Expansion Division Realignment

[thirdsaint]

One thing I was wondering before I bought this is does the game finally allow for you to align your teams in Expansion for fictional leagues? It’s kind of a game breaker for me when I expand and my New York and Philadelphia teams move to the Western League and San Diego and Colorado moves to the Eastern League. I tried finding a way to change this in the database too but there doesn’t appear to be one. I’ve been playing for 15 seasons with this league and want to start expanding but I can’t with this block. If this hasn’t been addressed is there any hope for it in future versions of the game?

[artfuldodger05]

I was wondering this as well after digging through the db files and not being smart enough to figure out if it was possible. I just picked up the new DDSPB over the weekend and I'm already hooked, though I'd love to be able to make this small tweak to make my game a little more geographically realistic. Obviously, it's a small detail, but if if there's any way to edit this, it'd address such a personally nagging issue, lol. Thanks, Wolverine team! Keep up the good work!

[thirdsaint]

Yeah, I mean it seems such a small thing when you add a team that it doesn’t jumble all the other teams up. I mean, if depending on how many I add and what number team it is, I’m ok if the game forces them into an existing division for the sake of the schedule not being messed up, that’s fine. There’s just no need to have teams move around for no reason.

[daltontr]

I don't know exactly how the games db is structured, but looking at the historical and Real Mod databases, there are two fields in the team folder that designate the division and conference. The fields use simple integers, so in the DivisionID column, 1 = Atlantic, 2 = Central, 3 = Southeast, 4 = Southwest, 5 = Northwest, 6 = Pacific. The ConferenceID column is the same, 1 = Eastern, 2= Western. So, for example if you wanted to have Boston in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference, you would simply change their DivisionID and ConferenceID from 1/1 to 6/2. It is really that simple.

To be clear, this only works if your building a league from and existing db like the Real Mod DB or Historical.

Once the league has been created, you can export the db, but those two fields do not exist in the team table of the exported database. I have tried adding those two fields and experienced no errors when importing the data, but the divisions were unchanged. This leads me to believe that once the divisions and conferences are established, that data resides outside of the team table.

Honestly, I never really cared about this until I decided to expand the league and found that both teams were automatically placed into the western conference. I assume there is a very good reason for doing that, but if the division and conference fields were included in exportable db, it would be very easy to move teams from one division to another. Then again, it might be incredibly complex...I don't know. Obviously you would have to stick to the already established structure, but as I said, there might be an underlying reason why we can't do that.

Regardless, it is something that I think would be high on the list for anyone wanting to expand their leagues. I actually didn't know about this limitation until after I'd decided to expand and now I kind of regret it. It might be a small thing to most, but a Virginia based team in the Western Conference really ruins the immersion value.

I have considered using the commissioner to "trade" entire teams back and forth, then edit there team colors, logos, etc...but I realized that if I did that I would very likely orphan historical data...well, orphan is not the best word for it, but say I swapped the Spurs and Grizzlies with this method. I'm pretty sure the historical data, like hall of fame players, MVP's, etc...would not longer be associated with their correct teams. Having George Gervin associated with the Grizzlies would be heresy! ;-)

The other method I considered is exporting my existing db and incorporating the data into an existing db like the Real Mod, then build the league from scratch. However, I only briefly entertained that thought because I imagine that would be a herculean task and I'm certain the failure rate would be high due to the complexity of marrying up the two db's.

Anyway, if someone can shed some light on how to do this that would be great. Otherwise, I would lobby to have this included in the next version.