Update on my attempt to create real-life schedules
Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:56 pmI know some of you were interested in my endeavor to create real-life schedules for DDSCF2021. I added 117 FCS teams in order to fill out the yearly schedules, but it’s become apparent that the game does not handle this type of load very well. With a total of 247 teams, it’s necessary to sim one week at a time and save. Otherwise, the game freezes after two or three weeks while trying to simulate multiple weeks. Also, the game doesn’t scale very well to the differential in talent with this amount of teams. I’ve done various trial runs giving all the FCS teams prestiges of 25, 20 and 5, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The first season seems to be fairly realistic, but after that the upper tier teams seem to move downward in talent, and the FCS teams and bottom feeder FBS teams seem to get better. It doesn’t matter if I set prestige change to “none” or not. A number of the FCS teams actually bring in better recruiting classes than the lower level FBS teams. As a result, there’s a lot more parity and fewer blowouts after two or three years. Weird things start happening to the elite teams as well.
What I think might work, and what I’m going to try next is to create just ten FCS schools with low prestige, and have each one of them play 12 road games against the FBS schools. They will not play against each other. I can keep the FBS schedules realistic for years into the future (USC, UCLA, Notre Dame, and one rotating division in the Big Ten don’t play FCS opponents). The downside is that the teams will not play the exact FCS opponent they would in real life, and not in the same week, but since I’m just using them to round out schedules it’s not a huge deal to me. Many schools have their non-conference schedules set for five or six years, and after that I will add some logical matchups, including non-conference games they’ve played in the past.
For the conference schedules, mine will have the exact rotation for each conference each season. The Big Ten and Pac 12 will play their nine conference games, USC, UCLA, Stanford and Cal will play each other every year, the ACC and SEC will maintain their permanent cross division rivals, etc. These schedules will also be a lot more balanced than the ones the AI creates. You won't see a team play four consecutive road games, followed by four consecutive home games.
It will take me a few days to test this, but I think it might bear better results than my initial attempt.
What I think might work, and what I’m going to try next is to create just ten FCS schools with low prestige, and have each one of them play 12 road games against the FBS schools. They will not play against each other. I can keep the FBS schedules realistic for years into the future (USC, UCLA, Notre Dame, and one rotating division in the Big Ten don’t play FCS opponents). The downside is that the teams will not play the exact FCS opponent they would in real life, and not in the same week, but since I’m just using them to round out schedules it’s not a huge deal to me. Many schools have their non-conference schedules set for five or six years, and after that I will add some logical matchups, including non-conference games they’ve played in the past.
For the conference schedules, mine will have the exact rotation for each conference each season. The Big Ten and Pac 12 will play their nine conference games, USC, UCLA, Stanford and Cal will play each other every year, the ACC and SEC will maintain their permanent cross division rivals, etc. These schedules will also be a lot more balanced than the ones the AI creates. You won't see a team play four consecutive road games, followed by four consecutive home games.
It will take me a few days to test this, but I think it might bear better results than my initial attempt.
