I have been investing heavily on SET for all of my clubs. But sadly I have not felt any contribution was gained from such follie.
So unless you pay cash on the auction, I see no good reason for such investment.

BTW - There is a tiny whiny itsy bitsy chance I might be wrong.

In another league (that shall remain nameless) I invested heavily in SET when it first arrived and saw absolutely zero benefit. I even did some analysis of all the set pieces each team had taken, against their SET and the results to prove that it had no benefit whatsoever.

Then the Commish realised he had forgotten to turn the benefit bit on in OLMEC!!!

Suffice to say, once he had turned it on there were some clear benefits for the teams with 20 SET against those with 5 but I'm yet to be convinced that the benefit is good enough to justif investment in it, particularly in a league like SESL where resources are quite tight.

Maybe I played on the same league
That would explain not getting any benefiets from the hard investment

What other league was it, and were you compensated for wasted CP investment into a null void SET rating?

If SESL ever moved to the new online Olmec used by MSWL then SET is no longer a feature, so I imagine teams would benefit by getting all their CP investment refunded.

(eg. SET 20 would earn your team 20 CP one-off bonus in new software, so I think SET investment well worthwhile in SESL in the meantime)

A SaSo match today - BLA has a SET of 8 (as has EVE)

...FREE KICK for BLA....Dean Ashton (BLA) with the cheeky shot.....the shot slips through Paul Robinson's hands! GOAL! ...score now: BLA 1 -- EVE 1

...CORNER KICK for BLA....Neil Danns (BLA) takes the Corner Kick......Dean Ashton (BLA) gets in a touch......Paul Robinson gets a hand to it but can't hold on...GOAL!...score now: BLA 2 -- EVE 1

...CORNER KICK for BLA.....Dean Ashton (BLA) curls it into the box......Lucas Neill (BLA) gets in a touch......the keeper cant do anything about that one! GOAL! ...score now: BLA 4 -- EVE 1

...FREE KICK for BLA.....Andy Cole (BLA) takes the free kick from 35 meters....the ball deflects off of the wall....powerful header from Steven Gerrard (BLA).....GOAL! What a fantastic finish!...score now: BLA 5 -- EVE 1

OK it's a bit freaky. Worst part is that Nillis will think he managed his team well

Me? Manage well? Course not!! I don't know what good managing means!! Not that i'm complaining, i'm 2nd in the top league now, Yoav thinks I might even win it. Quote a Mr. Berwick: "Yoav, you sir, are a tool sir. And not the sharpest tool at that!"

The league shall remain nameless but no, we were not compensated - in fairness only two clubs had invested heavily in it and we agreed it was not necessary.

I agree that SET has good value in the league (ref. comments from HUN on previous page), especially when your opponent doesn't meet your rating. Unfortunately, maintaining OTF and SET each at the max. level would deplete CP resources to the detriment of your roster. I've always felt that the OTF option was the better of the two, leaving SET to receive the odd CP during the season or perhaps benefit from the auction purchase.

This is an interesting one because there are pro's and con's. In its favour SET, like OTF is used in every game and can mean the difference between scoring or otherwise from set pieces BUT against, it does not, unlike OTF, add any benefit to ATT or DEF (or GP for that matter) and it costs 6CP per season to maintain it at 20 - a 2/19 costs just 3 CP to stay at SL19 and a 3/19 costs 5 CP so you could argue that SET is quite expensive to maintain at its maximum.

Personally I have always favoured coaching players unless there is no-one to coach and I frequently find I have no spare CP for SET.

Is there a feeling of a shortage of CP in SESL to use for SET and OTF etc?

Is this a fair question, or shall I go "run and hide"?

In comparison to the one other league which I play in, there is a relative shortage of CP to cope with the severe aging. This means, IMHO, that it becomes harder to justify using 6 CP to maintain OTF at 10 and 6 CP to maintain SET at 20, as that leaves barely enough CP to keep your age 2 and 3 players at a decent level.

(Before I get jumped on, this is not a complaint, just a comment on the different challenges in SESL!)

When SET was introduced in the other league, I did some extensive monitoring of the impact of SET on free kick and corner chances. As I remember, those teams which spent lots of CP on SET reaped very little benefit in terms of improved conversion of freekicks and corners. The main driver for those teams which scored lots of free kicks was having lots of nice referees. I feel that SET is not worth more than 2 or 3 CPs to maintain it at around 8-10.

As some people know from another league, I could go on rather more about SET, as I remain unconvinced that it is a good addition to the game. Free kicks and corners become more important as teams get stronger; in particular, they dilute the benefit of a star keeper and make it much harder for teams to defend desperately for a draw. They also increase the randomness of results and a very biased referee can be overly important. I also feel that, if we are going to have SET, it should be easier to buy CPs, but this has been partly addressed by the auctions and press points.

Perhaps if SET only fell by 20% instead of 30% at the end of the season it might prove better value?

I cannot alter software code to change SET reduction at ageing, so this is not an option.

However, in the past, I have handed out free bundles of CP at season start where resources were thought to be too tight. Most seasons half the teams finish with CP and TP to spare, so it is more a need for teams to try entice them to trade I think.

Managing resources is crucial to this game, so I would not wish to make it too easy to build stock piles. But I would consider a 10 CP free windfall again to all teams in a couple of seasons time if the need was there, but don't bank on it happening!

I must be in the minority, but I have never felt like resources were hard to come by in SESL.

Do you always want more? Sure!

But in my opinion, the resources are there to work with.

Tighter resources is a 'strength' of SESL in my opinion. It makes the management job harder yet more fulfilling and differentiates this league from the others I have been in before.

The extra 10CP as a one-off should only be considered if too many teams are finding it difficult to get Total SL over 350ish.