What's the only room you can't have in your house?  A mushroom

Would prefer if the home advantage were lower and you could nerf specific skills in your team instead like groundskeepers in MSWL

Interesting.  Definitely open to ideas here and not just for home court.  Also, how can we implement assistant coaches into the game that may have impact on how certain skills improve.

For example...

Can I select 1 of my graduating seniors to become an assistant coach for a season or two after they graduate to coach up a certain positional or skill area?

Bringing this topic back up for season 3 (or maybe 4) planning.  

Josh mentions mushrooms.  Can you expand on that idea Josh?  :-)

John mentions coaching/assistants concepts (like where we have groundskeepers in MSWL United soccer that improve home field from 7 points to 9 points).  

So we could do this a lot of ways and this discussion may go nowhere, but let's give it a try:

Offensive and Defensive Assistant Coaches

Remove all home court advantage and simply let the home team select and use the Offensive OR Defensive Assistant Coach in the match to:

Offensive: Add 1 SL to these areas for all home players: ATK, SRV, SET

Defensive: Add 1 SL to these areas for all home players: BLK, DEF, RCV

Here only half of the team's skills get a bump, not an advantage for all 6 (we'd take away the removing of 1 point for all 6 away team attributes in this approach).

Great Performance Points (maybe needs a better name)

In the soccer game we give out 30 GPPs a season for teams to use when they want to and it increases "SL" essentially for the overall team.  

Here we could say give out 5 or 10.  You use a Max of 1 per match.  And it raises ALL 6 skills by 1 point for that match.

As an away team it is an equalizer.  Is the home team allowed to use it or not (maybe they are) to offset the away team usage in a big game?  Or maybe its a great neutral court big-game opportunity to use it?  

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You probably have better ideas.  Please share them.

I like the offense or defensive coach idea, but I really have no idea what I'm doing tactically apart from just putting the best team on the court.

I like the idea of graduating players being able to come back and be assistant coaches for a season.  Given that we're probably recruiting 4+ players every year anyway, and there are no SL requirements to eliminate players from becoming coaches (like happens at times in United), there is a good chance that every team will have all the coach slots filled if there are 4 or fewer.  If every team gets all the coaches, I think the benefits should be limited with each coach.  Nothing too drastic in terms of match-changing abilities.  Alternatively, you could have a list of 5+ possible coach slots, so it would be difficult for every team to have all of them, and a manager will have to make some choices.

Suggestions for asst coach positions and effects, to spur discussion.  Just spitballing here to start, as some suggestions might seem too weak or too strong for competitive balance:

Offensive Asst Coach - +1 to ATK, SRV & SET in one match per session (not same one as Defensive coach)

Defensive Asst Coach - +1 to BLK, DEF, RCV in one match per session (not same one as Offensive coach)

These two would complement each other, yet be limited to use in only one match per session.  The idea being that they would spend extra time scouting and in the film room to develop team-specific strategies for just one upcoming team, and have the time to drill the players on those strategies during the week.  This limits their impact while also adding a strategy impact as managers would have to choose just one match to get the OFF bonus, and another to get the DEF, with 3rd and 4th matches getting neither.

Public Relations Officer - as opposed to great performance points, one ex-player takes a public relations position and ramps up home support and attendance at home matches with advertising, promotions, community appearances, etc.  If the full home court bonus (a full point at every skill for every player) seems too much for fairness or competitive balance for the league, this position could replace some of it, yet not all.  Example possibility: home team players get +1 ATK (fired up hitters!) & +1 RCV (flying all over the court) and away team gets -1 SRV (jeering fans) & -1 DIG (distractability factor and communication issues on hostile court).

Recruiting Asst - plenty of room for ideas here. One free initial recruiting visit per session? A generic +15 RP per session (equivalent of a free 3-star initial visit)? Assign to an individual player (only one at a time) and get a bonus 25-50 RP boost to your final recruiting bid depending on whether or not the Asst followed this recruit for 1 or 2 sessions before the final offer?  A free 2-star non-competitive recruit, under premise that this Asst spent the season following and recruiting this one player so the manager wouldn't have to spend resources on him?

Personal Trainer - +1 Fitness to one player per session. Perhaps only if 0 or lower to start, so a player can't get to +2 without resting a session or spending points?  Or limit to only being able to boost Fit for a player once the whole season?

Specialists - players can remain for a '5th year' to work with the other players at their prior position, and raise one or two stats for that position only while they remain with the team?  Example: OH stays as 5th-year specialist, and is assigned to raise the ATK & BLK for all OH's on the roster by 1 pt for any match that season.  This option would allow for a slight stat boost, as it is limited to only one position, and is not a permanent boost that carries over into next season.  Thinking about players on the court, perhaps OH & MB only can raise one stat (since there are two players on the court), while RS, S, L could raise two stats (since there are only one of each of those players on the court at a given time).  You could have multiple specialists, but only one at any given position.

Thoughts?  What do you like?  What do you see massive issues with?

- Public Relations Officer should be called Marketing Director

- Like the idea of being able to pick a skill to raise as a home team, maybe a PR officer gets you an additional skill to raise?

- Personal Trainer should reduce the amount of CPs you have to spend on each player by 1, similar to the coach in MSWL - this idea is too powerful I fear

- Recruiting Assistant should probably just make recruiting cheaper to start

I wrote a super simple Python script. If two teams are equal, they have a 50-50 chance of winning the game. But a team with a 51% chance of winning any given point in a game has a 56% chance of winning (per a super simple Python monty "python" carlo I wrote in four minutes.)

52% of winning a point - 61% chance of winning a match
53% - 67%
54% - 71%
55% - 76%
56% - 80%
57% - 84%
58% - 87%
59% - 90%
60% - 92%
(trending to 100% at around the 77% better mark)

I'm not a huge fan of allowing graduating seniors becoming assistant coaches simply because it's a given that we're all going to have 4 each season right? This is the difference from United where teams have to plan seasons in advance to ensure that they'll have the proper number of Age V players to replenish their BRB stable or pay a good sized fee for each. Here, it would seem that we'd all be guaranteed to have the assistance coach stable full each season. I like the notion of having to plan for it.