Game Rules
16. Team management

Basically all users will have the possibility to control teams in Footstar. In fact we have 3 types of Clubs in FootStar:
- Teams controlled by humans with FS Fan Gold
- Unprotected teams controlled by humans without FS Fan Gold
- Bot Teams

However managers of unprotected teams have a totally different status/restrictions regarding Gold FS Fan users/managers. These are the main differences:
- Unprotected teams are subject to be immediately taken over by users with FS Fan Gold. B Teams are an exception: they can be managed by users without fs fan but they CAN´T be taken over by users with fs fan because they´re connected with protected Main Team
- FS Fan Gold users will have their teams protected and restrictions free.

Let us explain, starting from Teams controlled by humans with FS Fan Gold.
By subscribing to the gold FS Fan package, you´ll be able to manage a team but you won´t get an automatic team. You should know that you can manage teams from all countries (according to Federation Rules > more informations below) and there might be the possibility that you can´t take control of teams on specific divisions, depending on the "acceptance %" of each division (more informations below). Of course, this only applies when you first take control of the team; you can then promote to higher divisions without any problems.

Be informed that you have the possibility to leave/resign the team if you wish so. (Team >> Resign). But you won´t be able to manage another team in the next 1 month.

Also, to be able to take control of a team, you must be a free player or you need to have the "Manager clause" in your contract . You cannot manage 2 teams in the same time (with first and second player for example..or with father and son). Only ONE team for each user.

When you take control of a team you become the player-manager of the team. Your contract´s wage will be preset following this formula: the average wage of the 11 most well-paid players of the team + 3% of the sponsors weekly income. The value of the wage will be updated weekly at the economic updates. The contract will have duration of 1 season and it will be automatically renewed each season. It also won´t have any signing fees nor match prizes, and you won´t be able to offer yourself a new contract.

If you happen to resign from the team, your player will remain in it or leave, depending on your game option (Manager >> Preferences) regarding this event of the game.

Well, after knowing these informations and having subscribed to the FS FAN Gold package, when you want to start managing a team, you should go to its details page and select the "Control this team" option on the right info panel. It might be wise to first check about player´s info, standings, fixtures, etc. You should know that after you start to control a team some players might leave the team at that exact moment. Those who´ll stay will probably ask some brand new contracts as their bot contracts will be really low, so be ready for that. These are probably the first steps to make when you start with a new team: get to know your players, analyze your squad, make a quick check about your player´s contracts and define the strategy to the club; the team´s training scheme is also very important. You´ll start with €500.000 (0.5M euro or the equivalent on your currency), so you can also take a quick look on the transfer list and free transfers page (All in menu Team >> Transfers). That´s right, when you´re controlling a team you´ll have access to a new main menu option (Team).

Now, let us explain Unprotected teams controlled by humans without FS Fan Gold:
As we said few "lines ago" all users have the possibility to control teams in Footstar..even if they haven´t Gold FS Fan, but with some restrictions. Now let us present you the list of restrictions.

Managers of unprotected teams have the following limitations:
- They can’t release player
- They can’t add players to the shortlist
- They can’t save match-specific events
- They can only set the lineup for their next match, using default orders.
- They can’t hire staff members
- They can’t buy transportation items
- They can’t play MvM
- They can’t loan in or loan out players
- They can’t vote in federation referendums that are manager specific.
- If a team owned by a managers with FS Fan Gold invites one of these teams for a friendly match, the invitation is accepted automatically
- Wages are set automatically for players playing in these teams:
>> 1st Division: 3400€
>> 2nd Division: 2600€
>> 3rd Division: 1800€
>> 4th Division or below: 1250€
- They can’t also set match prizes and contract duration in contracts. The same applies when a player asks to join the team. They receive a message saying that the team is unprotected and therefore can’t offer more than the pre-defined wages, etc.
- Stadium capacities are updated automatically for these teams:
>> 1st Division: 25000 seats
>> 2nd Division: 20000 seats
>> 3rd Division: 15000 seats
>> 4th Division or below: 10000 seats
- They can’t use the "Vacations" feature.
- They can’t leave the club during the season. They can however hand the team to another user. If they decide to do so an "auction" will be set for 7 days. The final winner takes the team. If nobody applies the same manager will continue with the job. The window will re-open with the beginning of the season and closes again in the 12nd day of the season.
- If they are 15 days without visiting the website their teams will be put on auction for 7 days.
- Users without FS Fan Gold cannot apply to bot teams in all periods of the season. They will need permission from the other managers of the same series. There are however periods in which this restriction does not apply:
>> From day 1 to day 12
>> From day 57 to day 61
>> From day 106 to day 112

So that they can enter on bot teams off these periods, there must be the following acceptance %:
>> 1st Division: 50% of the managers
>> 2nd Division: 35% of the managers
>> 3rd Division: 25% of the managers
>> 4th Division or below: 15% of the managers
Votes from bot teams and managers without FS Fan Gold are always counted in favor for new managers.

- Restrictions on the budget for unprotected teams when buying players, depending on their available money
- Team training can’t be set freely and can only be changed once a week. There will be a list of 10 team trainings that will cover all the possibilities we consider important for the purpose of this feature.
- They can pick teams in another countries but they must follow the federation rules and there’s always a limitation regarding the number of teams foreign managers can pick.

Unprotected managers with FS Fan Silver have additional perks over non FS Fan managers. They can:
- Change the team logo
- Change the team kit
- Change the team name
- Change stadium name
- Change club homepage
- Release press conferences
- Have a guestbook and the "last visitors" feature on their clubhouse.

Some other general - but important - details:
- For unprotected teams Manager’s wage is equal to the player’s wage rule.
- The current player contract clause (Manager Clause) keeps the same purpose. If you’re currently playing in an human club, you can only apply to a bot team if you have a manager clause.
- Unprotected managers can hand the management to someone inside the team; but only to users that have FS Fan Gold.
- Unprotected teams can have youth teams.
- Once a Gold FS Fan takes over an unprotected team it will have the possibility to reset the team’s finances.
- Users with less than one month in the game cannot apply to bot teams (unless they have FS Fan Gold of course)
- The restriction to take over bot-teams in the top leagues is over with this new feature.

How will the managers be picked to these bot teams?
As there will probably be a lot of users trying to control teams, there will be an auction in order to decide who controls a team. For example, you decide to control team B and you have permission to do so. An auction will be created for team B (for 7 days). Then user A also applies during this time. At the end of these 7 days the board of the club would decide to whom the club would be assigned. In order to decide the auction winner, a new concept will be created: manager’s reputation. Here is how you can improve your manager’s reputation:
- By simply coaching a club. Every day you coach a club your reputation will increase. You can only benefit from this method during a whole year (365 days), consecutive or not.
- By affording a "Manager Certificate". This will cost both money and interaction points. There will be 2 levels for this Certificate. The last level is only available for FS Fans. This certificate will provide a bonus in the manager’s reputation.
- At the end of the season by winning titles. A bonus will be conceded for each title won (important titles will provide bigger bonuses).

Additional informations related to Team management
Control a team in another country
This is something that can be controlled by the National Federation’s President though. The President is able to set up the voting with the following options:
- Allow Foreign Managers in country;
- Set the "maximum foreign-controlled teams in country", with options 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50%. This means that half of the teams in a country are always reserved to local users while the rest might be reserved or not, depending on the community wishes.
- All users in the country can vote. You can be able to hand it to a foreign ONLY in case the federation rules allow it. By default all countries don´t allow Foreign Managers.

Matches management
As a manager you´ll have the responsibility to set your team´s starting eleven, choose its formation and possibly schedule some match events, choose the Individual Match orders for all your players, etc.. The purpose of FootStar is not to be an online football manager simulator so we don´t want you to waste too much time with it.

To select your starting eleven you need to go to Team >> Fixtures >> Starting Eleven on the right info panel. The page consists on a formation + starting eleven selector + team orders selector (in Flash, please refer to the FootStar Computer Requirements above in this manual). Everything should be pretty straight-forward. On top, you´ll find the selector menu in which you can switch between any of these three options. To select the players into the formation (you can change the formation by moving the circles representing the players) just drag and drop them at the formation circles. You should also know that you won´t be able to select invalid formations; a formation has to have at least 3 defenders, 2 midfielders and one forward. You need to click on the SAVE button in order to keep all the changes you make.

You can also set Match Orders for the match. At the top of the page you´ll find a select box with the "Default Orders" text on it. Well this means that you´re editing the default orders of your team. These orders will be used in any match where match orders weren´t set. If you go to that box and select any other game, you´ll be editing the specific orders for that match. These kind of pre-defined orders (called Match Orders) will be used over default orders so be careful when you set them for a specific match.

The other important feature for matches is the possibility to schedule the substitution/other events of your players. Going to Team >> Fixtures >> Match Events you´ll find an interface to schedule your subs and other events. You can also program some specific conditions for the sub to happen such as minute and match result.

Team Talks
Being a manager, you have an important task: the communication with the players. We provide you an interface so that you can easily do that without having to use internal messages. Going to Team >> Players >> Team talks, you´ll find an option to leave a message to a specific player or to leave a message to all of your players. Your players will probably answer back, and you´ll see a small warning box in the office page if that happens. Bear in mind that if some of your players are foreign, they´ll probably not be able to understand your native language.

Result Prizes
These prizes are given when your team achieves a draw or a win (home/away). You can set a value of a maximum of 1% of your available amount of money for each prize. This prize will be paid to all players that participate in the match, providing it is an official (league/cup/itc) match. You can change the value of the prizes in your advanced options at any time you want.

Assistant Managers
By going to Manager >> Club >> Staff, you can appoint players to help you managing your team. Only FS Fan players/users are eligible to have and maintain these functions though. You should be wise when you appoint Assistant Managers for your team: they´ll have some really important powers that might affect the success of your team as a whole.
So only appoint users in which you have full trust! We can´t really held responsibility if one of your Assistants ruins a match or some other aspect of your team management. In fact, so that we realize how much we care about this, we won´t be giving the chance of Assistants to sell or/and release players from the team.
Here are the complete list of available Assistant Managers´ powers:
- Manage player´s contracts
- Manage starting eleven and match events/orders
- Manage main team´s trainings
- Manage team talks
- Schedule friendly matches
- Team Forum moderation
- Trips
- Buy players (manager can set some restrictions on budget and contract-clauses)
- Manage youth team (manager can set some restrictions on budget and contract-clauses)

Vacations & Contract Terminations
Players can offer you friendly contract terminations. In case you don´t answer (positively or negatively) these requests in 30 days (21 days for unprotected teams) they´ll be free to leave the club without any kind of compensation.
These waiting periods can be reduced in 15 days depending on the inactivity level of the manager. Meaning that for regular team, in case of inactive manager, players can wait only 15 days to leave. For unprotected teams it can go down to 7 days. A manager is immediately considered inactive in case he does not log in the game for 15 days. If the manager is on Vacations (Manager > Club > Vacations) these periods are doubled. You can only go on vacations once in a season.

Team´s Items/Goods
Such as players, teams can also buy their own items. However, as of today, teams can only buy planes and/or buses in order to use them to travel when they play away matches. A team can in fact own a plane and a bus but there isn´t any special use in having both as only the best (plane) will be used in travels. These items have a fixed monthly cost and cannot be improved. You should know three very important things: first is that when you play away your team needs to travel and players lose fitness when they travel. The second is that better transportation items will reduce the impact trips have on players´ fitness levels. Finally, another important thing you should know is that if you´re going to play away from your city and you don´t have any transportation item, your team will automatically rent a bus and the team will have to pay a fee for this: the full maintenance fee (of a bus) in case the trip is outside the country or half the maintenance fee in case the trip is to another city inside the country. These costs include going and returning from the city where the match takes place.

Team Spirit
Team Spirit is a variable visible on player relationships page. If it's low team players' morale will decrease on a daily basis. If it's high (>= 95%) it can give boost to morale for teams' players with low morale (< 85%).
Team Spirit is increasing or decreasing each day and the change is decided by how many of that team's players are using 'socialize' or 'stay alone' on that day (main team and youth team players are included here). 'Stay alone' has more weight in calculations so if the same number players are using each of these options, team spirit will decrease.

Team Harmony
Team Harmony is a variable visible in club pages. It’s the average level of happiness of all the players in the club. Players have an interface at their profile page to change their current happiness at the club. This variable has no effect on ME and any other part of the game. It’s just a way for other players to know how the mood is on your team’s locker rooms.

Players Discipline
Every player will receive his wage, every week...but all teams have the possibility to give "fines" for their players. These fines consist to not pay player´s wage for 1 week if he commit some "errors":
- Player is in a different city when team training is ongoing
- Player is in a different city when team is playing a match
Managers can give these fines going to "discipline page", here: Manager > Players > Discipline

Stadium
Your stadium´s capacity is another of Footstar´s decisive factors. This because the higher you stadium´s capacity is, the higher the ticket´s income will be. Provided of course that your team is able to attract the necessary number of supporters to fill the stadium!
The downside of having a big stadium is that you’ll have to pay maintenance costs, so be careful with unnecessary seats. As we said the stadium may not always fill, so empty seats are a synonym of loss. But if you have your stadium full on every match, it means that you are losing money, because you are not taking full advantage of the fact that with a bigger stadium, you’d have more attendance and money.

The stadium is divided into 8 stands, and you can build as much places as you want. The construction isn’t immediate and it can last several months, depending of course on the dimension of the new capacity. Remember that a Footstar month is equal to a real-life week (more information on the section “Footstar Week” of this Manual). Stadium updates are made on Fridays during the economic updates. An estimate about the construction time for the stadium will be presented to you at the stadium´s details page.

You also have the possibility to reduce the stadium´s capacity. For that, just change the option “Type of construction” to “Demolish”. As in the construction type, you will have to pay a fee for each demolished chair. The chair’s destruction is immediate. The price for each seat is 20€. The cost for a demolition is 5€ per seat.

You can’t set the ticket’s price for your stadium. The price is constant (6€) and unless it’s really necessary we won’t be changing it at all.

Gym
Gym is a team facility who represent an additional options-set that can help players improving Skills, Fitness, Morale and Confidence. There is a cost to create a Gym (2,5 millions €) and this cost can be shared by the team and their players (at least 20 different players are required to complete the funding process). B-Teams can also have gyms and these are shared with the main teams (funding as well). Creation process can be started going on Manager menu > Team Facilities.

Gyms provide 4 kinds of bonuses:
- Skill: +0,1 - 1.500€ for each session and 2 days as cooldown period
- Fitness: +8% - 1.000€ for each session and 7 days as cooldown period
- Morale: +5% - 750€ for each session and 2 days as cooldown period
- Confidence: +1 level up - 3.500 € for each session and 7 days as cooldown period
A city gym is also available and it provides the same bonuses, however the the price of bonuses is doubled. The city gym is available at the city page you’re in. You can find it at Player >> Location.

Additional info
- Skill bonus provided by gyms is always the same +0.1. Player age, skill level, fitness level, GK skill - none of these have any influence on skill bonus.
- Buying skill bonus for skills below 1 and above 100 will actually adds +20% to progression bar. That happens because real skills values are rounded in FS and when you buy skill bonus for skill which is already 100, it means you are buying +0.1 to skill above 99.5 and that 0.1 equals 20% of half skill you still have to train.
- Skill and fitness buying does not count as an additional training and do not break or start "training in a row" bonuses.

Economy
Each week on Fridays (10:00 server-time) the financial updates take place. It´s at this moment that your wages are paid and your monthly costs are deducted from your bank account.
For teams, they´ll have to pay wages and stadium maintenance but they´ll also receive their sponsor´s money income and local city´s football association´s money income.
Human-controlled teams should be careful so that they have the necessary money to pay their players´ wages. If they fail to pay their players, wages will be left behind and with a delay of 2 wages, human players will be free to leave without any compensation fee.


Previous SectionAll rules in the same pageNext Section