TM Ireland - Trophymanager Ireland

Routine and how it works and, more importantly, its effect on player performance is open to speculation.  Like alot of things in this game, you have to come up with and test your own theories.  Would the game be any less appealing if these were spelled out?  Hard to say.

The user guide tells us this: Routine (Rou)

A player gains routine from playing cup and league matches. Routine makes a player perform more consistently and makes him more valuable. Ordinary cup and league matches are worth 0,1 pts of routine per match. European and international games are worth more than 0,1 pts per match - the exact values can be found in the 'Tournaments' section of this guide.

The more routine a player has the more consistent he is.  Makes sense, but how this is established within the match engine is unclear.  Some argue that routine works on a series of thresholds.  For example:

0-1 very inconsistent, player performance can vary widely

1-5 less inconsistent

etc, etc...

20-30 mostly consistent

30+ very consistent

These numbers are made up by the way, just in order to illustrate the theory.  Perhaps when the myriad of calculations are being performed during a match, low routine players receive a kind of performance penalty while high routine players get a 'bonus'.  This doesn't necessarily explain how this would relate to consistency though.  Unless these penalties and bonuses are decided by chance, with a weighting for routine.

Others suggest that if the ME decides matchplay around a series of one on one player duels (and plenty of evidence suggests it does), where skills of each player are taken into account and compared to the opposing man.  The better player has a higher likelihood of winning these challenges, but due to a random factor, does not win them all of the time.  So could routine work the same way?  And merely be treated as another player skill used to decide one on one challenges?  This idea would make routine as important across all divisions - in lower divisions the differences in routine between players are not as marked.  Yet, (without the luxury of screes of data to back this up), the higher the division you go, the more important routine appears.  A straight comparison between players like that, doesn't really explain any effect on consistency either.  But add a random factor and it could make more sense.

Another theory would have it that the routine of all players on the pitch is factored in to a kind of performance random choice equation at the start of a match.  Those players with high routine are more likely to give a good performance, low routined ones are less likely.  As this would base it alot on chance, experienced players could still put in poor performances and the lesser experienced could still play out of their skin.  Given the Devs absolute obsession with all things random, this theory could have some foundation.  It explains the link between routine and consistency and sheds some light on some of those inexplicable performances you get.  When altogether brilliant players, play like shit.

Then again, it could be a highly complex combination of all three!  Most likely routine and its effect is still influenced by some kind of random chance.  Besides, do we really need to know how routine works at all?  All other things being equal - skill, professionalism etc - the more experienced player should obviously be the better player.  But how much better is the question.  Should the apparent difference in performance between 20 routine and 50 routine players be so marked?  What are your thoughts on the matter?  Again, posit your own theory and see if you can test it.  I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts on routine are.  Let me know here.

And while you ponder the subtle machination of TM match engine calculation, here's a random picture of a horse:

Like alot of TM, this pic is Random