Let me start off by saying that this article is a further build to the Hattrick Announcement to allow conditional substitutions for the youth team. If you haven’t read that Hattrick is opening up for conditional substitutions in the youth team yet, please read that article/announcement first as you are otherwise most likely not to know what the hell this is about …

Over the last few days since this news was announced, HT-Tjecken has been answering a lot of questions, sort of like a Q&A session in thread 11418829.29 in Global (English). Luckily for us, Hattrick Library founder DogNatural was kind enough to sort all of them out in a thread in the Library. Let me give you a quick run through of the Q&a session and then some general thoughts regarding substitutions (SKIP THE Q&A AND JUMP TO GENERAL COMMENTS AND IDEAS).

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Q: In YA substitutions it´s the perfect way to know how good are the players in each position, but for example, will the stars showed at the end of the match the real value to compare a player that play 5 min with an other that play 90? (of course first one won´t have the grey part losing due to stamina)

A: Stars always show the average performance for a specific player in a match. So, yes they are comparable. Naturally, the longer a player is on the pitch, the better calculation can be made in general as there are more measurements points.

Please not that if a player has played in two positions during a match, he will only get a star rating for the last position.

Q: One of the conditions is “red card for a defender”. If I play with 3 central defenders, can I add an extra central defender if one of them gets a red card, or will I lose training for that?

A: As long as you don’t play with 4 central defenders at the same time, you’re safe.

Q: Wingers… In the manual you wrote that only the specific repositioned player that uses the winger position in 4-4-2 can be positioned as a winger… how may I know who is that player without using the html version instead of the flash?

A: When you give a repos player a player order in flash, a 4-4-2 grid will be displayed where you get to choose where your repos player’s original position is.

Q: What is the earliest possible time, if everything works like it should, for this to come to the competetive games of the senior team? Season 36 is just about to start, but could it be in action during season 37 all ready?

A: If all goes well I guess it could be ready for season 37.

Q: Will it be possible to see the star rating for the substituted player as well as the sub?

A: Yep.

Q: Can you tell us something please, about which kind of ME is useful at YA?

A: It’s the “old” one, ie stamina doesn’t work the same.

Q: Whoa? So a divine defender playing 85min as a defender and then switching to the forward position gets some 1* star rating because it ignores defending completely? Makes absolutely no sense. Showing the average would be roughly as horrible.

A: I agree that it’s not the perfect solution with only showing the latest position, but it’s the best we can do for now. It does not mean however that we stopped thinking about some other solution to give a better “feedback” to managers.

Q: How about individual orders? If the player just switches the individual order, will we still see only the latter rating or an average?

A: Same as with subs, only the latter rating will be visible.

Q: Will confusion disappear if I am changing formation?

A: Yep.

Q: Suppose I play 3-4-3, one of my forwards gets a red card, and I substitute a defender for a forward when a forward gets a red card. So I’m playing 2-4-3 then, from the point of view of the original line-up it will look like a 2-4-4, will I be safe for confusion?

A: It’s the same thing as your earlier question. As long as you don’t have more than 3 player in the same position at the same time, you’re safe.

Q: But now you talking about, lose training. I think Jetstar means that 244 isnt a normal formation what means, your players can be confused.

A: Perhaps I should read what it really says, yes.

If you change formation to a formation where you don’t have full routine, you risk confusion.

Q: The training effect is not mentioned in the editorial. If i substitute player in training position (let say defender in minute 60), with another player on the same position, what training will get both players? 60/90 for the first one and 30/90 for the second?

A: We got minute based training.

Q: I have not seen anything related to tactic change during the match. Because trying to play “italian style” by adding many defenders is OK, but it would be really adapted to switching to pressing or CA.

Do you envisage to modify that in next version ?

A: That’s an option of course.

Q: What would happen in this situation?

I play 442 normal and set:
1. Minute 60: If I’m loosing, put one defender as extra inner.
2. Minute 60: If I’m winning, put one forward as extra inner.

Now…

Minute 61: My rival score, so 0-1. I put one defender as extra inner, 352. Ok.
Minute 62: I score, so 1-1. My variation is gonna be ok
Minute 63: I score again, 2-1. I put one forward as extra inner, so I playing 361??? Is that possible?

A: That’s exactly what will happen.

Q: If I reorder a defender to “play midfield if a midfield/winger get a red card” and a winger(!) is red carded, then the defender will play winger or inner?

A: You can’t order someone to “play midfield”, so that scenario can’t happen.

Q: So I could start out playing 2-5-3, and say
- minute 20 change to 3-5-2
- minute 25 change to 2-5-3
- minute 55 change to 3-5-2
- minute 60 change to 2-5-3
- minute 75 change to 3-5-2
- minute 80 change to 2-5-3

And I would effectively be playing something like 2.2 - 5 - 2.8 with very little confusion effects? I can see this become popular with AOA teams…

A: You can only do 5 orders, so it’s nothing you can do that much. That said, we are thinking about having some “penalty” for every player order too even though we don’t have right now.

Q: Will you be adding conditional subs for injured players as well?

A: We want to, but I can’t say exactly when. Injuries are a bit more complicated than the other stuff.

Q: Are you talking about friendlies or official matches? I mean, can we hope for substitutions to become available in senior friendlies the coming season and for official matches at the beginning of the next? Or should we just hope for it to be available for friendlies (with or without official matches) in one season’s time?

A: I rather wait with all such predictions until we know a bit more how things turn out.

Q: Will you be adding conditional subs taking into account the possession?

A: I’m not so sure about that, there are both pros and cons with that one. So, perhaps.

Q: Will you be able to recieve formation experience based on the minutes you play the different formations?

Lets say you play first half in a 4-3-3 and second half in a 3-4-3. Will you then get 50% formation experience in both formations?

A: As of now you only get formation experience for the first formation you use. We will however most likely change that so it becomes minute based.

Q: Let us say I start playing with 4-4-2

The ref gives my forward a red card, effectively changing my formation to 4-4-1. This has never caused confusion in the past, and how should I interpret your answer?

1. It will not in the future either because it was the ref who changed it, not my conditional orders”

A: I’ve never seen any formation loss because of red cards during our test phase, hence why I’m quite certain your number 1 is the correct answer. Will see if I can provide a better answer later on.

Q: How about experience? Will the both players (substituted and the one who comes in for him) receive full experience by the same parametres as usual, or is that somehow minute-based too?

A: Minute based.

Q: But what about casual gamers who do not want / cannot spend more time managing their teams?

A: It’s still optional and it’s really hard to say how much impact a tactical change will have. And naturally, sometimes tactical orders could actually fail. But this is an important question for us of course, we want to keep the game as simple as possible though it should contain depth and tactical options for those who want that. I actually think subs aren’t that hard or complicated either, it all depends on how complicated you as a manager want to make it. So, I think it’s Hattrick style over this feature, but we of course have to listen and have a close watch on this in the future.

Q: What about newbies?

A: I guess most people who start to play a football manager game think it’s possible to do substitutions, it’s part of football after all. That said, I definitely agree that it’s a lot to read before you get the hang of the game and it’s naturally also our aim to make it easier to understand the game. But I don’t think this feature makes that situation any worse.

Q: How can we get reliable information from matchratings after the implentation?

A: Something which also involves a risk, and moreover I don’t think anyone can disguise their ratings forever. But we are already thinking about how to make the “match information” better so it’s easier for you to analyze your match and the choices you made. Ie to make you understand the match engine better (and understand that the random factor isn’t that big…). When doing that we will also search for ways to include this type of information.

Q: Suppose I set this order: at minute 80, replace player A with player B with the same position, on any condition. But before minute 80 player B already enters the pitch, replacing player C who gets injured. Of course, I expect that in such a case my order is just not carried out… Is it so, or is there risk that something nasty happens?

A: As one of the players in your substitution order is not available anymore (he’s not a sub anymore), the substitution will not be carried out.

Q: How about players not substituted?
Will the old experience system prevail there, or will they receive the new minute based experience aswell?

Meaning: will substituting a player at 85m be the only way for any player receiving guaranteed “full” experience for a single match?

By the way, does “before extra time” mean at 90m or after full time in league matches? In the latter the substitution will not happen at all.

A: It will work similar to how training works. You can gain 90 min experience per match. If a player plays for 45 minutes, he will receive 45 min experience.

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These are some of the questions which HT-Tjecken have answered in thread 11418829.29 in Global (English). But as this, as with any conference thread is constantly changing and being updated I’d encourage you to go through the full thread. There are also a lot of double posts, I’m sorry if any of that occurred in this run through.

In general there seem to be a “HOORAY! FINALLY” and a “I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!” side to this feature. It’s like with any new thing that Hattrick has implemented really, there are always two sides created (two sides of the coin!) and even though I’m sure the Hattrick creators take all comments into consideration, we are VERY unlikely to see that a new feature is being reversed and completely removed from the game. However, if the test with the youth teams should be less successful, we might see that the original road map to roll this out by season 37 for the senior squads is changed.

Personally I’d say I’m somewhere in the middle. It’s great to finally see a really big new function being rolled out, much like the youth teams when they were introduced. And as HT-Tjecken commented in one of his answers to a question, I also think that most new users expect this function to exist when they sign up to start playing. However, there are a couple of dangers to conditional substitutions. As the game become more complex, more and more managers that aren’t real fanatics might lose interest very quickly. This is also a function that more or less move away from the saying that Hattrick “are not different from a manager that plays 1 hour a week compared to someone who plays 20 hours per week”, that is; there’s no different between your level of commitment. Of course, they can argue how much they want that one does not NEED to use this function - that it is completely optional, but - if this proves to be largely successful, which is likely to happen, the two camps are likely to grow even stronger in both directions.

From what we’ve seen so far, there are a vast amount of ideas and comments regarding substitutions from he community. As mentioned before they range from very positive to quite negative. Some of the positive thoughts and ideas that have been collected include:

• Older players with lower stamina become more useful
• Lower stamina-training share in general could be an option
• Multiskilled players are more valuable, as they can fill out two positions
• Having many tactical options means you have to have a balanced squad,to be able to exploit them
• Some advantage to “tactical” managers over “money-bags”
• As counter attack tends to give the counter attack chances early in the game a formation change could become a powerfull tool, play strong attack in the first half of the match and in the second half switch to even stronger defence
• You play 4-3-3 CA from start, secure the 3 CAs in the 20 minutes (or first half), and switch to 3-5-2 or 4-5-1 for the rest of the game…
• You could play very defensive first half (like 5-4-1) and press and than switch to 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 (with stamina fresh midfielders) in the second half, of cause you run the risk of loosing some chance even in second half, but not that many, so that would be a very viable tactic use
• Possibility to check more than 11 players in one game in YA
• Able to precisely manage formation experience
• Does an opponent tend to leave one WB position weak, but which one varies? Attack one wing in the first half, and in the second take that winger off, bringing in another on the other wing
• Having two wingers with reasonable amounts of PM make switching wing attack sides very easy (two orders - one to switch to “towards middle” orders from “offensive”, and vice-versa for the winger on the other flank)
• Having two old guys sharing one position and getting one half each looks like a potentially powerful strategy for teams that are training properly, and don’t want to use 25% stamina share

Some of the negative or skeptical thoughts include:

• Subs will be pretty advanced tactically compared to the rest of the game. As many managers mess up with set tactics player positioning etc, etc this will be beyond them
• The changes basically require a manager to add 2 or so players to his optimal squad
• People will overuse subs, as they do with any new toy we get given by the HTs
• This lets me hedge my bets against potential cup upsets
• Favors rich teams
• I don’t see how they could be effectively used for much else than securing a lead
• This is a very useful option for skill-trading. The new sport is hitting the next level on the minute

WHAT’S YOUR TAKE/IDEAS/COMMENTS REGARDING CONDITIONAL SUBSTITUTIONS? PLEASE SUBMIT ANY IDEAS OR COMMENTS YOU MIGHT HAVE AS A COMMENT.

[The background information and data for this article was researched through the Hattrick Library (Alliance ID: 71795). Many big thanks to Mod-DogNatural for collecting all of the data in The Library thread 11436454.1]