Advanced Tactics: Scatter Launches And You

The last passing post ended with a bit about how scatter launches can be made to work in your favor. Let's talk a little bit more about that.

How Scatter Works
Scatter occurs in a number of situations. A scatter launch is an obvious one, but the ball also scatters once whenever a player fails a pickup, fails to catch a pass or kickoff, or fumbles on a throw attempt. When a ball scatters, it moves one space in a random direction (all directions are equally likely).
On a scatter launch, the ball scatters away from the intended square three times. This does not mean that it will land three squares away, however. By way of example, here are some possible scatter patterns:

As you can see, every space within three of the intended target (including the intended target itself!) is a possible landing square for a scatter launch. And I'm sure you've already noticed that not all of these squares are equally likely landing squares; for example, only one scatter sequence leads to this square:

While this square has three sequences, making the ball three times as likely to land here:

And here's how the squares all work out percentage-wise (as always, with some rounding):

First observation: 4.69% of the time, a scatter launch will land where you intended. The receiver will have a chance to catch it, but he won't get the +1 bonus for catching an accurate pass.

Second observation: The way scatter works means that you can make relatively "safe" throws even if your AG is low enough that you're unlikely to get an accurate pass. For example:

While this pass is obviously pretty unlikely to work, the potential scatter has a pretty good chance (~72.42%) to either land on or adjacent to one of our players. A pass like this is dangerous, of course, but sometimes it's preferable to the alternatives. For example, if your thrower is in that position and being harassed by enemy blitzers, a long bomb into the other half of the field can prevent an easy opposing touchdown. It's also a way for slower teams to move the ball more quickly, particularly if they feel like their men downfield are tough enough to withstand the opposing player's attempts to knock them clear of the ball.

Third observation: There's a ~46.85% chance for the ball to land either on the receiver or within one square of him. Why is this important?

Throwing The Game

The Diving Catch skill allows a player to attempt to catch a ball that lands in one of his empty tackle zones, and it can be an important part of a low AG passing game. A player with Diving Catch has a chance to catch both accurate passes and nearly half of scatter launches. If you can remember the math from the previous passing post and combine it with this fascinating new information, then you might be almost as much of a nerd as I am. In any case, Diving Catch raises the catch chance of an AG 3 catcher by like 8% in the simplest case, and more for higher AG players. But there's a much more entertaining use for it!
The Hail Mary Pass skill allows your passer to throw the ball to any space on the field, even beyond normal long bomb range. A Hail Mary can't be intercepted and has a greatly simplified pass roll: on a 1 the pass fumbles, and on a 2-6 it scatter launches. Because these passes aren't affected by AG, it's a passing plan even a Khemri can get behind (although even with Diving Catch, he might have a hard time catching the ball). Of course, hurling the ball off wildly into the distance is still risky, but used sparingly a Hail Mary strategy can give even slow, low-AG teams a shot of offensive mobility.

Final Notes
One other thing I mentioned briefly last time is the number of skills that exist to improve your passing game. Most of them are incremental increases and the improvements are easy enough to calculate in your head, but I think it will be valuable to show the math on an example of the reroll skills:

AG 3 Thrower, AG 3 Catcher

Range	Fumble Throw %	Scatter Launch %	Fumble Catch %	Accurate Catch %
Quick Pass (+1)	17	17	22	44
Short Pass (+0)	17	33	17	33
Long Pass (-1)	33	33	11	23
Long Bomb (-2)	50	33	6	11

AG 3 Thrower with Pass, AG 3 Catcher with Catch

Range	Fumble Throw %	Scatter Launch %	Fumble Catch %	Accurate Catch %
Quick Pass (+1)	6	6	10	78
Short Pass (+0)	8	17	8	67
Long Pass (-1)	22	22	6	50
Long Bomb (-2)	42	28	3	27

Pass and Catch improve your passing game immensely. The effect is nearly as dramatic on higher AG players (they improve slightly less with rerolls, but given their much higher initial values they obviously end up with very high improved values). It's obvious that players with passing skills should be better at passing than players without, but the point I wanted to underline here is that the difference is really large. You can achieve this same level of improvement with just one of these skills and a willingness to use a team reroll as well.