First things first, do not post in this Forum. This is here to provide as much reference material to newbies and oldies alike regarding the Dark Art that is Gameplanning

If you want to discuss something, I would advise ask questions in Discord for the first instance.

To this end, I plan to cover.

Offensive Gameplanning
Defensive Gameplanning
Play Selection
Scouting
Misc Page
Run/Pass Keying
And Introduction to Rules


So on with the Show.

*Pictures will follow at some point in the future, when I have better internet!

Offensive Gameplanning

First a Brief Overview of the Short/Med/Long System

These are game set distances for Distance set by Each down. In theory, you will mostly be using your Medium Game plan. Think of this as your default setting. The game should adjust towards your Long Game plan if you aren't making much distance per play and towards your Short play if you are making great progress.

I can't remember what the Default distances set by the game are, but they are entirely reasonable for each Down and you shouldn't worry about it too much.

For how you can adjust how this changes, see Misc -> GP Adjustment Speed!


Back to the Sliders
The sliders are a powerful tool for getting something that you want, honestly, for me, it is about finding balance in what you are using. Use certain plays too much you get play overuse (more about these on Run/Pass keying.... you'll understand).

You may notice there are two sliders, the game logic picks these sliders in order, It Pick Play Type (under Gameplan) first, then it picks Personnel. This is why I say balance.

Why?

For starters, you have the Options of Outside/Inside Run and Short/Medium/Long Passes. Your play book will be made up of a variety of these from a variety of Formations, it's your choice what formations you use and what plays to pick. That's what makes your team yours.

However, if you set your Gameplan to be 50 Inside Run 30 Short Pass and 20 Medium Pass and then heavily weight your personnel to be 122, but you only have one Inside run as opposed to 212 which has 3 or 4 inside runs. You will probably find your 122 Inside Run gets selected an awful lot more over your 212's.

This will risk putting your 122 into the Play Overuse penalty zone and unstick your otherwise perfectly sound game plan.

At the end of the day, sliders are about balancing your game plan to get it to do choose plays in a balanced way. This doesn't mean each section of the pitch has to be the same, nothing stops you running 230 (2RB/3TE) only in Opposition 25-0.

There is no magic slider that will make everything work, however, if your sliders are meaning you are calling a certain run 10 times a game, you probably will want to look at making some adjustments. Play overuse is the easiest way to unstick a game plan and the sliders are usually the primary culprit.

Defensive Gameplanning

To be honest, there is not much else to add beyond what I've said previously.

Except I believe your sliders go from Secondary then Linebackers. So the Secondary Sliders run on all plays in your Playbook, then Line-backers runs on the Narrowed down selection of plays.

I say not much, there is one crucial thing the game does, it always man matchs WR's to CB's.

If your Opponent plays 2WR's it will pick from Normal Defence and 46 Heavy plays. 3WR it will pick from your Nickel Plays, 4WR your Dime and 5WR your Quarter plays. That is the default way the game works. It's worth knowing.

Play overuse is less of a thing here, I believe, remembering from the distant pass, Play Overuse only affects Blitz Plays. I've forgotten why this is, it probably involved a bloke called setherick.

Again, for the most part, this is about balance, you don't want to overuse plays defensively too much, even if they aren't Blitz Plays. Why? Because your opponent will be scouting you and that play you call 8 times on average per game, is going to get scouted.

Sorry to say, no magic bullet here regarding defence planning.

Play Selection

Forget your sliders, this is by far the most important thing you can do for your team. You can balance your play calling to whatever style you want, however, if your playbook is rubbish, the sliders won't help.

You need to filter your plays regularly, seeing which ones are performing and which one's aren't. I'll say this now, Pre-season is terrible for this, you will find some that perform in Pre-season don't perform in Competitive Fixtures, the only way to get your Playbook in shape is proper competitive matches.

That being said a bit of guidance.
Offence - Anything running 2 > Yards on Average over a number of games and calls. Ideally you will be look at any play called more than 10 times over the last few games.

Defence - Anything giving up more than 5 Yards is worth monitoring, anything more than 7-8 start chopping and 10+ is costing you big time.

With both of these, it is also worth taking some account of your opposition, especially for Defence Plays!

Otherwise, which Formations you pick, which plays you pick and how you adjust the sliders to find the balance for the team you want to create is how you create your teams overall style.

Scouting

Always do your scouting, it's can be quite noticeable without, as to how you decide which to Scout. It's a balance between the plays that are most successful for them and the ones they use the most.

How you solve the conundrum is up to you! However, you should always, always do your scouting.... If nothing else.

Misc
Let's run through this Quickly

Max FG Normal - This sets your Field Goal Distance for Normal Play, gives you the 70% Success distance for your kicker.

Max FG End of Half - This only applies if it is to tie or win the game at the end of either half. That means 3 or less behind. If you are further behind, it won't apply.

Note of Field Goal Locations - Because Field Goals take place 7 Yards behind line of Scrimmage and the Goal is 10 yards beyond the Touchdown line, your Field Goal attempt location "= Field Goal Length - 17". E.G. A 40 Yard Field Goal will happen from the 33 Yard line.I'll come back to this point in Rules

Max Fatigue - This sets at what level players are subbed off for fatigue. Lower Value means they are subbed sooner, you can set by position group. Set by position group.

GP Adjustment Speed - So you know how you have Short/Med/Long Distances. This is a distance set by the game for each Down/Distance, I can't tell you exactly what they are, however this number affects how quickly those numbers change. Higher is more volatile. 0 keeps the values fixed. What it should me is in situations where you are struggling to make ground, the numbers will adjust so you call you Long Gameplan more, if you are making massive headway, it will move those numbers so you call from your Short Gameplan more.

*Makes mental note to write about this earlier on

Hurry Up - This means when the game calls your Hurry Up Offence. Only if you are loosing. Hurry up Offence is 100% Pass, go for it on 4th etc. The number sets when you want to start hurry up if 1 Score down (1-7 down), this multiplies for each score down. So for 3 score down (15-21) you will start hurry up at 9 minutes for a value of 3.

Slow Down - Same as Hurry up, just if you are winning, will pick 100% run plays. Same formula for Scores but this time for Scores ahead.

2 Point Conversion - When you go for 2 points. This is set automatically to the Super Duper NFL 2 Point Conversion table that is used by just about everyone, so no need to fiddle.

If Winning the toss - Do I really need to explain this? However Beans has made a good point that you should always choose to Receive as the Toss Affects Overtime as well. You want to be Receiving First in Overtime, so you should elect to Receive if you Win the Toss.

Pull Starters - When and which starters to pull. You set the winning amount and then the time and if those conditions are met, starters are pulled.

Run/Pass Keying

First things first, No Key is better than a bad key. If in doubt, leave it neutral.

Run/Pass key is your prediction of how a team is likely to play in a certain Area/Down/Distance situation. On the bottom, below the field, you can see the Run/Pass Splits for your next opponent for each Area/Down/Distance combo. You can set how many games back you want this data from, you want some, but not too many. Where you decide to go is up to you!

However, that does not mean if a team is splitting 50/50 Run/Pass that is what you should set your key to. That's terrible!

What that will do is mean is you will likely find is about 50% of your Pass calls are runs and vice versa for your Run Calls. This means your correct call rate is actually pretty low. And bad calls cost you. You should only be trying to make some kind of call when there is a definite likelihood they will play one over the other. And even then, you still don't need to go 100%, you have a slider, use some finesse.

And if in doubt go Neutral!

Play Overuse
I bring up play over use here because Play over use puts penalties on plays that are being used a lot during a game. This mainly affects Offensive Plays and only Blitz Defensive Plays are affected.

Play overuse in the the most extreme circumstances, will appear on your Play by Play as Play over use. It will say, "Looks like they've used that one a lot" or " They knew that was coming" or something like that. You'll should know it when you see it, or just ask. That appears after the 6th use.

However after the 3rd use, the game automatically starts calling the Correct Pass/Run Key for the play. This is why a say Neutral is no bad thing. If a play is overused, the game will automatically start play calling against it, 100% correctly on it's 4th appearance in a game.

This is also why you should bear this in mind in your own gameplanning. Between 3-6 appearances per game is no deal breaker for a good play, 3 is not a hard limit that I advise, but anything more than that and you should be making adjustments. The full play overuse penalty get's quite harsh.

I would advise as 6 being a hard limit. However, only over multiple games. Sometimes one freak game and the RNG can play call a play quite a lot for no other than RANDOM!

Rules

Rules are for finer control of your team, they should be used in conjunction with sliders, not as a replacement. That get's too messy.

Rules always take precedence over all other parts of your gameplan and if the Rule Conditions are met, the highest in the list is the on that is picked. You can deactivate Rules if you don't want them for your next game. They are still there, but shaded out. Use carefully, however, if something janky is going on and your don't know why.... Look at your rules!

Also rules, do not call by Play Type then Personnel like sliders. If weights the plays based on the sliders you select for both of those in the rule. The little Red bar for each play if you click "View Plays" shows you how they are weighted.

Rules are Split into Conditions the things that makes you call this rule and Decisions, what you want to happen when those conditions are met.

Defensive Rules
I will give you an run through of a really good starting defensive rule. Your Opponent plays 5WR, 5WR has only Passes. This means you can set up a 100% Pass Key rule for 5WR Sets.

Conditions
-First Select Defense
-Select All downs plus Extra Point, you'll need to do this individually.
-Select all 3 Distance Options (Distance can also be selected by numbers on rules, but for this rule that is not needed)
-Selection all 4 field locations (Locations can also be selected by numbers and not just the 4 locations the game divides the field up into).
-Selection 5WR Personnel - In this case, what you opponents personnel is, is a Condition for your rule. So Personnel on conditions is the Offensive Formation your opponent is using.
-Select All Quarter and Overtime.
-Time 15:00 - 0:00
-All Scores - Can be done by Down 29+ to Up 29+. If you did this from 0 to +10 you would only call this rule, when you were drawing or winning by up to 10 points.

Decisions
-Personnel - This is the defensive personnel you want to call, for a 4WR play, the game would normally call Quarter and this is what I advise selecting. Move that slider to 100, that means you will only select from your Quarter Plays. Make sure your playbook has the relevant plays in it.
-Set Secondary and Linebacker sliders so that it weights your plays available for selection as to which are most likely to be called. To see the Red Bars - Save the Rule and Click "View Plays"
-For this rule, we know, because of the formation, it will always be a Pass. Therefore in this instance you can set Pass to 100 and leave Run and Neutral at 0.

If when you click view plays you have no plays appearing, you have no plays that satisfy the rule in your playbook

This is a good default rule to run. You can now have fun doing the same on your own for 4WR sets as both of those are 100% Pass sets. You only need one rule to do both! However, I would advice using Dime not Quarter.

Offensive Rules
These follow the same idea as Defence.

For Conditions you selection Down, Distance, Location, Quarter, Time in the Quarter and Score Scenario you want the rule to be called.

For Decisions you only need to Move the Sliders for Play Type and Formation. Remember, unlike sliders these are weighted simultaneously. If you want to see which plays are weighted the most heavily, Save and Click View Plays.

For this reason, I advise rules to be kept very narrow in their scope. Don't try and weight 4 different formations in a rule, use if for very specific scenarios.

For example, you are Drawing or Behind and 3 yards away from FG range on 3rd Down. You could set up a rule that means you on the Fourth Down, at that distance and location and those scores, you Pass/Run and Go for it.

At the end of the day, with Rules, remember the Conditions and Decisions, take your time and don't go too mad until your got a basic grip of it. Keep the narrow and specific and you should go too far wrong. Not every player plays massively with rules, so it's not much of a handicap to not play with it too much.

However the 100% Pass Key for 5WR and 4WR is a default advice given the community so I have given you that one.