Schedules with Custom Conferences

[JeffHCross]

Has anybody found "the answer" with Custom Conferences and the schedules that it spits out? In other words, has anybody figured out what dictates the schedules?

Since that question probably made no sense ... here's the situation. The Powerhouse OD has made a ton of custom conference changes, thanks to the detail-oriented Oneback. But we've noticed in Years 2 - 4 of our Online Dynasty that the conference schedules have been ... similar. In fact, for my Florida State team, the conference schedule in Year 2 was the exact same as my schedule in Year 4.

So I decided to take our customizations into Dynasty Mode ... and I'm noticing a trend. No matter when I set the "Start Conference Games", I'm getting the exact same schedule. Same games in Week 1 (which are conference games), same first four weeks or so schedule for at least two teams. I'm sure it was the same for everybody, but I just happened to focus on two teams that noticeably weren't changing at all.

Interestingly, I finally got a change when I changed every conference to Start Conference Games, Week 7. It's strange that, of all things, that's what got the schedule to change. Yet the first two weeks are still the same for the two teams I noted ... though Weeks 3, 4, etc all changed this time. It's pretty clear that the "Start Conference Games" setting isn't even having much influence, yet alone being followed. I know the game notes that scheduling conflicts may screw it up, but if I set every conference to "Week 3", I don't see any reason for conflicts to cause that to not be followed. Should be very easy for everyone to follow that.

I'm presuming at this point that "the answer" is to change our custom conferences. Maybe a more balanced number of teams will make a difference.

Anybody else's experiences would be very nice to hear.

[gschwendt]

I suggested to Oneback... I think a big part is other conferences. So if everyone else is told to start in Week 1 or Week 2, then that leaves less OOC opponents available in week 1 & week 2.

Not certain if that's the same thing at work in your scenario but it'd be something to play with.

[JeffHCross]

I've played with it. Obviously I haven't tried every combination, but ...

I've tried everybody in Week 1. Everybody in Week 3. Everybody in Week 7. I did the math for how many conference games each conference would be and gave them the Weeks that would, mathematically, end their conference seasons in Week 12 (i.e. Week 3 for 9-game conferences, Week 4 for 8-game, etc). I've messed with Protected Rivalries. Every year, Arkansas and Florida State have the exact same schedule. It only changed when I set every conference to Week 7, but the first two weeks didn't change.

I thought maybe it was the size of the conferences (since we have an 8-team conference, 16-team conference and 6-team conference), but I made all of them 10-12 and that didn't change anything either.

Only thing I'm wondering now is that it may be something to do with the fact that I'm making these changes in the offseason between Year 1 and 2. Maybe some return-game logic is screwing with it. But I wouldn't think so.

[JeffHCross]

So, I tried removing a single team from our two 10-team user conferences. That should reduce those conferences to 8-game conference schedules and, presumably, cause the schedules to reset and regenerate.

Nope. All it did was remove the team I had removed. Arkansas played them in Week 1 ... they now have an OPEN date that week. Nothing else changed. Same with FSU -- only the team that was removed got removed, everything else remained the same.

The hell.

[SmoothPancakes]

So, I tried removing a single team from our two 10-team user conferences. That should reduce those conferences to 8-game conference schedules and, presumably, cause the schedules to reset and regenerate.

Nope. All it did was remove the team I had removed. Arkansas played them in Week 1 ... they now have an OPEN date that week. Nothing else changed. FSU's schedule didn't change at all.

The hell.

That's messed up. It also explains, why no matter how many times I recreated my Tulsa dynasty while testing out different things, I kept getting the exact same conference schedule in the exact same order of play for my first season.

[JeffHCross]

That's messed up. It also explains, why no matter how many times I recreated my Tulsa dynasty while testing out different things, I kept getting the exact same conference schedule in the exact same order of play for my first season.The first season makes (made?) sense to me, actually. Because it seemed like the opening season schedules were based on the real-life 2012 schedule, as much as possible.

Not sure how to explain what's going on with Year 2.


I've now made every conference in the dynasty 11 teams, except for the two user conferences of the Big XII and SEC (10 each). That leaves 5 teams Independent. Guess what?

No change!

Sigh.

[JeffHCross]

Only thing I'm wondering now is that it may be something to do with the fact that I'm making these changes in the offseason between Year 1 and 2. Maybe some return-game logic is screwing with it. But I wouldn't think so.Well, I advanced to year 3. No change in the SEC schedule, but the Big XII obviously changed. Still have Week 1 conference games even though I have it set to begin in Week 3, but at least the games changed. MAC and C-USA suddenly have Week 1 games too in Year 3, whereas they didn't in Year 2. Interesting.

[JeffHCross]

Final result is that I took all the teams in the SEC and threw them into the Big East, thinking maybe it was something about the SEC. No dice. The only change in three seasons (Year 2, Year 3, and now Year 4) is that the conference schedule moved up a week (i.e. Week 3 games are now Week 2).

Interestingly enough, the Big XII schedule has now been different in Year 2, Year 3, and Year 4. Different conference opponents every year, though the weeks that are conference games remain largely unchanged (and the conference games continue to start in Week 1). The Big XII is particularly interesting because both gschwendt and Oneback believe their Big XII schedule in our OD has not changed at all, from Year 2 to Year 4.

This experiment has suggested a few possible conclusions:
1) Custom Conferences completely break the schedules. I don't think this is 100% true. It may not even be 50% true. If it was true across the board, we'd be seeing a lot of complaints about it, particularly with so many people interested in replicating the real-life conference changes.
2) There are pre-built schedules in Custom Conferences that years follow, and they're not randomly generated every year.

My first reason behind this is that is the only good explanation for the fact that I could change a lot of things external to the SEC (like changing every conference to 11 teams, start dates to Week 7, etc), and if I didn't change the # of members in the SEC, the Year 2 schedule would be the same every year. That suggests a consistent baseline.

My second reason is if you watch the information when advancing to the Pre-Season, the game tells you that it is generating the Conference schedule, then Annual games, then OOC schedule. The Conferenc and Annual games take a fraction of the time that the OOC schedule takes. With more games to schedule, one would think the Conference schedule would be quickest (though starting from a blank slate may help). The fact that it takes practically no time at all suggests pre-built, to me at least.

3) There are circumstances that are possible in Custom Conferences that can cause the schedule generator to be unable to handle the custom conferences. I would venture to guess that the Powerhouse OD's conference setup (MAC is 16 teams, MWC is 8, WAC is 6) is not the likeliest of combinations for custom conferences. Maybe the imbalance causes a problem for the scheduling system, and then the pre-built nature I mentioned can't recover. Just a guess.

Also, someone on Operation Sports suggested that modifying an existing conference with a title game had some negative ramifications for his dynasty's schedule. Perhaps how and who we chose to edit the conferences for Powerhouse contributed to the SEC getting the same schedule every year.

[JeffHCross]

:bang:

So the short, quick, "final" answer: alphabetical order matters.

It does appear to me, based at least on whatever screwed up situation the Powerhouse OD finds itself in, that the schedules are, to an extent, set in stone and do not change. Certain teams will have certain weeks of conference games, no matter what day of the week you allow them to play conference games, what week the conference schedule starts, etc.

And the only way to get those schedules to change, at least in the case of Powerhouse, is to change the alphabetical order of the teams in the conferences. Like swapping Texas Tech for Oklahoma State.

I did also discover that the schedule for 6/7/8-team conferences is drastically different from the schedule for 9/10-team conferences, but within those two sets you won't get much change.

I simulated three seasons of Powerhouse OD schedules, with 8-team conferences. The SEC schedules never changed. The Big XII schedules, at least for Notre Dame, only changed in where the Michigan game was located on the schedule. It went from Week 3 to Week 4 to Week 7. But everything else remained the same, conference wise.

I do note that others (such as Smooth Pancakes) do not seem to be running into this problem. I believe it is an issue of the combination of other teams in other conferences, annual set-piece games, etc. But at the end of the day, I've had to do one of two things to get the schedules to change ... reduce the conferences from 10 to 6 teams ... or change the alphabetical order.

:bang:

[acropora52]

Ugh, that's pretty much what we've experienced as well. So strange that something that simple wouldn't be easily fixable.

[JeffHCross]

Ugh, that's pretty much what we've experienced as well. So strange that something that simple wouldn't be easily fixable.Well, it's not necessarily simple. Just because the end result seems simple doesn't mean the cause is. It could be that you and I have both found some strange combination of custom conferences that just screws things up royally. As I've mentioned before, the CPU conferences in my test dynasty seem to be okay. They seem to rotate, seem to change their schedules, and seem to listen (roughly) to which week to start their conference play. It's only the two user conferences that are screwed up. That could be for a reason, it could be coincidence. Impossible to tell from here.