Scheduling problem in 15 team league.

[Shaggyra]

Brief summary of my league. 15 teams. Want to play a 20 game season.
This is the result of a full season. Obviously the with a 15 team league you can't have a balanced schedule week to week but other leagues will use an odd numbeer of teams and the total games should be the same or at least close.


DivisionID TeamName Wins Losses Ties Pct Games PointsFor PointsAgainst
1 Washington Federals 13 7 0 0.650 20 333 258
1 Florida Pirates 9 5 1 0.633 15 200 208
1 New York Blazers 9 9 1 0.500 19 320 322
1 Carolina Lightning 6 11 0 0.353 17 160 278
1 Boston Breakers 7 13 0 0.35 20 116 112

2 Calgary Bandits 13 7 0 0.65 20 318 259
2 Toronto Blizzard 10 8 1 0.553 19 320 304
2 Winnepeg Wolves 9 8 2 0.526 19 331 301
2 Vancouver Force 8 9 1 0.472 18 279 321
2 Montreal Thunder 5 13 2 0.300 20 261 354

5 Arizona Wranglers 11 6 1 0.639 18 227 137
5 Portland Storm 12 7 0 0.632 19 287 236
5 Chicago Wind 9 8 0 0.529 17 242 219
5 Oklahoma Outlaws 8 11 0 0.421 19 238 253
5 So. Cal. Sun 6 13 1 0.325 20 250 320

[Magnum357]

Although the game does allow for odd number of team leagues, for scheduling purposes I would stick with Even amount of teams. Odd numbers can create problems with scheduling formats from my experience.

[Shaggyra]

Kinda tough to simulate the CFL then don't you think.

[MjH]

ORIGINAL: Magnum357

Odd numbers can create problems with scheduling formats from my experience.

Interesting, I was sure that I read somewhere that shipping the game with a 5-team indoor league was done intentionally to show that the game could handle unbalanced schedules.

[Magnum357]

Ya, the game can produce schedules with Odd number of teams, but I think David was hoping that people would edit the Schedules themselves in the Database files so that we can balance them ourselves.

Not too worry though, over the past week, the utility I have been working on is a schedule utility. Unfortunetly, it is taking me longer to create them I had expected. [8|]

[Shaggyra]

ORIGINAL: Magnum357

Ya, the game can produce schedules with Odd number of teams, but I think David was hoping that people would edit the Schedules themselves in the Database files so that we can balance them ourselves.

I sorry but some things we should not have to do ourselves. We bought this game to simulate season. We should not have to edit and manipulate basic things like schedules.

This is a problem.

[Tbird]

I think he did mention somewhere that you can have odd numbered teams but it would be better to use even teams but dunno if it was here or the old forums.

[lain]

I made a 9 team league with a 16 game schedule. So I figure my team would play each team 1 time at home and 1 time on the road, but that's not how the schedule turned out, it schedules 2 games vs the team at either both home or both on the road. Is there a way to edit schedules?

When I wrote this I didn't yet assign all the teams to a division yet, maybe that will work.

[Magnum357]

Ya, I think I remember David talking about odd number leagues being possible, but gives the game some slight problems making good schedules.

I can understand that Shaggy is a bit upset about this, but I don't see a problem here. At least the game allows the user to edit the schedule yourself. Thats a lot more option then Madden gives in there game.

[Tbird]

I was gonna start a 7 team league but noticed there wasn't any bye weeks in my other league's so I thought it would create problems with it leaving one team out and with no bye weeks.

Lain you can edit the schedule if you use Checkers DBviewer from www.fbmax.com

[Shaggyra]

I'm sorry but I resent the answer "Do it yourself".

If you are happy with that, great. I am not.

Scheduling games is a fundemental part of any sports simulation. We can't even see a team's schedule because that wasn't included. So, even to see if there was a problem, we wouldn't know and wouldn't have any way to fix it. (A scheduling utility also wasn't included.)

Please don't tell me that this was a designed this way so that we can "fix it ourselves". That is very insulting.

[Tbird]

Just add another team it's less of a hassle and it's less of a headache trying to figure out how to edit the schedule.

I can understand rebuilding the schedule
I remember EA Gelat's schedulemaker was cool but a nightmare trying to figure out which teams I haven't added to the schedule.

[Magnum357]

I'm hoping that my Schedule Utility I'm working on will be a little easier too use then Football Pro's EA Gelat's schedulemaker, that is part of the reason why its taking me a while.

Shaggy, I can understand your point here, but why do you consider it insulting? At least this way it creates flexibility for the user the way the Schedule is designed now.

[Tbird]

It'd be cool if it was able to let you pick interconference matchups with the Division of your choice and just build the schedule based on that [8D] unless you wanted to do the whole schedule yourself... have both options available. I'm not sure if Maximum Football can do that yet.

I remember Fbpro would skip one division from the other conference and you could never play against that Division and that's the reason I got his schedule maker.

I'm not sure if that's possible with yours Magnum I was just amking a suggestion [:)]

[Erik Rutins]

I'll discuss this with David.

Regards,

- Erik

[Magnum357]

TBird, as it is right now, the my Schedule maker utility will be somewhat basic. Basically, you upload your League Database file then edit each game one at a time to get it the way you want. Ya, this makes it kinda tedious and time consuming, but it allows the user to customize the schedule they way you want. Also, with such variety of different League structures and unlimited amount of teams allowed in the game, I found it almost impossible to create a "Set" schedule structure that you could just "click a button and BOOM, you got your new schedule". Ya, this could be done in Football Pro, but that game only had 5 set League structures too choose from, that is a lot easier to handle things then how MaxFB has its league structure is setup. My utiltiy is more like that utiltiy called "ScheduleMaker" then the other one mentioned above. ScheduleMaker was a fairly simple program, just write down your league schedule on a .txt file, let the Program upload it and it would adjust the games Databases accordingly. That is how I hope my utilty will work with MaxFB.

One of the main problems I'm running into recently is that the US League Database Files seem to have some different settings compared to Custom leagues the user creates. This has slowed down my development of my utility until I can figure out what is going on and get some more time too work on the utility. [8|]

[Tbird]

That's cool

as long as you can see the teams

With Gelats if I remember correctly you had enter the team matchups blindly for each week thru DOS

[Magnum357]

Ya, I remember that too. The way I'm setting up my utilty will be fairly straight forward too the user. I sure am glad we don't mess with DOS anymore. [:D]

[Marauders]

Brief summary of my league. 15 teams. Want to play a 20 game season.
This is the result of a full season. Obviously the with a 15 team league you can't have a balanced schedule week to week but other leagues will use an odd numbeer of teams and the total games should be the same or at least close.

The computer can only make schedules from the data that is given it. A 20 week season with an odd amount of teams must have a minimum of 20 bye games. In order for that to work with a 15 team league, there must be five other games with byes that are not played in addition to the odd man out each week for a total of 30 byes.

I suspect that the schedule maker does not allow an unplayed game with the left over even number of teams once the bye team is selected. It knows there are 15 teams and schedules a bye for one team and plays 7 games with the other teams; it will not schedule a bye for the other five games during the season to compensate for the number of byes needed to create a balanced schedule.

It is easy to have a schedule for a small odd number league as long as the league size and the number of weeks are equal. A 5 team league with a 5 week season would have one bye each week and every team playing each other once. A 15 team league with a 15 week season would work for a 14 game season.

A small round robin league should have schedules with x-1 weeks where x=number of teams. With an odd number of teams, each team must play the bye, so a 15 team league is the same as a 16 team league with a bye being scheduled to play someone each week in place of a real team.

When divisions are taken into account, it becomes much more complex if home and home games are figured in.

Many football games like Madden don't even allow differing seasons because they just plug in the teams to the NFL model. They don't really figure anything out; they just use a template.

[Magnum357]

Very good annaylisis Marauders. As I have stated above, the game can create Odd number leagues, but its best too simply stick with Even Number league structures. Odd number leagues HAVE TO have byes each week or it won't work. Even Number leagues can have byes too, but its much more flexible where you want to have those bye weeks occur and from my experience, Even Number league structures are easier to schedule then Odd Number Leagues.