Huge Schedule Generator Issue

[JDOldSchool]

My days of playing OOTP 6 have likely come to an end...

The schedule generator is so broken, I can't really play anymore.

20-team fictional league. 2 leagues, 2 divisions in each league, 5 teams in each division. I want 162 games. Simple math dictates each team plays every other team in its league 18 times: 9 home, 9 road.

This really could be done with only 3 game series and nothing else. It's possibly the simplest schedule to generate.

So why does my Chicago-based team have 5 one-game series to finish the season?

I've generated multiple schedules. Not all are that extreme, but the schedule generator has some major problems.

I tried Stickware's schedule generator and that wasn't any better. The program doesn't understand the concept of a balanced schedule.

I know I'm complaining a lot here, but to me this is a major issue. If I can't create a simple, balanced schedule every time I sim I think "This isn't a level playing field."

Any help? I spent an hour working on creating the schedule manually and I only managed to get through 1 week of 1 of the leagues.

Another feature that should be added - when Off days happen. In real life, off days are only on Mondays and Thursdays (excepting the first week of the season and the Wednesday after the All Star game).

[Tiger Fan]

JD - I believe I have a historical schedule that should work for you. It is a 20 team league format as used from 1962-68. It is in OOTP5 format so let me convert it and I will get it to you late tonight or tomorrow. Send me a PM to remind as I am at work right now.

[Le Grande Orange]

I see I'm being paged. Well, the doctor is now in.

JD, my first question to you would be this:

What in the heck are you doing using a balanced schedule when your leagues are split into two divisions!?!?! Using a balanced schedule when you have divisions renders those divisions completely meaningless and arbitrary - why not just make a single 10 team arrangement? After all, that's really what the schedule is for when it's balanced.

You must understand I have a huge issue about using a balanced schedule when divisions are involved.

It is entirely possible to have a proper, divisionally weighted schedule even with an odd number of teams in each division. The PCL in 1963 had two 5 team divisions and played a divisional schedule: each team played its 4 divisional rivals 22 times each, and played the 5 teams in the other division 14 times each. This results in 88 divisional games and 70 interdivisional games, for a total of 158 games.

Creating such a divisionally weigthed schedule with divisions containing an odd number of teams is more difficult than with even numbers, but it can be done.


Now, as to the balanced schedule you're seeking, actually no, it cannot all be done with 3 game series. This would mean you'd only have 6 games scheduled per week for each week of the season, and the season would run 27 weeks long. This is 1-2 weeks too long (currently the 162 games are played in 26 weeks; back when the majors actually had 10 team leagues, the 162 games were played in 25 weeks). Or, you could get more games per week with only 3 game series, but then you'd have the series start days sliding through the week. Instead of the back half of the week series being played on Fri-Sat-Sun, eventually it'd be something like Sat-Sun-Mon or Sun-Mon-Tue.

Then there's the total number of series being played by each team. A team is playing 6 series against each of the 9 other teams, or 54 series in total. If you have a modern day season length of 26 weeks with an All-Star Game, those 54 series aren't going to fit in the time allotted, since there is space for only 51 series (two series per each of the 25 full weeks, plus one series after the All-Star break in the All-Star Game week). This means that at least 3 of the weeks in the season are going to have to have three series played in the week instead of just two.

The result of all of this is that there MUST be some 2 and 4 game series put into the mix. Some of the 9 games a team would host against its opponents will need to be split 4-3-2 instead of 3-3-3.

If you look back at the real schedules used in the 10 team league MLB days, you'll see some 5 game series and 1 game series used as well. In the original 1963 NL schedule, for example, the Milwaukee at St. Louis season series was split 4-4-1, as were the New York at Philadelphia and the Philadelphia at Cincinnati season series. In the 1963 AL original schedule, the New York at Chicago, Cleveland at Boston, New York at Cleveland, and Boston at New York season series were all split 4-4-1. The Los Angeles at Chicago and Washington at Cleveland season series were split 5-2-2. The Baltimore at Washington season series was split 3-3-2-1 while the Washington at Baltimore season series was split 3-3-1-1-1.

Off days nowadays are limited to Mondays and Thursdays, but this has not always been the case. In the real 10 team league MLB days, you'll find a couple of cases where other days were used, and where teams got 2 or 3 days off in a row outside of the All-Star break. Consider this example from the New York Mets original 1962 schedule: the team was scheduled to play a twin bill on Sun. May 27, then have Monday and Tuesday off, and then play a doubleheader on Wed. May 30. It was slated to finish a series on Tues. Sept. 4, then have Wednesday and Thursday off, and then open a series in Houston on Fri. Sept. 7. On Mon. Sept. 10, the Mets were to play a one game series against Milwaukee, and then were to have the next three days off in a row, and then finally resume play on Fri. Sept. 14.

Given these real-world schedule examples, you can see OOTP's schedule is not that much worse than what MLB actually played back then. It may not be accurate to today's scheduling practices, but then, today's league sizes and alignments are different as well.


By the way, about your statement, "If I can't create a simple, balanced schedule every time I sim I think 'This isn't a level playing field,'" I agree, however baseball did really have some exceptions to this. In particular, the Pacific Coast League for a great many years NEVER played a balanced schedule, in spite of having an 8 team league. I started a thread about this very subject in the Talk Sports forum on the boards here, you may want to check it out.

[kingcharlesxii]

JD - Have you tried the Stickware schedule utility? It is quite good. Otherwise I would follow LGO's advice if you want a truly authentic schedule. After all, this is what he is a god at

[JDOldSchool]

Originally posted by Le Grande Orange
What in the heck are you doing using a balanced schedule when your leagues are split into two divisions!?!?! Using a balanced schedule when you have divisions renders those divisions completely meaningless and arbitrary - why not just make a single 10 team arrangement? After all, that's really what the schedule is for when it's balanced.

You must understand I have a huge issue about using a balanced schedule when divisions are involved.

I did this because I want two teams from each league to make the playoffs, and if I did 1 10-team division in each league then there would be no real reward of winning first place because 2nd place would be good enough.

Also, I have each league split into East and West. I suppose this is in some way arbitrary, but I wouldn't say it's meaningless.

Something about 1-game series (and 5-games, unless it's necessary due to a double-header make up game) bothers me. Although travel doesn't come into play in OOTP, it just seems silly to have a team in 4 different cities in 5 nights.

The weirdest thing was the schedule generated all these games at the end of the season.

Also, I agree 4 and 2-game series would make the schedule better, but it can be done with just 3.

[bbrrsansangel]

I realize that I am late coming in on this discussion, but it would appear that the schedule generator has a much bigger problem than the one mentioned by JD, to wit, the gnenerator creates "balanced" schedules in an overall sense, but not internally. Example: I just attempted to create a schedule to two eight team leagues, 140 games per team, no inter-league play. (That is, a schedule for baseball in 1901). The generator should produce 20 games between any two teams in a given league, 10 at home and 10 away. What I get, however, is as many as 22 against some teams, 18 or 19 against others. Additionally, I get results like 20 total games between two teams - 15 in the stadium of one and 5 in the stadium of the other.

Personally, I could put up with a few one game series now and then if the overall results were truly "balanced."

[Eugene Church]

The schedule generator in OOTPB is very poor and this is very well known.

I used to get frustrated and upset with all of those single games at the end of the season and teams not playing each other correct numbers of games home and away, but in defense of the game, it is very difficult to program, considering all of the various combinations of leagues and divisions and total number of games.

I just manually do my schedules for each league. Once you create a schedule, the game keeps it for each season, but does switch the opponents year-to-year.

(I have not played OOTP6 yet..still setting up my league...but in OOTP5 and previous versions there was a glitch in the schedule editor...hope it has been fixed in this version)

If you do create your own schedule manually, be advised of a glitch in the schedule editor...when you change the 6th game in the left column, it causes the entrie schedule to slide down and some games are hidden from view. The only way you can play those games is to sim them...or reenter that day's schedule over again manually...which is a pain, if you have to make a lot of changes.

[gmo]

Seeing this thread prompted me to start a thread in the mods forum to hold schedules for people to download and use (I am not in a situation to be able to webhost anything).

For what people generally want, there are big problems with the OOTP schedule generator as noted above. The Stickware utility is quite terrific IMO, but it is not perfect. Just like other add-ons such as logos, there should be a good collection of schedules for people to use. I've read many times about people making or tweaking schedules for their leagues, plus the Retrosheet real MLB schedules can at least be converted to the OOTP-readable format. Hopefully many of these things will get posted or at least put up somewhere for others to take advantage of also.

[DerekT]

Here I want to add a bit to this. Now I don't mind the 5 games against 5 different teams at the end. I don't mind the uneven schedule. What I don't like is that at times there are teams playing 7 games in a row against one team, and I don't mean 4 home and 3 road I mean NY at Boston for 7 straight games.

Now on the issues that must be fixed list it is about #220 or so, but I just wanted to mention how much this bugged me.

[JDOldSchool]

I should clarify my strongest statement from my original post...

I will still play OOTP6, I just won't continue with this league until I can make or get a schedule I like. When I use real player leagues, I rarely have a problem with those schedules so it's not an issue.

A few other minor schedule issues. Not huge complaints, but something that could possibly be fixed if a schedule generator overhaul is ever made...

Two teams playing in the same park on consecutive weeks. This one seems easy to fix. If Team A is at Team B in one week, Team A shouldn't be a Team B the next.

I think part of my problem is a lack of true balance with the balanced schedule. Right now I want certain teams to play certain other teams an equal number of times.

Creating a 162 game schedule manually is, in fact, a major pain in the butt.

My problem with Stickware was it didn't seem to balance the home/away properly. Maybe I just didn't use it right.

[Henry]

I have to chime in with a relative fact that some may not know (I do know that LGO knows it

MLB schedules are done by hand. Why? Because no one yet has been able to program the function to a level where everyone's wishes are possible. Stickware attempted to improve on this for OOTP, which it did - but it's not perfect. Markus added the ability to input your own schedules, which is the perfect solution to this problem.

We have 100 years of various schedules from various leagues available to us. Finding the schedule that best fits our needs and inputing it manually is the solution.

As far as creating your own - yes, it is difficult. I've done it once and it took me 3 weeks to come up with a 200 game PCL schedule.

And expecting this task to be programmed is also probably asking too much since the MLB chooses to use hand designed shedules over computer generated ones. A computer generated schedule is simply a trail and error approach - trying multiple solutions until some settings are met - problem is everyone has a different idea of what those setting should be.

As a final note, with all the option available for schedules now, I would rather see Markus improve the import mechanizm so we can import the Retrosheet schedules.

Henry

[D Love]

If schedules truly can't be created realistically by a program, then isn't the answer obvious?? Markus or some cohort will simply have to come up with 1 schedule for each league scenario (4-20 teams, balance & unbalanced, etc.).

Yes, it would be somewhat time-consuming, but given the ridiculous schedules now generated, it's a better alternative. Then have the program randomly assign teams each year (Team 1 plays Team 2 to start the season, so OOTP would simply designate different teams to be team "1" and team "2" each year).

Yea, this could result in teams playing in LA one night to end a series and in NY he next, but at least the schedules will be solid, despite the lack of variation.

[Dan Theman]

Well, this may be the obvious solution for some, but I for one would hate seeing the same friggin team on opening day again and again and again. However I do have to say one thing in defense of the standard auto-scheduling - if the collection of one-game series at the end of the season is so bad that someone wouldn't want to play the league anymore, one might consider them to be a tad over-sensitive.

Perhaps an enhancement to the boiler-plate schedule would be to use such a system with a rotating assignment of teams.

eg - series 1: divisional team, series 2: nondivisional, series 3: divisional, etc, etc. That might be manageable.

[Henry]

Originally posted by D Love
If schedules truly can't be created realistically by a program, then isn't the answer obvious?? Markus or some cohort will simply have to come up with 1 schedule for each league scenario (4-20 teams, balance & unbalanced, etc.).

Sit down for a minute and calculate how many schedules that would be....

8-10-12-14-16-18-20-22-24-26-28-30-32-34-36 team leagues organized as no divisions, 2-4-6 divisions, balanced and unbalanced, intra league versus inter league...

that alone is about 120 schedules by rough calculation. If mine took me 3 weeks to get right by hand - even assuming I'm slow, your looking at maybe a year or two of full time work ??

Henry

[rogmax11]

This was all old news to me until I ran into Eugene Churchs' post revealing the "sixth game glitch." Any of you self-schedulers encountered this yet? I was cruising along quite happily, contemplating inputting my shiny new hand-built schedule ( whenever the CD should arrive ), and now Im a bit shaken. Any more news or workarounds?

Im planning on a fictional 2-league, 2-division, 4 teams per division set-up, playing out a 144 game schedule ( 24 games intra-division, 18 inter-division per team ), no interleague play. I would be seriously miffed if after going to the trouble to build the damn schedule I couldnt implement it.

Clarification, anyone?

[rogmax11]

LOL, speaking of clarification, I reversed the meanings of inter and intra in the above post; hopefully you understood the thrust of my statement.

[lynchjm24]

Originally posted by Henry

MLB schedules are done by hand. Why? Because no one yet has been able to program the function to a level where everyone's wishes are possible. Stickware attempted to improve on this for OOTP, which it did - but it's not perfect. Markus added the ability to input your own schedules, which is the perfect solution to this problem.

A real MLB schedule is more complicated then this though. In real life travel must be taken into account. Not the case here. Also in real life MLB avoids having the Mets/Yankees, White Sox/Cubs, Angels/Dodgers being home at the same time. They also try to balance weekend versus weekday home games.

While it is tough, giving up probably isn't the right answer.

[Henry]

I don't think I was saying "give up". I believe I was saying that a workable importer would be the best solution.

Henry

[Eugene Church]

Originally posted by Eugene Church
I just manually do my schedules for each league. Once you create a schedule, the game keeps it for each season, but does switch the opponents year-to-year.

(I have not played OOTP6 yet..still setting up my league...but in OOTP5 and previous versions there was a glitch in the schedule editor...hope it has been fixed in this version)

If you do create your own schedule manually, be advised of a glitch in the schedule editor...when you change the 6th game in the left column, it causes the entrie schedule to slide down and some games are hidden from view. The only way you can play those games is to sim them...or reenter that day's schedule over again manually...which is a pain, if you have to make a lot of changes.

You can correct the above situation, but it is time-consuming to reenter some or all of the games on a day's schedule, when you delete the 6th game on the schedule. I changed about 100 days trying to edit the existing game generated schedule. It took me 3 weeks working on it 8 hours a days...Luckily, I'm retired and have the time.

I hope this has been fixed in OOTP6.

I will find out in a week or so, when I finish rosters for OOTP6.

Does anyone know?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally posted by Henry
As far as creating your own - yes, it is difficult. I've done it once and it took me 3 weeks to come up with a 200 game PCL schedule.

Henry, what was it about it that took so long? I'd expect doing a PCL-style schedule should be the easiest of all because of it's week-long series format, and all the teams are off and travel on the same day. I'm pretty sure I could knock off a decent PCL-style schedule fairly quickly.

By the way, you ought to pass along that one to me to take a look at. I'm curious to see how your worked it out.

Originally posted by Dan Theman
Well, this may be the obvious solution for some, but I for one would hate seeing the same friggin team on opening day again and again and again ... Perhaps an enhancement to the boiler-plate schedule would be to use such a system with a rotating assignment of teams.

OOTP sort of does that now by changing up the schedule each year by rotating the opponents in the schedule based on their position of finish. The only problem with that is that it tends to make for unrealistic looking road trips in some seasons.

I made a suggestion earlier this year as to how to rectify that while still allowing the schedule to vary each year based on the position of finish. The way to do it is to add the concept of geographical subgroupings. I explained the idea in detail here: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ht=subgrouping

If this concept was implemented, you could use a single schedule template while still having it change each year (unless the teams finished in exactly the same order each season), and have it retain realistic looking road trips. The only problem this system doesn't address is the situation of two team being based in the same city, since both teams shouldn't be playing home games at the same time.

Originally posted by Henry
Sit down for a minute and calculate how many schedules that would be... 8-10-12-14-16-18-20-22-24-26-28-30-32-34-36 team leagues organized as no divisions, 2-4-6 divisions, balanced and unbalanced, intra league versus inter league... that alone is about 120 schedules by rough calculation.

And that's leaving out the question of season length. For example, and 8 team league could play 140, 154, or 168 games; other league alignments could have different numbers of games played as well.

That being said, however, I'd be willing to wager if you conducted a poll you'd probably find a range of fictional league setups and season lengths that are most often used/wanted. Included schedules could be done to cover these league arrangements. For historical leagues, easy importing of the real schedules from Retrosheet would be best.

The old game FPS: Baseball Pro came with a set of fixed schedule templates; it did not dynamically create them. If I remember right it did much like OOTP does and changed up the opponents each year in the template based on the position of finish.

The game did include a considerable number of league alignments, but you could only use what was in the game, you couldn't create your own.

Originally posted by rogmax11
Im planning on a fictional 2-league, 2-division, 4 teams per division set-up, playing out a 144 game schedule (24 games intra-division, 18 inter-division per team ), no interleague play.

You're in luck here, as the International League used that schedule format in its 1974 season. You could use that real schedule as a base and modify if need be to suit your own tastes. The biggest thing about minor league schedules is that they are rather time compressed - that is, they squeeze in their games in a much shorter period of time than would a major league playing the same number of games.