How training works in Dugout-Online

Basic introduction

In Dugout-Online, all trainable skills of your players have "training points" assigned to them. So when a particular skill reaches 1200 or more training points, your player can (if his talent permits) progress in that skill. When that happens, 1200 points are deducted from that skill, so he can start training this skill towards another improvement again. However, if the player's talent does not permit this skill to increase, then the player has only 1 in 8 chance to actually progress in the skill, when the 1200 training points barrier is reached.

Example 1:

Player's shooting is currently at 24 level, while up until now, he collected 1100 training points on shooting. During the next training update, this player received 230 training points on his shooting "training points" and that puts him over 1200 limit (1330 to be exact). Now, what happens is the following:
  1. Player's talent permits advancement in shooting, so his shooting skill increased to 25
  2. 1200 points are deducted from his "shooting tally", so he will start the next shooting training cycle on 130 training points.

Coaches

On your training screen, you can see the quality of your team's overall training in 7 basic areas : Goalkeeping training, defending, midfield play, attacking, physical training, tactical training and your youth team training quality. Whenever you reassign any of your coach, you see the effect on these areas immediately. And how do the coaches affect these areas? Well, each coach that is assigned to be the "general" coach will help out in 4 basic training areas (goalkeeping, defending, midfield play and attacking) by adding 15% of his available training points (that depend on his 4 skills for these areas of course). Each coach that is assigned any of these 4 "special" training regimes (like goalkeeping for example), will add full tally of his available points (based on his skill for the area) to this area. Also, all coaches not assigned to a youth training area contribute training points to the tactical and physical areas as well (how much, again depends on their tactical and physical skills), while coaches assigned to youth area will focus solely on youth area, contributing 100% of their training points (based on their youth training skill) to the area.

Gathering training points

Each training update, the player receives training points on all the skills that are tied to the area the player is focusing on (see the list below). The number of these training points depend on the following factors :
1. Quality of training in that particular area
2. Player's talent (not if player is focusing on improving his physical skills)
3. Player's teamwork
4. Any improvements, your club has available (training ground for 1st team, youth academy for the youth team, fitness centre for physical training and research facility for all training areas).

The most training points can be earned through quality coaching staff, followed by player's talent (if aplicable) and player's team work. Improvements increase the tally of the gathered training points "percentually", after the initial value is determined.

Training focus

You can choose from 11 different training areas for each of your players :

General

Your goalkeepers will receive most of the available training points to their goalkeeping skills, and some of the training points to their outfield skills. Your outfield players will receive most of their points to their outfield skills, while they will still receive some training points to the goalkeeping skills. Note that all players training on general setting lose about 15% of their available training points on all the affected skills (because they must focus on lots of different skill sets).

Goalkeeper

Player will receive training points on his reflexes, one on one, handling, communication and positioning.

Defender

Player will receive training points on tackling, marking, heading, positioning and communication.

Fullback/Wingback

Player will receive training points on tackling, positioning, marking, communication and crossing.

Central midfielder

Player will receive training points on passing, creativity, positioning, first touch and long shots.

Defensive midfielder

Player will receive training points on passing, marking, tackling, positioning and creativity.

Attacking midfielder

Player will receive training points on passing, long shots, dribbling, creativity and shooting.

Winger (midfielder)

Player will receive training points on crossing, creativity, passing, positioning and first touch.

Forward

Player will receive training points on shooting, heading, dribbling, positioning and first touch.

Winger (forward)

Player will receive training points on shooting, crossing, dribbling, positioning and first touch.

Fitness training

Player will receive training points on speed and strenght.

Note, that when you train a particular position, the quality of that training area is not the only thing to consider. To give an example - during the calculation of the player's training that is assigned to train as goalkeeper, his reflexes, one on one and handling training points will be calculated using your club's goalkeeping training quality, but his communication and positioning training points will be calculated using your club's tactical training quality. If skill is in more than one general area (like heading) then the main area is used (defensive training quality for defender's heading and attacking training quality for attacker's heading). With youth players this goes a bit different. There all skills are determined by your club's youth training quality, but after the skill is calculated, the best coach value for the particular area is added to that total (and here is where the youth players actual bonus is). For example. A youth player training as central defender will first see all his skills calculated against your club's youth training quality and then he will receive additional bonus to his tackling, marking and heading that will reflect the highest DF skill of all coaches assigned to the youth training, and a bonus to his positioning and communication that will reflect the highest tactical skill of all your coaches assigned to youth training. Also note that if you assign a youth player to the fitness training, he will train with your 1st team for the time being, even if you have the player in youth team. There is no bonus on fitness training for youth players.

Other training modifiers

Player's age

Player will start losing some percentage of his gathered training points after he reaches 27. For each additional year, his development will be further slowed down. After he reaches 32, he will start losing a total sum of training points on 4 randomly selected technical skills and 2 physical skills each training update. Meaning that after he reaches 32, he will not only lose a precentage of his gathered training points, but will actually start to go into "minus training points" (ugly term, but just so you will understand what we mean). This decrease will be more evident on physical skills (speed and strength) then the decrease on technical skills. Note that no skill can go under 15 because of the player's age.

Youth training

Youth players that are too good to train in the youth squad start receiving a penalty after their skills reach 15 or higher. By penalty, we mean a loss of 5% of the training points for each skill that is above 14. For example, if youth player is training in the youth squad and his shooting is already at 19, he will lose 25% of the gathered training points for his shooting skill.

Player overall positional rating

can now only be gathered by playing games. How much points on the rating the player receives is determined by his talent and the number of minutes he was on the pitch. The player's rating cannot be, at any given time, more than 2 skills higher than his highest outfield skill (for outfield players) or his goalkeeping skills (for goalkeepers). Speed and strength are not counted as outfield or goalkeeping skills in this case. Also, every match the player is participating in counts towards the rating improvement and there is no difference between different match types (friendly, cup, ...)

Maximum speed and strength

Each player has a maximum speed and strength skill assigned as a "hidden stat". Let's face it, not anyone can be a super athlete. When the player gets closer to his maximum speed or strength, he starts to get less and less training points on that particular skill (if trained) during the training update until he reaches his maximum and stops receiving any training points for that skill.