Four Newbie-ish Questions

[PyroFalkon]

Okay, so I've had WMMA2 since day one, but my first campaign with GAMMA was me doing a "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" sort of haphazard booking, which led to a myriad of problems (such as throwing all my main eventers into a single PPV and being screwed out of popularity the rest of the year). Now, I'm trying to be way more micromanaging, but I've got four questions that I don't know the answer to, and I'm wondering if you all harder-core fans can shed some light and help me out.

 

1. Time between bouts

Right now, the way I'm running GAMMA, I've got a ridiculously large roster. Like, too big. It's caused me the problem of remembering only certain fighters, and ignoring others. I've taken to making a personal list of every fighter who has gone longer than six months without a fight, and scheduling him in ASAP. My worst offender is a guy who's gone 20 months without a fight (the beginning of the campaign; poor Jethro, I've just totally ignored him).

 

My question is, what's a "good" length of time to be expecting fighters to perform? I know that for main eventers, I really should get them out there as much as possible to bolster my popularity. My question really pertains to fighters who are currently destined only for prelim fights. I know part of it has to do with age and fatigue and so on, but I'm curious if there's a definitely length of time where, once a fighter passes it, I need to get him in a match.

 

2. Round Timing and Fatigue

Just to experiment, I started my second GAMMA campaign by setting the round time as 1x15 minutes for normal fights, and 1x30 championship fights. Also, I took away judges and made it an automatic draw if fights went the distance. Both rules combined to making my company drops its popularity INSANELY in the first year: few guys were making any sort of momentum as a good 60% of my matches were draws, and those that were getting momentum (especially the champions) were so exhausted that they asked for over a half-year off between long fights.

 

My question is, does round timing have the obvious effect on fatigue, and does it play into the strategies of the fighters? I reasoned out that the shorter the round, the more it should favor strikers because wrestlers and submission artists usually need a bit longer to set up and apply their holds. Does having shorter rounds mean strikers will tend to win more? Do shorter rounds mean I can have fighters fight more often regardless of their style? Do shorter rounds generally impact fight excitement, positively or negatively (or does timing not matter as long as the fighters are exciting to watch)?

 

Right now I've switched to 3x3 and 5x3, again mostly to experiment, but I may go with UFC rules soon if I need to.

 

3. Name Value

I've noticed that a fighter's Name Value and Reputation seem to be the top two factors in how much the crowd cares to see them, which makes sense. I know how to deal with rep (and popularity), but Name Value is one that's a bit ambiguous to me.

 

Okay, I figure Name Value is based sort of like rep, where if the fighter is winning and is exposed to the world, his value goes up. I also figure that a fighter's name value will go up more if he's on larger networks and PPV carriers than smaller ones, which also makes plenty of sense. My question is, does Name Value increase even if some of those factors are not, strictly speaking, favorable? I've noticed guys tend to go up in Name Value as they fight in prelim matches (yet another reason I'm just trying to cram in fighters if they have gone longer than six months), which is hopefully grooming someone to become something other than an epic failure in terms of draw power. I just can't seem to pull drawing power for most of my guys up that high.

 

I have done something right with my heavyweights (I've got literally about 20 "secondary" stars and 4 "primary" stars). I just don't know what I did exactly, other than having a crapload of heavyweights and putting at least three heavyweight matches on per card. A lot of the guys I've used a lot have gained name value seemingly regardless of match outcomes, which is what makes me curious.

 

4. Already Answered

Found the answer to this one, so never mind for it...

 

Thanks for the help guys, and apologies if this post is a bit on the long side.