How to make a team very bad?

[Merla]

I have a big problem. I've made realistic player attribute changes and moves in the Swedish Allsvenska league. The newcomers are Asploven HC and basically all players have an ability between 40-55, whereas most other teams are around 60-80 and the top teams have most players around 70-95. The team Asploven have no money and a terrible reputation. I've had a look at the attributes of the players and lowered them drastically, ie their only goalkeeper has an average rating of 5.
I have simulated one season about 15-20 times now and this team, Asploven, has no finished no worse than a third place!?

I feel like I've tried everything. I've even gone through their "Staff attributes" like Professionalism, Ambition etc and lowered them to under 10.. Still they beat the top teams quite easily! The players of the team have an average rating of around 6.5-6.9 (only 2 players above 7!) while the players of f.e. Djurgarden (top team) have most their players around 6.8-8.0 (most above 7.0) and they are only a mid-table team.

I just can't understand this. There must be something to it since it's been like this all 15-20 games I've simulated. I've even made their coach really bad.. But I don't want to set everything TOO low as it would make their players unrealistically bad.

So what could cause this? Why is a bottom team, with really, really poor players, always finishing top 3?

Picture of 2nd pair defender of Asploven: http://i45.tinypic.com/kqhwg.png
Picture of 2nd pair defender of Leksand (top team): http://i47.tinypic.com/2ptpd7q.jpg

This is a player comparison which pretty much represents the differences of the team. Asploven finishes top 3, Leksand finishes between 5-10..

[archibalduk]

Have you been through the players' Defensive and Offensive Role ratings? This can have a big effect on how well players will play.

As it happens, I posted a little bit about these two attributes a couple of days ago and I've quoted it below. Note that the full 1-20 scale should be used for every player regardless of their CA. So the top offensive players in every single league (e.g. from the Mexican league, right up to the NHL) should have a rating of roughly 18. If your team is the worst in the league, you may want to look at setting their forwards' Offensive Role ratings to something like 11 - 13. Note that setting this value to less than 12 can seriously impede a player's offensive output. Normally you would only set a value lower than 12 to defencemen, but you may want to try setting it slightly lower (i.e. 11 or maybe 10) to the very weakest forwards of your team if those players are really that bad.

You might feel that some of the best forwards in the team are actually roughly average in comparison with forwards in other teams in the same league. In which case, you'd set their Offensive Role to 14.

The same principles mentioned above apply equally to the Defensive Roles.

You may also want to try setting all of the players' technical attributes to 0. EHM will then set the attributes to an appropriate level according to their CAs.

Defensive & Offensive Role
This determines how good the player is at playing as a defenceman (Defensive Role) and as a forward (Offensive Role). Use the following tables as a guide, depending on the player’s position / role within the team.

Defensive Role
18 Top defensive skills (when compared with NHL defencemen)
17
16 Good defensive skills (when compared with NHL defencemen)
15 Average defensive skills (when compared with NHL defencemen)
14 Poor defensive skills (when compared with NHL defencemen)
13
12 A poor two-way forward
11
10 The typical NHL forward
9
8
7 An NHL forward who virtually never contributes to defence - i.e. a floater (very rare)

Offensive Role
18 A top forward who is often one of the top scorers in the NHL
17
16 Good offensive skills (when compared with NHL forwards)
15
14 Average offensive skills (when compared with NHL forwards)
13
12 Poor offensive skills (when compared with NHL forwards)
11
10
9
8
7 A stay at home defenceman

NOTE:
* An offensive defenceman should have a minimum of a 12 Offensive Role. Any less than 12 and he won't be regarded as offensive.
* A two-way forward should have a minimum of a 12 Defensive Role. Any less than 12 and he won't be regarded as a defensive forward.

[Merla]

Wow, excellent help. Thanks arbichalduk. I will definitely look into this! Thanks a lot again.

By the way.. I may have missed this as well. But is there any way of setting all free agents who are 35+ years old as Retired? The Swedish Hockeyallsvenska teams sign a lot of 35-40 year old Canadiens who retired several years ago. (Using Manimal 4.2b as base). Even found some players who I assume retired in 2006 (like http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=907).

[archibalduk]

At present, there isn't an easy way of doing this (you can filter FAs using the Pre Game Editor, but there isn't an age filter).

However, being able to retire players is something that is very high on my to-do list for the EHM Updater I have been working on (take a look here for more info on the Updater). Once I have added the feature (and I don't think it will be too hard), it will be possible to retire players using the contract_update.csv file with the Updater. It is already possible to export a spreadsheet listing all players' contract details and so it would be easy to create a list of FAs who are 35+ years old - this will make retiring players a very quick and easy process.

Keep an eye on my blog using the link I mentioned because I post all news about the Updater there. Once I have added the feature, I would be happy to talk you through step-by-step how to retire the players en masse.

[Merla]

Yeah, I've been using the Pre Game Editor so far but it's been quite time demanding to say the least. But thanks for the excellent info, once again. Looking forward to using EHM Updater!

Regarding the EHM Updater.. "Staff Validation" removes retired players etc. What effects does this really have on the database though? Will it be faster? Is there any downside to having lots of "retired" players in the database?

And btw, thanks a lot for your Super Patch.

[archibalduk]

One thing it does in particular is to remove player profiles from non-players (the player attribute removal / validation function also does this). If you change a player to a non-player using the Editor, his playing profile remains (i.e. all of his playing attributes remain). If you try viewing one of these non-players in-game or in the Editor, you will see he still has a player profile. Here is an example of Kirk Malty who I turned into a non-player - you'll see he still has his playing attributes and he counts towards the team's reserve list: http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb43 ... before.png . By removing the player profile, it fixes these problems and also prevents EHM from creating "super regens".

The validation function also ensures that there is a "Player Info" tab for every player in game. The Pre Game Editor doesn't add this data when you create a new player and so the function fixes this.

Other than the above two things, the general idea is that the validation function removes data redundancy. It is good practice to remove invalid/unnecessary data from a database. I haven't done any speed tests, but if there was a very high number of retired/invalid players in the DB, I would have thought that it could improve the speed in at least starting a new game.

One final thing - it also re-orders all of the data so that it complies with SI's guidance. The Pre Game Editor (and my staff creation function) adds new players/staff at the end of the database and doesn't re-order it in alphabetical order, etc. The validation function re-orders the data correctly. Again, this might make a slight difference in terms of speed - but I don't know for sure.

Oh - and it also re-counts each name in the name sets so that they have the correct weighting for regens.