Making the most of your bids

X11's transfer market is slightly odd, in that that the person that offers the highest bid limit isn't always the winner. This is because the way bids are calculated is through bid steps, where two competing bids take turns to "step" up the current offer until one of the bid limits is reached.

The unusual result of this process is that, when you place a bid, there are actually ranges of values that are equivalent. For example, when you place an offer, if a current bidder has a limit of [asking price + 1 step], you will lose if you haven't offered at least [asking price + 2 steps]. If you offer [asking price + 2 steps - 1 econ], that offer is as much use as offering the asking price alone. This means that you can actually optimise your offer based on what you're prepared to pay, and also know what you would need to pay to fend off bids of a certain limit. The following calculator is rather crude, but will give you the lowest amount equivalent to your suggested bid limit, as well as the next offer up.

Bid optimiser

What is the player's current asking price?

What is your approximate bid limit?

Development Value, Match Experience and Average Form

Knowing about how the Development Value (or DV) works is an important part of the game, as being able to successfully train up your players allows you to improve the skill of your players and increase the value of your squad.

There are two factors that contribute to a player's DV (and ultimately, how they will progress at the end of the season) - match experience (ME) and average form (AF). Knowing a little bit about how these two factors combine to produce the final DV value will help when it comes to maximising your team's development.

Players gain experience for each minute that they play. Younger, lower skilled players learn more from older, better players, both on their own team and on the opposing side. That experience is converted into a percentage value, such that DV is then a percentage of AF. The more experience a player gains, the higher that percentage value. However, something unusual happens when a player reaches "100%" i.e. when DV is the same as AF. Further experience still contributes to a player's DV, but instead of being a percentage of their average form, it's a percentage of 20 (the maximum value for average form) - AF. This means that players on lower average form actually gain more than players on higher average form for extra time played.

It's worth noting that, the greater match experience a player has, the smaller the effect any additional experience will have - don't be surprise if DV rises quickly to start with but slows down as the season progresses. I got hold of some figures regarding match experience and its effect on DV and have managed to put them into a graph which should help illustrate how match experience and average form combine to produce the overall development value, and the effects of giving players more than "100%" match experience i.e. what happens when you start pushing DV above the average form. The term "standardised match experience" just means I've adjusted the figures so that 100 is the experience needed to get DV = AF (players getting the maximum experience out of a game need about 4/14 games to get "100%" usually), 200 is double that amount of experience and so on. Realistically, you'll not be able to get past around 300 without having a cup, as cup games provide bonus experience.

One thing to note is that average form is incredibly significant for players with lower amounts of match experience. It's why it's not always a concern if players appear to gain DV slowly at the start of a season (when you may be trying to build form up after a change report). It also shows that you can't rely solely on match experience for DV, you have to maintain form as well.

Calculating a player's exact skill

Here's a quick and easy Javascript skill calculator that will allow you to use a player's change report history (which is sadly VIP-only) to check their current skill. I've also attached an image to show you how to use it. :-)

Note: sometimes the calculator may return multiple values. This may be because there is not enough information to narrow down the player's exact skill (for example, a youngster with just one change report), or there may be one or more values that fit the data provided (which can start to happen once a player gets above 12 skill or so, and an increase of 0.1 becomes smaller than an increase of 1%).

Now updated to show the calculated history for a player's skill value.

05/08 - Updated so that, if you specify the player's current age and one result is returned, required DV for single / double will be shown. For multiple values, you will need to use the calculator I've placed here for the moment.

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Enter the player's skill and change as shown on their CR history.
Enter the player's skill prior to their first CR (if you know it) in the row below as well.
Hit Go!

Age: Please select 16-20 21-22 23-25 26-28 29-31 Skill Percentage

Reliable agents

You're not meant to talk about them in the forums, but the three reliable agents (i.e. those that never overstate or understate a player's skill) are:

Kevin Kagge
Billy Wonka
Al Corleone

Admittedly, this information isn't as much help as it used to be given that evaluations are so cheap and compatibility is more significnat than before, but it still can help refine searches for players.

For example, you may wish to go through these three agents first if you're looking for an older player to fill in (as you know they'll be the same visible skill). Likewise, if you're hunting for understated players on the market, you'll want to avoid these three agents.

Transfer and loyalty calculators

Here are some calculators that I've written to deal with transfer prices and the loyalty bonus for the Job centre.

Kudos to audub for the legwork on the loyalty calculation.

Market transfer calculator

How much are you selling the player for?

How much is the player listed for on the market?

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Direct transfer calculator

How much does the selling club wish to receive?

How much is the buying club offering to pay?

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Loyalty calculator

Enter the date you joined your team (dd/mm/yyyy):