Balanced within division, but divisions aren't equal - possible?

[eriqjaffe]

I'm kind of screwing around a bit with some European league schedules, and I'm running into an issue with the German Bundesliga.

Bundesliga is divided into two divisions, North and South. The schedule calls for each team in each division to play each other team in the division four times, with no inter-divisional play.

Where the issue lies is that the North division has an even number of teams (8), and the South has an odd number of teams (7). The official schedules for the Bundesliga (North, South) work along the 4-games principle, which means that the teams in the North play 28 games, while the teams in the South play 24.

As far as I can tell, it's not possible to import an XML schedule like this, correct?

I guess I could work around this by setting up the North and South as separate leagues, creating separate XML schedules for each one, and then Associating them, but I'd rather not do that. The ultimate goal would be to associate the Bundesliga into a larger European federation, and I don't believe it's possible to "nest" associations like that.

Would it be possible to manually add a handful of garbage games to the teams in the South to get them all up to 28 games, import that, and then manually delete the games in the schedule editor? Would that work?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by eriqjaffe

Where the issue lies is that the North division has an even number of teams (8), and the South has an odd number of teams (7). The official schedules for the Bundesliga (North, South) work along the 4-games principle, which means that the teams in the North play 28 games, while the teams in the South play 24.

As far as I can tell, it's not possible to import an XML schedule like this, correct?

Sure you could. In 1961 the AL played 162 games and the NL 154, and OOTP handles that. The scenario you are describing is much the same (with the big difference being the odd number of teams in one of the divisions).

The problem you'll face is that you'll have to select the larger number of games as the number to enter into OOTP's schedule options. That means the magic numbers and such won't be calculated correctly for the league with the shorter schedule. Another item would be the fact that some teams in the odd-numbered division will be idle on various days during the season, but if you're not bothered by that then it doesn't matter.

[eriqjaffe]

Thanks, LGO. I realized where I was going wrong, I had the "type" attribute and file name incorrectly formed. I had used "ILN_BGN_G28_SL1_D2_T15" thinking "well, 2 divisions, 15 teams." Changing it to "ILN_BGN_G28_SL1_D1_T8_D2_T7" fixed it and it imported properly.

Once I knew it could be done, the solution became obvious. Thanks!