TCMD SIM Discussion

[ny92mike]

6 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

16-20-24 teams to start. Doesn't really matter.

 

INITIAL STARTUP: You can call your teams whatever you want. I think it's fun if you make it your own, something silly or stupid, but it's your team (Like Nacho Sim or BDL for those who know). You want to be the Arizona Cardinals while I'm the Little Rock Lot Lizards? Cool. Doesn't matter. 

I personally think the best idea is to "fantasy draft" from the rosters of the entire NFL, start to finish. We're planning on doing this league for years to come, what's a solid 10-14 days of drafting to get your roster built? A lot of fun IMO. But I'd be fine too with, for example, we each pick 1-2 offensive and 1-2 defensive players from our favorite real life team, then fantasy draft the rest. Not sure what secondary fans get to do, if say we end up with two guys participating who are both fans of let's say Pittsburgh. Then what? That's part of what's keeping me from signing on for this startup method whole heartedly. We can debate later.

I'm good with the team name changes, once a year got no problem with that at all.  

I'm good with doing a fantasy draft, but I would like to take some time before we decide on this to see if we can't work something else out to start this.  Just not sold on doing a draft for 90 players.

I think we can all come to a solution if given enough time.

6 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

FORMATIONS/STRATEGY/SLIDERS: As Mike previously mentioned, this part would be built a bit like the Nacho sim league. For those new to the idea, the built in Sim would have rankings for every player based on a combination of potential, recent production, the system they are inserted into, and possibly a large portion from how they play that week. You can set your defense to play more aggressive each work, or more conservative. Set them to play a 3-4 base, or a 4-3 base. The Sim will combine all that info and "Simulate" a victor in that week's game. Once it's all automated, it's always fair, because we're all playing within the same structure. It could be mostly based on the players real life recent performance, so the idea is simply to sign/draft the best Real life players to construct your roster.

Yeah I'm thinking what determines the season outcomes is basically 75% irl stats and 25% based on the game plan adjustments.  If you think your opponent is going to be running the ball more you might set up your defensive position's focus to stop the run.  Which would increase your def. tackles, etc. things related to rush defense and alter the pass defensive stats by x percentage.  All numbers that we can decide on. 

6 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

SALARY CAP: Here is where I want to get creative. I kind of like what BDL has set up for this. The cap is based loosely on the real life salary cap. But in BDL they take 3 digits off the end, to keep things simpler?? At the least it's always slightly quicker to type. So instead of a guy being $3,250,000, he's only $3,250.

So you're just wanting to reduce having to type a few extra zeros.  Or are you referring to how they have the same cap hit (average) for each year of the players contract?  Dropping the zero isn't a big deal, we can do that.  

I'd prefer to use irl numbers for the first year of the mock to set the base.  But after that I want it to be all tcmd after that.  Chasing irl cap numbers is a nightmare IMO.  If I don't have to upload contract data each year it would be a huge time saver.

6 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

I start with that premise and then borrow from an old version of Madden for the fantasy draft. So as a hypothetical, the salary cap is $200,000 and here's my roster after a fantasy draft:

Josh Allen (my first round pick) $15,000 APY on 5 year deal

Joey Bosa (2nd round pick) $12,000 APY on 4 year deal

Tee Higgins (3rd) $10,000 APY on 4 year deal

Next 11 guys drafted are between $4,000-$10,000 APY (whatever # we decide works), each on 3 year deals

Next 11 guys are all 2 year deals (something less than $4,000 APY

Last 4-10 guys, whatever roster size we decide works are all in last year of their  deal for $1,000 APY

Nothing in here is exactly what it HAS TO BE. But just to give you an idea what I'm aiming for. We could have more guys on 5 year deals, or more on 4, we'll argue that out later. 

We set the roster size we agree on, then work the draft figures out so we all have $5,000 in remaining cap space after the startup fantasy draft.

Not opposed to this idea.  I'd rather stick with irl numbers this first year, but we can definitely discuss this in more detail.  If we opt to do a 100% fantasy draft this might be our best option.  Still not sold on a full fantasy draft yet though.  I need to visually look at our options because I like the idea of a free agency being involved the first year to fill our rosters.

6 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

OFFSEASON (ERFA/RFA): We can do EXACTLY like real life, and adjust with the NFL salary cap using their figures. Year 2 before our first draft we have to tag our players that are eligible for these tags in real life, or let them become free agents. Leave time just like real life for teams to 

OFFSEASON (Free Agency): This part is all TCMD. I love the blind bidding. I personally think with a built in team salary cap and a dynasty style format like real life where our actions have consequences and guaranteed money hurts us down the road it's up to us to manage our salary cap and we can do away completely with "Players APY demands". The price becomes simply what the market will bare, or the highest a team is willing to go. I think we should build in a formula where the most money is LIKELY to win the bid, or a combination of the most money and the most guaranteed money/longest contract, etc. We can make it 1000% transparent what is helping the players choose one deal over another, or we can leave a little mystery. We can debate that more later. 

I really don't think I'd do away with the APY demands, unfortunately you caught this mock in a year that it just got totally jacked up.  I think it is currently set up to where the highest amount wins the bid, well the highest NPV formula determines the highest bid.  I'm really not looking to change much with the current tcmd free agency, if I'm being honest.  Not saying it couldn't use some attention but the system has worked well for several years now.  This year got jacked up for sure but it's fixable.

6 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

OFFSEASON (Draft): Again, call it TCMD. The structure is simple enough. Like real life draft the worst team from the year before picks 1st, previous year's winner picks last, etc., no snaking. In inaugural season we all start with 7 draft picks, just like real life. 

OFFSEASON (Very Interesting Curveball): Ala BDL rules, we can have our draft before the real life NFL draft. It means our other fantasy football leagues don't get in our way time wise. It means your player projections become all the more important. I'm a big draft nut, so I love this feature. Not sure how everyone else would feel about it.

Yeah I agree with not having a snake draft, I wanna keep this as close to how the nfl does things as possible.  There are obviously times where we just can't do it that way.  

Not sure I follow the curveball, we already do our draft before the NFL does, unless you meant to say free agency.  I think bdl does their draft before the FA.  Not sure why but they do I think.

 

6 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

Did I completely miss any important dates or issues Mike? Should we include coaches? 

No coaches we've tried that before years ago and it just wasn't popular.  Teams would be signing college coaches that would never leave.  It just got to be a headache to deal with.

I like some of you thoughts but some I'm not sure about just yet.  Need to get more of this initial stuff figured out.  I'm torn really on how we should start this out.  Just not 100% sold on a fantasy draft at least not the entire thing.  The free agency would be the fastest way to build a roster.  Just in this mock alone we've signed nearly 500 players in 7 rounds.  We could structure it a bit differently to sign even more.  

 

[ny92mike]

18 minutes ago, Trojan said:

I heavily dislike the removing last three digits. There's little time saved and it looks less realistic imo. Ideal is 32 teams and they are the 32 teams. Using IRL cap limits is a huge strategy boon. If it's 16 teams your drafts are going to be silly. It's not hard to get a QB if it's a 16 team league. It'll be fun, but TCMD has always felt realistic in a way. I would want realism preserved personally. Replacing GMs for real teams wouldnt be that that hard, and worse case scenario the "league" could own GM-less teams where we vote on FA/Draft selections until an active GM can take it over. The biggest pain is going to be contracts for future years, void year things, restructures, below market extensions, and all of the tricks. A lot of people may dig some crazy holes three years down the line.

I agree, I prefer realism where I can fit it in.  Not a fan of the fantasy teams and doing things different just to be different.  

The sim is currently set up to be 32 teams and if we had a decent grading system it would project what the team needed based on that.  It wouldn't be hard to make it work what your suggesting.

Right now I feel like everyone here has their own idea of what they want it to look like, I feel like we need to have a general idea of what we want and then fit our suggestions and ideas into that structure.

Right now we can't figure out if we want a fantasy draft.  I'm leaning on how @LuckyNumber11 is thinking with just taking our team as is to start it out, but I also get where @RTTRUTH is going with a fantasy draft because our teams won't be recognizable in a year anyway.

[squire12]

7 hours ago, RTTRUTH said:

personally think the best idea is to "fantasy draft" from the rosters of the entire NFL, start to finish. We're planning on doing this league for years to come, what's a solid 10-14 days of drafting to get your roster built

TCMD is 7 rounds for 250ish players scheduled for 2 weeks.  Multiple that by a full 60+ roster and you are pushing 6-8 weeks easily 

[MikeT14]

I don't think we can roll TCMD into this. I don't think we have the same interest. My guess is everyone is running 2 teams. 16 people participating would be good though. 

[RTTRUTH]

32 minutes ago, MikeT14 said:

I don't think we can roll TCMD into this. I don't think we have the same interest. My guess is everyone is running 2 teams. 16 people participating would be good though. 

There’s no need for anyone to run two teams.

[MikeT14]

8 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

There’s no need for anyone to run two teams.

You think we'll get 32? 

[downundermike]

31 minutes ago, MikeT14 said:

You think we'll get 32? 

I think so.  Just reading the chatter in this thread, there is plenty of interest, before we start inviting folks.

[RTTRUTH]

42 minutes ago, MikeT14 said:

You think we'll get 32? 

Honestly no. Certainly not 32 who will stay. But I think the advantage of this is, we are just doing it for fun, so we are competing against each other. We don’t need all 32 teams to exist to bid on whatever players are available.

 

In a lot of ways, I am picturing something similar to the BDL, or nacho, neither of which have 32. And it’s not hurting the entertainment value of those leagues 

[MikeT14]

5 minutes ago, RTTRUTH said:

Honestly no. Certainly not 32 who will stay. But I think the advantage of this is, we are just doing it for fun, so we are competing against each other. We don’t need all 32 teams to exist to bid on whatever players are available.

 

In a lot of ways, I am picturing something similar to the BDL, or nacho, neither of which have 32. And it’s not hurting the entertainment value of those leagues 

So if we have like 24, how do the other 8 operate? Or do you play with 24?

[RTTRUTH]

We play with 24.

If interest grows, we could have a discussion even about how we expand in the future.

 

I already have an idea in my head that looks a little bit like the NHL expansions.

[ny92mike]

I should have some time tonight and tomorrow to post more details on this.  I'll attempt to explain my vision of this and see if we can't start getting some structure to this discussion, we seem to be all over the place with this atm.

I picture this like tcmd when we first started doing that in this forum.  We created a pretty solid concept and each year we seem to add or structure things to make improvements.

 

[LuckyNumber11]

It is funny, I remember being a little upset when TCMD first being upset cause it took over w87r’s mock that I liked a lot and always did after FFMD. But it has always beaten my expectations every year. So I feel confident that once we get this off the ground it will be extremely fun 

[ny92mike]

27 minutes ago, LuckyNumber11 said:

It is funny, I remember being a little upset when TCMD first being upset cause it took over w87r’s mock that I liked a lot and always did after FFMD. But it has always beaten my expectations every year. So I feel confident that once we get this off the ground it will be extremely fun 

Yeah we lost so many mockers over the years.  We need more guys willing to run these mocks.

Thanks man.

[ny92mike]

Initial start up for this mock is something I'm still trying to figure out.  

Personally, my favorite option is picking at team, you're allowed to cut as many of the players as you wish without any cap penalties.  Basically, keep the ones you want and cut the rest.  Once we have everyone signed up and teams picked and players cut.  We then use an expanded version of the tcmd free agency to fill our rosters.  I think this is the fastest way to do the initial start up for this.  Not completely shut off from the fantasy draft but I just think it would take weeks to do it this way.  Now this idea has it's own issues too, the biggest being who picks the first team.  I'd say restrict it to who they are a fan of but we've seen it each year with teams like the Jets (why I'll never know...ha) where we have several fans of that team.  Any solutions to this I'd love to hear it.

We could expand the free agency bids to more than 4 somewhere upwards of 8.  Could even apply bidding amount restrictions on each bid.  For example the first 4 could be limitless on the amount you offer, and the other four could be restricted to 10 million or less.  Could expand on this to break it down more open to that.  After this initial start we could revert back.

Managing the salary cap for each team

I'd like to do something like what bdl is doing with their contract structures just not 100% I want to do this just yet.  I still want to have a base salary, base Gtd., Signing bonus and perhaps even Non prorated bonuses but odds are we'll need to reduce that just to make it more manageable for the ones updating this info.

The way BDL does the contracts is each year of the contract is the same amount as the first year.  So they only need to worry about updating the current contract year vs multiple years.  They also don't include signing bonuses.

It would make it easier for sure but I like the complexity of building the contracts for more than just one year.  So I'll look to see if I can't work on a easier system to manage multiyear contracts that vary in dollar amounts. 

I think the best solution for this is just to have a base salary and a signing bonus.  Drop everything else.  To make this easier to manage we limit the amount of transactions during the season, or have quarterly updates for transactions during the season and unlimited during the off season.

Restructures and Extensions

Most of these can get done during the off season, but could allow for extensions to take place in the last quarter of the season.  This would allow us to keep players from hitting the open market, but we would need to set some rules for this so that we still have a quality free agency each year.  Now if that's just a set number but we need to get the details of this worked out.  See this as a great topic for discussion.

Releasing and trading players

This would open the door for pre and post June releases and trades.

Cap Management

We most likely need to set some flags whether restricted or just warnings to prevent future team destruction.  I'm concerned about this because it could create issues should we have a GM decide to go Rambo with the current year and completely destroy the future cap for him or anyone taking his place.

Perhaps set some limits for future cap so that we can't push current contracts beyond a certain amount.  Open to suggestions on this.

Sim Structure

What I've already built is a beast but I could use some serious feedback on this.

I said before that I want this part to be set up so that each member can put what they want to in it, setting up our game plan and roster each week can quickly become a choir rather than enjoyment.  I don't want to have to chase down each week the injury report for my team and other teams.  I want this part of the sim to be easy to manage.  So I have some thoughts on this.  I'm thinking I can set it up so that each week after the stats are uploaded, it selects the top producers for that week and makes them the starters.  This way we aren't having to set our depth chart each week, it would essentially be doing it for us.  Other option would be to take the averages for each position group.  Definitely something we need to discuss to work out the details.

Game Planning and Slider data

Going to need help with getting this right.  How this system is currently set up is each team has some game planning options.  Those are currently as follows:

• Offense
  • Scheme
    • This determines the number of players you'll have on the field.
  • Position Focus
    • Each position you can choose either, Pass, Rush, Balanced.
      • Depending on your option it will increase or decrease irl stats by a small percentage.  For example, if you select Passing for receivers, it will increase the irl stat lines for the number of targets, receptions, etc.  While decreasing the number of rushing stat lines by the RB position.

  Defense is set up the same way, but for defensive stat lines.

 

These adjustments to the stats will not make extreme adjustments to the irl stats.  Without doing the math, I'm guessing it might alter the irl stats by no more than 20%.  For example, if you set everything to help your rushing game, if you irl stats for your run game was 100 yards and two TDs it might increase that to 140 yards and 3 TD's.  Opposite of that it might decrease it to 80 yards and 2 td's.  

Once I get the current workbook dressed up so that you can understand what I'm showing, you'll be able to help me out with the percentages.

I'm thinking we can pull the stat data each week.  I'm paying for the pro football reference site which allows me to pull each weeks stats individually.

 

[DTMW78]

Whatever you do with this Mike is gonna have some teething problems.

I'm no expert on these work books but for the most part they run very well.

I guess what I'm saying is once it's up and running you or we should be able to work out the kinks of it all.