Commish portal issue

[beorn]

I am seeing players incorrectly released when automating Dog Days (on line league) sims during the off season.

==>In league setup, the DFA period is 21 days. (Max allowed.)
==>The sim length was 16 days, from December 20 to January 5.
==>In the Commish Portal, the setting was to release/demote players with 16 or less DFA days remaining.

Yet, players signed during the sim were released later in the sim, and I can see no possible reason for this.

Images below:





McCaughay, for example, was released 5 days after being signed. This seems like a very significant problem, from my point of view!

[injury log]

If they are supposed to be released when they have 16 days of DFA remaining, it makes sense that they'd be released after exactly 5 days- when signed they have 21 days of DFA left, after 1 day, they have 20 days remaining, after 2 days they have 19 remaining, etc. So 5 days later, they have exactly 16 days left, and your option settings force the game to release (or demote) the players.

I think you want to change the 'demote/release when they have X days of DFA remaining' to zero (or one or two days) to get the result you want. Does that help?

[beorn]

You may be correct, but if so, I have totally misunderstood the way the system works.

It was my impression that that setting calls for a check prior to the the first day of simming, and that all players who will run out of days during the length of the sim are cut prior to the start of the sim. (This would make sense -- In an online league, if there are 7 days in the sim and a player's DFA time will run out in 6 days, once imports are done, there is no further chance that the player would be removed from the DFA by the time his days run out.)

I will test your theory out in tomorrow's sim, but I'd love to get a definitive word on this from above.

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by injury log

If they are supposed to be released when they have 16 days of DFA remaining, it makes sense that they'd be released after exactly 5 days- when signed they have 21 days of DFA left, after 1 day, they have 20 days remaining, after 2 days they have 19 remaining, etc. So 5 days later, they have exactly 16 days left, and your option settings force the game to release (or demote) the players.

I think you want to change the 'demote/release when they have X days of DFA remaining' to zero (or one or two days) to get the result you want. Does that help?

No, that can't be it. The Commish Portal's release-players function isn't an active process throughout the sim. It's a one-time event that occurs before any days are simmed (events happen in the order you see them in automator: rosters imported, DFA status checked, games played, league file created, etc.; there's no looping).

For players to be released mid-way through the sim like that, I think the AI has to be involved. Beorn, do all your teams/leagues have the "Prevent AI Roster Changes" option checked?

EDIT> And, along the same lines, have any of the affected GMs deferred Transactions control to the AI on their Manager Options screen?

- Kai

[injury log]

Fair enough; I was only going by the wording from the description of the option- it just seems an odd coincidence that the players were each released exactly five days after DFA, precisely when you'd expect them to be released if the releases were automated, following the option setting, during the sim. In any case, is there any advantage to setting the number as high as 16?

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by injury log

In any case, is there any advantage to setting the number as high as 16?

You need to set it as high as the length of your sim, whatever that is. The point of the feature is to prevent OOTP stopping the sim in mid-run with the "Team X has a player designated for assignment who is out of time. He must be released or assigned to a team" (or whatever the exact wording is). Online Commissioners absolutely despise that message, because it forces us to go in and manually guess at what the slacking GM should have done. So if you set it to fewer days the sim is going to run for, potentially there are players whose DFA time runs out towards the end of the sim who aren't "covered" by the initial check - thus resulting in the sim-stopping error.

- Kai

[injury log]

What you're saying makes sense, Kai, but the manual implies that the process does indeed 'loop', i.e. that players are checked on each day of a sim. Or do I misunderstand? From the manual:

"Demote/release players with DFA time left of X days or less:
This will cause the automator to search for any players with X days or less
left on DFA. If it finds any such players, it will first attempt to demote them
to a minor league team in the team’s organization. If it cannot do this, the
players will be released.

This process happens is repeated after each auto-played day in the sim
session. So, if you’ve elected to auto-play 7 days, it will check the players on DFA after each day. "

This makes me think you'd want to set this box to DFA Time minus sim length, perhaps minus one. The only players who would then be auto-released would be those who had been in DFA during two different sims.

The option is to release players with DFA Time remaining of X days, not players who have been on DFA for X days. If in Beorn's example, this option is set to 4 days, the only players who could possibly be auto-released are those who have been on DFA for 17 days- i.e. during two different sims (his sim length is 16 days, DFA length is 21 days).

[beorn]

After fixing all the erroroneous releases, I checked the "Prevent AI Roster Changes" box for each team, and I ran another sim. This time it was 15 days, and I kept the commish portal setting of release if DFA time is X days or less set at 15.

The problem is not solved. Players were signed and then released during the sim:
* Salguaro signed on the 6th, released on the 12th
* Shetley signed on the 9th, released on the 15th
Note -- both 6 days later, when they would have reached the 15 days left in DFA matching the commish portal setting.

Further, a team (Hinsdale) sent an export with two players waived and designated for assignment, and this was imported on the 5th. The game released both of them on the 11th, 6 days later, when they had 15 days remaining on DFA.

All of this would seem to support Injury Log's theory and contradict everything that Kai and I had believed about the workings of the the DFA functionality of the Commish Portal. But if that is the case, why have a separate setting for this in the Commish Portal??? A check mark should suffice -- Release/demote players if they run out of DFA time. The entire matter makes no sense at all to me.

On the other hand, I am seeing a few other actions being taken in the middle of the sim that are suspicious: a player being placed on the active roster, some others being released... So it is still possible that GMs have inadevertently turned over control to the AI, without meaning to.

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by injury log

What you're saying makes sense, Kai, but the manual implies that the process does indeed 'loop', i.e. that players are checked on each day of a sim. Or do I misunderstand? From the manual:

"Demote/release players with DFA time left of X days or less:
This will cause the automator to search for any players with X days or less
left on DFA. If it finds any such players, it will first attempt to demote them
to a minor league team in the team’s organization. If it cannot do this, the
players will be released.

This process happens is repeated after each auto-played day in the sim
session. So, if you’ve elected to auto-play 7 days, it will check the players on DFA after each day. "

Hmm. The manual does, indeed, say that. However, as one of the beta testers involved in getting this feature added in the first place, I know that wasn't what we asked for; and as the guy who wrote the original draft of that section of the manual, I know I didn't write that.

I'll have to check with battists and/or Markus about this, because I've been away from the forums for the last little while, but I don't recall anything about this function changing.

If it has, in fact, changed, then Beorn's point is entirely correct: if the function is going to check every day, then the "number of days" field needs to go away, because it's only screwing things up (if it's checking daily, there's no need to release players X days in advance; it can simply check for players with 0 days left every day, and release those).

If it hasn't changed, then there's something else going on with Beorn's league. I'll get back to you on this...

- Kai

[beorn]

Thanks. I'll be anxious to find out how this all comes out.

[Kaitiaki]

I did some testing on this myself, and it looks like injury log/the manual is right: the DFA process is being run every day. I can't fathom why, but I set up a league, took over a team, made sure to disable every aspect of AI control, DFAed a couple players, and simmed a few days. The players got released.

I won't rehash the points made above, except to say that this is, indeed, a problem. I've TT'd it as #3848, and moved this thread to the Logged Issues subforum.

- Kai

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by Beorn

A check mark should suffice -- Release/demote players if they run out of DFA time.

FYI, this is what has been done. The DFA process is running on every day of a sim, so the option to release players "in advance" has been removed. The checkbox on the Automator screen now simply says "Automatically demote/release players whose DFA time runs out".

Since that removes the inconsistency, I'm going to close this thread. The new behaviour will be incorporated in the third patch, when it is released.

- Kai