New Player Guide

[siddhus]

Welcome to the Simulation Soccer League!

Make sure to join our Discord to meet the rest of the members in the league, and have a quick and easy way to ask for any assistance that you may need at any time. Once you join, make sure to introduce yourself to the rest of the league!

[siddhus]

1 - Create an idea

To get into the league, you will first need to create a player! The process can sometimes be overwhelming for new users so make sure to refer back to this guide during the process. Before starting, think about what kind of player you would like to make. With Football Manager (the sim engine), there are many different playstyles that you can have. Whether its a free kick specialist, a very aggressive defender, the fastest player on the pitch, or anything else, it is all possible to create, as long as you have some understanding of the attributes.

*While there are no restrictions on what position to create, we would suggest checking to see how many active players are playing at each position at the time of creation in the Position Tracker. With there only being a limited amount of spots for each position on a team's starting roster, creating in a populated position might result in you being stuck as a substitute or part of a rotated squad.

[Canadice]

2 - Create your player

Now that you have a few ideas on what you want your player to be like, visit the Player Builder. This is where you will be able to enter in the information for your player.

Player Details and Cosmetics
The player details informs us of how you want your player to look like and their name and birthplace. It is also appreciated if you add your Discord ID to your player in order to simplify the communication between yourself and other members of the league.

Attributes
Next you will need to select whether you would like to create an outfield player or a goalkeeper. Both have slightly different creation processes, with goalkeepers getting an extra category of stats to upgrade, while outfield players have the positional experience and traits that is included in their initial build.

No matter if you created an outfield player or a goalkeeper, it is time to choose what attributes to upgrade. Our Player Compendium contains explanations of attributes, traits (which will be looked at later), and important or key attributes that should be focused on for a specific position. This is also included in the Player Builder by using the dropdown menu and selecting a role and duty. The roles are sometimes tough to understand but the Compendium tries to summarize the most common ones. Read through it carefully, as it will help mold that player that you are looking to create and bring the idea to life.

Start entering in the values for all the attributes you are looking to upgrade once you decide what you are upgrading. Each attributes goes from a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 20. While you are free to upgrade as much as you want in any attribute, we suggest not going over the 12-13 mark in too many attributes. At that point in the upgrade scale the will not give you as much "bang for the buck". You have a total of 350 TPE to update according to the current update scale shown at the bottom of the builder.

Positional Experience (ONLY FOR OUTFIELD PLAYERS)
Now that you are done with attributes, it is time to look at positional experience. Positional Experience dictates how well your player will play if it plays that specific position in game. At creation you may select one Primary position and two Secondary positions allowing you to play at three different parts of the field.

Player Traits (ONLY FOR OUTFIELD PLAYERS)
Finally it is time to make your way to player traits. Traits are what make your player unique from another player that has the exact or similar build to you. They can help your player on the field, and can often be like tendencies such as "Likes to Beat the Offside Trap"; or "Places Shots". You may pick 2 at creation, and later on as your career progresses you will have chances to add more traits to your arsenal. Goalkeepers may add their specific traits later in their career. A description of the traits can be found on FMScout. (note that not all traits listed in this resource are available to be chosen)

[Canadice]

3 - Build Export and Player Pages

After completing the previous step, all you need to do is press the summarize button and you will be given a prompt showing the formatted player build. Highlight and copy that formatted text or click the "Copy Text" button to copy the text directly to your clipboard.

Next navigate to the Player Creation subforum where you will start a new thread to paste the information in.


1 - The subject of the thread must include your player name, class and preferred position using the format (SX) PLAYER NAME - POSITION, where X is replaced with the draft class you are creating and position replaced by your primary (preferred) position (found in the pasted output).

2 - Make sure that you are using the source mode of the editor which is activated by highlighting the rightmost button.

3 - Paste your formatted output from the player builder into the message field. You do not need to do anything more with this text unless you see a clear error in something.



Post the new thread and now all you need to do is wait for your player to be approved, after which you will have officially joined the Simulation Soccer League!

[Canadice]

4 - Earning and Updating

Earning
During your player’s career you have the opportunity to earn TPE (points that you can use to update your player’s attributes) and money (that you can use to update traits, positional experience and get even more TPE).

The league has two different kinds of TPE, Cappedand Uncapped. The Academy Tasks give you an overview of every type of task and try to ease you into the work of earning and updating.

You can at most earn 12 Capped TPE every week (Monday to Sunday Pacific time as seen on the forum clock) and each capped TPE tasks all give 6 TPE each. The tasks include Activity Checks, Affiliate Links, writing an Article, creating a Graphic or a Podcast, or having one of the various jobs in the league. Combine two of the tasks each week to earn to the cap.

Uncapped TPE tasks are tasks of various amounts of TPE. They include predicting the results of a couple of games in a week, a seasonal training camp, or surveys of different kinds when we need information from you as users.

There is also a third type of task, namely Career PTs that give you different rewards depending on the task. Every season a new task is available for your player and you will have to write a minimum of 300 words to the prompt given.

Updating
Once you have earned some TPE it is time to start updating. Each player has a corresponding update thread where all your earned TPE is claimed and you update your player which you have created during the fourth Academy Task. It is strongly recommended to use the Update Assistant for this process as it provides a formatted output that is clear for both yourself and the updater that will process the update.

All capped tasks can be directly claimed in your update thread while only some of the uncapped tasks can be directly claimed. Uncapped tasks need to wait for one of two things, either you will see your name in the TPE Claim Thread after someone has graded your task (ex. predictions), or you will get an “APPROVED” stamp on your post (ex. in the Career PTs).

When you claim a task you will need to copy the link to the specific post where the TPE has been given. You can find this link by right clicking on the number at the top right of the post you want to link. Paste it in the Update Assistant and provide information about what the task is and how many TPE you have earned from it. If you have earned from more tasks, just add some rows using the “+Row” button.

All earned TPE is automatically updated in the total earned TPE which also gives you an indication of how much TPE you can use to update your player’s attributes. Note that you are only allowed to increase the values in a normal update.

Academy Players have one chance to redistribute up to 100 TPE (that is removing already updated TPE from one attribute and adding to another) and you are allowed one free re-roll during the first two seasons in the SSL proper. A re-roll allows you to re-create your player from scratch using the currently earned TPE. It is recommended to use the Player Builder for this process instead of the Update Assistant.

After adding all of your earnings and updating your attributes, click on “Summarize your update” and copy the formatted output. Paste the output into a new post (or edit an old post if the updater has yet to process it) in your update thread. All updates are processed on Saturday or Sunday of the week, so make sure to get your update in by Friday at the latest if you want the update to be processed for the week after.