[Idea] Rethinking Youth intake?

It's one of the biggest things in FM and yet it has absolutely nothing to do with real life football, as far as I know. There is no single country where clubs wait until a given day in March to add a handful of young players.

In Holland these kind of young players get the change to visit 'youth days' at professional teams, these are usually in May/June. Bigger teams have more youth days or split the goalies and field players into separate days.

Also, every club scouts at least the local amateur market for youngsters, which means most talents are at a club from the age of 12. I understand this is not allowed in FM, due to age restrictions, but maybe it's an idea to move the youth intake to mid-season, or spread it over a season, with scouts pick up talent randomly in a season?

The current Youth Intake is not as it is in real life, that's for sure.

All that is presumed to have happened already in FM.

Your youth team is ficticious behind the scenes, what you see as youth intake in FM is when the players move age groups from the youth setup to the U18s.

You'll also players who have been in your youth setup but join other clubs at U18 level. These can be seen via the player history or usually on the screen which shows future fees.

You have to assume all of this does happen and all you actually get is a message letting you know 'this group of players will be old enough to be considered for the youth team for next season' All the other stuff happens behind the scenes

Yes it may seem weird it all happens in one day but that is just the day you get told who is in position to move up

I believe part of the reason its done this way is to alleviate the processing burden on computers. It used to be all the game world on one day (if I remember rightly), the good old regen day when you'd begin scouring the world for talent but that in itself was pretty processing intensive. Now it happens in bands of time to reduce some of that stress but if you went too far and the game was having to continuously factor in and simulate youth development with an ongoing RNG element for every club as to whether they'd get a new regen that day or not would also add a huge processing burden into the game.

There would have to be something of a cooldown period built in as well, so that you couldn't keep getting regens popping up every day and hitting the sweet spot where it produces a certain number of players over any rolling 12 month period would be problematic. Of course, SI would be far better position than myself to envisage the kind of coding but I think the main barrier would be it'd add in too much processing as when you think of it from the one team you manage it seems fine but then inflate that to cover every active club in your database and even a few of the others who are inactive but can also produce regens and it becomes enormous. Wouldn't surprise me to see it in the game some day, just not in the immediate future.

Also, every club scouts at least the local amateur market for youngsters, which means most talents are at a club from the age of 12. I understand this is not allowed in FM, due to age restrictions, but maybe it's an idea to move the youth intake to mid-season, or spread it over a season, with scouts pick up talent randomly in a season?

Similar system was implemented in now extinct FIFA Manager - 4 or 5 different youth teams (from age of 12, as I remember) with their own scouts. Yes, that game was more arcade than actually management simulation, but youth development there was really better and deeper than we have now in FM. Personally I'd like if SI implements something similar as well (though I understand probable reasons why they don't, 5 times more youth teams require more resources to process the game). Age restriction shouldn't be an issue here as it applies only for real players, not newgens.

Similar system was implemented in now extinct FIFA Manager - 4 or 5 different youth teams (from age of 12, as I remember) with their own scouts. Yes, that game was more arcade than actually management simulation, but youth development there was really better and deeper than we have now in FM. Personally I'd like if SI implements something similar as well (though I understand probable reasons why they don't, 5 times more youth teams require more resources to process the game). Age restriction shouldn't be an issue here as it applies only for real players, not newgens.

Problem with more youth teams is that you need literally thousands more players in the game and that slows it down a lot for a lot of players who won't get near the first team ever to be present

Problem with more youth teams is that you need literally thousands more players in the game and that slows it down a lot for a lot of players who won't get near the first team ever to be present

I don't know how the game is programmed and if they are already doing this, but say after current years youth intake of all countries in the save adds 1,000 regens, is that just added ontop of the existing loaded amount and then each year it just stack more and more? Can't they overwrite useless players? Like, 1,000 regens are added to the game and those 1,000 "data files" are written over/replace player files that aren't used, like the 1,000 lowest rated players "retire" and then have the regens file take over that place. So, if you started a save with 50,000 players, say it increased for a few years to say 60k, and then after that it remains 60K year in and year out because as regens are being added, players are being deleted. Is that possible?

I don't know how the game is programmed and if they are already doing this, but say after current years youth intake of all countries in the save adds 1,000 regens, is that just added ontop of the existing loaded amount and then each year it just stack more and more? Can't they overwrite useless players? Like, 1,000 regens are added to the game and those 1,000 "data files" are written over/replace player files that aren't used, like the 1,000 lowest rated players "retire" and then have the regens file take over that place. So, if you started a save with 50,000 players, say it increased for a few years to say 60k, and then after that it remains 60K year in and year out because as regens are being added, players are being deleted. Is that possible?

It's a bit like population: whilst many regens are 'born' every year, so many players and staff 'die' - retire. Many hang around for a while maybe looking to pick up coaching jobs, but many others either immediately or after a period of non-activity disappear from your savegame. I've actually had Mourinho disappear from mine after leaving Chelsea. In addition, most of the regens who get released from their clubs and don't find another one disappear too.

I believe, like population, there are more 'births' than ' deaths' every year, but the 'deaths' make the 'births' manageable.

I do like the idea of spreading them out throughout the year, maybe based on the month the regens were born.