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so a little late, but the post all star version of the GE is released, with its promised features.

TIE/CT is reduced in importance, and the dynamics of how it rises and falls altered slightly.

the endgame logic is more sophisticated... hopefully time management is better. please give me feedback on this aspect, as there are probably cases i have overlooked.

i've implemented some backend things that should make boxscores with quarterly totals possible in the near future.

offensive flow is now more important as your team can better move the ball around more/less depending upon your ratings relative to your opponents exterior defense.

hail mary half court shots are now attempted at the appropriate times.

seems in some cases both teams were getting into a fouling war at the end.. i found the bug that was causing this.. should work right for games run from this point on.

Will the change regarding offensive flow + exterior defense result in a huge drop in effectiveness of a 2-3 zone?

Not sure if this is new to the tweaked game engine or not. Here's the scenario... I'm trying to train my three strongest backcourt players in Pressure (PG), so I want my PGs in a given game to be those three only. But these are my best players, so I want them in the game, period.

Here's how I set my orders, using "Strictly follow depth chart". Let's call the players A, B, and C, and everyone else gets lower-case. Depth chart, starters in bold:

PG: A, B, C
SG: B, w, x
SF: C, y, z

Now imagine that A gets two quick fouls while starters B and C are still in the game in their starting positions. (This isn't the only case where the problem occurs, but is probably the clearest illustration.) What should happen?

What should happen, IMO, is that the GE figures out that B or C should shift over to play the point and that w or y should come in to the game. What does happen (see (1021111)) is that the GE chooses someone not in PG depth chart at all. When this happened to me, it was y (not ideal) at one point, and a center backup (ack!) at another. This is good neither for training nor for trying to win the game.

Here's my guess on what happens. The GE simply looks at the necessary substitution in isolation. It should try to roughly maximize the best lineup across all positions with the constraints it has (foul trouble, depth chart, chosen sub algorithm), then proceed with the substitutions necessary to make that lineup. (Possibly that would be a bit taxing to apply at every stoppage. Maybe have a generic simple substitution algorithm followed by a check to see if a major constraint is being violated, at which point the more advanced algorithm would apply.)

Right now, I don't think I've ever seen a player shift positions in game (I think once I saw a player sub off on one line in the match viewer, then sub on at a new position during the same stoppage), which really should not just be possible, but routine.

Edited by oeuftete (1/1/2008 6:03:53 PM CET)

Last edited by Mod-oeuftete at 1/1/2008 6:03:53 PM

so you have got it right... right now the GE considers substitutions in isolation. The problem is how to design an algorithm that does what you want it to do .. ie maximize the total lineup without considering all possible lineups, because that is computationally impossible given the time constraints (we have to be able to run a lot of games relatively quickly).

Now i'm open to ideas, and I will think about ways that could do a better job or approximate what you are saying. LIke for instance, i could simply run the isolated substitution algorithm twice, which would sometimes result in someone coming out at one position and being put in another.

I could probably handle consider all permutations of switching the positions of the players who are on the court... ie see if it would be better if the PG played SG and vice versa.

I'm less certain, but perhaps we could consider maximizing substitutions in pairs, like I could consider maximizing the PG/SG, then independently maximize the SF/PF, then the C. That would just be ~ 2*12^2 + 12 combinations as opposed to 12^5 combinations.

or actually here's a better idea. What i currently do is take a look at each of the 5 positions and have the coach look down the bench and consider how much better it would be to put in each of the bench players. I does this for each position and picks out the position that is in the most need of substitution. what i could do is also let it look at the players on the court and evaluate how much better it would be to swap them in.. of course minus the loss of having to replace that player at his current position with players only from the bench.. so sort of stop the logic 1 level deep so it doesn't run away.

Thanks for the detailed answer.

The isolated substitution done twice wouldn't do anything about the particular problem I gave, so I don't like that one.

I like the sound of the last option you gave.

I've also been experiencing the same problem, and I think this is (hypothetically) a great solution.

Here's how I set my orders, using "Strictly follow depth chart". Let's call the players A, B, and C, and everyone else gets lower-case. Depth chart, starters in bold:

PG: A, B, C
SG: B, w, x
SF: C, y, z

Now imagine that A gets two quick fouls while starters B and C are still in the game in their starting positions. (This isn't the only case where the problem occurs, but is probably the clearest illustration.) What should happen?

What should happen, IMO, is that the GE figures out that B or C should shift over to play the point and that w or y should come in to the game.

Yay! Sounds like this is going to be addressed with the new changes. /crosses fingers

I figure this can be a great improvement, logically speaking. However...

Imagine I train Cs, one position. My PF gets in foul trouble, so the coach decides it's a great idea to shift over my C to the PF position. The result? My C gets 20 minutes as a PF and 10 as C (roughly speaking, the numbers are the first that came to mind).

Sounds like an amazing way to make an already volatile system even more unpredictable...

I figure this can be a great improvement, logically speaking. However...

Imagine I train Cs, one position. My PF gets in foul trouble, so the coach decides it's a great idea to shift over my C to the PF position. The result? My C gets 20 minutes as a PF and 10 as C (roughly speaking, the numbers are the first that came to mind).

Sounds like an amazing way to make an already volatile system even more unpredictable...

so why did you put your C as PF rotation if you didn't want him to play there?

so why did you put your C as PF rotation if you didn't want him to play there?

As long as the new GE does this only when I have listed a player at both positions in the depth chart, that's fine.