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Rocketcan

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Rocketcan last won the day on January 19

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  1. It is based on the number of snaps the player receives at the new position. If they reach enough snaps to get the "starter" designation for progressions, they will receive the new position. If they get enough snaps to meet that threshold across both seasons after year 2, then they will get the new position.
  2. Hello coaches! Here is the changelog for NewSim v0.5.0. Bug Fixes: Fixed a case where penalties at the end of a long play could result in the new line of scrimmage being in the endzone. Fixed a case where penalties occurring on the 1 yard-line could result in a new line of scrimmage in the endzone. Removed penalties from 2 point conversions to make them consistent with extra points. (For simplicity and lack of controversy) Fixed an error resulting from RPO weights not adding up to 100. Fixed an issue where a receiver would not be selected, causing the sim to be set on fire and initiating SkyNet's global takeover protocol. Fixed an issue where some RPOs would not be assigned a direction properly. New Features: Scheme Rework Replaced the 4 old offensive schemes with 12 new offensive schemes. New Schemes: Power Run Vertical West Coast I Option Run and Shoot Air Raid Pistol Spread Option Wing-T Double Wing Wishbone Flexbone Replaced the 2 old defensive schemes with 6 new defensive schemes. New Schemes: Old School 2-Gap 4-Man Front Quarters (Spread Stopper) 3-Man Front Quarters (Spread Stopper) Speed Multiple Replaced all old offensive formations with 34 new formations. Big Pistol Big Spread Gun Double Tight Double Wing Double Wing Strong Double Wing Wide Double Wing Spread Double Wing Split Empty Gun Flexbone Flexbone Strong Flexbone Wide Flexbone Gun Flexbone Gun Wide I Formation I Formation Heavy Near/Far Singleback Singleback Gun Splitback Gun Pistol Power Pistol Heavy Power Pistol Spread Pistol Spread Spread Gun Pony Spread Gun Wing-T Wing-T Split Wing-T Double Tight Wing Split Back Gun Wishbone Wishbone Strong Wishbone Wide Replaced all old defensive formations with 24 new formations. 3-2-6 Big Penny 3-2-6 Penny 3-2-6 Dime 3-3-5 Base 3-3-5 Nickel 3-3-5 Over 3-4 Bronco 3-4 Eagle 3-4 Okie 3-4-4 Heavy 4-1-6 Big Dime 4-1-6 Dime 4-2-5 Base 4-2-5 Nickel 4-2-5 Over 4-3 Base 4-3 Heavy 4-3 Light 4-3 Over 4-4 Base 4-4 Heavy 4-4 Jumbo 4-4 Over 4-4 Under Added 4 new Option plays Read Option Speed Option Inverted Option Triple Option Added 2 new RPO plays Choice (Quick passes with an attached run of either Inside, Outside, or Power) Peek (Short passes with an attached run of either Inside, Outside, or Power) Added Gameplan settings for defenses to focus more on the QB or handoff, and the QB or the pitch for option plays. Added Scheme Fits and Bad Fits where certain player archetypes at different positions would have a bonus (Scheme Fit) or a malus (Bad Fit) in certain schemes. Added Rock-Paper-Scissors style strengths and weaknesses on defenses (ex. Speed is good vs. West Coast and Vertical, but bad against Wing-T and Double Wing) Added Out Of Position Penalties. Players can gain new positions by playing in that position for a significant number of snaps. Added Defensive Double Teams Users can now select an opposing receiver to double team, which will make it more difficult to complete passes to that receiver. Players not double teamed will have a slight bonus on deep routes to simulate less help over the top of the formation. Reworked weight distributions for ball carriers and receivers. Users now assign weight to a player, not a position. That weight will follow that player around regardless of the position they are playing. Users can also assign preferred depth targets for receivers. For example, if you want a player to be targeted more on Long passes, setting their preference to Long will add a bonus to their weight on Long passes, making it more likely that they are chosen as the target. Added Focus Plays on Defense (Plays that the defense will get a bonus against. To simulate defensive gameplanning). Added Shotgun Rating to players. Added Clutch Rating to players (hidden). Added Two Point Conversions. Added new information to the play-by-play output that will be useful for gameplanning, flavor, and immersion. Balance Changes: Buffed Practice Squad progression. Buffed Redshirt progression. Added Boom/Bust System for players going to the NFL. Misc: Added position-based snap information under the hood to help with position conversions at the end of the season. Added stats to the player data sent to the interface database. Added stats to the team data sent to the interface database. Added Play-by-Play data object to assist with potentially hosting the play-by-play on the interface. Feel free to ask any questions on these changes here.
  3. Can you go into more detail on how the hybrid model would work?
  4. Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! We are continuing our series on the upcoming changes to the simulation engine regarding schemes. This dev diary will focus on the new defensive plays being added to the engine. Defaults Before I go into this any further, I do want to mention that if gameplanning isn't your thing, and you really couldn't care less about setting your gameplan (or it is a bit daunting), that is ok! Several of us have worked very hard to select "default" settings for each scheme (offense and defense) that you can use to make your life easier. Thus, you can still just set your gameplan at the beginning of the season and forget about it if you really wanted to. Formation/Personnel Matching One of the biggest issues with how the sim handled defense before was that the formation selection for the defense was random, and all that the user could do was weight how much they wanted to defense the pass or run overall and blitz overall. Now, the sim will be able to handle users (and AI) choosing which of their defensive formations will be deployed depending on the offensive personnel. Each week before games are run, the gameplan page will update showing the offense that the opposing teams run. You will then be able to choose any of your five formations to match against each of the five possible opposing formations. You will also then be able to set your run-to-pass ratio, blitz weight, and blitz aggressiveness (up to how many blitzers you may blitz at a time) for each formation match-up, rather than as one overarching setting. Now what happens if your opponent changes their offense (and thus the opposing formations and your carefully crafted gameplan!) and games are run before you can make a change? Well, first, the opposing team would get a massive scheme change penalty like last season. But also, we have come up with "default" settings that the AI will use to gameplan for opponents, thus you won't be entirely out to dry. Option Defense With the addition of option runs on the offensive side of the ball, we needed to add something to allow the defense to react and change things to help them succeed as well. Thus, we added two new overall defensive settings: Dive Focus and Pitch Focus. If you remember back to the previous Dev Diary (#109 | SimFBA | Scheme Changes: Part 3 (New Offensive Plays)), there are essentially three possible ballcarriers on any one option play that the defense will ever have to worry about: Some sort of "Dive" player (or outside run if it is a WR coming in motion, for example), the QB keeping, or the "Pitch" player. Some option plays are only concerned about two of these players (Read and Inverted Option only have Dive and QB, while Speed option only has QB and Pitch), but Triple Option has all three available (hence the "triple"). Defensively, you will now be able to set your gameplan to tell you defense how to defend an option play. Specifically, Dive Focus will allow you to set how often you want your defense to take away the Dive player (in other words making the QB keep the ball), or to take away the QB run (forcing the QB to give the ball). By extension, the Pitch Focus setting sets how often you want to take away the Pitch (forcing a QB keep if the QB reads correctly), or take away the QB (forcing the pitch if the correct read is made). This gives the defense a few options (lol) for how to defend the option run. For example, if an offense runs the option with a decent RB, but an amazing QB, the defense might be inclined to move the Dive Focus slider closer to the QB Focus side, forcing the QB to hand the ball off if he makes the correct read. This would inherently reduce the number of carries the QB gets, and therefore the fewer opportunities he has to make a play. This whole strategy would depend on the rest of your defense's ability to shut down runs by the RB. Another scenario is where a team runs both read option (RB runs inside) and speed option (RB runs outside). Now if, in this case, the RB is a good outside running but not a good inside runner (maybe he's a receiving archetype), then maybe you would be perfectly fine if he got the handoff (so you focus more on the QB for a Dive read), but definitely don't want him getting the ball on the edge (so you focus on him instead on a Pitch read). There are also scenarios where you might want to be balanced. For example, if the opposing QB has low FBIQ, then he might just make poor reads very often and so you don't want to commit one way or another. Focus Plays One of my favorite additions to defenses is Focus Plays. These are plays that you can select that you will get a bonus to all of your players to defend against. The catch is: there are only so many plays you can focus on each week. You will be able to focus on anywhere from zero to three plays on any give game week: Zero: Don't even do this. You should always focus on at least one play. One: You will gain a significant bonus to all of your defenders abilities (at least those on the field) whenever defending against this play. Two: You will get a less significant, but still meaningful bonus to all of your defenders (on the field) abilities when defending against these two plays. Three: You will gain that same less significant, but meaningful bonus against these three plays. However, you will suffer a similar-magnitude malus to all of your defenders anytime they are defending against anything other than those three plays you chose. EXCEPTION: If your team is coming off of a BYE week, you can choose three focus plays WITHOUT PENALTY. I really like this feature because I think it gives coaches even more options to choose from with how they run their defense, which is hard to do when offenses get all the bells and whistles! Also, I think this helps simulate how real defensive gameplanning works: You watch film and find the opponent's biggest plays, and then work during the week to take those plays away. The following list is how plays will be broken down to choose from: Outside Run Inside Run Power Run Draw Read Option Speed Option Inverted Option Triple Option Quick Pass Short Pass Long Pass Screen Pass Play Action Short Play Action Long Choice Outside Choice Inside Choice Power Peek Outside Peek Inside Peak Power As you can see, that is a significant list, so you will need to choose the plays you focus on wisely when you gameplan. Speaking of that, the next Dev Diary in this series will deal a little bit with how users can make use of the new features to do a little gameplanning... That is it for this dev diary. Until next time, Rocketcan
  5. Hello everyone! I wanted to put out that we are going to be having a print run for the 2024 SimNFL Draft Guide! @alexfall862 has been able to get in touch with a printer that can help us make this dream a reality! They have come back with some quotes. As one might expect, some of the estimates aren't cheap (considering there are nearly 300 pages!), but there are some more affordable options. Here is the catch: because printing stuff like this gets cheaper with scale, we can probably only afford to order one version of the book. We can't have some people ordering one version and others ordering another, as it would just be more expensive for everyone. So, here is what we will do. I am going to include a link to a survey where we will collect which options you would be willing to pay for. PLEASE ONLY RESPOND WITH WHAT YOU ACTUALLY CAN AFFORD! Once we have a clear winner, we will be able to send out for a more precise quote, which we can then use to have people place orders and we can begin production. The options: Color cover with B&W interior: ~$26 per book if we order 25. ~$23 per book if we order 50. Color cover with color interior: ~$50 per book if we order 25. ~$37 per book if we order 50. Note: The price will scale between order sizes. So the price for an order for 30 books will be somewhere between the price of 25 books and 50 books. Also Note: Shipping will likely be somewhere between ~$10 and $15. So the cheapest a book might be is about $33 to get to your door, while the most expensive might be $65 to get to your door. Survey: https://forms.gle/DcWT4jskT4fr8RVU6 I will keep this survey open for a few days. Once it is closed and we have the true quote for how many books we decide to order, then we will make another post with how to order (somewhere to put your address and a way to collect your payment for the book). We will likely collect shipping separately since that will vary depend on where we are shipping to. Please reply with any questions you might have.
  6. This will be the crown jewel of this site's functionality!
  7. @alexfall862 is hereby banned until RPOs have been announced.
  8. Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! We are continuing our series on the upcoming changes to the simulation engine regarding schemes. This dev diary will focus on the new offensive plays being added to the engine. Option Runs For a long time I have wanted to do option plays for the sim, but simply haven’t been able to. We have been abstracting that away with pre-called plays where QBs can keep the ball themselves. No longer! This season, you can call plays that have the QB actually read the defense to determine whether to keep or hand off the ball. In fact, there will be several forms of option plays! Read Option This is the most common form of option play run all the way from youth ball to the NFL. In the read option, most of the offense will be executing a run to one side of the field. However, they will leave the last man on the line of scrimmage unblocked. If this defender looks like he will chase the RB, the QB will keep the ball and attempt to get outside of this “crashing” defender. If the defender “stays home” (does not take the bait and chase the RB) then the QB will hand the ball off like normal. This puts stress on the defense even on the handoff, because usually that means the defense now effectively has one less defender to defend against the RB. Here is an example. The first play the QB gives the handoff. The second play he keeps it. For our purposes, Read Option will either be called to the left, or to the right. If called to the left, the play will either be a handoff to the RB on an inside run to the left, or the QB will keep it on an inside run to the right (read option right will flip which side the RB and QB go to). This means that good inside running RBs, and agile QBs will do well on this play. Speed Option This type of option play is similar to, but slightly different than the read option. Instead of going to two separate sides, this play has both QB and RB heading toward the outside on the same side. The QB will read the first unblocked defender. If the defender goes after the QB, the QB will pitch the ball to the RB. If the defender goes after the RB, the QB will keep it. Here is an example where the QB pitches it: And here is an example where the QB keeps it: In the sim, Speed Option Left will have the QB on an outside run to the left. If he makes the read to pitch it, then it will become an outside run to the left with the RB instead. Thus, agile players at QB and RB will be important. Inverted Option There are a few different names for this type of option, so to just simplify I will call it Inverted Option. The “inverted” part comes from how the RB will run the outside track, while the QB will run the inside track, rather than the other way around like in Read Option. Here is an example of the handoff to the RB: Here is an example of the QB Keep: For the sim, Inverted Option Left will choose between an outside run left with the RB, or an inside run left with the QB (With Inverted Option Right having both players go to the right). So now big and strong QBs and agile RBs will be preferred. Triple Option Option teams everywhere, rejoice! The pinnacle of option football, the Triple Option, will be in NewSim for the 2024 season! This is one of the most complex plays in football, and as a result, one of the most complex to code. However, we think we have a handle on it! The Triple Option, as the name implies, is built around the QB making a decision between 3 different points of attack. The traditional approach to this play requires the QB and two RBs (usually a FB and a HB). Basically, it is a combination of Read Option and Speed Option. In it, the QB will run to the playside and mesh with the FB who is running inside toward the playcall. The QB will then read whether to give the ball to the FB or keep it and continue on his track (many teams even make this a pre-snap read because it happens so fast and it makes the handoff more decisive). If the QB keeps, he then continues until he reaches the first unblocked defender, whom he also reads. If the unblocked defender goes after the QB, then the QB will pitch the ball to the RB. If the defender goes after the RB, the QB will keep it. Here is an example of the traditional Triple Option with a FB Give: And the QB Keep: And the Pitch: That isn’t the only way to run Triple Option, however. What if there is only 1 RB? As modern football moves away from two RB sets and to sets with more WRs, a different form of the triple option has come about. This newer form has a WR go in motion towards the middle of the formation. Once the WR is close, the ball is snapped and the WR and QB mesh with the WR running outside away from the playcall. The QB can hand the ball off to the WR here, but if he doesn’t, the QB next will continue with the option play as is traditional, with the RB being there for the pitch. Here is a more modern example of the FB/HB give: The QB Keep: And the Pitch: What Makes Option Special There will be special effects based on how the defense decides to play the option. It won’t make much sense until we get to how to defend Option, however, so those effects will have to wait for the next dev diary. The Play That Shall Not Be Named That’s right. RPOs are here. All those weeks added up, but we finally hit the end of it! RPOs will now be a valid playcall for users in NewSim! In case you don’t know what an RPO is: an RPO (Run-Pass Option) is a play that allows the QB to decide between two different points of attack, just like an option run. But instead of the option being between different types of runs, the option is between a run or a pass. The way that NewSim will handle RPOs is by breaking them down into two main categories: Pre-snap RPOs and Post-snap RPOs. Each of these types will be broken down further by what type of run play that will be run (Inside, Outside or Power). Pre-snap RPOs These RPOs are the safer of the two options because the QB does not have to rush and make the read on the fly. He just has to see how the defense lines up, and then makes the decision. Because it is a quick decision, these plays will always have a Quick Pass paired with a run (Inside, Outside or Power). Since this is safer, the only maluses that apply are that if a defense is setting up to stop the run and the QB correctly reads this and throws the pass, the defense will get the regular malus for committing to the run against a pass play, and vice versa. Here is an example that shows the read the QB makes by counting the number of defenders in the box and how many defenders are covering the receivers: Post-snap RPOs This is the riskier of the two RPO options, but it also has bigger rewards. In this RPO, the QB reads how the defense reacts to the run action of the offense. If they “stay home” and don’t chase, the QB hands the ball off with the hope that the defense is now out of position to stop the run. If the defense plays the run, the QB pulls it and then throws a designated route that should be taking advantage of at least one particular player that the QB was reading being out of position. Because this read takes longer, these plays will always be runs (Inside, Outside, or Power) paired with a Short Pass, rather than quick. Here is an example of a QB making a post-snap RPO read: The effects for a correctly read Post-snap RPO are: If the defense reacts to the run, then whoever is assigned coverage to the intended receiver loses a whole tier of coverage ability. If the defense reacts to the pass, then the offensive line will receive a boost of one whole tier of run blocking ability. However, the QB can always make the wrong read. If he does: And the defense is playing the pass, the defender will have their coverage ability increase a whole tier and have a higher chance for an interception. If the defense plays the run, then the offensive line will lose one whole tier of run blocking ability. QB Reads All of these plays being added are dependent upon the QB making the correct throws. All of these reads will be made using the QB’s Football IQ attribute. The exact influence has yet to be set in stone as this will likely need a *lot* of testing and balance work. That is it for this dev diary. The next dev diary in this series will continue the scheme updates, specifically regarding some new defensive play options that will be available. Until next time, Rocketcan EDIT: I forgot to mention that not all offensive schemes will be able to use all of these plays all of the time. The breakdown of that will come in a later dev diary.
  9. None of this is entirely in stone. The man/zone dichotomy is on the top of list for revision.
  10. I like all these ideas. Some are more feasible than others, like the week 17/18 games and whether or not starters are rested is a bit gray. But the rivalry games could be determined fairly easily even now. I expect the easier ones could be added no problem, but the harder ones reserved for later upgrades. For example: things like ranked vs. ranked is definitely possible, but requires extra infrastructure on the interface that we do not have just yet.
  11. Some of this will be a matter of logistics that we might not be able to hash out right away. +1
  12. These affect all attributes, but even a player having the best clutch rating doesn't mean that if they are a DT they can play QB.
  13. I am all for it at Tennessee. It is forbidden in Washington D.C.
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