Signing major recruits at end of year

[clipsrback]

I haven't tried this in a solo game but I assume the same is true there.

I am playing a 2 person online league and each season when we get to weeks 14-17 there are a decent amount of top players that have no competing colleges.

We are playing as UAB and Old Dominion. Old Dominion (the other player) just signed the #1 recruit in the country in the last week of the year without scouting him, and using 10 points and a scholarship.

The AI Difficulty in settings doesn't save and I know we brought this to attention and should be fixed in future updates.

Just curious if that might resolve the easy pilfering on major recruits at end of year.

[brooks_piggott]

This is most likely due to roster limits... if everyone has a bunch of top rated recruits already at certain positions it could leave the top guys to fall to other schools. Will have to re-evaluate this in future versions so that more CPU schools target the top talent... on top of this too few schools talent those top 10 recruits because they think they have no shot even with other schools passing. It's a bit of a domino effect that will need to be addressed eventually.

[clipsrback]

This is most likely due to roster limits... if everyone has a bunch of top rated recruits already at certain positions it could leave the top guys to fall to other schools. Will have to re-evaluate this in future versions so that more CPU schools target the top talent... on top of this too few schools talent those top 10 recruits because they think they have no shot even with other schools passing. It's a bit of a domino effect that will need to be addressed eventually.

Appreciate the logic and awareness for future consideration!

[PocketScout]

From what I've seen in some heavy testing this is caused by how your teams Prestige settings are. Prestige appears to limit schools to their "Recommended Targets" rank of recruits. If you do not have enough teams in that range the players seem to go unrecruited.

To solve this issue I have grouped all my power 5 teams with prestige from 90 to 65. Elite schools are 90, Blue Bloods are 85, Then we skip 80 prestige, average schools (which make a bulk of the schools) are 75, barely sub .500 schools are 70 and terrible schools are 65.

In the setup I'm using I have 18 schools in the Elite and Blue Bloods area so if you think about 18 schools, 20 scholarships a year open they will be battling for the top 360 recruits. Then the 75 prestige starts looking for recruits around 137. With these overlaps in recruits the schools are going after you will see a drastic reduction in kids going unrecruited. If you are playing in a setup that only have 5 teams at 85 and above they are going to need 100 recruits a year and your lower prestige schools don't recruit up top players this causes many kids to not have anyone recruiting them.

You might worry that you have to many teams with "High" prestige but it really isn't an issue. The prestige rating mainly controls the initial rosters that are generated: 90 prestige gives an avg roster rating of 87.8 and have access to all recruits, 85 prestige gives an avg roster rating of 86.9 and starts recruiting from recruits 38 down, 80 is skipped because the rating really isn't different recruiting wise from 85, but roster strength wise its the same as 75 prestige, 75 prestige gives an avg roster rating of 84.4 and starts recruiting from recruits 137 down, etc.... Once prestige falls below 63ish all rosters will start with an avg of 76, the prestige just locks schools out from certain levels of recruits. (note if you put prestige at sub 30 in the teams.xml file the teams will start above 76 avg roster, normally around 78, my guess is that it is some type of catch up logic that tries to keep the bottom teams from being so terrible).

When you look at the chart below you might be worried that no teams will be recruiting the players 800 to 1800 range because we do not have teams assigned in that prestige range. This isn't the case in my testing. With 65 teams in the "Power 5" group that is 65 teams at about 20 scholarships a year so they are going after about 1300 players. The lower teams seem to step up and try to take the players at the bottom of that range.

Then I do this same idea for mid majors but from 50 down to 30 scale using the same idea.

With this setup I still see midmajors getting upsets and after looking at how prestige works and used in roster creation it makes sense that it would. A school with 60 prestige starts with the same average roster (76) as a team with 30 prestige does. Brooks might be able to chime in on the other things prestige affects in the game since I'm sure their is more. These are just the affects that were easy to observe.

http://www.thepocketscout.com/DDCF/2020/TeamInfo.html <--- Is a list of how the schools are setup and changed after the first season.

Code: Select all

           Suggested        Generated
Prestige   Top Recruit      Team OVR
   90         1           87.8               
   85         38          86.9                  
   80         62          84.7               
   75         137         84.4                  
   70         305         82.6                  
   65         516         80.6                  
   60         905         76.0     <------------ I use this as a floor for power 5 schools, if a school falls below I move them back to 60 before the next season.               
                                    
   55         1506         76     <------------ I use this as a ceiling midmajors, if a school rises above I move them back to 55 before the next season.                                    
   50         1807         76                     
   45         2106         76                  
   40         2508         76                     
   35         2508         76                     
   30         2508         76                     
   25         2508         78                     



[AKH]

also nice work. The untargeted recruits is a side effect of an earlier patch that solved teams getting too many for different positions (before that there was a catch where the big teams would go through the 4 and 5 stars every few weeks and target recruits that didnt have offers - but this led to teams ending up with way too many players at some positions.

We will certainly revisit the logic for 2021 and straighten this out.