Guide

Tours and the Tour Card

A career climbs five tiers, each with its own tour: the county circuit, the Prospects Tour, the Contender Tour, the Pro Circuit and the Elite Series. The Tour Card is the ladder between them. This page covers tours, their events, and the rules for winning, keeping and losing a card.

Tours#

Tours live in data/tours.json (or any file in data/tours/). Each file is a JSON array. The editor schema is the tours reference, and the Mod Studio edits them under Calendar → Tours. Patches target tour:<id>.

{
  "id": "acme.tour.super-league",
  "tier": 3,
  "name": "Super League",
  "shortName": "Super League",
  "tierLabel": "Super League",
  "colour": "#5b8def",
  "logo": "assets/super-league.webp",
  "description": "Weekend opens for the nearly-there.",
  "rules": { "cardsAwarded": 4, "cardYears": 2, "orderOfMerit": "season" }
}

Cards are awarded from this season's money on the tour, whatever orderOfMerit says. Tours hand out their cards in tier order, lowest tier number first, so a player at the top of two tours takes the first one's card and the next player down gets the second's.

Tour Cards into another tour#

A tour can give its best players a card into another tour's events, as a junior body's top series gives places on a junior tour. Each entry of rules.cards:

{ "key": "elite", "name": "Youth Elite Tour Card", "top": 4, "months": 12, "into": "core.tour.junior", "benefit": "place", "free": true }

Nothing is stored in the save: the holders are worked out from the prize history, which keeps two seasons.

A tour can give more than one card, into different tours. A qualifying school is a tour of its own whose phase ends when the school does: the core pack's Junior Series Qualifying School (core.tour.junior-school, phases: [2]) plays two January days, and its table gives its top 8 a card into core.tour.junior. A series' champion can hold two cards under one name: a seed in the Junior Series, and a free place at the school (into: core.tour.junior-school, free: true).

The core tours#

The Women's Tour shares tier 3 with the Contender Tour. Its events are open to women only ("restrict": { "gender": "f" }), and its table feeds the Women's Golden Mile Showdown and two World Championship places. When a tier has more than one tour, a player's tier is named after the first of them in the file.

To give the Contender Tour a third card: { "target": "tour:core.tour.challenge", "patch": { "rules": { "cardsAwarded": 3 } } }.

Events#

A tour's events are event templates in data/events.json or data/events/calendar/*.json: when they're played, the field, the formats, the prize money and who gets in. Each names its tour (tourId) and venue (venueId). The essentials:

Qualifiers, entry routes, byes, staggered entry, group stages, league nights, team events and women's or youth events are all in Calendar and entry rules.

The Tour Card#

The game's career rules decide how cards are kept and how many Trial Week gives out. They're settings: data/career-rules.json holds one object (an array of them works too). Every field except id is optional, and a field left out keeps the game's number. The editor schema is the career rule sets reference; the Mod Studio edits them under Career rules → Tour Cards & economy.

{
  "id": "acme.career-rules",
  "tourCards": { "keepRank": 80, "holders": 144 },
  "qschool": { "maxCards": 24 }
}

Several mods can supply career rules: they apply in load order, later fields winning. Reusing another mod's id replaces its record. Patches target careerRules:<id> (the core record is core.career-rules).

The season, card by card#

1. Trial Week (January): everyone who plays a day tagged qschool has Contender Tour status for the year. The cards are given once the last such day is done: exactly the places free on the tour (holders less the players whose card runs this season), within [minCards, maxCards] but never more than the free places, so the tour never goes over its size. Retirements and cards lost at the season's end free places; there is no fixed count:
   • **Without schools**, every qschool day awards points by finishing position, and the players without a card with the most points take the cards.
   • **With schools** (; the core pack has Trial Week UK and Trial Week Europe), each school has its own days:
     • First stage. A school's first-stage days give no cards. Each sends its last count players through to every final-stage day (qualifies.events, see calendar). A player who is through plays no more first-stage days.
     • Final-stage days. Each day's top dayCards places (2: the two finalists) win a card while places are free, and those players play no more days.
     • The rest of the free places are shared between the schools by how many players each had, then go down each school's order of merit (points) over its final-stage days only. A pack's qschool.meritCards can cap them.
     • One school a season. A player in one school's days may not enter another's.
     • Every school day still carries the qschool tag.
2. Season's end: cards expiring this season are renewed inside keepRank and lost outside it. Then each tour with cardsAwarded gives cards to the top of its season money, lowest tier first, while places are free on the tour.
3. New season: card holders are split between tier 1 (inside eliteRank) and tier 2; everyone else goes by level and age to tiers 3–5.

The season review's targets follow these numbers ("Finish in the top 64 to keep your Tour Card", "Or finish in the top 2 of the Contender Tour").

Who plays where#

Who may enter a tour's events follows its tier, unless the event says otherwise with restrict or entryRoutes (see Calendar):

The big fields' qualifiers are drawn from the money of the tour with the role "feeder" (the core Contender Tour, core.tour.challenge).

Tour roles#

Four rules need one tour in particular. A tour says it is that tour with role; mark your own tour and the rule moves to it.

If several tours claim a role, the first in load order has it. The core pack marks its own four; to move a role, patch role off the core tour ("role": null) and set it on yours.

The economy#

The same data/career-rules.json record holds the money of a career under economy: the day job, living costs, what travel and hotels cost, what sponsors offer and how they bargain, and the earnings milestones. Every field is optional; a field left out keeps the game's number, and records merge field by field in load order (a list, like milestones, is replaced whole). Amounts are whole pounds: the game shows them in the player's currency (see Localisation).

{
  "id": "acme.economy",
  "economy": {
    "dayJobWage": 350,
    "livingCosts": 150,
    "travel": { "maxNights": 4, "classes": { "comfort": { "cost": 1.4 } } },
    "sponsors": { "valueScale": 0.3, "offerDays": 35 },
    "negotiation": { "greed": 1.5 }
  }
}

A sponsor's offer is also multiplied by the player's nation's market (see Nations), and "home" for travel prices is anywhere in your nation's region (the core's is the UK).

Difficulties#

difficulty sets what each difficulty starts you with: every attribute's level (before the playing style and age adjust it) and the savings in the bank (cash, or childCash for a career that starts at school, younger than the tuning value create.juniorFullAge).

{ "id": "acme.hard-times", "difficulty": { "hard": { "cash": 0 }, "normal": { "cash": 800 } } }

Career paths#

paths sets the two career paths a new career chooses between in the creator: classic (Classic Career) and unknown (Unknown Potential Career). A path sets the new player's hidden potential in place of the difficulty, which then sets only the start level and the savings. Careers made without a path (by tools, or before paths existed) keep the older formula.

On both paths the ceiling falls by the tuning value create.potentialTaper for each year past 21, and it never goes over 95. The draws come from the career's own stream (its seed plus :path-potential), so a path changes nothing else a career rolls.

{ "id": "acme.long-shots", "paths": { "unknown": { "topChance": 0.05, "floor": 60 } } }

What's at stake in a match#

stakes sets how much a match matters to the players (0 to 1: nerves and the big-stage effect in the match engine): base + progress × how far into the event (the final is 1; a group-stage match counts as group, a league night 0.2 to 0.5) + major at a major + tv on TV + rivalry × how fierce a rivalry is, at most 1.

Saves#

A career keeps the tours and career rules it was created with. Career rules (the economy included) follow the installed packs when a career is loaded (saves from before them play by the game's numbers, which the core pack's data/career-rules.json holds). The difficulty's starting savings and seedMoney only matter when a career starts.

The example-rules mod gives the Contender Tour a third card, keeps cards inside the top 72 and caps Trial Week at 24 cards.