Career Management
Career Management
For a boxer to be successful, it is wise to think about the management of a fighter's career. Basically, this means to look past the present status of your fighters. It is important to have an idea on how to manage your fighter from creation to retirement. (and in some fighters' cases, multiple retirements!)
The main ideas for a successful career are as follows:
1) Creating your fighter
2) Go For The Wins Early In Career
3) Plan for the future and the Random APs
4) Reduce the unnecessary IPs and Losses
5) Deciding how to fight opponents
6) Managing Weight in times of crisis
7) Deciding if to fight an opponent
8) Deciding to throw in the towel
9) Deciding when it is time to retire the fighter
1) Creating Your Fighter:
The important things to think about when creating your fighters. First, determine the type of fighter you want to create. Determine the stats that would make a quality fighter of that type at the desired weight class. Determine the amount of chin needed. If your region at that time has loads of kp fighters at that time, it might be wise to add 1 extra chin in the stats for that fighter. If the kp fighters are rare, then use that 1 AP for another stat. WeBL has cycles, and so determine what would be best for the current state of WeBL in your region.
2) Go For The Wins Early in Career:
In the early part of a career, you have little invested in a fighter. Be willing to be a little less conservative in order to win the fights at the start of a fighter's career. This doesn't mean abandon all conventional thought, but it does mean be willing to take a chance that you might not take later on. The reasons for this are that often you will be fighting the lower tier managers. Secondly, you might win more of the fights by being a little more aggressive, because your opponent might be fighting conservatively. Third reason is that at 70 APs, the amount of damage that can be done to a fighter is a lot less than if the fighters were squaring off at 100 APs or so. Also, if for some reason you do get pulverized, you could retire him, and little has been invested.
3) Plan For The Future and The Random APs:
Have an idea what you would like your fighter to look like at certain points in his career. For example, you might want your flasher to have 7 KP by status 6, you might want an agile slugger to have str and agility at 18 by status 6. Some status points that you might use as your guideline is status 6, 10, 15, 20, 24, 28. You don't need to know what you want him to be like at status 28 when you create the fighter, but it is often beneficial to look down the road a little bit. Why do I recommend this? I recommend it for two reasons. Number 1 is that at times you will be gaining random APs. This random AP might be placed in a spot you would like it to be placed or it might get placed in an area that wouldn't really benefit you. If you plan well, it might just help you get through the times when you have the badly placed random APs. Secondly, it helps keep managers thinking about what they think would be best for their fighter in the long run. A fighter with a quality placement of APs is definitely an advantage.
4) Reduce The Unnecessary IPs and Losses:
When dealing with a fighter's long term health, it is important to limit the number of IPs and losses when at all possible. By this, I am not talking about the normal IPs and losses. I am talking about the very painful IPs and losses. Let's pretend you had a fighter, a dancer type, that had a promising career, and he was facing a slugger/clincher type. Look at all the possible ways to beat the opponent. Let's say that you have come up with three possible tactics for the fight. If you try these tactics out in the practice simulator, look to see how well does each one work? For example, with tactic A, you might win 75% of the time, but take nearly 80 IPs for your trouble. With tactic B, you might win 65% of the time but only take 50 IPs. And with tactic C, you might win 40% of the time, with 0 IPs in a win and only 25 ips in a loss. At this point a decision has to be made. Do you determine to go for the win at all costs? Do you take the lower chance of winning for less IPs? It is a decision that you will have to make. Some managers live by the win at all costs methods, and others have sworn by the lower IP methods. There is no right or wrong answer, but it is something that needs to be thought about, because a fighters career is a long journey (hopefully).
5) Deciding How To Fight Opponents:
This basically comes down to scouting and the information posted above in #4. What are your fighter's advantages in the ring? How can you use your strengths and exploit your opponent's weaknesses? What type of overall fight plan tactic do you want to use? Bash and Run, Bash and KO, or maybe a slapper type fightplan. Scout your opponent, and even yourself. Try to make sure you aren't going to be overly predictable.
6) Managing Weight in Times of Crisis:
Due to many factors, such as random AP gains or bad planning, a fighter may be put in a situation where he might be fighting overweight or underweight in his division.
-Overweight: The possibility of fighting overweight. What does this mean? Every division has a weight limit. If your fighter's minimum weight is greater than the weight limit, he is considered to be overweight. He will receive a fatigue penalty at the beginning of the fight, to simulate the energy lost in making weight. This fatigue penalty reduces your endurance that you start the fight with, and ultimately lowers your strength, speed, and agility during the fight also. This puts you in a disadvantage already at the beginning of the fight.
To determine the amount of fatigue penalty you would use:
Starting Endurance = (1 - R*R) * normal endurance
Where R is the ratio of the division's weight limit to the fighter's minimum safe weight.
For example, suppose a fighter with a CND of 10 and a fighting weight of 200 pounds fights in the Light-Heavyweight division, where the weight limit is 175 pounds. He can lose (10+2)/4 = 3% of 200 pounds (6 pounds) without penalty, so R is 175/(200-6), which is approximately 0.90. Then R*R is approximately 0.81, so the fighter starts the fight with 81% of his 100 endurance points = 81 endurance points.
The fatigue penalty is a result of the remaining endurance that the fighter has. To determine how the fatigue has affected the fighter, his STR, SPD, and AGL are reduced in proportion to the number of endurance points he has lost. For example, suppose a fighter began the bout with 100 endurance points but begins the round with 80 endurance points. Then the fighter's STR, SPD, and AGL are each multiplied by 0.8. These values are used for the remainder of the round.
Note that KP and CHN are not reduced by fatigue.
-Underweight: Fighting underweight? Is this bad? It definitely can be. Whenever one fighter has a higher fighting weight than his opponent, the heavier fighter has his STR and CHN increased by 1 point for every 10% in weight difference. Fractions are retained so that, for example, a 105 pound fighter with a 5% weight advantage over a 100 pound fighter would gain 0.5 STR and 0.5 CHN.
However, a fighter does not get credit for weight that he loses in order to make a weight limit. So if you are fighting underweight, your opponent basically gains APs of strength and chin. This definitely doesn't help your chances in beating your opponent.
7) Deciding if to fight an opponent:
There are some fights that managers will say are hard or even impossible to win due to matchups, or matchups that will result in a large number of IPs. There are basically two types of managing philosophies. Those that take on all opponents, and some that "duck" or opt not to fight a potential opponent by retiring for a week. What decisions are you going to make? Are you going to allow your low chin fighter to face a guy with lots of KP that will most likely win easily by knockout? Will you allow the dancer to face the clincher? Ultimately, this decision is yours. Again, neither method is the correct method, but expect to hear a little smack talk thrown your way if people notice that you "ducked" a fight.
8) Deciding to throw in the towel:
Deciding to throw in the towel can be a difficult decision to make. However, it is often a smart decision to make. If you are losing the endurance advantage and losing in points, your chances of winning the bout are generally slim to none. At this point, it might be wise to throw in the towel. This will allow you to take less IPs from the fight than if you would have continued taking a beating. This saves your fighter from the unnecessary IPs. If you know you have lost the fight, and are going to be taking IPs, go ahead and make the smart decision. Throw in the towel. However, it is important to know that in order for you to throw in the towel, your fighter's endurance must be below 50%.
9) Deciding when it is time to retire the fighter:
This is a hard decision for some managers to make. There really is no correct answer. However, I have two rules of thumbs that I try to go by. If you scout your fighter, would it appear obvious that his skill level has diminished because of lost APs. The second is I will try to keep them active if they are close to getting to my goal. This to me, means trying to win a World Title. To other managers, it might be a Regional title, or a certain status level. For example, if my fighter has lost 2 APs due to Injury points. I will usually retire them, unless they are high in both rating and status. This is because I could still get lucky with them and win a WT. However, if they drop in rating by several points, it becomes much lower chance that I would be able to win 5 or 6 fights to win a WT. At that point, then I would retire them. Having a fighter with 3-5 or more lost APs and having your rating way below your fighter's status isn't good. It weakens competition, and it will hurt your record and winning percentage. Go ahead and retire him. He will enjoy life after boxing much more than getting his face pounded in. Let the guy have his dignity.
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