alexfall862

2 hours ago, Sarge said:

Please God let us hope David Tyree smashed Dekoda Link's mom, amen.

Almost certain that Dekoda is actually David Tyree's dad through some back to the future hijinks.

Does the malus or boost for either of these (passing and clutch) apply as a global modifier or impact specific attributes?

Someone is going to spreadsheet this out and sign an entire team of below average but clutch players. @tsweezy

Very interesting foils!

2 hours ago, Bingo415 said:

GD Jacobs. Mironde is incredible.

Is this Maronde's Heisman Moment?

Nebraska with some weapons grade ooftonium on that one. At least it was a non-conference game. 

Team	Player	ATT	YDS	YDS/ATT	TD	FUM
Nebraska	Richaun Alsadek	18	180	10	2	0
Nebraska	Oday Rodriguez	12	7	0.58	0	1

Hmm, I wonder which one should play more.

Not if I investigate you first.

Ad Application:

• Game: NCAA National Championship or Super Bowl (depending on when turnover happens)
  
• Company: Nacrotics Anonymous
  
• Sponsoring the first fumble of each game
  
• Script: "This turnover has been brought to you by your anonymous friends at NA. Whether it's fleeing the police across the country in a stolen Subaru or losing a championship game to the third best team in Oklahoma, turn to us after your rock bottom."
  
• Tagline: "Don't fumble your life away. Don't be Matt Howard."
  

In

 

alexfall862#6505

What, so I can have it added to my file? I'm watching you.

 

Fellas, he's on to us!

Is there any chance we can make sure that Kansas isn't allowed into any of the cool leagues no matter what?

Dude, that is a huge task to get the game data together. Shoutout to @PoopyRhinoPickle and @Piercewise1 for making that happen.

Oh sorry, the other 20 points are the affinities. So a perfect school would get 50% of the total possible score addition from that, and then another 20% comes from having or not having affinities. Broadly speaking, the difference between a 0-12 school and a 12-0 school is about the same as 1 affinity matching.

Well Lubbock is pretty white and also it's hot there...

Hello Coaches!

 

Welcome to the second Dev Diary for 2022 on the new recruiting system for this coming season.

 

Recruiting Dev Diaries for 2022

Dev Diary 54: Recruiting Affinities Refresh | Close to Home

Dev Diary 55: Recruiting Affinities Refresh | Other Affinities

Dev Diary 56: Recruiting Efficiency Score

Dev Diary 57: Recruiting on the Interface

 

With this diary, I want to introduce the new recruiting system. The goal of overhauling the system was to take advantage of what the interface gives us in the form of new ways to connect on-field performance and recruiting while both preserving and nerfing the affinity system.

 

Challenges of Last Season

 

One of the things that was clear when reviewing the first season of recruiting was that affinities had a very strong influence on whether a team could even consider competing for a recruit. Schools could invest as little as 5 points into a recruit and get 90% of their necessary points through the affinity bonus system. In isolation, this doesn't mean too much, but the effect it had on recruiting was in shutting out competition and leading to a dice roll in player generation dictating committals before recruiting even began.

 

We can also take advantage of the interface, and more realistically simulate the way a player may consider a school. Beyond affinity matching having a strong hand in recruiting choices, we also saw Georgia and Nebraska bring in really strong classes despite absolutely putrid seasons. To be fair, in real life poor teams can often out recruit their relative place in the standings due to affinity with recruits, but while both teams were closing the season getting blown out, they were also signing 5* recruits and that just didn't pass the smell test.

 

The new recruiting system retains the points based recruiting backbone of the previous system. Each team still gets 50 Recruiting Points (now called Recruiting Time Points - think of the 50 points as an approximation of how your coaching staff divides their time among recruits) each week. (or fewer if you have an administrative penalty for bad gameplans or other site issues).

 

Recruits still have a threshold that ticks down over time and reacts to the number of teams recruiting them.

 

What has changed are two things: we've swapped out the Affinity Bonus for a Recruiting Efficiency Score and recruits now have memories.

 

Recruits are Now Goldfish

 

Before we dive into the big change, let's go over memories. One of the bigger issues that came up in feedback was the battle of trying to overcome schools who were currently inactive but had pushed the committal threshold so high that no other school could get a player to commit until the last week of the recruiting season.

 

Part of this was intended. Recruits should naturally want to wait to hear back form all possible options - but when looking at some of the recruiting battles, it was clear that this behavior from recruits was ultimately harmful to the fun of recruiting and not all that realistic as a recruit is unlikely to commit to a school that's ghosting them.

 

Recruits will now only evaluate the last ten weeks when counting the number of teams interested in them. They will still consider all Recruiting Time Points when calculating a decision, though, so a school that was active in week 1 could conceivably get a commitment without further activity provided no other school made a serious effort on that player.

 

Recruiting Efficiency Score

 

The Recruiting Efficiency Score is a modifier to team's point totals with recruits meant to be an approximation of how well your pitch is landing with a recruit. 0-8 with no affinity match with a recruit? Expect your pitch to be less effective with a recruit than a 2-6 school with 1 affinity match, or a an 8-0 juggernaut that's also close to home.

 

The value of the modifier in the Recruiting Efficiency Score is between -20% and 20%, meaning that the worst possible fit for a recruit is at 80% strength compared to the median school. It also means that the best possible situation has effectively 120% strength in recruiting. When pitting the best fit against the worst fit, it would be a 50% advantage for the best fit school. That's far more modest than the previous affinity system gave out.

 

The nuts and bolts of how the affinity score is calculated are below, but broad strokes are this: wins and losses account for 30% of the score, postseason participation of various kinds and strengths (bowl game, conference championship appearance, conference title, playoff, etc.) account of 10%, and 50% of the score is evaluated by matching affinities.

 

 

 

 

Examples

 

This is all a little heady, so let me give some example situations.

 

Tulsa had a perfect season last year. They maxed out every category in the RES that a school can control. Their score for the year was 100%.

 

If they're recruiting a player they have 1 affinity match for, their RES goes to 110%, and 120% if they match both affinities.

 

Because this is a modifier on the Recruiting Time Points, Tulsa's RES for a 1 affinity match recruit would be:

 

Week 1: (5 RTP Points in Week 1) * RES of 110% = 5.5 Points logged into the recruit in week 1.

 

Let's say Tulsa loses their opener. That would impact their score (0/0 games played is full credit in the RES, but once a game is played it references that outcome. 0/0=1 is meant to be an approximation of hope springing eternal in the offseason.) This would drop their baseline RES score from 100% to 94.76%. The affinity bonus still applies, so in week 2 their RES would be 104.76%.

 

Week 2: (5 RTP Points in Week 1 + 5 RTP Points in Week 2) * RES of 104.76% = 10.476 Points logged into the recruit week 2.

 

Oh no, they also lose their home conference opener as well! But, to make up for that, they're spending 10 RTP points this week on the recruit instead of 5. Their baseline RES drops to 89.56% because they're now getting 0 credit for current season conference record.

 

Week 3: (5 RTP Points in Week 1 + 5 RTP Points in Week 2 + 10 RTP Points in Week 3) * RES of 99.56% = 19.912 Points logged into the recruit week 2.

 

Competition

 

Let's now say that Texas Tech has an interested in that same player and also has an affinity match, but where Tulsa had the best season, Texas Tech has the worst. For comparison of the system, let's say they start off white hot and win their first game and conference opener.

 

Their initial RES is 90% and they have 1 affinity match for an RES with this recruit of 100%. Let's say they win a noncon week 1 and a conference game week 2 and go into week 3 sensing a battle with Tulsa and also put in 10 puts in week 3. This is how it would break down:

 

Week 1: (5 RTP Points in Week 1) * RES of 100% = 5 Points logged into the recruit in week 1.

 

Week 2: (5 RTP Points in Week 1 + 5 RTP Points in Week 2) * RES of 100.29% = 10.0029 Points logged into the recruit week 2.

 

Week 3: (5 RTP Points in Week 1 + 5 RTP Points in Week 2 + 10 RTP Points in Week 3) * RES of 100.53% = 20.106 Points logged into the recruit week 2.

 

So we can see that Texas Tech started the season at a 10% disadvantage, but in just 3 weeks were able to shorten the gap in RES score, by virtue

 

In a third example, let's say Texas Tech has all the plans in the world to contest this recruit, but instead of opening white hot, they fall flat on their face while Tulsa continues on pace.

 

Tulsa by Week 3: Baseline RES of 100% + 10% Affinity Bonus = 110% * 20 = 22 points logged.

Tech by Week 3: Baseline RES of 80% + 10% Affinity Bonus = 90% * 20 = 18 points logged.

 

In a fourth example, let's say everything about the previous example stays the same, except Tulsa has no affinity match with this particular recruit.

 

Tulsa by Week 3: Baseline RES of 100% + 10% Affinity Bonus = 100% * 20 = 20 points logged.

Tech by Week 3: Baseline RES of 80% + 10% Affinity Bonus = 90% * 20 = 18 points logged.

 

Takeaways

 

The example above uses the best and worst team possible by on-field performance. Tulsa currently has the highest possible score, and Texas Tech has the lowest possible score. For most teams, their baseline RES scores are going to revolve around 90-95% throughout the season. While that's not nothing, it isn't a huge difference in impact on the total race for a recruit.

 

However, cumulatively, a bad season is about a 10-15% difference in RES and it takes roughly 1 affinity match to counteract that deficit. This has the intended goal of making teams that should have no business in real life of competing for recruits against powerhouse programs think twice before chasing after 5* players - yet at the same time doesn't completely eliminate the possibility they could get one.

 

Conference championships and bowl games last until the next round of games, so they can act as a buoy for teams that have a bad follow-up year. This advantage doesn't seem unrealistic, as the 'glow' doesn't come off a team in less than a year.

 

The longer the sim goes, the more stable a coaching record value is going to be. This should act as a stabilizing force for many programs with long-tenured programs, and will also protect coaches who take over struggling teams from being tied behind the recruiting anchor of their new team's previous season record. A 9-3 good coach taking over a 3-9 program equals out to the same credit as a 6-6 team with a 6-6 coach.

 

2021 End of Year Scores

 

The RES score is supposed to be an evolving number, but to give you some idea of of the effect it will have by year's end, here's what last year's end of season RES would have looked like:

 

Without the bump from the RES calculator treating the beginning of the season as a 'clean slate', Texas Tech sits at 80% along with UTEP.

 

 

 

 

Here's that distribution as a graph

 

 

 

 

and the quartile measurements - lower scores tend to be lower than the high scores are high, meaning that having a bad season is going to separate you from the meh teams more than than a meh season is going to separate you from the good teams. Again, this is the intended outcome. That's not to say teams that perform poorly can't recruit good players, they'll just need to be more mindful of affinity matches and spend more points per recruit.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a WIP

 

This project is a WIP. Other derivations of this general idea are also possible.

 

Testing on this concept has been slow, because the number crunching is just a little too much for a google sheet to handle, and I'm sure we'll learn things when we do a test run off of the interface. As stated above, the goal here is to take advantage of what the interface gives us in the form of new ways to connect on-field performance and recruiting while both preserving and nerfing the affinity system.

 

I could foresee the overal span of effect changing from the 80%-120% to 70%-130% or 90%-110% if coaches feel on-field performance has too dynamic an effect or not dynamic enough of an effect.

 

 

Wrap Up

 

Unlike the affinity refresh project, this is more of a single person project - so I'll take credit for whether this sinks or swims. I would like to shout out @TuscanSota though for getting the interface closer and closer to up and running and for talking me through what he can do the facilitate this idea. As I mentioned above, this is a WIP, but thanks to @TuscanSota, the bones of this project are ready to go in the interface.

 

Like everything else, I welcome your input and these diaries are an effort to be as transparent as possible about the way recruiting works, where my minds going as far as these projects, and I look forward to a test run in the near future. The next dev diary in this quartet will be written and released shortly as a preamble to the first test run of this recruiting system.

Hello Coaches!

 

Welcome to the second Dev Diary for 2022 on the new recruiting system for this coming season.

 

Recruiting Dev Diaries for 2022

Dev Diary 54: Recruiting Affinities Refresh | Close to Home

Dev Diary 55: Recruiting Affinities Refresh | Other Affinities

Dev Diary 56: Recruiting Efficiency Score

Dev Diary 57: Recruiting on the Interface

 

With this diary, I want to go over the cleaning run on affinities for the next season. The goal for this offseason was to look at all affinity assignments and make sure teams were getting bonuses that made sense and that the system overall was reflecting something close to reality. Specifically with the non-close to home affinities, the goal was to find a way to tie the affinity assignment into objective measurements as much as possible.

 

In some ways, the affinities aren't strictly objective qualities, but we made an effort as a working crew to find public reference points we can point coaches to, instead of 'well it just feels right'.

 

Academics

 

Academics is now tied to the 2022 US News Top 20.

 

 

 

 

Service

 

No changes were made to Service, as those are tied to the Service Academies, Army, Navy, and Air Force [iSPOILER]...and soon to be Space Force? [/iSPOILER]

 

Religion

 

No changes were made to Religion, as those are the 11 schools aligned with a specific religious institution:

 

Baylor (Baptist General Convention)

Boston College (Jesuit)

BYU (Mormon)

Duke (United Methodist Church)

Liberty (Jerry Falwell)

[iSPOILER]Nebraska (Corn)[/iSPOILER]

Notre Dame (Catholic)

SMU (United Methodist Church)

Syracuse (Nonsectarian, formerly United Methodist Church)

TCU (Disciples of Christ)

Tulsa (Presbyterian Church)

Wake Forest (Nonsectarian, formerly Baptist)

 

Large Crowds

 

Large Crowds was made to include schools with attendance capacity above 70,000 fans. 3 schools were removed. None added.

 

 

 

 

Small School

 

Small schools were pinned to enrollment data from US News. 7 schools were added, and 4 were removed.

 

 

 

 

Frontrunner

 

Frontrunner was changed from the somewhat unknowable measure of team overall from before any games were played to a list of championship teams. These are the schools who won their conference championship and/or made the playoff. By changing this definition, it is also the first affinity in the sim tied directly to on the field results! 8 teams were added, 15 were removed.

 

 

 

 

Climate

 

Climate has been removed from affinities, because after review, it seemed like assignment was completely arbitrary and since we couldn't tie it to a specific reference point, it was therefore also unfair. 17 schools were removed, 5 of which had no other affinity.

 

 

 

 

Current Affinity Assignments

 

See this thread for current affinity assignments.

 

Here are the numer of affinities by school:

 

 

 

Future Affinity Plans and Ideas

For those 5 schools schools who lost out on their affinity, and for any other coaches that find themselves either out of affinities or are down one - there's no need to fret quite yet! Our next dev diary will go into the ways that affinities are being reworked in the actual recruiting process. You'll have to stay tuned to hear the specifics, but in general expect affinities to have ~5-10% boost to recruits as opposed to the ~900% boost possible when gaming the previous system in the most efficient way possible.

 

As a team, we also floated some new affinity ideas, but with recruiting moving entirely into the interface and a pretty substantial recruiting process overhaul, we've left the affinity additions out of this next recruiting cycle.

 

Here are some of the ideas floated out by team members in the past, that are under consideration:

 

Party School

Schools were the students party pretty hard. Issue with adding is that's arguably any school.

 

Urban/Rural Schools

Schools located in urban areas could get a boost with kids who want to live the city life, rural school the opposite. Issue with adding is having to find the delineation between urban and rural - especially with so many schools being in bedroom communities around larger metro areas. Is Northwestern urban because Chicago or rural because Evanstown is a "small town"? Probably not, because it's pretty clearly part of the metropolitan area. What about Ames and Des Moines or Bloomington and Indianapolis?

 

Large School

This is the corollary to the small school affinity already listed. Issue with adding is whether this really does anything different than the large crowds affinity.

 

With the move into the interface, there's also long-term potential to tie affinities into on-field performance in a more direct manner. Some of the affinities suggested that fall into that category are:

 

Play Style

Players could get an affinity match with schools who have particular schemes assigned. Issue here is how to measure that, and what happens to teams that change scheme - is it fair to penalize a team for switching scheme? What even defines a scheme?

 

 

NIL Opportunities

Players could get an affinity match with schools who have large endowments and high enrollments. Issue with adding is similar to a Large School affinity. Does it really add anything different or just reinforce that affinity?

 

Playing Time

Certain players look for where they will start immediately. Issue with adding is how that would be measured without becoming a particularly hairy evaluation each recruiting week.

 

Play with a Legendary (QB/RB/WR/TE/OL/DL/LB/CB/S/K/P/Coach)

Players with this type of affinity want to commit to a school where a particular position player or coach is at - and they want to learn or be in the same position group room as the best of the best. Issue here is how discerning how it's different from the frontrunner affinity, and it also has the same challenge as the playing time affinity. Evaluating anything over 130 rosters could become hairy very quickly.

 

Feel free to suggest your own affinity ideas here as we will use the 2022 season to start planning recruiting changes in 2023.

 

Wrap Up

 

I asked some users to help out with this job, and special thanks need to go to @PoopyRhinoPickle @subsequent @TuscanSota @Rocketcan @tsweezy for their help and especially to @PoopyRhinoPickle as this dev diary would probably have been posted a month from now without his help compiling all of the changes.

Hello Coaches!

 

Welcome to the first Dev Diary for 2022 on the new recruiting system for this coming season.

 

Recruiting Dev Diaries for 2022

Dev Diary 54: Recruiting Affinities Refresh | Close to Home

Dev Diary 55: Recruiting Affinities Refresh | Other Affinities

Dev Diary 56: Recruiting Efficiency Score

Dev Diary 57: Recruiting on the Interface

 

With this diary, I want to take a moment to talk about the changes to close to home assignment for the next season. The goal for this offseason was to look at all affinity assignments and make sure teams were getting bonuses that made sense and that the system overall was reflecting something close to reality. This Dev Diary is for the Close to Home affinity, which affects around 60% of all recruits in a given class.

 

Close to Home Score

 

In order to compare schools' situations as close to objectively as possible, I developed a score to reflect the strength of a team's close to home assignments. There's a little bit of math behind it, but the gist of the score is that the higher the number, the stronger the close to home advantage that team should have.

 

 

 

 

When comparing schools, first let's look at total number of players each school could recruit with a close to home bonus. This is the total number of players in CtH states for schools, multiplied by 60% (the percentage of recruits generated with close to home affinity):

 

 

 

 

This is certainly one measure to see which schools have an advantage with close to home as an affinity, but one thing it doesn't capture is the degree to which multiple teams are competing for the same resources. After all, is Hawaii really the worst place to try and recruit players who want to stay close to home? Is West Virginia really that strongly positioned?

 

So instead of looking at total recruits, let's use the Close to Home Score.

 

 

 

 

This score does a good job of reflecting close to home advantages both in the sim and in real life. You can see all the rocky mountain schools tearing each other apart at the bottom due both to having few recruits in their regions, but also due to so many schools being in the same region. Instead of being ranked as the weakest school for close to home advantages, Hawaii is now in the upper middle of the rankings. This makes some sense, because while they may only have 25 recruits, there's no other competition that can argue a recruit could stay close to home without playing for Hawaii.

 

We've spent some considerable time talking about the Close to Home Score, and I want to emphasize that this isn't a measure we tried to fit our schools to, but a score that lets use know whether our existing assignments pass the 'smell test'. The actual work of assignment and reassignment of close to home regions was done with quite a bit of hand-checking of regions and whether a school would plausibly be able to make the argument to a recruit that they'd be able to stay closer to home than their other options.

 

In general, as far as straight geography, schools in the middle of the country have a geographically larger orbit in close to home regions and the coasts have a much tighter window to argue for close to home. My sense is that this reflects reality, as communities on the coast tend to be denser on the coasts and sparse in the plains, particularly the northern plains.

 

2022 Close to Home Changes

 

All of the above is a preamble to this - the changes that have been made for 2022 to Close to Home affinity assignments!

 

You can look at the 2022 specific state assignments here and see an interactive map here. (One thing the map can't do is divide between the sub-state regions we have for California, Florida, and Texas. Copy the drive document to avoid two users trying to select things at the same time)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wrap Up

 

I asked some users to help out with this job, and special thanks need to go to @PoopyRhinoPickle @subsequent @TuscanSota @Rocketcan @tsweezy for their help and especially to @PoopyRhinoPickle as this dev diary would probably have been posted a month from now without his help compiling all of the changes.

"You can match their contract exactly, or create your own contract - as long as it meets or exceeds the previous offer's Value"

 

Ah dang, no poison pills?

Nebraska

alexfall862#6505

Nebraska

alexfall862#6505

alexfall862 and Nebraska will be participating this season.

 

Discord is @alexfall862#$6505

FIRE LARRY SCOTT [uSER=1]@SUBSEQUENT[/uSER]

 

But also, woo! Getting closer to kickoff!

I'm super bummed I'm not in a position to help anymore, but this is just the coolest shit.

Fun fact: I did the design for their charity website! Bunch of really awesome folks. Happy to see it still going, even if we haven't had the trophy for a while...