Teams not using their best players in created competition...

SOLVED... Entirely...

(Well... for leagues, anyway - now the Cups don't work properly)

Stay tuned for further development...

Just realized something while testing my Trinidad & Tobago league, which is coming along fine after some troubles with the Advanced Editor.

However - I've just noticed that the teams do no play their best players in the league. In fact - they opt to use a whole host of gray players, despite having an unlimited squad to choose from. I tried forcing a squad limit and registration to see what happens, but they still use gray's, reserves and u18 players instead.

Players that are "indispensable to the club" don't even get a spot on the bench... ever. 1-2 league games per season if they're lucky (and it's not that they don't get registered for the competition or anything - they are definitely available for selection).

As soon as it's time to play in the cups - teams select their squads appropriately. It is just in the league stages. Both for the Pro League and the Super League below it.

Leagues are set as "Domestic - High" in game importance.

Anyone have any ideas what could cause this, so I can hunt down the problem and fix it?

Let me just illustrate the problem.

And, this is not just a one-off occurrence, this is what the squad selection is like for every league match during the season. Now - for the cups they use a better squad selection, and the expected players play in the cups.

Both league and cups use the same "fixture rules" settings.

EDIT:

Yup - this is a problem that is present elsewhere as well. I got curious, so I loaded up Magic's Oceania file to have a peak, and found the same thing there:

It seems this is a problem restricted to the Advanced Panels leagues, as I know this has not been the case when I've created leagues in the "normal" editor.

I found in Magic's file that this issue didn't seem quite that bad in the New Zealand league - but as you can see in the Fiji League it is the exact same problem that I have in the Trinidad League.

Now, this is something that needs fixing, and hopefully some of you guys will help out in locating this issue. Any ideas and/or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

This is a very serious issue, in my opinion.

That's something for the bugs forum. The advanced panel is not officially supported, but maybe the developers are interested to look into the issue with regard to the next version.

That's something for the bugs forum. The advanced panel is not officially supported, but maybe the developers are interested to look into the issue with regard to the next version.

Yeah, I thought so as well.

I'm going to go over there and post. Hopefully they are interested, even thought the Advanced Panels aren't supported officially.

I've done some investigating into the matter myself, but I can't really pinpoint any issue that could possibly cause this.

I thought it had to do with the Fixture Rules index. This came to me after I thought that the New Zealand league in Magic's file seemed pretty ok. That one was listed first, and would probably be using the index 0 for Fixture Rules, whereas the other leagues might re-assign the rules index.

And - with me having reserved index 0 for the CFU and using the index 1 for the leagues, I figured this could be the cause. But - that was not to be. I removed the CFU rules and set league discipline and fixture rules to 0 instead, and the same issue.

Cups are still good. But league games - no.

--------------EDIT AGAIN------------

Hmmm...

Now I'm getting more and more confused. Just decided to check another league created with the Advanced Panels, and everything seemed fine there.

Must be some odd setting? Or... just a thought. Only one competition per xml with the advanced panels? I just checked the Paraguay league I had downloaded, and everything seemed fine with the squad selection on match day there - and that file has no other competitions except the top league...

Grasping at straws here...

I solved it!!!

Never mind this issue. It's been solved.

For those of you creating leagues with the Advanced Editor though, there is some very important information that you need to know.

To prevent this from happening you HAVE to set the league rankings. Not having those set is what caused the teams to not play their players. I guess they thought of the league as something completely useless to play (even less important than friendlies), so they basically used the worst available players, because there was nothing to gain from the match... or something like that.

After looking at the Paraguay file I decided to look into what may be different from my own and Magic's Oceania file, and when I saw that the Paraguay file had rankings set for the league, I immediately thought that could be it.... Cups have them set - not leagues...

So, I opened Magic's file where New Zealand seemed to work, but not Fiji. At first I was disheartened to see he had NOT set rankings in New Zealand... nor in Fiji. But, then I noticed he had a play-off to determine the champions - and there were the rankings!

And, after adding rankings to my Trinidad leagues... proper lineups are selected for the league matches.

So - there is the key.

Add rankings to leagues created in Advanced Editor!

Great to hear that it is solved OLT!

*sigh*

Well, guess I celebrated prematurely on this one.

I did fix the leagues - but it messed up the cups instead! Now they select the poor lineups in the cups I just found as I was looking at it a bit closer.

And, it's not like they choose to play the first team reserves or anything... I mean - they're playing Gray's fercryinoutluod! Teams like Joe Public who have well over 50 players in the original database are fielding Gray's in a cup final!!!

There's got to be some way of solving this idiocy...

Did you also set the reputation for the competitions? That could also have an impact.

Yeah - reputations are set.

This goes beyond that, though. I mean - for the game to select Gray's ahead of actual squad players when they are available...

I'm just running a new test soak after I've added some Ranking "Events" to every stage of every cup. I've opted for the "Qualified for this stage" for each round... but as the game is holidaying at the moment I'm wondering if that was the right choice... The cups are in Rounds - not Stages...

If that doesn't work, I'm setting some "Was competitive in this division" or something...

I'm thinking - these things are probably more important than I'd thought. The board at the start of a season will say things like - expect you to be competitive in this and that cup... now - the teams need to know what is required to BE competitive in that cup, right?

Wish me luck

---------------

Well, I'm on to something...

Now the teams fielded a good side in the first round of the cups - but from then on it was bring on the Gray's again...

I guess now it's pretty much a matter of finding the correct settings in the ranking events. I am a bit lost here, because the options available seem so adapted for league settings (Finished in top half, Avoided Relegation...). I don't know what options to use for a cup. I'm guessing my above mentioned "Was competitive..." will have to work. Qualified for stage maybe on the first round, then a gap of No Info, and at the Quarter Final Stage, maybe a "Was Competitive". But, I'm worried, because they fielded those grays in the final, in which I had set the "Champion" event...

-------------

I'll keep on editing to inform of my progress.

First Cup played out perfectly. I have 5 Cups in the Trinidad Leagues, so I want to keep playing to see that all of them work as they should now before I announce the (hopefully) key to solving this issue...

-------------

ALRIGHTY!

Now I've cracked it for sure though. Here's the deal - I did two things in that last attempt, and I am about 100% sure that BOTH of these things are required.

First up - I added the Ranking "Events" in the COMPETITION/RANKINGS area of the cup. What I used, and what seems to be enough is to add the following:

Winner of final, or team of Rank 0 = "Champion"

Teams Ranked 1-3 (That would be down to QF teams) = "Team Was Competitive In This Competition"

In the case of the second one here, you also need to make sure you set the correct number of teams that will earn this event. In the case of Quarter Finals being your point of competitive performance that number would be 7 (8 teams in QF, 1 gets Champion status).

Nothing further here...

Then, and even more importantly as I found is this:

In the Rankings of each CUP ROUND/STAGE:

For Cup Rounds - previously I had set only the winner and loser rankings. This is a no-no! It has also been quite common that the winner has always been set to 0 for each round... this is also a no-no!

Here's how it needs to be done (in reverse order for easier understanding)

FINAL: Winner=0, Loser=1

Semi-Final: Winner=1, Loser=2, Winner Highest Rank=0

Quarter-Final: Winner=2, Loser=3, Winner Highest Rank=0

Round of 16: Winner=3, Loser=4, Winner Highest Rank=0

...and so forth

The reason for this, I've found, is that if you set the winner to 0 in say the Quarter Final. In the next match, the game believes the team has already won the competition - so they have no reason to field their players (or even go to the match at all... it's all over they think).

Same thing - if you don't set Winner Highest Rank=0, the team who's just earned a rank of (say) 3 believes that they can't get any further in the competition, so why play the following match?

But, making sure you set their CURRENT ranking for the competition level they have reached, and adding the highest level they can reach (winner=0... as long as you're in a knockout cup you can win it*) then they field a strong squad to get a higher ranking in the competition.

So, for example - if you got a 3rd place play-off, in the semi finals you would have to set the Loser to 3 and a Highest Ranking the Loser can get to a 2. Winner/Loser ranking in the actual 3rd Place Play-Off would be set to 2/3.

It all worked perfectly as I had a good hard look at every cup match during the season (didn't watch the games, just looked at the lineups and stats). Big teams against smaller teams would field a few reserves... but no friggin' grays. One or two first team regulars would still always be present - just like you'd expect.

Also kept an eye on the leagues, and they continued to play out as expected after the Cup changes.

Have you released the fix in your T&T and Jamaica file? I am starting a North America game as soon as you release the changes in your two files and as soon as I can run down the Canada 1.6 file (can't download it from the FMNorthAmerica site).

No - I'm some way off completing the T&T leagues. Still some more finetuning to do, and then add players, change team info & colors, cities, awards...

The Jamaica Leagues I (might) redo completely, as if I do them with the Advanced Panels I could get those cups and lower leagues to play out the way they should. I could also, probably, add the round finals for the Premier League there.

Doing leagues with the Advanced Panels is a lot more time consuming than the default editor, as here you need to set every little detail - whereas in the default editor most of that stuff (like the rankings that has been causing me problems above) is done automatically.

I've maybe found a way to solve your level 2 problem in Ghana too, it is possible to do it almost perfect if some of the league and group stage stuff works in the advanced panels.

I've maybe found a way to solve your level 2 problem in Ghana too, it is possible to do it almost perfect if some of the league and group stage stuff works in the advanced panels.

Yeah, I've considered re-doing the Ghana league. It should be possible to make it 100% correct using the Advanced Panels. It's just... it would be nice to get that career game started sometime But, yeah, I may redo the Ghana league just to make it perfect.

---------------

There is another twist to this story...

For some reason Domestic Main Cup and League Cup cause "Array Access Out Of Bonds" with this system. Not a fatal one, but an annoying one that popped up and you need to click "ok" on to get the game running again. I changed the FA Trophy, First Citizens Bank Cup and Toyota Classic to regular "Cup" settings, and that got rid of the Array Access... problem.

There is probably some additional setting required for Domestic Main Cup and League Cup that we need to figure out.

For my Trinidad League, I don't think I need to have them set as anything else than "Cup" though, since there is no continental qualification. And, even if it were, I believe we can set the winning team of any "Cup" to qualify anyway.

If anyone wants to look into the Domestic Main Cup and League Cup settings that would be great. The more we can learn and understand about the Advanced Panels - the better.