Some friends and I thought about the possibilities of asynchronous games since we are living in different parts of the world at the moment, and one thing that came to mind was a football management sim where everybody could setup their teams during the week and have matches on weekends (or whenever all players from a league have finished doing the weekly things). Now, due to different time zones matches would have to be resolved automatically, especially when two player teams compete against each other. A lot of online F2P management games do it this way, so that's not really uncommon.
However, to keep things interesting I think there should be some way to at least influence the match even when you cannot actively get involved in any way, so now I am looking for possible mechanics to solve this issue. I have been playing some Hattrick over the last few months, and while it allows to set individual orders for players it's pretty complicated to a degree where I usually just skip it altogether.
One possible mechanic I could think of is dividing a match into phases, maybe 15 minute segments, so each halftime consists of three phases. For each phase you can set a general strategy or maybe even a tactic your team trained during the week. Think of Endless Space's battle phase cards for example - if your team trained offside traps during the week you could have them use it during a certain segment of the match (and hope your opponent hasn't chosen to play defense during that phase of course).
The nice thing about this would be that you see a direct connection between weekday trainings and matchday tactic settings. Furthermore studying your upcoming opponent's general strategy would be vital to prepare before the match.
Do you think this would be a good idea? Any changes you would suggest, or maybe even better ideas than the one above?
