enigmatic

There's a lot of unchangeable variables in there to balance things out, but that's the point of them. The most important variable, reputation, is very, very changeable (to the point there's so much flexibility in there a persistent human manager can make San Marino internationally competitive if controlling the club side as well), but the static values prevent weird unintended stuff happening like Brazil ceasing to become a leading exporter of talent after a couple of bad tournaments. At the end of the day, the values in question aren't supposed to be interpreted in isolation or even seen in game and aren't preventing people from doing intentionally crazy stuff so I'm not sure making more of them dynamic so the game can go weird in more mysterious ways is worth the immense amount of debugging effort involved.

Unless it's radically altered in FM18, or totally different for active leagues it should play out the same way as my FM17 holiday experiments Bump up the "youth rating" of a random mediocre international team to 200 and they'll continue to produce few stars; if you do it to, say, Australia you won't see many more elite Australian players than IRL. Bump up the reputation to 8000+ leaving YR at its original value and they'll get a golden generation (though the reputation will drop pretty darn fast when the existing senior players fail to win anything, so if they're an inactive nation that doesn't get many new players generated per season it might not have any lasting effect). Every side in the game produces talented prospects at a higher rate than they do IRL tbh it's less a vicious loop and more a reality loop. It keeps sides around the same level unless and until human managers do something game-breakingly good, and as you've noted there are a whole lot of other dynamic inputs like club reputations and facilities so there's enough flex in the system for @noikeee to gradually improve the Hungarian side now he's managing them and raising the standard of the league, it'll just take forever. Which arguably it should do.

This is probably correct behaviour; he's not allowed to play the ball until another player touches it

Youth rating is a minor balancing variable that makes surprisingly little difference. A major factor which makes Scotland less likely to produce leading international players is the reputation of the national side, which -is- dynamic but I'm assuming hasn't changed much. (and don't forget pa stars are relative to your first team; if your first team is world class, a 2*pa player probably has the potential to play for the national side)

Interesting. I'd always assumed it only really applied when player was under physical pressure (hence why bigger players tend to have good balance even if they're centre halves and small players often have very low values) Sounds just as useless for a keeper though.

This is the classic area where FM's manuals and advice really ought to be clearer on the significance of the attributes and how they're used in different contexts In theory, "agility" ought to be one of the most important attributes and relevant to just about everything a goalkeeper does. In practice in FM, it declines pretty quickly in players' early 30s (when they're actually likely to peak IRL) and you can often see 35 year olds playing at the top level with agility in the single digits, "Jumping" is according to some SI guidelines completely irrelevant unless the keeper heads the ball (which I don't think I've ever seen in the ME!) but it's CA-weighted, which suggests it might not be completely useless after all, and IIRC there's an in game hint that lists it as a useful attribute for goalkeepers. And your guess to whether strength and balance works is as good as mine. The "balance" attribute for outfield players is more around how they stay on their feet in a challenge (completely useless for a goalkeeper unless they like dribbling) but I've seen some pretty wobbly looking keepers which may or may not just have been poor animations. And whilst I've seen keepers miss crosses on FM plenty of times, I haven't seen any animations that make it clear it was because of lack of strength in physical contact with an opponent and not just poor judgement or lack of height...

I doubt anyone IRL has ever been asked if they can avoid relegation whilst many points clear at the top of the league and mathematically safe...

It's a while since I played Touch, but IIRC training is somewhat more limited, and you don't need to dedicate any time to your players learning new tactics, which might feel like a cheat to some people. IIRC the scouting is much more basic and the youth intakes are smaller too, with the latter being a big deal for the sort of long term save which might most benefit from less repetitive interaction

FMT misses parts of the game people actually like, such as training and edited databases...

I don't think many foreign footballers would particularly want to play for Gibraltar's national team,. At the time FM18 was released naturalised citizens weren't eligible for the football team either. unless they were educated on the territory or had a claim through grandparents, as Gibraltar was assumed to abide by the Home Nations Agreement, though this appears to have changed

You've played the game before, you know this is what a move in this direction will actually end up with . Your youth team captain turning your entire youth squad against you because his preferred shirt number is currently occupied by Harry Kane, your new signing demanding to be sold before even playing a game because the autoassign didn't/couldn't give him his much coveted number 37, your star striker suddenly losing confidence because he's got Basingstoke's famous number 10 shirt. Maybe some media stories about iconic number 9s would be a nice cosmetic touch, but introducing more player tantrums or weird losses of form for implausible reasons and interactions which bear no resemblance to real life and have no possible resolution is the very opposite of what should be happening.

Frankly, the specificity of the "preferred position" is bizarre anyway, especially for defenders. Easy enough to imagine a player preferring to be in their natural position rather than an accomplished position, or perhaps even preferring to play further forward Possible to imagine a minority of players being very determined to get a designated playmaker-type role where they get fed the ball more, possibly even being given the freedom to roam, though I'm not sure the game picks such preferred roles very sensibly. And difficult to imagine that a player wouldn't be open to persuasion that being a complete forward isn't worse than being an advanced forward, even if it's easy to imagine them being determined not to be a target man. But pretty much impossible to imagine a player throwing a wobbly because of an entirely imaginary distinction between types of defender. Classic example of a part of a module that SI would have been better off either not implementing or trying something very simple rather than trying to be clever and coming up with something implausible in principle and frustrating and buggy in practice.

This is an (afaik) completely separate issue that the board gives you less credit for last season's achievements in the current season. So when the season changes, their judgement of the long term aims and last season is still good, but the judgement of the current season is now you haven't done anything good (or bad) yet and they're waiting and seeing whether you achieve the aims they've set for you. The difference between 80% and 72% is tiny anyway It's not like managers haven't been sacked after poor starts to the season despite good performances the previous season IRL...

I mean, your tactic isn't so much "rubbish" as generic and average FM17 works extremely well (too well) offensively when you have lots of people running into the box. You've got one player running into the box from a wide position and a forward running into the box generally later in the move and everyone else arrives very late or not at all. Defensively you're not too bad, but your wingbacks and ball winning midfielder might leave your two centre backs exposed to fast breaks, especially if they're not great centre backs. One overpowered FM17 way of dealing with it is to have your wingbacks instructed to sit narrow, which will mean they're more likely to help your midfield win back a lost ball in midfield (especially since your forwards and AP won't do a lot of work there), and also tend to make more dangerous runs into the box rather than crossing from wide positions which isn't that effective in FM17 especially not without targets to hit. This also helps you put more attacking duties on other players.

Yeah, I think the more interesting question is how much Long Shots helps (especially: do you choose the player with medium Free Kicks and high Long shots or vice versa?)