Scheduling Logic

[Aerosol]

Is there any rhyme or reason to how the AI teams decide to set up their schedules? I have noticed very high prestige teams seem not to mind making road trips to obscure programs which seems to be something that would not be overly difficult to remedy (e.g. Alabama traveling to Kent State etc.).

Would it be possible to have the computer take prestige into account when deciding on whether to set up an away game? Another variable that might be good for immersion is somehow accounting for schools wanting to play teams in their region , which might make it more likely for a big school to visit a small school (Virginia Tech @ Old Dominion etc.).

[brooks_piggott]

For just non-custom leagues it's pretty much random for non-conference games. The scheduler already struggles to find the right mix of games for all teams as it is... further restrictions based on region and prestige calculations would make it even more difficult meaning it could take several minutes, or hours, to find a suitable schedule each season flip.

For user owned teams you can set preferred matchups via your schedule screen which helps your scenario. You can also manually create your own full schedule and import it if you want full control.

[Aerosol]

That's fair enough then. Two quick follow up questions:

1) Do you know if there is an exemplar xls we could use to do the schedules? (i.e. so I know what columns / fields etc the game is expecting to see if I wanted to do a schedule file).
2) Would user schedules be imported at the "new season" phase - i.e. the same stage in which conference realignment can be done.

[slybelle1]

File format is the following, first line has the headers and the the remaining lines would contain your schedule per week. You would get the teams id from exporting the database within the game or looking at teams.xml file.

WeekNumber,HomeTeamID,AwayTeamID
1,27,32
etc.

When you create the league, you have an option to select a schedule file then. That file will be used until you import a new one during the new season phase.

[Aerosol]

Thanks for your response and helpful info. If doing custom schedules... is it sufficient to just do the non con games... i.e. will the computer handle the conference slate or does each game need to be individually edited ?

[slybelle1]

Thanks for your response and helpful info. If doing custom schedules... is it sufficient to just do the non con games... i.e. will the computer handle the conference slate or does each game need to be individually edited ?

Pretty certain you need to provide full schedules for every team otherwise will get error when importing.

[Aerosol]

Just a suggestion , but it would be a great help to immersion to have a feature that replicated the scheduling process. There is a free game out there, CTFM College Football , which is not nearly as polished as DDSCFB23, but which does have a cool feature where you can try and make deals with other schools several years in advance. The GUI has a "future opponents" section which shows your schedule for the upcoming 5 years or so. The conference games are obviously fixed and unchangeable, and you can select open weeks in future seasons, select a desired opponent, then select from whether you want to ask them for a home, away, or home-and-home series. Then you have to hope the other side says yes. Scheduling like that is a big part of college football, and while I understand it is not an easy problem to solve in terms of development, it is at least demonstrably possible.

[brooks_piggott]

Yea, we have the same scheduled opponents... it's not 5 years out, it's just set up for the next upcoming year.

[ksbass]

My issue in scheduling so far has been the lack of home and away balance for in conference scheduling. Six seasons as Penn State head coach, and all six I have played at Ohio State and at Michigan. Nary a home game against either of the big two in the east division.

[brooks_piggott]

Are you using a custom schedule? If so it won't rotate or shift... it sticks to the schedule you used.