1988 Draft Discussion

[BradZ]

My guess is they were autopicks. I think I know what's happening.

The utility has settings for feeder league ages. Because we're simming as we draft the utility is including players who turn 21 (or 18 for HS) in the draft utility even though they don't appear in game. I sent a message to the utility to creator to get his thoughts. He is usually very responsive.

At this point to continue the draft we'll need to disable autopick and everyone will need to make sure they only select players who appear in game.

So, the draft is back up and running at this point (or will be shortly)?

[Lintyfresh85]

I think we have to void the Kel Brown, Lonnie Bird and Pat Robbins picks as they aren't draft eligible as of yet.

[BradZ]

The interesting thing is there are other players younger than the three guys that have been drafted that are eligible in the draft list, but aren't actually assigned to a team so they made it into the in-game draft file.

So, it's not actually their age that is the issue it's the combination of age and league.

[Clay]

Yes, age is contingent to level. 18 year olds in NCAA and 18 year olds in HS can be different.

[Lintyfresh85]

They're both legal.

Hey-Oh!

[BradZ]

The utility has settings for feeder league ages. Because we're simming as we draft the utility is including players who turn 21 (or 18 for HS) in the draft utility even though they don't appear in game. I sent a message to the utility to creator to get his thoughts. He is usually very responsive.

I'm curious, what selection criteria is the utility using? None of these kids has had a birthday yet in game, so the 17 year olds haven't turned 18 yet and the 20 year old hasn't hit 21 yet. Does the utility have a time buffer in it, like 17 year olds who will turn 18 in X days/months are being picked up?

[Clay]

I think that's what Andrew is trying to find out from the guy who wrote it.

[Andrew]

Here's his response:

The utility checks the league draft date and then checks to see which players will meet the feeder league age by that date. It then includes them in the draft pool. OOTP doesn't include them until they actually reach that date. If it's one day before the draft, they don't show up in the draft pool until one day before the draft. IMO, this is a bug in OOTP, as all of these players eventually make it into the draft pool. I actually did a fair amount of testing on this and it appeared to consistently work properly. If you don't believe it, make a copy of your league, sim to the draft date, and check to see if these players end up in the draft pool. Or you could simply look at their birthdates and verify that they'll reach the age by the time the draft takes place.

Still looking into it...

[Lintyfresh85]

So basically, next year change the potential date changers birthdays to either put them in the draft class, or make them stay an extra year at their level.

[Pat]

They're both legal.

Hey-Oh!

And you wouldn't have to worry about pulling out on these ones, Linty.

[BradZ]

Here's his response:



Still looking into it...

What is our in-game draft date set to?

[Lintyfresh85]

Sometime in June.

[BradZ]

Sometime in June.

I ask because one of the questionable picks has a DOB of 09/19/70 and another is 07/10/67. If the draft is in June, neither would hit their next milestone BDay prior to the draft.

[Andrew]

OK I figured out the issues and we should be OK.

- I had the max ages for feeder leagues in the utility set to a year younger than they should have been. This was causing a lot more players to appear as eligible than should have. We were lucky only 3 got selected.
- I had the draft date in game set to sometime in may (which is necessary to create the draft pool earlier) but never edited to June, which it should have been.

To fix this I changed the settings in the utility and changed the in game draft date to be correct. There should now be 384 players that appear in the draft pool in game and 384 that appear in the utility. A new league file that contains these players will be uploaded this afternoon when I sim.

Hopefully this doesn't unbalance the draft too much since there are 24 new players who were previously unavailable.

For the 3 guys selected who didn't appear in the utility... I cleared the Pat Robbins pick because it was the last one. The Lonnie Bird pick is OK because he is now eligible with the new in game draft date. And for Kel Brown I edited his DOB to May rather than September so he is now eligible rather than rolling that far back in the draft.

In the future I won't edit the in game draft date. Otherwise it will create more players for the draft than we need. This means the draft pool will only be available 75 in game days before the draft. In the past we wouldn't have been able to finish in this short amount of time but I think now that the utility autopick works correctly and without admin intervention we will be able to.

Sorry for the confusion. The draft has been re-enabled, Los Alamos was autopicked so California is on the clock.

[Lintyfresh85]

Who are the 24 guys that are now eligible?