Several questions from a new player

[historysteve]

Hey, so I just bought '23 and am playing through my first all-sim season and a few questions have come up for me. I'd appreciate any insight into the following!

1. When I set "Offensive Set Description" and "Defensive Set Description" on the strategy page, the selections don't seem to save when I navigate away from the strategy page. As in, I set OSD to "2-3 Zone Attack," click away to look at the week's rankings, and then when I return to the strategy page (without having advanced time), the OSD says "Select Set" again. Is this WAD?

2. In recruiting, is there any benefit to repeatedly talking with players on the phone after they've given you all their information? Or repeated home visits, or scouting trips/film viewing sessions?

3. Is there any way to reduce injuries? Does increasing the amount of budget given to any particular category help this?

4. Finally for now, a suggestion for Gary heading into the '24 release - more tooltips! I don't really know anything about basketball, so I'm constantly having to look up what different acronyms and abbreviations mean. The more of these you can include in tooltips, the easier this game is for people like me!

[Gary Gorski]

1. The description drop downs are just to let you select one and get text on what it does. To use the different sets set a percentage of time in the above area where it says man to man offensive set usage. The zone attacks are used against the appropriate zone defenses automatically (but be sure you are practicing them on your practice screen)

2. No benefit in terms of finding out information but the more you scout them etc the wider array of scouting "views" you have on them so your average ratings shown will be closer to being accurate than scouting just once and hoping you got an accurate look.

3a. In the hamburger menu in the upper left corner click Options and there is an injury factor where you can lower or raise them.

3b. When allocating your budget money at the start of the year you can put more into the wellness section which could help reduce injuries.

4. Anything in particular here? For example on the Team Stats page there is a stats key drop down that lists all the abbreviations and what they stand for. If there is a specific area that could use more of this I would appreciate it because its one of those things that I don't know what is confusing for some new players because I don't have that vantage point.

[historysteve]

hey Gary, thanks for the response. Loving the game too, still obsessed several days later.

That's all very helpful, thanks. As for #4, I was thinking on the main roster page in particular, where the ratings weren't immediately apparent to me, but really anywhere there's an abbreviation on a menu I always appreciate a tooltip.

A couple more questions:

1. How does the game decide how may scholarships you get? I'm in my second season with a team of around 20-25 prestige. My first season I had 3 scholarships and far exceeded the board's expectations in terms of record. However, in season 2, I was given only one scholarship. What determines this?
2. Do players you haven't offered scholarships to ever join your team? Or once I've given out my handful of scholarships and players have accepted, I should basically just give up on scouting entirely for the year?

[PointGuard]

1.You can have up to 15 players on your roster of which up to 13 of those can be scholarship players (those not on scholarship are walkons). Seniors who are on scholarship will be graduating at the end of the season and those scholarships become available to be filled thru recruiting. Additionally if you have more than 2 walkons on your roster (and therefor less than 13 scholarship players) the number of walkons exceeding 2 will also become avaialbe to be fill thru recruiting. So if you have 13 scholarship players on your roster and 4 are seniors..there will be 4 scholarships available to be filled. If you have 12 scholarship players and 3 walkons on your roster and 2 of your scholarship players are seniors, you'll have 3 scholarships to be filled.

2. If you don't offer a scholarship, then a recruit has nothing to accept and won't come to your school. Once you've filled all available scholarships thru recruiting, those who've accepted are not locked in until they sign LOI's. Those who have not signed LOI's may not meet your school's minimum SAT requirements. SAT scores are provided on Jan. 28. So if one or more of the recruits who have only given you verbal acceptances get SAT lower than your school's minimum requirement, their scholarship is released back to you and you can go after available recruits up to mid-April. Also if one of the players on your team decides to declare for the pro draft (you get that notification on March 4), then you have from then to mid-April to fill that new scholarship that's now available due to the early declaring player leaving your team after the season concludes.

By the way..welcome to the DDSCB forum.

[historysteve]

edit - nm i misunderstood!

[historysteve]

hello brain trust! and thanks for the welcome : ) got some more questions...

Is there any benefit to playing a tougher schedule as a small, low prestige, school? Or am I better off just playing similarly cruddy teams and raking up wins? Do my players improve playing tougher opponents? Do I gain more prestige if I get an upset over a better team?

And...is it better to switch up one's strategy game to game given the opponent? Or do you all pick something that works and stick with it all season (I only sim games)? And similarly, should I be adjusting my coach philosophy year to year to match my team's strengths?

[PointGuard]

Scheduling: Tough to say. Much depends on your preferences and whether you feel you want to get the most wins or if you feel tougher competition will better prepare you for conference play (I've played the game a lot and really don't know if tougher competition really better prepares your team...I just have my own opinion which could well be wrong). Prestige does not change based on one game...it's based on your how you do in the season and in post-season tourney play.

I don't change much game to game but when the scouting emails come out about who you're playing the week after the one you're presently in, I do switch from spending 5% of my practice time on each of the 3 zone offenses to focus all 15% of the zone offense practice on the zone D my team will be going up against...then switch back to even if the next week the opponent's each focus on m-2-m D. Can be good to change your O and D set strategies based on how your team changes, but I pretty much run the same O's and D's every season since my remaining players are most skilled and experienced on what has been practiced and played. if I pick a new O or D, then most all my players will be starting from near ground 0 on the new one.

Others I'm sure play the game differently and the way they do things could be as good or better than what I do. Hopefully others will provide their input on your questions. Fortunately not everything is spelled out on exactly what goes on within the mechanics of the game. So you'll need to experiment and see what seems to work best and is most fun for you.

[Billdozer]

Scheduling: I like a mostly easy schedule with a new team. If your prestige is really low you might get a bunch of tough road games even if you ask for an easier schedule. In addition, I also like to have at least 1 or 2 tough games because you never know when an upset can happen and even if you lose, you can see the player profile from an opponent at the start of transfer portal in the off-season.

Strategy: I prefer stability in depth chart and strategy unless there is a big issue. I monitor stats more closely at the beginning of the season and sometimes make changes every 3-4 weeks for the first 2-3 months of the season. My understanding of the game mechanics is that there are many pathways to success as long as you match what you are running with what you have been practicing.