Note about birthdays

I regularly get some questions about the recent introduction of player’s birthday's. It’s true that I haven’t given much information when this was done, that’s why I’m writing this message now (better late than never).
You all know how it worked before, don’t you? All players got their birthday when the last day of the season was reached. This had 2 big effects:
- The transfer market was like a rollercoaster between the end of the season (before players get one year older) and the beginning of the new one (when fresh 17 years old players arrive and when some training slots suddenly become available)
- The new user, getting his team right before the end of the season, saw his players getting older before they even played a single game.. while the another, getting his team right after, was able to play a whole season before his players turn one year older. This was very unfair.

The birthday has been introduced to fix both effects (even if the silly season had a kind of spicy taste and wasn’t really a problem when you were used to it).

Each player has now a birthday and ‘lives’ 133 days (19 weeks of 7 days) before getting older, whenever in the season they are created. This will make the transfer market more balanced during the season, but you’ll have to be extra careful when you buy a player, and watch out for his birthday because he may get older the day after you bought him, even if the season has only started.

Each player created before the introduction got a birthday too. The way it has been calculated could have been different … but whatever. The important thing is that they got one, please don’t worry (and don’t ask about ‘how’ and ‘why’). More than 95% of the existing players get their birthday on the day 133, which means no change for them: They'll keep getting older on the last day of the season.

Did this explanation help?

Chris.

World cup format change

To make upcoming World Cups, as well as national teams (NT) friendlies more exciting, it has been decided that:

- The next World Cup will be split in two: First and Second division World Cup, each containing 16 nations (4 groups of 4 nations each, as previously).

The 8 nations who qualified to the quarter-finals in the previous World Cup are automatically qualified for the next one, and will play against each other in a round robin tournament in 7 pre-determined fixtures to define their seedings in the next World Cup. These 8 teams are Italy, France, New Zealand, Romania, Scotland, Australia, Sweden and England

The remaining 24 nations will have to go through a qualifying tournament, to be played in a 7 round Swiss system. The seedings will be defined using their rankings after the next friendlies (July 21st). The top 8 teams in the qualifying tournament will play the first division World Cup, whereas the remaining 16 nations will play in the second division. The final positions in the qualifying tournament will be used to define the seedings of these 24 nations both in the first and second division World Cups.

Game engine v3.1

Until now, the game engine called v3.0 has been in use for all games.

As of now, you'll be able to setup your friendlies using either v3.0 or the new v3.1 game engine. We don't recommend you use v3.1 in tournaments or in friendlies where result means a lot, as bugs or other unpleasant things may happen!

This post will be regularly updated and will be the only official source to list the new features and differences between v3.0 and v3.1. Please check it regularly to get the latest information, as it will be updated when new features become available. (hopefully once or twice a week.)

NEW FEATURES and MODIFICATIONS.
1. After a scrum, the v3.0 engine accepted an action starting with the hooker holding the ball. This was completely unrealistic and won't happen anymore. Only numbers 8, 9 or 10 will start with the ball.
2. After a scrum, the v3.0 didn't see any problem with the fact that the first receiver could give the ball to a first or second row player. That was unrealistic as the front five are just leaving the scrum and looking for the ball. v3.1 will no longer decide that the first pass after a scrum can go to a first or second row player.
3. There will be a walk over if a team has less than 15 players on the pitch at kickoff (in v3.0, it was possible to start with only 14 players on the pitch).
4. Flankers will get tired! They'll stop tackling if they don't have enough stamina. One level is enough for 10 minutes of tackling. Which means that a flanker with a stamina level 3 will be able to tackle during the first 30 minutes only, a stamina level of 7 will give enough energy to tackle until the 70th minute ... a stamina level of 11 should be enough to tackle until the end of extra time. If a flanker is tired, another player will attempt the tackle instead.

5. Line-out. The formula for the two receivers fighting for the ball (still based on handling and height only) is slightly changed to find out who wins the ball in the end. The passing skill of the hooker is used to find "where to throw the ball". The higher the passing skill of the hooker, the more chance he will find a good receiver. (In v3.0, the best receiver of the team was always chosen by the thrower.) The number of potential receivers is unchanged and consists of the five players that make up second and third rows of each team.

6.Injuries. Some injuries will be so small that, although a replacement will need to be used in the match, the player injured will not need to use the sick bay and will still be available for selection the next day. On top of this, the probability of an injury occurring is slightly increased.

7.The Captain. In v3.1 the captain will play a small but significant role in your teams performance. In previous versions (v1, v2, and v3.0) your team would attempt to score a drop goal at random. Teams going into the last minutes of a game with three tries would, instead of attempting to secure a Bonus Point by scoring a fourth try, sometimes attempt a drop goal. The same principle applied when your team was losing by 9 points with a few minutes to go and no drop goal is attempted to secure a losing Bonus Point. In v3.1 the experience level of the player you select as your captain will determine whether these drop goals will be attempted or not, according to the situation your team finds itself in during the final stages of each match.
8. You can now choose the behaviour of 4 of your backs (10,12,13 and 15). According to your choice, they'll mainly pass the ball or try to run through the defensive line when they have the ball. The greyed choices (disabled) are only displayed to remind you how the others act (this is unchanged), and won't be enabled later.

v3.1 won't be in use for official games (league and cup) before season 15, which means that we have a little less than a season to test it.

Time to vote

There are 3 things I need to tell you.
First of all, the vote for your country’s manager has started, please go in the ‘International’ menu, ‘NT vote’ tab to vote for your favorite candidate who’ll be in charge for your national team during the next 2 seasons.

The second thing is about stamina. It’s true that stamina isn’t in use in v3.0 game engine and that’s not normal. The development of v3.1 is going to start soon and will fix this. When v3.1 will be quite ready, we’ll use it for friendlies (hopefully in may) and for all games when the next season will start, at the end of june. V3.1 will only fix some small things like stamina use, as well as some modifications in formulas when a ruck, a restart kickoff … happens. You’ll be informed sometime in april.

Last thing I wanted to say is that team training will, as from now and on top of the regular team training you all know, give a very little amount of ‘another skill’ (chosen randomly between the 6 main skills strength, tackling, speed, passing, handling and kicking) for all the players receiving team training (up to 25 players between 17 and 30). The amount is very little (around 2%), but as so many players are receiving it every week, you may see some unexpected pops for some player from week to week.

Have fun

First World Cup: Ferbruary 9th-17th

So, here we are. 2010 has started and so has winter. Fortunately, The real cold weather doesn't have any effect on RM, and no game needs to be postponed because of it. The world cup is soon starting, and here are some informations:
It will be 8 groups of 4 (teams ranked 1st, 9th, 17th and 25th together etc ...), with the 2 bests of each group qualified for the last 16. The group games will be played on 9th, 10th and 11th of february. Last 16 will take place on saturday the 13th and the last 8 the day after (St Valentine's day). Semi finals, third place final and final will take place on tuesday the 16th and wednesday the 17th.
You probably saw at there is a forum available at the bottom of the league page. Please use it instead of official forums. The official forums threads related to specific groups will be closed shortly as they haven't any interest for most of the visitors/readers.

Happy new year to all of you, from me and the whole staff. By the way, we got a bunch of users who have been willing to translate the whole site into german. That's a good new for RM and I would want to thank them a lot.
                               Chris109