What’s new

Rivalries now have rules. Sharing a country or a city counts for something but is never enough on its own. A derby is earned on the floor, by close games, playoff eliminations and title races. A rivalry that has had nothing happen in it for a few seasons fades. Nothing about any match already played changes.

The end of a season is now written down as a sequence: when the table becomes final, when the awards are decided, when the history is archived, when the new season and its fixture list are built, and when day 1 is armed. Nothing about your calendar moves. What changes is that a rollover interrupted half way now picks up where it stopped rather than needing somebody to notice.

The season awards have their rules written down: how much a winning team counts towards a player's award value, and how much of a season a player has to have played to be eligible for anything at all: sixty per cent of the games and thirty per cent of the minutes. Best Five is the five best players of the season whatever positions they play. No award already given is changed.

The shape of a game day is now written down in one place: when the day opens, when training and the finances run, when the market ticks, when the matches are, and when the day closes. Nothing moves, every hour is the one your world already kept, but from now on a change to any of them is announced here instead of arriving unremarked.

The league table now shows points as well as its ordering: two for a win, none for a defeat. Nothing about the order changes: the table is still sorted on win percentage, because dropped fixtures can leave two clubs having played different numbers of games and points would reward whoever played more. Your position is exactly what it was.

How long a season can be. A league now has a stated limit on how many rounds it can play: at most two matches a day for any club, so at most twenty-eight rounds on a fourteen-day regular season, and a league above roughly twenty-two is flagged as congested when it is created. Nothing about your league changes, eight clubs playing fourteen rounds is well inside both, and no match already played is affected. It is the rule that decides which league sizes a world can hold at all.

Two things the match engine described and never did. A team protecting a lead in the last two minutes now takes the ball inside rather than settling for the same shots it took all game, and a defence with fouls to spare at the end of a quarter uses them. Neither changes a rule; both make the closing minutes look like the closing minutes. Matches already played are untouched.

A balance pass on the match engine, from the first full calibration run. Shooting at the rim is a little harder and free throws a little kinder, loose balls go out of bounds slightly more often, and home advantage is smaller than it was, closer to what the real game shows. The default timeout setting now stops an opponent run a little sooner. No rule changed and no player changed. Matches already played are untouched and are still read under the rules they were played under.

Players now tire, and teams now rotate. Minutes drain a player's legs, faster at high pace and intensity, slower for high stamina, and tired legs miss more, turn it over more and stop chasing the offensive glass. The bench restores them, a timeout restores a little, and your rotation settings decide who rests when: minute targets, energy floors, foul-trouble caution, named closers for a tight finish. A short bench now costs you the fourth quarter.

Timeouts, foul trouble and the last two minutes are now yours to set. Your side stops an opponent run, holds the ball for the final shot of a period or hunts an extra one, and can foul when three points ahead. Timeouts you never spend are worth nothing at the final buzzer. Every team plays the end of a period differently from before, whether or not you change a setting.

How well your five fit together now counts. A lineup is judged on how many of the five can shoot from outside, how much shot creation it has, whether every defensive assignment is covered and whether its sizes balance, and the answer moves with every substitution. It decides close games and never mismatches: a better squad still beats a better-balanced one.

Players now have good nights and bad nights. A player's consistency decides how wide his swing is: a reliable player gives you close to the same performance every time, while a volatile one can win you a game on his own or disappear in it. His average over a season is unchanged either way: consistency changes the shape of what he gives you, never the amount.

The match engine has arrived, and everything it weighs is now configuration: which shot a player takes, how often it goes in, who gets the rebound, when a foul is called and how quickly a possession is played. Nothing already simulated changes , every result is reproduced exactly by the engine that produced it, but from now on a match is decided by these numbers.

The rules a competition is played under, the length of a period, how many fouls a player is allowed and how many time-outs a side gets, are now configuration, so a league can be run under either the FIBA or the NBA book. Every competition already under way keeps the rules it started with.

How good your scouting department is, and how confident it is about what it reports, are now configuration: including how far wrong a weak department can be about a player's character. Nothing your scouts have already told you changes: an opinion, once formed, stays the opinion it was.

The five bands another club's players are described in, Weak, Modest, Solid, Strong and Elite, are now configuration. The bands themselves are unchanged, and no player's rating has moved.

How players are created is now configuration: the age curve, the height and build of each position, how a player's attributes hang together, and how much room he has left to improve. Players who already exist are untouched: this decides the shape of the next generation, not the current one.

The sixteen nations players are drawn from, and the balance between home-grown and foreign talent, are now configuration. Worlds already under way keep the nations they were created with, so no squad and no future signing changes.

The rating scale is now configuration. Attributes still run from 1 to 99 and nothing about any player has changed.

The thresholds the operators watch the world's health against are now configuration. No game rule changed.