Adding a cup competition without reverting to basic rules.

[EnigMattic1]

I have created a cup competition that consists of 8 teams. It shows under 'competitions' in the nation rules with every other active competition, but when I start a new game, it doesn't show. 

If I go to 'Test Competition', under the 'Year' tab, all is has is '0' and not an actual year which, I'm assuming, is why the competition isn't showing. 

Can anyone help me work out what I've done wrong? 

[alian62]

Upload your file.  Hard to resolve otherwise

[EnigMattic1]

7 hours ago, prot651 said:

Upload your file.  Hard to resolve otherwise

The competition in question is the U Sports Championship.

Canadian MegaPatch - Full Expansion 4.0.fmf

[Dave Fairbairn]

I can't load the file in my game(don't have 22 yet), but I've added plenty of new competitions to files straight from the advanced editor literally over 100 times, and this error must be in the competition itself.

A good thing to do when making competitions is to regularly use the test function to see how the competition is working. A good thing to do when a competition stops working for some reason, is to make a backup save, delete all but the first stage of the broken competition and see if it generates, if it does, reload your data, do the same again, but leave stage 1 in etc. until you find the culprit stage.

[EnigMattic1]

18 minutes ago, Dave Fairbairn said:

I can't load the file in my game(don't have 22 yet), but I've added plenty of new competitions to files straight from the advanced editor literally over 100 times, and this error must be in the competition itself.

A good thing to do when making competitions is to regularly use the test function to see how the competition is working. A good thing to do when a competition stops working for some reason, is to make a backup save, delete all but the first stage of the broken competition and see if it generates, if it does, reload your data, do the same again, but leave stage 1 in etc. until you find the culprit stage.

When I test the competition, I get '0' under year. I have no idea what that means though. Every other competition I test has a proper year in it. 

[Dave Fairbairn]

Does it still happen if you delete all stages but the first? If so, you needs to find out what's hampering it. It could be as much as a date somewhere set up wrong, or an invalid setting somewhere. Just do a proofread of the entire competition from top to bottom to be sure.

There's times where I've just scrapped entire competitions, because sometimes, a competition just stops working through something you can't find and it's best to rebuild it from scratch.

Remember to build one stage at a time, making a backup save and testing after every stage, making sure to include ranking levels and such as you go.

[rusty217]

Looking at your file it's probably because it has no teams.

Seems you're trying to qualify the top two from the individual university championships to it? Except the U Sports Championship is told to set up on the 1st January, while the individual championships take place in November? (there are no dates set for the playoff rounds, that may be an issue too). You'll either need to set the U Sports Championship's start year to 2022 (or 2023 if you're starting the individual ones in 2022) so that it doesn't try to set up before the others have finished and qualified teams, or change it to Get Last Winner/Get Last Runner-Up instead of Get Qualified Teams for Comp. But then you'd still need to add a history entry with previous winners/runners-up so that there are teams to draw still.

[EnigMattic1]

3 hours ago, rusty217 said:

Looking at your file it's probably because it has no teams.

Seems you're trying to qualify the top two from the individual university championships to it? Except the U Sports Championship is told to set up on the 1st January, while the individual championships take place in November? (there are no dates set for the playoff rounds, that may be an issue too). You'll either need to set the U Sports Championship's start year to 2022 (or 2023 if you're starting the individual ones in 2022) so that it doesn't try to set up before the others have finished and qualified teams, or change it to Get Last Winner/Get Last Runner-Up instead of Get Qualified Teams for Comp. But then you'd still need to add a history entry with previous winners/runners-up so that there are teams to draw still.

In real life, the individual championships take place between September and October, then the championship runs in November. Is there any way to implement that? 

Oh, I've had a look and changed a couple of settings. I have now been able to get the competition to pull 4 of the 8 qualified teams. But, the thing that now puzzles me is that it is only pulling teams from 2 of the individual championships, despite the fate actions being the same in all 4 championships. 

Edited March 25, 2022 by EnigMattic1

[rusty217]

1 hour ago, EnigMattic1 said:

In real life, the individual championships take place between September and October, then the championship runs in November. Is there any way to implement that? 

Yeah, that's possible. Firstly I'd recommend adding dates and match rules (eg. penalties etc.) to the individual championship playoffs. Looks like none of the playoffs have them assigned. Also change the qualification fate action, make sure you tick the "For This Year" box.

Then go to the U Sports Championship, remove the 1st Jan setup date and instead in Stage 0 go to "Requirements" and add 4 new entries, set the competitions of those entries to the 4 individual championships and the stage to the playoff stage (it should be 1 for all of them). That will tell the cup competition not to setup until the playoffs in each individual championship has ended, by which time it should have qualified teams to draw from. If any drag on and end after the cup was supposed to start, that will likely be an issue too, so try and leave enough of a gap between the final dates for the individual championships and the first date of the cup.

[EnigMattic1]

@rusty217 @Dave Fairbairn

OK, I have the competition playing out in test competitions (somewhat correctly), however, when I try to verify, I get an error saying that it can't find teams and it is expecting 8.

When I say "somewhat correctly", I mean that, instead of 4 matches in the quarter finals, I get 3 (with one league having no participation in that round for some reason). Semi final, the 3 winners and one of the missing teams. The final missing team doesn't appear until the final, but I can't work out why as all teams are supposed to join in the quarters with fate actions from the leagues being identical. 

I'm also tagging @FCUtdWillas he has been trying to help me with this too. 

[rusty217]

Do you know which league doesn't participate in the quarter finals? It may be that their schedule is too tight to finish in time for the start of the cup competition so no teams have qualified by the time it's supposed to start.

[EnigMattic1]

6 minutes ago, rusty217 said:

Do you know which league doesn't participate in the quarter finals? It may be that their schedule is too tight to finish in time for the start of the cup competition so no teams have qualified by the time it's supposed to start.

It's usually the Ontario league. Would that affect only 3 quarter final matches being played? 

[rusty217]

10 minutes ago, EnigMattic1 said:

It's usually the Ontario league. Would that affect only 3 quarter final matches being played? 

Yeah, if those 2 teams haven't played the final (and therefore qualified) yet, that would mean only 2 QFs being played.

You could either try and change the dates so the cup starts later, or the Ontario final is played earlier. You could also set the fate action to qualify the winners of the Ontario semi final rather than the winner/loser of the final too. That way they'd be qualified 1 round earlier. Their final still may clash with the first round of the cup though.

[Dave Fairbairn]

Are all the requirements(a list of stages/tournaments which must finish before the tournament is generated) for the first stage properly set? Are the get teams routines set up correctly?

[EnigMattic1]

6 hours ago, rusty217 said:

Yeah, if those 2 teams haven't played the final (and therefore qualified) yet, that would mean only 2 QFs being played.

You could either try and change the dates so the cup starts later, or the Ontario final is played earlier. You could also set the fate action to qualify the winners of the Ontario semi final rather than the winner/loser of the final too. That way they'd be qualified 1 round earlier. Their final still may clash with the first round of the cup though.

There is almost a 2 week window between the last league game and the start of the championship.

[EnigMattic1]

On 25/03/2022 at 08:13, rusty217 said:

Then go to the U Sports Championship, remove the 1st Jan setup date and instead in Stage 0 go to "Requirements" and add 4 new entries, set the competitions of those entries to the 4 individual championships and the stage to the playoff stage (it should be 1 for all of them). That will tell the cup competition not to setup until the playoffs in each individual championship has ended, by which time it should have qualified teams to draw from.

@Dave Fairbairn, that is how it is set up. It draws the correct teams (the 2 finalists from the league playoff) from each league, but Ontario wont, for some reason, play in the quarter finals. And , after looking at the schedule for each league in 'Test Competition', ALL the leagues play the final on October 26th and the Quarter Final for the Championship doesn't actually start until the 13th (the draw/setup is the 8th apparently).

It also doesn't explain how I can test the competitions and get results, but I can't verify the file because it can't find the teams. It's weird.

[Dave Fairbairn]

Check the get teams routines in the test by going to the competition in the DB, going to the test, a year, go to the stage in question, and check the entries in the "Team rules panel". This will give dates, rules used and teams found for every time that stage attempts to get a team.

 

Find the entry where the missing teams are and try to work from there why it is happening. Check to see whether it is attempting to pick teams too early or whatever it may be.

[EnigMattic1]

12 minutes ago, Dave Fairbairn said:

Check the get teams routines in the test by going to the competition in the DB, going to the test, a year, go to the stage in question, and check the entries in the "Team rules panel". This will give dates, rules used and teams found for every time that stage attempts to get a team.

 

Find the entry where the missing teams are and try to work from there why it is happening. Check to see whether it is attempting to pick teams too early or whatever it may be.

There is only 1 stage.

And it finds 8 teams (2 from each league)

You can't see University of Guelph Gryphons, but they are #7 and are from the OUA.

[Dave Fairbairn]

It seems to be picking up teams fine, so who knows what it is.

As I've said, sometimes a competition will just not work no matter what, even if I know it's valid, and you just need to delete it and redo it. Keeping a backup in case, of course, but yes.

[rusty217]

hmm, for the quarter final have you got the "Number Of Teams Added To This Round" set to 8 and "Number Of Matches" set to 4?

That could be the issue. The editor is a bit picky and sometimes doesn't work unless things are set up perfectly. The file uploaded above seems to have nothing set in Teams Added and only 1 under Number Of Matches which would definitely cause an error.

[EnigMattic1]

8 hours ago, rusty217 said:

hmm, for the quarter final have you got the "Number Of Teams Added To This Round" set to 8 and "Number Of Matches" set to 4?

That could be the issue. The editor is a bit picky and sometimes doesn't work unless things are set up perfectly. The file uploaded above seems to have nothing set in Teams Added and only 1 under Number Of Matches which would definitely cause an error.

If I add 'teams added to this round':

I then get the error of "requires 8 teams, found -1" when trying to verify. As always, when testing the competition, teams from Ontario skip the quarter finals and one doesn't even enter until the final. The fate actions are the same for all 4 leagues and they all finish on the same day, so I can't see why they skip the quarter finals.

[Dave Fairbairn]

Have you tried qualifying teams for stage, rather than competition?

[EnigMattic1]

Tried that and I'm still having the same problem. Only 6 teams being used in the quarter finals.