Request for 6.5 - 30 teams (2/3/5) 162 games

[mach]

Greetings!

First off if this exists, my apologies as I didn't find it. That said, my online league uses 6.5 and we're just about to expand to 30 teams. We're looking for a schedule that kind of mimics what we have:

- Starts 4/1 and ends on an off day of 9/30 (it can go into October if needed).
- Balanced (ish):
6 games (3 home, 3 away) against 17 teams (the 14 in your league, plus 1 team from each division of the other league - doesn't matter who, we just kind of agreed on the alphabetical equivalent, so team 1 would get an extra game against 16, 21, 26) (102 games)
and 5 games (3 game series and 2 game series) against 12 teams (all the other teams in the other league) (60 games). If there's a better balanced format, that would be fine as well.
- Off days are uniform - the 15th and last day of each month. We had pondered adding in the 8th and the 22nd as well - if that fits, fantastic. If not, no big deal.

- All Star Break is in July 15, 16 (AS Game), 17


I think that covers most things, but I'll happily answer any questions if I missed something.There's not much preference on starting the right days, or having the right day of the week off.



Thanks!

[gmo]

I am reading this as 2 subleagues, each with 3 divisions of 5 teams -- same configuration as current MLB. That does not matter so much since the schedule is effectively balanced.

Uniform offdays are fine, but the couple of options do not quite work out in the desired timeframe. Two per month is too few, and four per month is a little too many. Sounds like the exact details are not a big concern, but there are multiple ways to go.

1. Two offdays per month (15th and last day) -- This would work with the season ending a week earlier. The thing with this is that it is several days shorter than current MLB so fatigue would likely be more of an issue.
2. Four offdays per month (8th, 15th, 22nd, and last day) -- This would work with the season ending probably October 5. It is a couple days longer than current MLB is. Also, fitting the offdays always exactly on those dates may not work because of the blocks of days with games. E.g., if you have seven days between offdays, that would have to mean two 2-game series and one 3-game series, and there are only twelve 2-game series in total.
3. One offday every week, except not every week -- This can fit with first game Apr1 and last game Sep30. Roughly every third week would not have an offday.
4. Something else, like offday every roughly 10 days, whatever works with the distribution of series and exactly whatever last day of games.

Let me know the preference among those.

[mach]

Originally Posted by gmo

I am reading this as 2 subleagues, each with 3 divisions of 5 teams -- same configuration as current MLB. That does not matter so much since the schedule is effectively balanced.

Correct, for the record.

Uniform offdays are fine, but the couple of options do not quite work out in the desired timeframe. Two per month is too few, and four per month is a little too many. Sounds like the exact details are not a big concern, but there are multiple ways to go.

1. Two offdays per month (15th and last day) -- This would work with the season ending a week earlier. The thing with this is that it is several days shorter than current MLB so fatigue would likely be more of an issue.
2. Four offdays per month (8th, 15th, 22nd, and last day) -- This would work with the season ending probably October 5. It is a couple days longer than current MLB is. Also, fitting the offdays always exactly on those dates may not work because of the blocks of days with games. E.g., if you have seven days between offdays, that would have to mean two 2-game series and one 3-game series, and there are only twelve 2-game series in total.
3. One offday every week, except not every week -- This can fit with first game Apr1 and last game Sep30. Roughly every third week would not have an offday.
4. Something else, like offday every roughly 10 days, whatever works with the distribution of series and exactly whatever last day of games.

Let me know the preference among those.

Indeed, I'm not terribly picky - I can be more decisive if you like, but so long as we have uniform off days on the 15th and the last day, I don't care if we have no additional off days (option 1) or they're in different places (options 2, 3, and I think 4). I also don't mind if lengthening the season up a bit would help (going from late March to early October), and we'd ignore mandatory off days for March 31st and September 30th in those cases. I would like to balance the additional days out though if possible (for every day in March, a day in October is added so like 3/30-10/2, or 3/31-10/1). In fact, I'd probably prefer adding a couple of extra days if I'm correct in understanding it adds leeway.

[gmo]

I interpreted the 15th & the last day of the month as being key offdays to make sure are set. Otherwise I scattered them such that the 2-game and 3-game series would fit with an not terribly uneven distribution. There are a couple of cases of only one 3-game series between a pair of offdays, and there are a few cases of 14 games between a pair of offdays.

First games are Mar31 and last games are Oct1.

One trick was making an old style CSV file that would work with that old version of the game. I think I got it right. I would recommend checking it before just running with it. The modern LSDL format file I will also post in the thread should be the same thing schedule-wise, so that would be another thing to check if you have newer version of the game with which to look at it.

That said, I think everything is good, I am just a little less sure. There is always a chance something wrong/unintended slips through my checks and review, and this case probably has a little bit more of a chance.

[gmo]

#
# 30 team schedule, 172 games
# Designed for the following configuration:
# 2 subleagues, each with 3 divisions of 5 teams
#
#
# 6 games against 14 other teams in subleague (3H/3A)
# 6 games against 1 team in each division of other subleague (3H/3A)
# 5 games against other 12 teams of other league (2-3H/2-3A)
#
#
# Schedule considered balanced
#
# No homestands or roadtrips longer than 15 games
# No team plays more than 14 straight days without an offday
#
# All teams have same offdays
# Offdays include 15th of each month and last day of months 
# April through August plus some other scattered days
#
# All game times set at 7:00pm
#
# Teams play no more than one game per day
#
# Season begins March 31
# Season ends October 1
# Season spans 183 days
#
# All-Star Game set for July 16 (season day 108)
#
# Built 2024-04-24
#

[mach]

Originally Posted by gmo

I interpreted the 15th & the last day of the month as being key offdays to make sure are set. Otherwise I scattered them such that the 2-game and 3-game series would fit with an not terribly uneven distribution. There are a couple of cases of only one 3-game series between a pair of offdays, and there are a few cases of 14 games between a pair of offdays.

First games are Mar31 and last games are Oct1.

One trick was making an old style CSV file that would work with that old version of the game. I think I got it right. I would recommend checking it before just running with it. The modern LSDL format file I will also post in the thread should be the same thing schedule-wise, so that would be another thing to check if you have newer version of the game with which to look at it.

That said, I think everything is good, I am just a little less sure. There is always a chance something wrong/unintended slips through my checks and review, and this case probably has a little bit more of a chance.

Originally Posted by gmo

#
# 30 team schedule, 172 games
# Designed for the following configuration:
# 2 subleagues, each with 3 divisions of 5 teams
#
#
# 6 games against 14 other teams in subleague (3H/3A)
# 6 games against 1 team in each division of other subleague (3H/3A)
# 5 games against other 12 teams of other league (2-3H/2-3A)
#
#
# Schedule considered balanced
#
# No homestands or roadtrips longer than 15 games
# No team plays more than 14 straight days without an offday
#
# All teams have same offdays
# Offdays include 15th of each month and last day of months 
# April through August plus some other scattered days
#
# All game times set at 7:00pm
#
# Teams play no more than one game per day
#
# Season begins March 31
# Season ends October 1
# Season spans 183 days
#
# All-Star Game set for July 16 (season day 108)
#
# Built 2024-04-24
#

Thank you, this is great! I won't have a chance to "run" it for a bit, but I popped in the schedule on an old file and everything looks like it came out perfectly.

[mach]

Hello again,

Minor issue, which I'm sure I caused. I put the schedule in before FA and the date changed from the FA date to 3/30. I set the date back to the FA date, but now Spring Training doesn't pop up after FA. Is there any way I can fix this?