Coach
The coach is a very important figure in Hattrick, responsible for training and managing your team during a game. Coaches use their particular skill set to inspire players both on and off the field and can play in games. While all new teams get initial coaches who are of equal skill level (weak), over time you will need to replace your coach.
Abilities of a coach
| This is an extract from the Hattrick rules, Chapter 17 | |
| If you have a good coach, special training will be more effective than if you have a bad one. Assistant coaches also increase the effect of training. | |
Coach types
There are three different types of coach: "Offensive Coach", "Defensive Coach" or "Neutral Coach", affecting the teams' performance (and only performance) during the game. The type of coach that is best for your team will largely depend on your training type. See Coach tactics for more information.
- Offensive - attacking nature, boosts a team's attack ratings. They stimulate a team to play more offensively.
- Defensive - defensive nature, boost a team's defence ratings. It is often believed they are slightly more effective than offensive coaches, in part due to an increase in the boost to defence that was implemented with Hattrick 6.5.
- Neutral - no preference, boost a team's attack and defense ratings equally.
Training Skill
A talented coach with a high training skill knows the right methods of training, allowing young players to improve their abilities faster and more effectively. The skill can never be rated higher than excellent.
Leadership
A coach who has poor leadership will not inspire your players. As a result, their performance (total stars) during a game will suffer and team spirit will remain low.
Changing the coach
If your coach disappoints you, you can always get a new one. There are two different ways to go:
External Coaches
External recruiting means that you hire a new coach from outside your team. First, decide how good you want your coach to be in training skill and leadership, as well as want type of tactics (attack, defence, neutral) you want your coach to use.
With external coaches, each combination of leadership/trainer skill has a fixed price. You sign your coach and he appears in your roster from an unseen pool of unemployed coaches.
Internal Promotion
Internal Promotion can be less expensive than external recruiting, if you have a player with the right coaching material.
There are a few restrictions:
- A player's experience determines how good a coach he can become.
- The more experienced a player is, the lower his price for a specific skill level.
Players keep their leadership abilities (already known to you) and you do not pay for their leadership - so, if you have a very experienced player with high leadership, this can be a real bargain.
To prevent daytrading of coaches-to-be, a player must be on your squad for 16 weeks to be promoted to coach. Thus purchasing a player with the intention of making them a coach will require some foresight.
Changing of the Guard
When you hire a new coach, he becomes the coach of your squad. When he arrives, the old coach steps down and becomes a player. You can then fire him, as no former coach can become a coach again and you cannot trade a former coach. This is to prevent people from day-trading coaches
Useful links to check your future coach are:
- Check the experience of the player you want to make a coach
- Calculator which has to be used with the Conversion price of the first side
- Check the prices for getting a new coach
Level of the coach
All new coaches of a certain skill level are equal. That is, if you purchase a coach with passable skill, he always becomes "average" passable. There is no "high passable" and "low passable". However, the increase in the coaches performance between levels is, like with regular player skills, non-linear. This means that the gap between a solid coach and an excellent coach is smaller than the gap between a passable coach and a solid coach in terms of the effect of the training, so a high-level coach might not always be the best solution for you. The common consensus on this matter is that a solid coach is both affordable and advisable for most managers. A passable coach with poor leadership is usually recommended for new managers.
Skills deterioration
Coaches will slowly have their leadership skills deteriorate. Deterioration will not start until the coach has been in the club for more than a season. HT's reasoning is a coach that might seem bustling with energy and inspiration when he first arrives, after a few seasons loses some of his "edge". He has simply grown bored with the job.
Finally, once a coach reaches disastrous leadership (and that would typically take perhaps 10 seasons for a coach starting with solid leadership), the deterioration starts hitting his trainer skills instead of the depleted leadership. Let us underline that the deterioration is very slow, although it will go somewhat faster for coaches with very high leadership, so a solid leader might go down to passable after 1-2 seasons (more likely after 2 seasons or more though).
Players who become coaches have an emergency surgical procedure and if they had any injuries, they are automatically healed!
For documentation on the introducing of the current coach system check the Hattrick 6.5 documents.
