Roster is functionally complete

The roster is where the coach makes or breaks the next match up. I'm thinking the roster has 8 players (3 reserves) and is static throughout the season (10 games). You can move the  8 players around the roster during the season but players won't leave or join - the coach has to do the best with what they've got.

I think I'll need to tweak the stats for depth and strategy but here is my dev version roster:

This is just a random roster with a random team. You can see players heights, speed and shooting skill. You can see they have been randomly assigned to positions on the court.

Height (in cm - will be a foot/inch option) will be an interesting one. Height determines how well you can block a shot - or even if you can block a shot. The algorithm is rather unique and I hope it will be fun: when 10 players come together to play, all 10 players heights are sorted and the top four players have a size of "3". It's just a number. The next four highest players have a size of "2". Just a number - but smaller than 3. The shortest players have a size of "1". How does this matter? Size 3 players can block everyone. Size 2 players can't block size 3 and size 1 players can only block size 1 etc. You get my meaning.

That is a long way of saying the actual height of your players matters far less than the RELATIVE height of your players compare to the other team. This means an average size player might be size 3 on one game (because the opposing team is short), and then size 1 the next game (because the opposing team is tall!).

From a coaches perspective - you just want tall players. Always. There is no downside to a tall team! But how to strategically use this knowledge? An astutue coach will understand that the guard is around the outside and rarely shoots. Because he doesn't shoot often, he doesn't get blocked often - he doesn't need to be tall! Guards should be fast and being short is mostly insignificant. Yes, they will shoot occasionally, but that is not their core role.

Here is the above roster when organised into something that might be more effective:



If you compare the two you can see what I've done here: Biron is average height, fast but a poor shooter. Perfect guard material! I moved him to the top of the roster and into the guard position.

The centres are nearly always in the key and hovering near the basket. They need to be tall so they don't get blocked. Whilst they shoot a lot, they are close to the hoop so don't need too much skill. Oasis and Neathway are my tallest players so they are my centres. Oasis is my slowest player but he remains in the key so shouldn't be too bad.

The forwards are the shooters: they need shooting skill and height never hurts. Dirk, Birmingham and Roxan can all shoot. They will mix up the 2 point and 3 point shots. Roxan is really quite short so he might get blocked a lot. Blocks = turn over = bad. Using the algorithm above, if Roxan is the shortest or 2nd shortest out of 10 players then he would be size 1 and can be blocked by literally the entire oppsoing team. I'm sorry Roxan - you're a good shooter but just too short. He might make an okay guard.

So that explains the game mechanics a little bit and shows the roster screen is feature complete.