Tactic
The tactic position players depending on the position of the ball on the pitch irrespective as to which side had the possession of the ball.
The pitch is divided into 12 areas like this
During the game, depending on the ball location on the pitch, each player knows his home location.
Since Final Whistle player's movements depend on the ball position and whether the team is attacking or defending. Which gives more game strategy.
Here is a detail about the internal structure of Player Manager original .tac files There are only 10 players because the goalkeeper's position is managed separately.
10 players x 20 areas x 1 position (x, y) coded on 2 bytes -> 800 bytes.
XY coordinates when were to stand on the pitch, the unit is pixels, with [0, 0] at the top left corner flag. After that follows where the player should stand during corners, kick offs etc. The tactic description seems to be after the first 800 bytes
As an example, reading the 5-3-2.tac gives the following results
Loading tactics file: 5-3-2.tac
playerIndex:1
426, 12, 498, 387, 540, 747, 468, 1209, 480, 39, 618, 306, 648, 639, 642, 960, 432, 6, 726, 264, 786, 627, 780, 936, 666, 345, 660, 336, 636, 339, 624, 438, 426, 1, 432, 1020, 486, 1, 810, 1350
playerIndex:2
456, 6, 186, 261, 138, 639, 132, 927, 450, 27, 306, 312, 294, 609, 276, 969, 468, 12, 414, 390, 360, 753, 432, 1212, 276, 342, 276, 342, 324, 348, 258, 450, 450, 1, 102, 1350, 462, 1, 480, 1020
In open kick off, this format as been replaced by an XML file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<tactic version="1.0" name="5-3-2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<player shirt="2">
<region name="area1">
<x>426</x>
<y>12</y>
</region>
<region name="area2">
<x>498</x>
<y>387</y>
</region>
<region name="area3">
<x>540</x>
<y>747</y>
</region>
(...)