Drastic and sudden sim slowdown

mjj55409 · 05-04-2017, 03:49 PM

I'm creating an historical league in 1901 with minors enabled. This will not bring in the minor leagues until 1915, but it will import the players from the minor league database each season. I import all players as free agents. And I create a number of minor leagues to give these extra players somewhere to play.

For each of my tests so far, I reach a point where the sim speed precipitously slows down. In the current universe it's the offseason of 1909. There are 2700+ free agents available. I just added a 6th minor league (8 teams each, so 48 minor league teams altogether). Now, when I try to sim the offseason, it is taking about 45 seconds to advance each day. This rate would mean 20 minutes per month, or about 3 hrs to advance from offseason start to Opening Day of 1910. Given that I progressed from 1901 to 1909 (periodically adding minor leagues) in about 2 hrs total time, this is a disproportionate slowdown.

I'm running on a MacBook. I tested also on a PC, and there was a difference. The PC was much worse--2 to 2.5 minutes per day.

I've uploaded the league file to the FTP server: phbl.tar.gz.

mjj55409 · 05-04-2017, 04:00 PM

More information -- removing the minor league I just added (the PCL if you are looking at the league file) returns the sim speed to more normal levels. So something is happening after adding that 6th minor league.

Matt Arnold · 05-04-2017, 05:08 PM

Opened up your save briefly, and I notice that your minor leagues are not affiliated, so essentially they're all treated like major leagues (in that they will offer free agents contracts, and do all the other daily tasks needed).

If they were minor league teams and affiliated with teams in the majors, that would certainly help in simming, as they wouldn't have nearly as many daily tasks to manage.

But from what I can see, most of the time seems to be on FA negotiation at the moment, so the fact that each of your teams is searching a FA list of 2800+ players is simply taking a lot of time.

We can see if there's anything in this that we can do to improve things, but I would suggest either reducing the free agent pool, or affiliating some of the minor leagues, and that should help. Alternately, you'll have to wait for the pre-season start, but you could try turning off finances in the minor leagues, and that can have a fairly decent effect on sim speed (as there's less they have to deal with when trying to fill their team with free agents).

Also keep in mind that often times early on in free agency, things will go a lot slower than later on. So just because it may take 30 seconds or 1 min in November, it will likely be much shorter in January once teams have filled out their rosters. But I will say the majority of the time is the fact that teams simply have almost 3000 options to fill out almost full rosters, so I would potentially suggest deleting many of the free agents who will likely never sign.

Matt Arnold · 05-04-2017, 05:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjj55409

More information -- removing the minor league I just added (the PCL if you are looking at the league file) returns the sim speed to more normal levels. So something is happening after adding that 6th minor league.

That's likely because that league the teams aren't full, so teams have an awful lot of choices to fill out their rosters. Once they have signed enough guys to fill the rosters the rest of the off-season should move quicker.

mjj55409 · 05-05-2017, 09:48 AM

I was afraid of that response. I'm just using the minor league db, creating extra leagues so the extra players have some place to play. I already do a lot of pruning--removing all the Ballplayer Smiths, the ones with no first name. And 1909 doesn't seem substantially different than 1908 in this regard, but the slow down happens in 1909. It's happened now more than once, which is why I decided to report it.

Matt Arnold · 05-05-2017, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjj55409

I was afraid of that response. I'm just using the minor league db, creating extra leagues so the extra players have some place to play. I already do a lot of pruning--removing all the Ballplayer Smiths, the ones with no first name. And 1909 doesn't seem substantially different than 1908 in this regard, but the slow down happens in 1909. It's happened now more than once, which is why I decided to report it.

As you said, it seems to be more about the new teams that got added that now have to be filled up. Have you added leagues previously, or was this your first time "expanding"?

One thing you could consider doing is when you add the new league in, add it in before the free agents file from your other leagues, and have the new league start with a free agent draft. That should give everyone a base to start from, and I would expect you wouldn't see a drastic change from previous years in terms of sim time.

We'll continue to look into other things we can do to speed things up, as well. Still worth it to report it

05-04-2017, 03:49 PM	#1
mjj55409 All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 1,166	Drastic and sudden sim slowdown I'm creating an historical league in 1901 with minors enabled. This will not bring in the minor leagues until 1915, but it will import the players from the minor league database each season. I import all players as free agents. And I create a number of minor leagues to give these extra players somewhere to play. For each of my tests so far, I reach a point where the sim speed precipitously slows down. In the current universe it's the offseason of 1909. There are 2700+ free agents available. I just added a 6th minor league (8 teams each, so 48 minor league teams altogether). Now, when I try to sim the offseason, it is taking about 45 seconds to advance each day. This rate would mean 20 minutes per month, or about 3 hrs to advance from offseason start to Opening Day of 1910. Given that I progressed from 1901 to 1909 (periodically adding minor leagues) in about 2 hrs total time, this is a disproportionate slowdown. I'm running on a MacBook. I tested also on a PC, and there was a difference. The PC was much worse--2 to 2.5 minutes per day. I've uploaded the league file to the FTP server: phbl.tar.gz. __________________ FABL -- Chicago Chiefs Last edited by mjj55409; 05-04-2017 at 03:54 PM.

05-04-2017, 04:00 PM	#2
mjj55409 All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 1,166	More information -- removing the minor league I just added (the PCL if you are looking at the league file) returns the sim speed to more normal levels. So something is happening after adding that 6th minor league. __________________ FABL -- Chicago Chiefs

05-05-2017, 09:48 AM	#5
mjj55409 All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 1,166	I was afraid of that response. I'm just using the minor league db, creating extra leagues so the extra players have some place to play. I already do a lot of pruning--removing all the Ballplayer Smiths, the ones with no first name. And 1909 doesn't seem substantially different than 1908 in this regard, but the slow down happens in 1909. It's happened now more than once, which is why I decided to report it. __________________ FABL -- Chicago Chiefs

05-04-2017, 05:08 PM	#3
Matt Arnold OOTP Developer Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Here and there Posts: 16,244	Opened up your save briefly, and I notice that your minor leagues are not affiliated, so essentially they're all treated like major leagues (in that they will offer free agents contracts, and do all the other daily tasks needed). If they were minor league teams and affiliated with teams in the majors, that would certainly help in simming, as they wouldn't have nearly as many daily tasks to manage. But from what I can see, most of the time seems to be on FA negotiation at the moment, so the fact that each of your teams is searching a FA list of 2800+ players is simply taking a lot of time. We can see if there's anything in this that we can do to improve things, but I would suggest either reducing the free agent pool, or affiliating some of the minor leagues, and that should help. Alternately, you'll have to wait for the pre-season start, but you could try turning off finances in the minor leagues, and that can have a fairly decent effect on sim speed (as there's less they have to deal with when trying to fill their team with free agents). Also keep in mind that often times early on in free agency, things will go a lot slower than later on. So just because it may take 30 seconds or 1 min in November, it will likely be much shorter in January once teams have filled out their rosters. But I will say the majority of the time is the fact that teams simply have almost 3000 options to fill out almost full rosters, so I would potentially suggest deleting many of the free agents who will likely never sign.