mental abilities (like composure) never ever increase
That's not true - every young player ( especally the strikers or the attacking players as general ) does increase their composure. One of the mental attributes that is almost always doesn't improves is "flair" - but I see few player which did increase their flair. But still this is the attribute which improves less.
Flair improves quite often for my teams that play attacking football, but it is composure that never ever increases for me.
That is because "Personality" attributes such as Aggression, Bravery, Determination, Flair, Influence etc. are not governed by CA increase/decrease but are governed by Game Events and Match Events.
These attributes do not control a level of ability at a certain component of a match event, they control playstyle, move choice preference, and general behaviour independant of event capability.
"Personality" attributes as I call them do not define how good a player is at certain actions, but rather they define how a player prefers to make decisions. They do not rely upon CA because they are not Abilities, they are personality attributes. They do not improve or decline with CA, they improve or decline with Man Management Techniques or certain regularly Match factors, such as being given the Captaincy, being told to play a highly Creative Game, being fined or disciplined for X,Y or Z behaviour.
These attributes define style rather than capability at substance. They are some of the most powerful attributes in the game because they define personality in all events. Being able to increase or decrease them through the ease of Training would give the manager far too much power while destroying far too much of the individuality of player that exists in the game.
Composure is an "Ability" attribute. It requires CA to improve and defines a level of ability for a certain move component. Determination is a "Personality" attribute. It does not require CA and it does not define a level of ability at a certain move component, it defines instead the type of choice a player will prefer to make or the type of behaviour a player will display in response to a match event.
I have no real FM evidence to back this up, but it would stand to reason that almost any player would gain in physical attributes even without much training simply by virtue of physical maturation, just as older players tend to lose physical attributes even with training.
There is plenty of FM evidence to back up this assertion, not least of all the 2 second "Tip" displayed during fixture processing that clearly states that Physical Attributes decline with Age.
As with all things SI, it is the task of the player to take this vague truth and figure out the accurate details.
What actually occurs is that each Attribute Category, Technical-Mental-Physical, has a different rate of CA gain versus Age. In a graph where CA gain is plotted on the Y axis (the vertical axis, my high school mathematics is rusty) and Age is plotted on the X axis, you have 3 different curves that start and end at the exact same point but follow different curves and different patterns.
Technical Attributes for example could be considered the basic Test scenario. Technical Attributes plot what is essentially a nice, smooth, basic and simple curve from minimum gain at a young age to maximum loss at an old age with a peak of maximum gain half way through.
Physical Attributes are different. They may start off from the same position but the Physical Attributes peak of maximum CA gain is much earlier than all other attribute Categories, and so from the Age of 24 or so the natural tendency is for Physical Attributes to decline. This can be prevented through Training or even reversed through training up untill the age of 30 to 35 depending on Player Hidden Personality Attributes. At the Age of 30 to 35 the natural decline of Physical Attribute CA gain cannot be halted.
Mental Attributes are the opposite of Physical Attributes. They start off at the same position but reach their peak of CA gain much later than all other attribute Categories. A 30 year old player that is slowly losing Physical Attribute CA will find he is rapidly gaining Mental Attribute CA and so even with zero Training a player will naturally shed Physical CA for Mental CA. Eventually however even the best players Mental Attributes will start to decline.
One of the trully brilliant aspects of this whole system in realism terms is how vital Stamina and Natural Fitness becomes in older players. Match Experience is the key variable for CA gain/loss in players, whereas Professionalism is the key attribute but not so much a variable. Low levels of Stamina and Natural Fitness means that players cannot achieve the required levels of CA to prevent a decline in Stamina, leading to a further drop in Stamin and a further drop in CA.
Maintaining Stamina even when you have given up hope of utilising physical attributes in older players becomes a key concern. You can ignore Aerobic with Acceleration and PAce and Jumping and Balance and Agility, you can let it drop like a stone and produce a mental genius. You can turn Ronaldo into Giggs or Vidic into Maldini, but you cannot allow Stamina to drop because then CA is lost and ability to continue playing is lost, which leads to a further reduction in CA and most importantly the CA-shedding Stamina attribute.
It is an amazing system.
I know that goal keepers tend to have some pretty weak physical attributes, at least in certain areas. And yet I am guessing most of us train our keepers in strength and aerobics at both a higher proportional and higher overall rate than outfield players. And while goal keepers do get better, they tend to remain pretty lousy physically. True, they typically start out worse, but it's not like they close the gap.
So either goal keepers are hard or soft-capped in some way by virtue of position, OR the other players are gaining physical attributes by running around on the pitch during games, indicating that game experience both increases AND shapes current ability.
Game experience both increases AND shapes Current Ability, but the critical issue with Goalkeepers is that they have a lot more Attributes in the key Aerobic Category than outfield players. The hard cap comes not from any specificly designed code to prevent Goalkeepers improving, it comes from the fact that they have more Attributes in their Key Training Categories. This means that you cannot train specific key Goalkeeping attributes at the same ratio of difference as outfield players. Goalkeepers are handicapped by the fact that there are only 25 notches in the training Categories, but their key Categories contain more attributes, so the maximum difference you can acheive PER ATTRIBUTE is much lower.
For example, Kaka might consider Attacking and Ball Control to be his key Categories with Passing, Creativity, Dribbling, First Touch, Heading and Technique. Attacking has two attributes while Defending has 4 attributes. The Training difference is 25 possible notches so you can Train each a maximum of Ball Control 12x his Attacking.
However Van der Sar considers his Aerobic and Goalkeeping to be much more important than his Ball Control. His Ball Control contains 2 attributes while his Aerobic contains 6 attributes. You can only train his Aerobic at 8x his Ball Control.
Consider what that means in Match Engine real terms. For a player like Kaka, Ball Control and Attacking are all vital components of his ability, yet you can train his Ball Control at 12x his Attacking if you wish. For Van der Sar his Ball Control is almost irrelevant while his Aerobic is vital yet you can only train his Aerobic 8x more than his Ball Control.
Goalkeepers do not have a "hard cap" per se, but they are significantly hampered by the quantity of key attributes for their position that exist within attribute heavy Categories. Goalkeepers have the heaviest "key attribute" categories of any player, which reduces the overall Training bias you can give to those attributes.
I will confess that I have had a few beers tonight and so the mathematics involved in the explanations may be very dodgy, although the points are very close to being nailed on fact, in my opinion.
Regarding the AMC: I ended up both training and playing him as an AMC. He got a good run with the first team and improved drastically during the first half of the season.
Exactly. This is precisely what should be expected. Greater Match Experience equals greater CA gain.
He improved in 18 categories, including pretty much all the striker and midfielder areas. So he didn't close the gap, and still retains a striker-like profile. But in the end, it still worked out I guess. He just turned into the kind of AMC who scores all the time, instead of the kind of AMC who creates plays. I'm not complaining.
As match time in a new position increases so does the Position value of a player. The position value of a player determines how much CA is required to boost a particular attribute, but it is also determines how much CA a player gets in his attributes for playing.
Your player used to be a Striker so had the attributes for a striker. While those attributes would require the most CA to improve, they are also the attributes he is most adept at and so would gain further CA through their successful execution.
Retraining him to AMC would reduce the quantity of CA required for pure Striker attributes, and so these would develop faster. At the same time your player would have his AMC related attributes increased in terms of CA, but at the same time would be gaining more CA in those attributes.
In short you are experiencing a zero sum game where ease of development is balanced by CA gain. The vital piece of the Puzzle is the quantity of CA your player recieves from high performance levels in that position.
In other words you need to keep him playing in AMC and not in the ST position so he "loses" ST CA based on performance, and and "gains" AMC CA based on performance. He might become "Natural" in AMC but that only removes the Ability penalty for playing in that position. To trully become an adept AMC you need to hugely bias his AMC training so he gains AMC key attributes, which will allow him to excell in performance in AMC, which will result it increased CA gains for his AMC attributes.
There is a hill to get over yet, once you get over it everything will become easy. That hill is his performance at AMC.
