Looking for assistance for an unusual schedule

andrewkay · 10-27-2005, 07:35 PM

Anybody out there willing to help or tell me how to set up a schedule for an usual league set up?

A fellow poster on a baseball forum suggested a new set up for MLB to "even out" the chances for smaller market teams to get into the World Series. The layout is as follows (sorry for the length):

Quote:

For example, suppose Fox demanded that MLB drastically realign into European-style divisions, with relegations and promotions? Were it to start in 2006, it would begin as something like this:

Premiership: New York Yankees, Boston, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland, Atlanta, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Houston
(the 10 best records in MLB in 2005)

First Division: Toronto, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, New York Mets, Washington, Milwaukee, Chicago Cubs, San Diego, Arizona (middle 10 records)

Second Division: Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Detroit, Kansas City, Seattle, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Colorado (the worst 10 records)

Teams would play divisional teams 14 times (126 games), one selected "traditional" rival six times if they weren't in the same division, and 30 games against teams in the other divisions.

The bottom two teams in the Premier and First divisions would be relegated, and the first two teams in the First and Second divisions promoted.

For playoffs, the second- and third-place teams would play a best-of-three, with the winner playing the regular-season champion in a best-of-seven for the division title. The First and Second division winners would then play a best-of-seven, with the winner facing the Premiership winner in the World Series. (To prevent its champion from getting rusty, the Premiership regular season would end a few days later, since it would have one less playoff round.)

The Premier winner would get home-field advantage for the World Series.

Oh, and if the third-place team in the First Division or any team in the Second Division ended up winning the Series, it would automatically be promoted to the Premier for the following season in lieu of the second-place team in the First Division.

Competition would probably be more even, as divisions would eventually correlate with team budgets. It would give the likes of Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay and Cincinnati more of a chance for postseason play.

I have the three leagues set up with this years rosters using HaloFans last update, but I don't know how to set up a schedule or organize the playoff schedule.

So any help to be offered on this project, or point me where I can learn more to do it myself? Thanks!!

gmo · 10-27-2005, 08:04 PM

I am not sure you can have a functional setup in the game like that. How do you have the 30 teams set up in 3 divisions? You cannot do 3 (sub)leagues in one league, and I did not think you could fit 30 teams into one (sub)league, plus one (sub)league setups do not allow for real playoffs in the game.

If the league configuration could work, perhaps with manually scheduled playoffs that the game would consider still regular season games, a schedule could be made, though I am not sure the "traditional" rivals aspect would work out.

andrewkay · 10-27-2005, 09:31 PM

I set it up with two leagues, one has a single division and the other has two divisions. Each division has 10 teams. It seems to have accepted everything although obviously I have not played any games yet. I figured the playoff series would be the major problem. Could I set it for no playoffs at all and then just manually add the series from the schedule menu at the end - can I do that or would that not be possible at the end of the season?

gmo · 10-27-2005, 10:06 PM

Playoffs will not work properly with different numbers of divisions in the two leagues. That I have tested myself as well as heard about from others. With playoffs turned off you can schedule games yourself, but they would be regular season games as kept by OOTP, so you would have to keep track of a lot of info, and the overall standings and stats would get skewed as a result. If you were doing relegation and promotion, sounds like doing a little work like that is not a big deal, though the numbers issue may be a problem.

If you still wanted to give it a try in spite of those things, a schedule could be made for the 162 desired regular season games (then you would have to input your would-be postseason games). Like I said, the traditional rival thing probably could not be made to work because of how it will vary year-to-year. If a team's rival is in the same division that would require pulling in 6 more games from outside the division, but then it may not work out as far as having the right number of teams available for those extra games. If you could settle for just 126 intra-division games plus 18 games total against both of the other two divisions (with those interdivision games probably mostly in 2-game series), something that would work could most likely be created.

Le Grande Orange · 10-28-2005, 03:59 AM

There's one problem though. If you do actually do a promotion/relegation, the team will naturally switch leagues. But it's schedule for the next season is still based on the old schedule, meaning it will still be playing most of its games against the teams in the league it's no longer in.

You'd have to adjust the schedule appropriately each season to take into account the teams that have switched leagues as a result of promotion/relegation.

gmo · 10-28-2005, 04:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

There's one problem though. If you do actually do a promotion/relegation, the team will naturally switch leagues. But it's schedule for the next season is still based on the old schedule, meaning it will still be playing most of its games against the teams in the league it's no longer in.

You'd have to adjust the schedule appropriately each season to take into account the teams that have switched leagues as a result of promotion/relegation.

With the teams being switched around on the League Structure screen, that might fix the issues you bring up that would arise with the schedule. Also, the manual addition of other games would for future seasons have to be undone. What I was figuring would be the solution would be piling together many schedules with randomized matchups. That way a schedule could be imported fresh each year, but there would be more variety than just the promotion/relegation changes if the same schedule was imported for each season.

gmo · 10-28-2005, 02:10 PM

Just a few notes on testing this if you want to investigate whether you can make it work satisfactorily...

You could set up a practice/dummy league, like it seems you have, and run it through some test seasons. You could import any 30-team schedule (there are options in the historical & fictional schedule threads atop this forum), and it will work for any 30-team configuration even though the games will not be broken down by opponent the way you want them in the end. Assuming you have playoffs turned off, you would have to do something to make sure the game did not shut down the season and pop up the "Proceed to next season" button after the regular season in the imported schedule ends. What I think would cover that is manually adding an(other) All-Star Game about a month after the regular season ends, something like around the end of October. I think that will keep the season open, allowing you to manually add the games that would compose your playoffs one round at a time, then after you lay out the final series you can delete that ASG so that the season ends after that last series.

Once more that would be making the postseason technically regular season games within OOTP. Supposing you had 4 teams in your playoffs in that case, a semi-final round and final round. You could lay out the two 7-game semi-final series, and supposing they both ended in 5 or 6 games, delete the remaining games in those series and add the layout for the final series. One thing of which I am unsure is when the "Proceed to next season" button would pop up. Suppose the final series ended in 5 games, then you deleted the remaining games in that series from the schedule (plus that still out there ASG if you had not done that before beginning that final series). I think that after simulating a day in the game with no more games scheduled the rest of the year that the "Proceed" button will then show up, but I am not completely sure of that.

andrewkay · 10-28-2005, 06:18 PM

Thanks gmo, I will give it a trial run through this weekend and see what kind of results I get back. If nothing else it will an interesting exercise!

10-27-2005, 09:31 PM	#3
andrewkay Minors (Single A) Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 70	I set it up with two leagues, one has a single division and the other has two divisions. Each division has 10 teams. It seems to have accepted everything although obviously I have not played any games yet. I figured the playoff series would be the major problem. Could I set it for no playoffs at all and then just manually add the series from the schedule menu at the end - can I do that or would that not be possible at the end of the season? Last edited by andrewkay; 10-27-2005 at 09:32 PM.

10-27-2005, 08:04 PM	#2
gmo Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2002 Location: Longmont, CO Posts: 3,420	I am not sure you can have a functional setup in the game like that. How do you have the 30 teams set up in 3 divisions? You cannot do 3 (sub)leagues in one league, and I did not think you could fit 30 teams into one (sub)league, plus one (sub)league setups do not allow for real playoffs in the game. If the league configuration could work, perhaps with manually scheduled playoffs that the game would consider still regular season games, a schedule could be made, though I am not sure the "traditional" rivals aspect would work out.

10-27-2005, 10:06 PM	#4
gmo Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2002 Location: Longmont, CO Posts: 3,420	Playoffs will not work properly with different numbers of divisions in the two leagues. That I have tested myself as well as heard about from others. With playoffs turned off you can schedule games yourself, but they would be regular season games as kept by OOTP, so you would have to keep track of a lot of info, and the overall standings and stats would get skewed as a result. If you were doing relegation and promotion, sounds like doing a little work like that is not a big deal, though the numbers issue may be a problem. If you still wanted to give it a try in spite of those things, a schedule could be made for the 162 desired regular season games (then you would have to input your would-be postseason games). Like I said, the traditional rival thing probably could not be made to work because of how it will vary year-to-year. If a team's rival is in the same division that would require pulling in 6 more games from outside the division, but then it may not work out as far as having the right number of teams available for those extra games. If you could settle for just 126 intra-division games plus 18 games total against both of the other two divisions (with those interdivision games probably mostly in 2-game series), something that would work could most likely be created.

10-28-2005, 03:59 AM	#5
Le Grande Orange Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Up There Posts: 15,642	There's one problem though. If you do actually do a promotion/relegation, the team will naturally switch leagues. But it's schedule for the next season is still based on the old schedule, meaning it will still be playing most of its games against the teams in the league it's no longer in. You'd have to adjust the schedule appropriately each season to take into account the teams that have switched leagues as a result of promotion/relegation.

10-28-2005, 02:10 PM	#7
gmo Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2002 Location: Longmont, CO Posts: 3,420	Just a few notes on testing this if you want to investigate whether you can make it work satisfactorily... You could set up a practice/dummy league, like it seems you have, and run it through some test seasons. You could import any 30-team schedule (there are options in the historical & fictional schedule threads atop this forum), and it will work for any 30-team configuration even though the games will not be broken down by opponent the way you want them in the end. Assuming you have playoffs turned off, you would have to do something to make sure the game did not shut down the season and pop up the "Proceed to next season" button after the regular season in the imported schedule ends. What I think would cover that is manually adding an(other) All-Star Game about a month after the regular season ends, something like around the end of October. I think that will keep the season open, allowing you to manually add the games that would compose your playoffs one round at a time, then after you lay out the final series you can delete that ASG so that the season ends after that last series. Once more that would be making the postseason technically regular season games within OOTP. Supposing you had 4 teams in your playoffs in that case, a semi-final round and final round. You could lay out the two 7-game semi-final series, and supposing they both ended in 5 or 6 games, delete the remaining games in those series and add the layout for the final series. One thing of which I am unsure is when the "Proceed to next season" button would pop up. Suppose the final series ended in 5 games, then you deleted the remaining games in that series from the schedule (plus that still out there ASG if you had not done that before beginning that final series). I think that after simulating a day in the game with no more games scheduled the rest of the year that the "Proceed" button will then show up, but I am not completely sure of that.

10-28-2005, 06:18 PM	#8
andrewkay Minors (Single A) Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 70	Thanks gmo, I will give it a trial run through this weekend and see what kind of results I get back. If nothing else it will an interesting exercise!