Best way to approach modifying continental club competitions qualifying and format in the Americas + adding new ones?

[gooseta]

I'd like to slightly rework the club champions cup formats for conmebol and concacaf so that both the copa libertadores and sudamericana feature concacaf teams, and adjust the amount of teams at each stage slightly, as well as reworking the leagues cup to include canadian teams and scrapping the conmebol CL for a knockout tournament with a preliminary group stage for the best clubs in the smaller concacaf nations, who then qualify to play roughly those who would have entered the original CCL but trimmed down and with canadian teams. I'd also like to add the copa interamericana with teams qualifying through each of those four comps but not a priority.

Where should I start with this? I've had a look at the mx & mls teams in libertadores file and I assume I'd need to do a lot more work. Is it best to strip the existing competitions completely and start there, create a framework, then alter the league qualifiers for individual leagues? I'm also confused as to why the competitions by default don't show any framework and I can't view divisional rules regarding qualification for CL, money etc. I've tried going into  advanced rules editing on certain leagues but I'm a bit overwhelmed. I've gained a bit of knowledge by just looking at editor data files and being lost but I'm not sure how much of the existing framework I need to completely scrap, and why some of it doesn't seem to exist as descriptive rules within specific leagues, nations, continents, or the continental competitions. Am I being dumb here (ie. is there a way to load in a database with all of the leagues/nations i need in order to show the qualification systems for respective leagues etc...

I'm also wondering if it is technically possible to have a continental club competition which spans two continents, with regard to host choice etc. but also in the game data, is it better to just pick one?

to simplify, i guess i don't really see how to start setting up rules because it's not apparent how the game's own rules work & whether they can/cannot be displayed in the editor and copied to a new competition etc. so small changes can be made to a comp's format

Apologies for the basic question but it felt a bit too much to post in another thread.

Edited November 14, 2023 by gooseta

[rusty217]

A lot of continental qualification rules are hardcoded and can't be edited or viewed. They can be overwritten by making a completely new qualifying system, but you can't edit the existing one. Generally none of it is done through leagues either, so you won't see continental qualification stuff in nation rules. I think CONCACAF is a bit of an exception with some CCC qualifications running through the Leagues Cup, Canadian Championship etc. but it's also one of the messier continental setups. That does actually make it a little more editable than the others, as in if you can find out the number of teams and the seedings they're given that qualify from competitions you can customise or replace those competitions to your liking as long as the qualifiers/seedings remain the same and happen around the same time. Things really do have to match up exactly though, so it can be pretty finnicky.

It's possible to have a continental championship that spans multiple continents. If you set it up in a specific continent then there will be some issues with teams from other continents (I've heard the Libertadores is a bit easier in that regard, possibly due to Mexican teams having taken part in the past) and it won't let you include nations from other continents in the qualifying system. You could of course just set up an alternative way to get those teams instead of the standard qualifying system (eg. just add an instruction to get the best x teams from y league). There is also the option to just set it up as a world competition though rather than choosing a specific competition. IIRC World is only an option in the basic rules continental competition rules, but does carry over to advanced (so you just can't change to it after converting to advanced rules). That would allow you to have nations from multiple continents fully integrated into it.

Contintental rules are generally some of the hardest to edit though, with North America being especially infamous for things going wrong. I haven't gotten into it on FM24 yet, but I actually found North America one of the easier continents to work with on FM23, although I did keep the qualifying system and teams exactly the same as they are in the default rules and just edited competition formats to my liking. Good luck!

Edited November 15, 2023 by rusty217

[gooseta]

2 hours ago, rusty217 said:

A lot of continental qualification rules are hardcoded and can't be edited or viewed. They can be overwritten by making a completely new qualifying system, but you can't edit the existing one. Generally none of it is done through leagues either, so you won't see continental qualification stuff in nation rules. I think CONCACAF is a bit of an exception with some CCC qualifications running through the Leagues Cup, Canadian Championship etc. but it's also one of the messier continental setups. That does actually make it a little more editable than the others, as in if you can find out the number of teams and the seedings they're given that qualify from competitions you can customise or replace those competitions to your liking as long as the qualifiers/seedings remain the same and happen around the same time. Things really do have to match up exactly though, so it can be pretty finnicky.

It's possible to have a continental championship that spans multiple continents. If you set it up in a specific continent then there will be some issues with teams from other continents (I've heard the Libertadores is a bit easier in that regard, possibly due to Mexican teams having taken part in the past) and it won't let you include nations from other continents in the qualifying system. You could of course just set up an alternative way to get those teams instead of the standard qualifying system (eg. just add an instruction to get the best x teams from y league). There is also the option to just set it up as a world competition though rather than choosing a specific competition. IIRC World is only an option in the basic rules continental competition rules, but does carry over to advanced (so you just can't change to it after converting to advanced rules). That would allow you to have nations from multiple continents fully integrated into it.

Contintental rules are generally some of the hardest to edit though, with North America being especially infamous for things going wrong. I haven't gotten into it on FM24 yet, but I actually found North America one of the easier continents to work with on FM23, although I did keep the qualifying system and teams exactly the same as they are in the default rules and just edited competition formats to my liking. Good luck!

Thanks, I've tried using the world setup and it seems to do the job but haven't quite been able to sort out the qualifying & end the old competitions in one save file yet. Will have a look at more of your previous concacaf stuff as well as some other editor files hopefully to help

[rusty217]

7 minutes ago, gooseta said:

Thanks, I've tried using the world setup and it seems to do the job but haven't quite been able to sort out the qualifying & end the old competitions in one save file yet. Will have a look at more of your previous concacaf stuff as well as some other editor files hopefully to help

To end the old competitions add rules for them to your file and set the End Year to 2000 or something, that's all you need to fill out in the rules. Having it in your file will make it override the default rules and having the End Year in the past will just make it never happen. Easiest way to end competitions.

I don't think I released my CONCACAF stuff publicly, but here it is if you're interested: z CONCACAF Clubs.fmf
There's no chance it will work on FM24 as is though, since I based it around the default qualification system which has changed for FM24.