Warrior General Games

My team gives up 4 Punt Return TDs per game. Any ideas on how to fix this? How should my depth chart look for Punt situations? I have no STOPs. I don't have a full roster, I'm still very much a n00b, so these are all contributory.

What would you do in my situation?

Check out the guide and useful links thread at top of this forum. Has a pretty good ST set up guide.

I'll try that, see if it helps Thanks Bane

what is the purpose of the punt coverage team? to tackle or to block? once you answer that, look at what players that you put onto the field.

Originally posted by Makntak
My team gives up 4 Punt Return TDs per game. Any ideas on how to fix this? How should my depth chart look for Punt situations? I have no STOPs. I don't have a full roster, I'm still very much a n00b, so these are all contributory.

What would you do in my situation?

Part of your problem is just that a lot of the teams you are going against have don't have CPUs and are probably better built. If you have far inferior dots no amount of tactics/depth chart or gameplanning are going to win you games although you might make it a little closer.

Originally posted by DarkRogue
Part of your problem is just that a lot of the teams you are going against have don't have CPUs and are probably better built. If you have far inferior dots no amount of tactics/depth chart or gameplanning are going to win you games although you might make it a little closer.

Depressingly, this seems to be the case. It's nice to take a bit of the blame off my n00b shoulders. Looking forward to next season, all of this knowledge will begin to serve me well, and I've still a whole 3/4 of a season to learn from my mistakes. Thankfully, my agents seem happy to take the XP

are you still planning to do a rookie team next season? rookie ST are notoriously unpredictable due to so many players being 1 dimensional. a lot of ST is watching each individual player and seeing what they are doing right/wrong. ST players are also heavily hardcoded into certain behaviors. so you'll want to learn how these players always move. a good STC will learn to take advantage of the hardcoded movements.

Originally posted by Makntak
My team gives up 4 Punt Return TDs per game. Any ideas on how to fix this? How should my depth chart look for Punt situations? I have no STOPs. I don't have a full roster, I'm still very much a n00b, so these are all contributory.

What would you do in my situation?

#1. as best as possible, try to have offensive players (or stops) when returning kicks/punts... and defensive players when stopping kick/punt returns.
#2, study the formations... AND how those formations line up AGAINST each other (kickoff vs kick return... punt vs punt return). Now watch the replays ... both the ones where you failed and the ones where you succeed. You should begin to see some patterns form (like which guys aren't getting through to tackle returners or which guys aren't blocking very well. You'll see where to place speed guys and where to put slower guys... where to have good agility and good vision and where it's not needed as much. Example; on kickoffs, your 3 BW (back wedge) guys need to be fast enough to get to their blocks BEFORE your returner does... otherwise they're basically useless. And they need enough blocking and strength to make good enough blocks to spring the returner. It's knowing stuff like this that will help you get your dots in the best places to do their best work.
That said, CPU vs Human dots usually doesn't produce the quality I think you want. You CAN improve the quality by having CPU dots in good places... but you'll be much happier when you finally switch to human built machines.

(Bonus) I know some people will shoot down what I'm about to say, but here is a little something I use to help me place dots on ST's.
Rule #1; Speed, agility, vision, strength, blocking/tackling. In that order I list the skills most important to ST's. Knowing those skill levels allows me to put dots where I think they'll do their best work. /////// Rule #2; Never use starters. ST's are a 1-and-done play set. Offense and defense usually run multiple plays. If you have dots on ST's that are starters on offense or defense, then either they'll be tired when they finish the ST play and therefore not as good (or not starting) when they take the field on offense/defense... or they'll be tired already from playing offense/defense and therefore not preform on ST's. Using backups lets starters play and backups rest so they'll be fresh when called upon to preform.
That's something to start with. You'll learn more with time as I did. Forums and friends can advise also and help. I hope I helped you a little. Good luck!)

Originally posted by Guppy, Inc
are you still planning to do a rookie team next season? rookie ST are notoriously unpredictable due to so many players being 1 dimensional. a lot of ST is watching each individual player and seeing what they are doing right/wrong. ST players are also heavily hardcoded into certain behaviors. so you'll want to learn how these players always move. a good STC will learn to take advantage of the hardcoded movements.

Yeah, I'll start again with a Rookie team next season. I'm already learning a lot this season so hopefully I can begin to make best use of the one-dimensional nature of new dots.

As it goes, changes I made to the punting team in yesterday's game were very effective (relatively speaking), I only gave up 1 Punt Return for a TD and goodness knows my offense had to punt many, many times.

Originally posted by Theo Wizzago
. I hope I helped you a little. Good luck!)

Yeah, that's great info TheoWizzago. Thanks very much.

The easiest way to improve is to put fast defenders at SE1 / SE2.

I think your main problem is you don't have enough human players. If you put your human players on STs, they're already gassed and can't tackle.

Honestly, sign enough CPUs to fill up a 55 player roster and fill the STs units with the CPUs who never play offense or defense. If you want, put fast guys at SE1 and SE2, maybe PP as well, but considering you have 8 human players on defense, I wouldn't even do that.

Just getting fresh players on the punt coverage units, even if they're CPUs, will help a lot.

the problem with signing so many cpu players is that they take that penalty for every player over 10. signing a whole roster of them will make them even more worthless than normal. i would go thru the roster and make sure that you have the right cpu archetypes.