Two Newbie Questions (database)

A few beginner questions that I've been wondering about since starting out with FM08. Figured it was best to just ask them and hope a veteran on here could answer them, that'd be great.

1) When I select to play with a Large Database, does that equal 'the entire' database of players, regardless of what team I choose to manage and regardless how many 'playable' leagues I choose to include?

2) Does the amount of 'searchable' players, just by typing out their names, depend on what team I am and what knowledge my scouts have? The reason I am asking is that I scouted a player in the demo, and when playing a second time with a different team I tried searching for that specific player and nothing showed up.

Thanks a bunch to anyone who takes the time to answer me!

Even large database won't include every single player. The more leagues you add, the more players will be available. The larger your database, the more players will be available, but you'll never have them all available. You can also retain all players from specific nations in the full game too, to add more players.

The search field searches all the players in the current game. Your scout knowledge only affects which players appears in the player and staff search screens. The demo games are all quickstarts, so they have small database sizes with only a single league selected. It's almost certain that some players will be available in one quickstart and not in another.

Hi there, hope you're enjoying FM.

1. Large database will not be all of the players that are technically available from the database. I think SI stopped you being able to select all the players because there were just far too many and made it unstable. However, the ones you are missing out on are age old free transfer players - you won't suddenly be unable to find Ronaldo.

2. Well, it does sort of depends on what team you are. If you play a team in England (ie: load their league) there will be more players from that nation. So, if you then go and play the demo in Italy, there will be many less players in England.

The way to sort this (although this will only apply on the full game, not the demo as they are only set-database 'quick starts') is when starting a new game. On the league select screen there is a box at the bottom right asking if you would like to load players from additional nations. Selecting countries from this box allows ALL the players of that nation to be loaded into your game - even if you haven't selected that particular league.

For example, if you wanted to manage the Cameroon national team, you could select all Cameroonian players to be loaded. Likewise, if you are playing at a lower league club in England, you might select all of the English players to be in there. This is because even if you load a league, a certain proportion of the really really obscure unattached players won't be there, and if you're in the lower leagues, you might want those obscure players avaiable. Hope that helps. :-)

Thank you both, bigdunk and humanriff!

I'm searching for the more 'complete' experience, that's why I'd like to include as many players as I can to the mix. I'll be adding the countries - as well as a few more popular leagues as playables and see how that goes.