autor: rtg
2009-12-06 16:47:07

Election Time

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a Senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] forestman or [U21] guacamole. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spammy activities will result in forum banning and/or financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections will start on the 7th and end on 20th December @ 22:15 so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

autor: rtg
2009-11-30 10:15:29

Junior Teams

Next season we are introducing a junior team’s competition for clubs. Every team that has at least 11 juniors may join junior leagues.

League System

A new junior team always joins the lowest division in the country, irrespective of the division the senior club is playing in. Junior league levels is exactly the same number as the number of senior leagues. The junior divisions are not divided into 8 team leagues - all teams from each junior division level compete in same league (so same league table). Every week the rounds are generated randomly. The league table is divided in half, top half teams play each other, lower half league teams also play each other. In the lower league there is a potential where there is an odd number of teams, so the same team may not get a match in the next round. This is counted and therefore if you find your team with a free week you will definitely have a game the following week. Junior league matches do not affect your team ranking, however, it does affect supporters mood, but several times less than a friendly senior match. You can also expect a lot less supporters turning up to the games in comparison to your senior matches.

Promotion And Relegation

Each junior season has 14 rounds, just like the senior teams season. After all the rounds are played the top junior teams automatically qualify to higher league. The maximum size of each junior division is the equivalent of the senior division. The number of teams promoted from and relegated to a lower division is always 50% of the maximum size of the division. However if the division is not filled, the number of teams relegated would be as small as possible
For example, if there are 32 teams in IInd league, 16 team are relegated and 16 can be promoted from lower division. But if in the IInd league there are only 20 teams, so 4 teams are relegated and 16 teams are promoted from IIIrd (4 teams in place of relegated teams and 12 teams on free places).

Your junior players

You can only play with players from your junior school in the junior match. Within the junior school you can now see the preferred position of a player (outfield or goalkeeper), age and total skill of each junior, but you don't see individual skills as they remain hidden. The distribution of individual skills is set for each junior when he comes to your junior team; each individual skill grows with the overall skill when your junior trains each week.
If you want to know the skills distribution before the junior is promoted, you will have to play him in junior matches, and verify his aptitude on various positions.

Other influences

A modification from the previous system is that your junior coach’s general skill now decides on exactly how the total skills of each junior are determined. The higher the coach level, the more exact the junior level determined. Also, the more matches your junior plays, the more adequately the coach knows his total skill and shows it to you. If a junior does not play in a match it does not affect his training - he will still get full training.
Notice, there was no change on the actual speed that juniors are trained, the only modification is how your coach shows the overall level and.... that you now can play matches with your junior teams

autor: rtg
2009-11-29 09:24:45

Champions Club Cup

Starting with this season, the top teams of each country in sokker will take part in the sokker club Champions Cup. The total number of participants in the Champions Cup is 128 teams. This total is made up of the following teams:
- 95 League Champions from each country that already have a national team.
- 33 National Cup winners from the countries that have the highest national ranking.

If it occurs, that one team wins both National Championship and National Cup, then the Champions Cup place moves down to a National Cup winner from the next country in the national ranking.

This competition is by means of knockout and shall provide the same amount of training for your players as an official game does currently.

Champions Cup games will be played on Thursdays. The draw shall be seeded based on your teams current ranking.

autor: rtg
2009-11-29 09:13:05

Match Engine Changes

From the first friendlies after the play-off games a new match engine shall be installed.
In this new engine the major changes are all related with your new junior teams to enable junior matches to be played.
Juniors play based on their current hidden skills, which level the play at is related with how well their total skill is visible on your junior’s page. Juniors will play as if they were in superdivine form. The juniors pace, for game purposes, shall be increased by 5%. This is to make the viewing of the junior games less dull. Juniors cannot be injured after the match i.e. if they are injured during the game they will make a speedy recovery directly after the game is finished. Yellow/Red cards and goals are not recorded either.

Other modifications are:

- Players height, the taller the player is, decides on how well they perform on a heading duel with opponents, on the other hand the shorter they are will allow the player to speed up quicker (but maxim speed is still same for short and tall players and depends on their pace skill).
Height has been balanced to not favour short or tall players, but it does matter what style of play you prefer - e.g. if you use the wing more, passes on head or rather through passes.
- Players may now block an opponent slightly while running to the ball, how good they block depends on their experience. For example an experienced defender will be able to either block or at least slow the attacker somewhat. Players will not block while heading. That change was tested three seasons ago and is now introduced.
- Tactical Discipline skill will now have an increased influence on the player’s position accuracy according to tactics during match.
- A defender will now watch if their team mate is behind them and basing on it decide to dribble or to pass in a hurry if opponent is close, this will decrease number of stupid loses of ball by defenders and also let you use defenders in offensive actions.
- NT players will get 50% of training instead of 33% while playing in a national match
- The offside numbers are now counted and displayed

autor: rtg
2009-11-28 16:55:41

Notifications

We are introducing a new feature that will be short messages, displayed as a pop-up box, informing user about some events. You can also review the notifications within your mailbox.

Initially only notifications listed below are ready:
- You have new mail
- Someone has overbid your offer

We plan to be adding the following notifications in the future as shown below:
- A user has read your mail
- Your player has been selected or removed from NT or U21
- You have sold a player
- A manager has asked you to form a pact
- You have been challenged to a friendly match
- Your invitation to a friendly match has been accepted
- Someone has signed your guestbook (Plus)
- A friend or observed user has written a new press announcement(Plus)
- Someone has replied to your post in the forums
- Your Plus has expired or is soon to expire (Plus)
- A player in your briefcase is on the transfer list (Plus)
- A friend or observed user is online (Plus)

Modification will take effect 7-8 december, after play-off games

autor: rtg
2009-11-28 16:52:38

Tipping On Matches

From the 8th-9th of December you shall be able to either tip the score in any game you wish or comment on the outcome of the game. This feature will be available within the TV studio which shall be opened a week before the match takes place and shall remain open for comments after the match has finished.
This new tool will enable you to see how others think you may do in the game and it can also be used for some cheeky mind games against your opponent.

autor: rtg
2009-11-28 16:34:50

Minor Modifications

We have introduced some minor modifications to the game:
- Popup menus on right and left menu bar which allow new users to catch up quicker on the menu organisation.
- Security of all pages have been reviewed and changed. Although this was a large change you should hopefully see no changes. If you do please post in the Bugs / Ideas (en) forum.
- Mailbox changes with the addition of notifiers (explained in upcoming news topic).
- League table colours to represent promotion, relegation, playoff etc.
- Sorting players squad by age, value, skills and also for plus users by values for each formation defined in assistant
- A short note has been added when publishing friendly ads
- Many minor bug scripts fixes

Modification will take effect 7-8 december, after play-off games

autor: rtg
2009-11-26 10:33:55

Database Table Cleaning

We have implemented an update for deleting unused data in Sokker tables. The purpose of this update is to enable a quicker data backup and morning update.

This update will clean tables of old matches that contain players that are not still active in Sokker(i.e. have been fired or deleted). The optimization will affect only matches that are older than 2 seasons.

For old matches with no active players remaining, the following will take place:
- delete players list (numbers) and players statistics data
- delete stored tactics view settings
- if there are no players on the list in both teams the match comment will also be removed

The optimisation will be executed from Wednesday and carried out during the testing phase everyday with limited number of matches affected.

After the successful testing phase we plan to add further data cleaning eg;
- transfer forums old topics
- match orders (currently all orders are stored)

autor: rtg
2009-11-16 12:35:02

Changes in transfer forums

From now on the following changes apply regarding Transfer Forums:

* Players can only be advertised in their home country or the home country of the user selling them. This means that all National Transfer Forums in effect become closed forums.

* Transfer (en), Transfer Star (en) and Transfer Junior (en) (formerly known as Transfer II, Transfers III and Junior Transfers) become the official worldwide Transfer Forums where all players can be advertised according to their own specific rules. You can add those forums to your forum list by clicking in ->Show other forums

These changes are designed to reduce complexity that currently exists in transfer forums. We also expect that National Forums become more usable as they will be more focused in the national players and local market.

Before posting in any Transfer Forum please read the rules thread of that forum as special rules may apply.

autor: rtg
2009-08-24 14:14:41

Walkover from Bot Team

As some leagues have many bot teams that produce walkovers in them, it makes for quite an uneventful week when human teams face them.

Starting this season bot teams will have their line-up and match orders set by using current order supplemented with new players if needed.
The default order is as follows:
- if there are players in the bot team, but previously not set in the match orders, they shall be moved into the orders.
- if a team doesnt have enough players to actually field a team then new players shall be generated for this team, to supplement squad, under the same rules as new teams being generated.

Additionally older players in bot teams will retire. How often will depend on age and value. In general if the player is 33 or older then it is possible they will be retired. A new player shall replace the retired player in each bot team as long as this player was actively playing in the team.

Both updates will be executed every Tuesday - until the season starts it will be executed every day for testing.