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 coach'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 slows markedly no matter the player's age — when a young player's development suddenly drags, you've probably found his limit.

The coach'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 coaches start from zero, however famous he is. That goes for your own academy too: the day a kid is promoted to the first team, its coaches start from zero like everyone else.

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.

Exhibitions are played fresh. A friendly, a spar, a community cup or one of the academy's practice games puts every player on stage at full condition, whatever the week has cost him — so practice shows you the player, not his week, and a cup is never decided by who had a league match the night before. It costs him nothing either.

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 slows to a fraction of its old pace — though it never stops entirely. A potential is where the climb turns into a grind, not a wall: park a man on a skill he has already maxed and he will still creep past it, given seasons enough. Whether that is worth his training days is another question.

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 on your own roster carries the coach's report on his page. It is the closest thing to seeing potential you will get — and you do not get it all at once. Your coaching staff have to watch the man work.

What they know is measured in training days under your roof. The clock starts the day he signs and resets to zero if he moves: buy a famous veteran and your people begin from nothing, however long somebody else studied him. There is no exception for the academy: a promoted player's clock starts the day he joins the first team, so he arrives as unread as any signing — and you decide what to do with him before you know what he is.

No read yet — the first week. Nothing on his ceiling at all. It is too early to judge.

First impressions — from 7 days. How far along he is: a raw prospect with a great deal still to learn, still developing, well into his development, close to the peak of his abilities, or a finished article — how much of his road he has walked, not yet how high it goes. And his style — the shape his current skills make, whether that is a relentless attacker, a late-game macro player, a raider who lives on pressure, or a genuine all-rounder.

Developing picture — from 28 days. The read worth the wait — his ceiling, in one of five words: a modest one, a solid professional one, a high one, an elite one (the makings of a star), or a world-class one — a player who could become a franchise player. It is the last thing the coach commits to and the most valuable: a month is how long you carry a new man before you know what he can become. You also start getting the warning that the skill you have him drilling has reached its ceiling — where it still creeps forward, but slowly enough that the focus is worth more on another skill.

Fully read — from 84 days. The names at last. Where his growth room is — the skills with the most left in them — and which skills have peaked — at or past their ceiling, with essentially nothing left to give. Training one of those is not futile so much as wasteful: it will still inch upward, but every day spent on it is a day not spent where the room is. Nearly a full season of watching, and the most valuable page in the report: everything before it tells you how much is left, this tells you where.

Separate from all of that, the report always carries what your club can simply see for itself — a fatigue warning when he needs rest, his form when it is notable, per-matchup notes once the sample is real, his academy record while he is still fresh from it, and an honest word on how the grind is going when you have parked him on one focus for weeks. Those need no watching, so they are there from the first day.