Scouting in Fieldball
Note: Teams in the Major Junior, Farm League and Junior Leagues do not need to scout. Of those three leagues, only major junior teams draft anyone and they can do it based on stats alone.
SCOUTING is the only method of learning more about players, whether they are on your team or on other teams. There are different things you can know about a player's attribute:
1. A vague description
2. A number grade [1-100]
3. A letter grade [F-A] (Major Junior teams use C+, -C- and C- to differentiate between players since they don't vary as much as pros)
4. Nothing
What You Start Off Knowing About Your Own Team [Applies to junior leagues as well]
A NUMBER GRADE FOR: ShotBlocking, Footspeed, Catching, Throwing, Leadership, Poise, Discipline, Aggravatingness, Decision Making, Awareness.
A LETTER GRADE FOR: Work Ethic, Durability and Mental Toughness
What You Start Off Knowing About The Rest of the League [Applies to junior leagues as well]
A LETTER GRADE FOR ALL OF THE AFOREMENTIONED STATISTICS [You've seen this already].
What You Start Off Knowing About Leagues Below Yours [Pro Teams include farm team league as if it were their own for the purpose of scouting]
Nothing, usually. Although, if you're a pro team, you are associated with a specific major junior league [due to geography] and so you'll know letter grades for the following attributes of all players in that league [ShotBlocking, Footspeed, Catching, Throwing]
How to Gain More Information!
You use your scouting department to get reports! You order reports on a player-by-player basis. You can get the following reports [I'll talk about their cost later]:
Skill Set Report Card
Cost: 10 Points
Gives you letter grades for Shot Blocking, Footspeed, Catching and Throwing
Mental Game Report Card
Cost: 40 Points
Gives you letter grades for Leadership, Poise, Discipline, Awareness, Decision Making, Aggravatingness
Background Check
Cost: 100 Points
Gives you vague descriptions of Work Ethic, Durability and Mental Toughness
*This information becomes apparent when the player becomes a part of your team simply from being around them*
Personality Check
[Player must currently be on your team!]
Cost: 60 Points
Gives you letter grades for Work Ethic, Durability and Mental Toughness
Advanced Skill Set Report Card
[Must already have a regular skill set report card done on the player]
Cost: 20 Points
Upgrades the skill set report card to numerical value.
*Automatically performed free of charge when you acquire a player because you'd see him in practice lots, etc.*
Advanced Mental Game Report Card
[Must already have a regular mental game report card done on the player]
Cost: 60 Points
Upgrades the mental game report card to numerical value.
*Automatically performed free of charge when you acquire a player because you'd see him in practice lots, etc.*
In Depth Personality Check
[Must already have a personality check on the player]
Cost: 200 points
Upgrades the personality check to numbers and gives you a vague description of the player's greed.
SO! Points. How many points do you have to spend, etc. That's completely based on your scouting budget. Your team has two restrictions on points:
1. The maximum amount of points that can be spent at once
2. The maximum amount of points that can be spent on a single player in one week
Lets say that you have 200 points that can be spent at once and 10 of them can be spent on any one player at once. That means that you can't spend all 200 on one player and get the in depth personality check in one weekfor that player, instead you can spend 10 on him and 10 on 19 other players. If you were trying to get the in depth personality check, you could get it done on 20 players in 20 weeks, but you couldn't get it done on one player in one week due to restriction 2.
So, what determines these maximums? Your scouting budget allocation. At the beginning of the year, your owner will ask you to assess what place you believe you'll finish in. The higher up you say, the less money he'll expect you to get in the regular season (because you'll reap the cash in the playoffs) and the higher budget you'll have to spend on media and scouting. This may seem lopsided: "well how will crappy teams scout well enough to take advantage of their high draft spot?" The answer is quite simple: They won't spend much on media budget at all, since no one's going to go at a crappy team's players and vice versa. Moreso, even small budgets can yield good results as long as the general manager is careful.
The more you spend on scouting, the more points you'll get.
For each million dollars you spend on scouting, you get 10 points to be able to spend and 1 point to be able to spend on any one player per week. So if you have a 6 million dollar budget, you'll have 60 points to spend each week and 6 will be able to be spent on any one player at a time.
Note: When scouting Major Junior Players, note that only players aged 17-19 can be drafted! You can (and probably shoud) scout younger players so that you know what future drafts will hold but they can't be drafted until they turn 17 and age is advanced in the off-season. Also make sure to factor in that older players are ahead in their development!
