Players & development

Each player is one of the three races and carries eight skills rated 0–20: Game Sense (reading the opponent — the counter to enemy strategy), Micro (unit control in battle), Attack (the punch of an engagement), Harassment (raids on the enemy economy), Strategy (build orders, timing attacks and the nerve for an all-in), Macro (production and economy), Defense (holding a position), and Scouting (spotting what's coming — the counter to raids). Six of the eight pair off against each other, and micro and macro matter to everyone, all game long — the full picture is the Balance chapter.

Current skills are public knowledge: every profile shows the skill octagon, so you can size up any player in the world. What the octagon will become is another matter entirely — see potential, below.

No two races use the skills identically. A skill that carries one race is merely useful to another, and some matter most in specific matchups — that, too, is in the Balance chapter, in as much detail as the analysts will commit to.

Every player also has a hidden potential for each skill: how far it can go, and how fast it gets there. Potentials are never shown as numbers — to anyone. Your scout's report hints at where the room is; beyond that, managers judge a prospect the old way, by watching how fast he improves. Two 15-year-olds with identical octagons can be a future champion and a future journeyman.

A skill near its ceiling trains at a crawl no matter the player's age — when a young player's development suddenly slows, you've probably found his limit.

The scout's read sharpens with observation — first impressions after a week of training, a developing picture after a month, the full report after a season of watching. And the knowledge belongs to your club, not the player: sign a man on the market and your scouts start from zero, however famous he is. Only an academy graduate arrives fully read — your people watched his whole academy stay.

The same goes for the training diary: a player's page logs the level-ups your own program oversaw, and nothing from his previous employers — their notes were never yours to read. His public profile still shows the shape of the whole career, as it does for everyone.

Experience grows only through official play — league, playoffs, Starleague — a little per game, more slowly the wiser the player gets, and it caps at 15: roughly a three-to-four season climb for a regular starter. It is genuinely powerful — a seasoned pro beats an equal-skilled rookie far more often than not — but the cap makes veterancy a career phase, not a caste: everyone who keeps playing reaches the same summit, and a club founded in season three can genuinely catch the founders. The Starleague preliminaries hand every one of your players official games weekly, so nobody is shut out of the climb.

Experience is public (shown floored, as a whole number). Friendlies, sparring and community cups teach nothing — exhibitions are for fun and scouting, not the climb.

Condition (0–100) is fatigue. Official games cost it — a win costs 1, a loss 1.5 — and rest brings back a couple of points every night. A rested player fights at full strength; a worn one fights measurably below his skills, and the deeper the fatigue, the steeper the penalty. A heavy week of league play plus a deep Starleague run genuinely wears a star down.

And the toll grows with age. From 20, every year adds about 3% to what each game costs — imperceptible at first, unmistakable by 30. A fresh veteran still wins the big one; it's the third match of the week, the all-kill run, the Bo7 decider where the old legs give out. Rotation is how you keep a legend sharp: rested sparingly, he stays deadly for years.

Read the number closely, because it lies to the eye: a few points is a lot. A man at 97 looks fine and is already handing a fresh rival a real edge. So every player wears a word as well as a number — Fresh from 98, Worn in amber below that, Exhausted in red under 95.5. Nothing about condition is cosmetic.

Fatigue also builds inside a match: in a long series — and above all in a KOF all-kill run — the player who stays on stage tires while fresh legs come in. The deeper you ride one ace, the more beatable he becomes. Rotation is a real weapon; rest your stars before the Saturdays that matter.

Only you see your own players' exact condition. Rival scouts can tell 'fresh' from 'running on fumes' — so can yours (the scout's desk on every fixture page notes a tired opponent).

A player's year is one season long, aged on his own birthday. Age sets how fast training lands: teenagers soak up practice at a furious pace — an academy kid improves several times faster than a man in his mid-twenties — and from 18 on, every birthday eases the pace a little, down to a veteran's slow grind. This curve was recovered from the original 2013 game's records and lives here faithfully.

Skills never decay. What a player builds, he keeps: a late-twenties pro is a finished portrait whose results ride on what he banked — plus experience, form and fatigue. The flip side: his growth story is over. Careers are made in the academy years and the early pro seasons; a perfectly-rolled prospect, trained from youth, can peak around 100 overall.

From age 26, careers begin to end — rarely at first, on the player's own clock, with form playing its part. The full retirement rules are in Fame & careers.

Each player drills one focus skill per day, set from his page or the Training board. Overnight — with the daily tick — he improves at a pace set by his age, his current level and his hidden potential: high levels come slowly, and a skill near its ceiling barely moves.

Training schemes save whole-roster loadouts and apply in one click — one regime for the early season, another for the playoff run. The Training board also carries the training report: each player's skill-ups this season at a glance.

Development is logged. Every level-up is recorded, and the counts are public on a player's profile — which skills rose is your business alone. The recent skill-ups panel on the Training board shows the freshest gains as they land.

Salaries are paid weekly and re-set each off-season to track what the player has become — develop a star and his wage follows. There are no contracts to negotiate: the wage is the wage, and rosters are shaped through the market instead.

Players can be renamed freely from their pages — handle changes are unlimited, but never secret: the old names stay on record and profiles show "formerly …". History is the game; nobody escapes theirs.

Every player page on your own roster carries the scout's report: a summary of what he is, a read on his style (an aggressive harasser, a late-game macro player…), where the growth room seems to be, his form when it's notable, a fatigue warning when he needs rest, per-matchup notes when the sample is real, and his academy record while he's still fresh from it. It is the closest thing to seeing potential you will get.