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Had a weird bug today, a scrub I had set as my starting center got 0 minutes with his backup receiving 48. Also my trainee set as the SF starter did not start and his backup did. I set the lineup with plenty of time and verified after the game that it was in fact my lineup (via previous lineups).

I checked the replay and there were no injuries and the two players who weren't supposed to start were marked as starters. I had coach picks from depth chart which might explain modified minutes but not nearly to this extent.

The downside was that two important players got 87 and 81 minutes on the week. Any hope in getting these reduced somehow?

Sorry to hear about your minutes, but the "coach picks from the depth chart" means exactly that, he can completely disregard your settings and start the players he thinks will win the game. To avoid this and have better control over your minutes, you really should use "strictly follow depth chart".

I think this could be the case for my SF situation but it doesn't make sense for the player who got no time. I had a huge lead in the fourth quarter and a 2k scrub with no slot on the depth chart was subbed in for the whole thing along with all other non-starters. In my experience the AI will use any available non-starters in this situation which indicates the player was not registering properly.

I understand that "coach picks from the depth chart" wasn't the setting I wanted here; it was an accident. However I have used this setting many other times and have never seen anything like this.

The starting center was a very low salary SG, while his backup was a pretty good PF-C, so the coach never even considered using the SG there. Since he had total control over the substitutions, he had every right to do so, even if the game entered garbage time.

I appreciate your work here and I am sorry to make you spend your valuable time on such an inconsequential issue. If I had to bet I would say you are probably right.

Still, I am not totally convinced. I find it odd that:

1) Another player with 2k salary (500 more) and the same game shape who wasn't on the DC at all played 12 minutes.
2) I used to use multiple sub 1k salary players and they were always put in the game with a large 4th quarter lead (even using "coach picks").

It would ease my insatiably curious mind if you could put these points in context. Again sorry for wasting your time and this will be my last post on the subject.

Last edited by w_alloy at 1/2/2013 5:24:38 PM

I appreciate your work here and I am sorry to make you spend your valuable time on such an inconsequential issue. If I had to bet I would say you are probably right.

Still, I am not totally convinced. I find it odd that:

1) Another player with 2k salary (500 more) and the same game shape who wasn't on the DC at all played 12 minutes.
2) I used to use multiple sub 1k salary players and they were always put in the game with a large 4th quarter lead (even using "coach picks").

It would ease my insatiably curious mind if you could put these points in context. Again sorry for wasting your time and this will be my last post on the subject.

Although I'll of course defer to Marin's analysis if he should say otherwise, I think the clear result here is:

While the game was not in garbage time, the coach picked the best player on the depth chart at the position, so the scrub player listed as the "starter" was never selected.

When the game reached garbage time, that overrode it so that the coach would try to ensure that no starters played. Because the player was listed on the DC as a starter, even though he never played, he was considered a priority to replace and since you had a player listed as a backup to that position, he was therefore confined to the bench.

The thing to keep in mind here is that garbage time is not a call for coaches to choose their least-effective lineups; the goal is to relocate the starters to the bench. I personally don't know if there's a preference to backups or reserves, just that whenever possible a starter is nailed to the bench. The scenario that occurred here is unfortunate, and does demonstrate that substitution options could definitely be improved, but given the way LCD and garbage time works, this is exactly how this scenario should be expected to work.

I appreciate the input hrudey but how do you explain the 4k SF I had set as the starter (but who didn't start) playing the whole fourth? Also this wasn't LCD, although much of what your wrote would also apply to CPFDC.

I don't know how you set your lineup. I do see that the player your coach selected to play at SF over (presumably) Jong pil was Radford, and that he appeared at PF at times during the game including a lot (or all, I haven't checked) of the fourth. Would it be accurate to say that you had Jong pil listed at starter at SF, Nart at PF, and then Radford backing up both positions? So when garbage time comes, Radford is locked in but he can't play both positions at once - and then for whatever reason, he plays at PF the whole time rather than SF.

I'd say you have a very good understanding of the substitution logic and I agree with the assessment (even with the part that says that the logic could be improved).

@hrudey: Thanks, this is certainly plausible. Although it would be difficult to confirm that this is in fact what is going on, it is good enough for me... +1

@Marin: I find it kinda funny you are endorsing an explanation that contradicts your own (and I don't think you realize this).

Maybe it's not a contradiction, maybe both explanations factor in. Actually, now that I think about it, hrudey's explanation does make more sense, so you can disregard mine. The game engine code is immensely complicated. I try to study it whenever I can but to say I know every bit of it's inner workings would be a big fallacy. In cases like this I can only make educated guesses, but I'm not afraid to admit that I may be wrong.