New Sim Program

[AllStarBCS]

I'm running into all kinds of problems with the new version of @ESMS, so we'll be switching to the MSWL simulator. In order to do this, I'll need some additional information.

1) This is the big one. After the draft, you'll need to modify the positions of the players on your rosters. The majority of your players will be qualified for only one position. These positions are:

GK - goalkeeper
SW - sweeper
DF - defender
MF - midfielder
WG - winger
FW - forward

You will also be allowed four players who can play more than one position. These players may be:

SD - sweeper/defense
DM - defense/midfield
MA - midfield/forward
UT - defense/midfield/forward (only one allowed per team)

Players suffer a reduction in skill level when playing out of position.

2) I need stadium info. Name of stadium, location, and capacity.

3) MSWL has a revenue system. Teams can gain money through ticket sales, etc. Each team will start out the season with $1,000,000 in its bank account. The money may be used in the future to bid for players and that sort of thing, but I haven't really decided yet.

4) MSWL also allows the league to create individual referees who will call games differently from each other. I need to know whether we want to use this option or not.

I think that's about it for now. I'll post again if I think of anything else.

[Kryptonite]

i'm voting for keeping it simple. in other words, no on options 3 and 4.


2) I need stadium info. Name of stadium, location, and capacity.

Kick Ass Field, Souf Central, 38,000

[JAnderson14]

I think the money side makes things too serious.

Other than that, sounds good.

[JAnderson14]

I wouldn't mind the different referrees at all.

A question:

Do I have to say I'm using wingers? If our midfield doesn't have any wingers, will two of the players be lower rated?

I'm just curious, as we have only one person that would be a winger, and he's a DM so it wouldn't matter.

[Bird]

Wow, MSWL's engine looks like its a big improvement over ESMS -- at least in terms of tactics and flexibility.

A couple of thoughts (feel free to ignore, of course, since I'm not a manager; I am a CM addict though):

Do the money thing next year, if at all. Hopefully, the league will have stabilized by then. Managing this feature could get pretty complicated and this is a unfamiliar game engine. We'll have enough of a time just figuring out tactics and strategies this season. We can do more trading (which is where the money is useful) next year. If anything, maybe set up the database to track gate receipts for the season without actually allowing trading, just to see if the feature works well and there aren't wild discrepancies in bank accounts.

Use the referees feature. It shouldn't take much time to set up (4 attributes per ref, maybe 8-10 refs max) and will add some interesting variability to the matches. We could use the names of the main MLS refs, plus Peter Prendergast, just to make it really controversial. ;) (If you decide to use this and need some help coming up with names/attributes, feel free to PM me.)

Factor morale bonuses in a couple of times a season. Maybe give slight boosts to morale effect for teams that regularly contribute to the forum or have high post counts/witty discussion in their team threads (whether they're losing or not).

[AllStarBCS]

Good suggestions, all of them. I'll keep them in mind.

[AllStarBCS]

Originally posted by JAnderson14
I wouldn't mind the different referrees at all.

A question:

Do I have to say I'm using wingers? If our midfield doesn't have any wingers, will two of the players be lower rated?

I'm just curious, as we have only one person that would be a winger, and he's a DM so it wouldn't matter.

I'm not sure I understand the question, but I'll try to answer it as best I can.

Wingers aren't considered to be midfielders. They suffer a 20% skill reduction playing midfield, and midfielders (DM and MA included) suffer a 20% reduction playing the wing.

There are also some lineup limits that could get annoying.

From the manual:

There may be at most one SW.

You must play between 2 and 5 DF and MF players at all times.

You may play between 0 and 2 WGs in a match.

You must play at least 1 FW at all times.

You may have no more than 4 WG/FW players in a match at the same time.

[AllStarBCS]

Well, I can't find an option to eliminate ticket revenue altogether, so I'll just let it run throughout the season to see if it works.

[JAnderson14]

So if I play 4 midfielders, I don't have to signify who's wide and who isn't?

Will an MA or a DM be able to play as a winger without skill reduction?

[AllStarBCS]

Originally posted by JAnderson14
So if I play 4 midfielders, I don't have to signify who's wide and who isn't?

Will an MA or a DM be able to play as a winger without skill reduction?

1) Well, no, but you'd only be able to play one defender.

2) No.

Honestly, I'm having trouble figuring out the logic behind these limits myself.

[panicfc]

From Dave Austin who runs GISL - the oldest ESMS league in the world.




Remember we used MSWL BEFORE ESMS.... only we used one of the very early dos-
based ones.....

Thing about MSWL is it didn't have anything which we wanted to use... except
the game engine. For example, there were no such things as AB's... skill
increases only came in the way of using Training Points and Coaching Points....
and it was actually fairly complex to use this, so we never did, and went with
the AB system isntead... however, we had to do the AB's manually (games would
take me about 12 hours to do, hence most times I never sent things out until
Sundays).

However, MSWL made the source code for the engine available from day one,
(which I think is soemthing that helped Eli and Igor out a lot when developing
ESMS), which also meant that people over time took the code, made adjustments,
tried things out more, and overall MSWL became a very polished product, I think
it is also now in a VB application.

Certainly the wider variety of tactics and formations makes it interesting....
but now Eli has released the source code for ESMS over the next few years it
may develop along the same lines...

I think MSWL still relies on 1 skill level for a player. Eg, you have a skill
15. But they are also assigned a specific position, such as DF. If you play
them out of position, eg a skill 15 DF as a MF, their skill level is penalised
by something like 20%.

In the old days, the amount of stats tracked by MSWL was also very poor... only
recording saves, goals conceded and goals scored (in the same column) and
shots. Hence in olden days of GISL almsot all awards went to forwards or at
least players who scored lots of goals (eg Kinky).

MSWL (the league) has been in existence for a lot longer than GISL, and the
software had been around a long time too before GISL used it. However, at the
time GISL took it on for use, perhaps only 5 other leagues used it... even
though it had been available for use for soemthing like 2-3 years.... within 2-
3 years of ESMS being made available, the number of leagues to have developed
is among the hundreds... ok so maybe 75% of these folded quickly, but I'd say
the pick up rate of ESMS has been a lot better than MSWL (although for some
leagues, they would not have existed had it not been for EOFA's early days when
there was order.. before chaos hit it like it has now....)

Bigsoccer.com would have blossomed through EOFA if they had staretd back when
leagues like SNIFL, WSL, JAFL etc started up.... because back then people like
Bourkie, Andy McGrae, Eduards Rens, Eli (from ESMS point), and some others
really helped new leagues out with all their issues....

[panicfc]

and more from Dave Austin

I better add that the injury part wes mentioned is not 100% MSWL... we also had
to handle that manually....

Essentially your player started out on 10 fitness points.... if you played a
game aggressively, they lost 8 points, 6 points if you played normal, and 4
points if you played passively.

The way MSWL intended this to work was that after each game, you would add back
4 fitness points to a player.

So, a player playing aggressive goes from 10, down to 2, then back up to 6.
Next game if you play them aggressively they fall down to -2, then back up to
2. Next game if you play them aggressively they fall down to -6, and back up
to -2. And the key to it was that you could not play a player who was on
fitness level of less than 0. So overall, every player missed at least a game
or two.... injuries happened in games which might push that player down to -20
or something... so they would miss a few weeks.

In GISL though, we played games according to a close to real life schedule.
MSWL would play "sessions", and a session usually invovled playing 3 games in a
row... so you had to submit a teamsheet for 3 straight games... and I think
games were like once a fortnight.... becasue there were people who played the
game via postal mail.

With GISL, we played according to a schedule of Saturday league games and
Wednesday Cup games.... and thus, we shoved off some of the "EL" (that was what
the fitness was called)... and would add back 4 points twice per week... so you
could almost play a player the entire season aggressively so long as you had
very few cup games.

We also had the infamous "Captains Bonus" where we gave out AB's to the team
captain for when a team when a game, and then more AB's when they won 3 in a
row.... this is what created the monster called G_Kinkladze.... but again that
was all done manually....

ANd of course the random AB's we would give out to players was done manually by
me, and in the end I heard that Bourkie and Smitty found a system to purposely
get some AB's for their players... because despite me randomly choosing a
player to give the AB's to, it was generally certain players listed on the
teamsheet (eg the 5th or 6th player named), so they would make their teamsheets
reflect this... even though in my mind I was randomly choosing a player, it
turned out msot often it was the 5th or 6th player....

[PSU92]

My Brain hurts.

[panicfc]

Originally posted by PSU92
My Brain hurts.

It's beyond me as well, but some of the number crunching geeks can make heads or tail of it.

[AllStarBCS]

AB's are ability points. I used them last season to produce the top players list, but in most leagues they're set up so that once you reach 1000 AB points, your skill increases by one. In the past, I've tried to avoid skill changes completely, as they make things too complicated.

Panic, where did you get this? Did you e-mail Dave Austin, or what?

[PSU92]

May I suggest all Stadiums have the same capacity so no team has a ticket sale advantage.

[AllStarBCS]

I'll consider that.

[panicfc]

Actually Caddman posted it to the GISL mailing list and Dave was nice enough to post his thoughts for us to post on here.

Dave is the wizard - if you want I can hook you up with him?

[Elninho]

What referee attributes are used? I think I can give a decent assessment of any of the actual World Cup referees...

[AllStarBCS]

Ref attributes:
Strictness - likelyhood of giving cards
Flow - amount of interference with game flow
HomeBias - penalties more/less likely for home side
Offisides - frequency of offside calls