 recruit anything, I will offer my scholarship to the 84 and 82 because I have a higher probability of getting them to sign with me even though their interest is lower. Recruiting points refresh every monday, so you can sim for a week, and then check the status of your recruits, but I find it painstakingly long to do that, so I only recruit for 4 certain weeks DURING the season. These weeks are: 1. The week BEFORE the early signing period. 2. The week DURING the early signing period. 3. The week AFTER the early signing period. 4. The last week of Recruiting during the season. So, when I start a season, I will simulate to the Monday of the week BEFORE the early signing period starts. (the computer automatically spends your recruiting points for you when you don't use them) At this point, I will go through the algorithm I described above. And make offer's accordingly. Then I sim a week. If no one signed with anyone else, I will continue to spend all my points on the players I have made offers to. After that week, players can no longer sign with you. So if you have any free scholarships, make an offer to anyone who fit's the qualification. At this point, you can sim your season to the last week of recruiting (usually end of February) At this point, you want to make sure all of your offered recruits have been spent on, and if you have any free scholarships, and someone took interest in you who fits qualifications (over 80, right caliber), then make an offer to him! You never know if he might sign first week after the season. So, once that's done, sim the rest of your season. Hopefully you make the NCAA tourney, this helps pimp your school to future recruits. Then, the first week of recruiting happens. Typically, you will get a few signees and a few sign-other-place's in the first week. If you have any players who still haven't decided but are still offered a scholarship, spend your points on them first to seal the deal. Then follow the algorithm again. Sim one week, and repeat. Do this until the LAST week of recruiting In the LAST week, there's no more playin games. You need to sign people. Here is the new algorithm: Sign the best players you can who have a 90% interest in you or higher, and also have no offers (or lower offers) from other teams. You need to fill up your roster, and you don't want a bunch of 55 rated walk ons on your bench. So if you're a small conference, this may mean signing 1*'s, oh well, it has to be done. So that's the guide to recruiting, in your 7th or 8th year at a mid-major school, you should average a little over 1 4* a year, and a 5* here and there, and by the time your in your 4th or 5th year at a power school, you should be average close to two 5*'s a year. This will make you a top 10 team perenially over time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 Coach Attributes Through doing things, winning 10 games, making the NCAA tournament, and other success-related things you get attribute points. You start out with 5 to assign to your coach, and you can earn the other 43. It is important where you assign these points, and I will tell you what I think you should do with them here. First of all, a note, I choose one stat (say Teaching) and max it all the way to A+ before I begin improving anything else. The reason is, is I think College Hoops 2K6 works on a model of expanding returns. What I mean by this, is say if you up your Offense attribute from C- to C it improves your Offenisve Awarness of your team by 10 points. Now, if you improve it from C to C+, it doesn't just improve it by the same static amount, it would improve it by 11. So if you have two points to spend, and you split them between offense and defense, your team would overall be worse off than had you spent them both on offense, because splitting them adds a total of 20 points to your team, while putting them both into Offense adds 21. So, with the idea we're going to max out each one before moving on to the other, what order do we do this in? Here's my list. 1. Training - Non negotiable!! This will make your team one of the best in the conference after you've been with them for a few years. Combined with All-Left slider method, this is your path to glory! 2. Offense - Who couldn't use a little more offense? This will also help with your chance for PotY awards. 3. Defense - Helps overall win games. 4. Discipline - Helps keep your team consistent and less likely to lose to Mississippi Valley State. 5. Scouting - Helps your scouting ability and your gameplan ability. 6. Charisma - Helps in recruiting and in keeping players on your team happy. Once you get the first 3 done, combined with All-left slider method, your team will become a machine after you've been with them for a few years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #5 Job Offers Yay! You coach so well other schools want YOU as their head coach. But I'd be careful about where you accept. In general, only accept offers from schools that are above you in conference pedigree. So if you're a small school, and University of New Hampshire offers you a job, don't take it! With your training ability already high and having groomed your team for a few years, it should be much better than whatever you get at UNH! But, say, the offer came from Old Dominion, say goodbye to your former school! The object of the game is to win and you can't expect to win a national championship coaching at a crappy school your whole life! You can check what conference class a team is in the job offers menu by using the RS button and scrolling through their profile. It will tell you what size conference they play in. Another fun thing I like to do is have a “dream” job you want to attain from the start, like the UNC head coach position, and work your way up to a power school, and make your power school one of the best in the country. And then, when UNC has an off year and fires their coach (or he retires) you can bolt over to your dream job and finally reap the rewards (a la back-stabber Roy Williams circa 2003). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #6 Schedule Making This is one of the funnest parts of the game, and I don’t want to take that away from you, so feel free to expereiment and make your non-conference schedule as easy/hard as you want. But a word of advice: if you are undefeated into the 2nd or 3rd week of December, you have a very good chance to be ranked nationally, so setting an easy NC schedule does work to your advantage (just ask Jim Boeheim and the Syracuse Orange who schedule DII schools sometimes!) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusion Well, that’s it, hope it proved helpful! Once again, if you want clarification, or anything added, or even just have a suggestion, send it over to dougdorval@gmail.com. Thanks!