[FM17] Das Reboot - How Scottish Football Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World (Complete)

[mjaferrie]

Hello!

I'm currently testing a fantasy Scottish system I've developed and thought I would share it with you here!  I'm also going to build a similar system for the English setup, so look out for that soon.  This edit only changes league structure.  It doesn't change any player, team or nation attributes.

I set out with a few key goals, or questions.
- As a Celtic fan, I wanted to increase the unpredictability of the league.
- If playing as Rangers, I wanted to increase the possibility of winning the league.  (I've gone through several saves in FM17 already and watched Celtic dominate under AI management).
- I also wanted to increase the possibility of other teams - Aberdeen, Hibs, Hearts, etc. - challenging for the title, this ties in with the first two I suppose.
- I feel like in real life there isn't a huge gap between the level of clubs in the Championship through to League 2, so what to do there?
- Could I implement the nation rules of the German football system in the Scottish system and how would that affect the future in terms of youth development?
- Get creative with the league structure!  No more 10 teams playing 4 times a year in the lower reaches, and no more 12 team Premiership.  
- Move towards summer football*
- Implement B teams in the Scottish system*

*These last two aren't for everyone, and I get that.  So I'll be making four versions of this file - the normal winter football system with and without B teams, and the summer system with and without B teams.

So here's the structure I've settled on:

    WITHOUT B TEAMS    |    WITH B TEAMS        |    
-------------------------------------------------
 Ladbrokes Premiership | Ladbrokes Premiership  |
  Ladbrokes League 1   | Ladbrokes Championship |
  Ladbrokes League 2   |   Ladbrokes League 1   |
                       |   Ladbrokes League 2   |

LADBROKES PREMIERSHIP

The top flight increases in size from 12 teams to 18.  Dundee United retain their relegated status from 2015/16, so the best six teams from last seasons Championship move up - Falkirk, Hibs, Raith, Morton, St. Mirren and Queen of the South.  Any of you who are familiar with the J-League structure over the last few years will recognise this one.

Autumn Season - teams play each other once between the first couple of weeks in August and the first couple of weeks in December.  Winner qualifies for Championship Playoff.



Spring Season - as above, from mid December until May.



Overall Table - results from the Autumn and Spring seasons are combined into an overall table, and the top 3 here also join the Championship Playoffs.  European places are decided by this table.



Championship Playoff - The winner of the OT qualifies straight to the final, while the teams qualifying from the other places will contest a quarter and/or semi final en route to playing the winner of the OT.



So, in an event where Celtic won all three stages, they would qualify straight to the final.  If Aberdeen and Rangers came 2nd and 3rd in the Overall table, they would contest a semi final with the winner playing Celtic in the final.  This, for me, increases the unpredictability of the league as the Champion status will come down to the winner of a single tie. 
For more (up to 5) teams to qualify for the CP, it would require different teams to win the Autumn and Spring campaigns.  For example:
- Hearts win Autumn season but perform poorly in Spring, coming mid-table.  Achieve 6th in the OT.
- Hibs have the reverse, a miserable Autumn followed by a seriously overperforming Spring that sees their position in the OT rise to 4th.
Both of these teams would qualify for the Championship playoff, but neither's form was good enough to claim any of the 3 Overall Table places, which went to the more consistent Celtic, Aberdeen and Rangers in this hypothetical season.  Therefore, all 5 teams would qualify.

Relegation to Ladbrokes League One (Championship) is decided by the Overall Table - the bottom three teams all drop down a division.

LADBROKES LEAGUE 1 (Championship)

So, as I mentioned earlier, I don't feel like there is a huge chasm in terms of ability between the 2nd-4th tiers in Scottish football.  Some may argue with that, but I think on their day any team can beat any team.  We already threw 6 teams up to the Premiership, which gives 24 teams left from the Championship, League One and League Two.  I decided to reinstate East Stirlingshire to the senior leagues, and they'll be joined by the best 3 from last seasons Highland League and the best two from the Lowland League (as Edinburgh City came up via the playoffs last year).

Wait, what?  You mean, you're adding MORE teams to a league that already had 24 teams?

Yes sir!  The LL1 now has 30 teams, which may seem a little bit mental, but stay with me here This structure is inspired by the MLS system of having separate conferences where teams play each other a different number of times in the year.  So - at the beginning of the season, all of the 30 teams in the LL1 will be drawn as best as possible according to their local region into 3 groups.

Ladbrokes League 1- The 3 groups each play the other teams in their own group twice, before playing all the teams from the other two groups once.  I.e. Dundee United face Arbroath two times in the season, but only play Airdrie and Stirling once.



Champions Playoff - the top 2 teams from each group qualify for the Champions playoff, to decided the winner of Ladbrokes League 1.



Caledonian Shield - works in the same way as the Supporters Shield in the MLS.  All three groups are combined into one table, with the winner claiming the Caledonian Shield.



Promotion and relegation is from the group stages.  The winner of each group will be promoted to the Premiership.  The two worst teams from each group are relegated to League 2.  B teams may not be promoted from this stage.

LADBROKES LEAGUE 1 and 2 - depending on if you're playing with a B team version or not will depend on how many leagues there are in this setup, but these both follow the same structure as above.

SCOTTISH CUP - unchanged
BETFRED CUP - with the increase in teams to 48, the group stage is now 7 groups of 6 teams with the group winner and 3 best runners up qualifying for the knockout round.  These 10 teams are joined by last season's top 6 in the Premiership.
IRN BRU CUP - again, the increase in teams means that the structure changes slightly.  64 teams enter in the First Round, with no teams entering at later stages.  The 60 teams from the leagues under the Premiership are joined by the top 2 from the Northern Irish and Welsh top flights, like IRL.

IN SHORT?!

Japanese style top flight, MLS style lower leagues, with German engineering under the hood.  A no brainer really!...

DOWNLOAD LINKS
Winter Football:
Das Reboot Complete - with B Teams_B4C21C9D-23AE-4C85-A1B6-856849E64D8F.fmf
Das Reboot Complete_A5624C9B-D51B-4413-B9EB-7F26AF5A7922.fmf

Summer Football:
Das Reboot Summer Football - with B Teams_80BF131B-EB70-4BDF-96C3-1C27BFE7A4B8.fmf
Das Reboot Summer Football_E6B5CA25-B864-4791-93C0-63E08B1CD1F8.fmf

Known issues:
Championship playoffs in lower leagues don't seed teams correctly
B team versions potentially buggy.  Files verified no problem, but failed once due to number of teams in league.

[mjaferrie]

TEAM LIST

Versions with no B teams:

|  Premiership         |  League One          |  League Two          |   
----------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Aberdeen            |  Airdrie             |  Auchinleck          |  
|  Celtic              |  Albion Rovers       |  BSC Glasgow         |  
|  Dundee              |  Alloa               |  Buckie Thistle      |  
|  Falkirk             |  Annan               |  Civil Service       |  
|  Hamilton            |  Arbroath            |  Clachnacuddin       |  
|  Hearts              |  Ayr                 |  Cumbernauld Colts   |  
|  Hibernian           |  Berwick             |  Dalbeattie Star     |  
|  Inverness CT        |  Brechin             |  Deveronvale         |  
|  Kilmarnock          |  Brora               |  East Kilbride       |  
|  Morton              |  Clyde               |  Edinburgh Uni       |  
|  Motherwell          |  Cove Rangers        |  Forres Mechanics    |  
|  Partick Thistle     |  Cowdenbeath         |  Fort William        |  
|  Queen of the South  |  Dumbarton           |  Fraserburgh         |  
|  Raith               |  Dundee United       |  Gala Fairydean      |  
|  Rangers             |  Dunfermline         |  Gretna 2008         |  
|  Ross County         |  East Fife           |  Hawick RA           |  
|  St. Johnstone       |  East Stirlingshire  |  Huntly              |  
|  St. Mirren          |  Edinburgh City      |  Inverurie Locos     |  
|                      |  Elgin City          |  Keith               |  
|                      |  Forfar              |  Linlithgow Rose     |  
|                      |  Formartine          |  Lossiemouth         |  
|                      |  Livingston          |  Nairn County        |  
|                      |  Montrose            |  Preston Athletic    |  
|                      |  Peterhead           |  Rothes              |  
|                      |  Queen's Park        |  Selkirk             |  
|                      |  Spartans            |  Strathspey Thistle  |  
|                      |  Stenhousemuir       |  Turriff United      |  
|                      |  Stirling            |  Vale of Leithen     |  
|                      |  Stirling Uni        |  Whitehill Welfare   |  
|                      |  Stranraer           |  Wick Academy        |

Versions with B teams:

|  Premiership         |  Championship        |  League One          |  League Two            |   
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Aberdeen            |  Airdrie             |  Aberdeen II         |  Buckie Thistle        |
|  Celtic              |  Albion Rovers       |  Auchinleck          |  Clachnacuddin         |
|  Dundee              |  Alloa               |  BSC Glasgow         |  Clydebank             |
|  Falkirk             |  Annan               |  Celtic II           |  Coldstream            |
|  Hamilton            |  Arbroath            |  Civil Service       |  Deveronvale           |
|  Hearts              |  Ayr                 |  Cumbernauld Colts   |  Dundee Utd II         |
|  Hibernian           |  Berwick             |  Dalbeattie Star     |  Dunfermline II        |
|  Inverness CT        |  Brechin             |  Dundee II           |  Falkirk II            |
|  Kilmarnock          |  Brora               |  East Kilbride       |  Forres Mechanics      |
|  Morton              |  Clyde               |  Edinburgh Uni       |  Fort William          |
|  Motherwell          |  Cove Rangers        |  Gala Fairydean      |  Fraserburgh           |
|  Partick Thistle     |  Cowdenbeath         |  Gretna 2008         |  Hamilton II           |
|  Queen of the South  |  Dumbarton           |  Hawick RA           |  Heriot-Watt Uni       |
|  Raith               |  Dundee United       |  Hearts II           |  Hurlford              |
|  Rangers             |  Dunfermline         |  Hibernian II        |  Inverness CT II       |
|  Ross County         |  East Fife           |  Huntly              |  Irvine Meadow         |
|  St. Johnstone       |  East Stirlingshire  |  Inverurie Locos     |  Leith                 |
|  St. Mirren          |  Edinburgh City      |  Keith               |  Lossiemouth           |
|                      |  Elgin City          |  Kilmarnock II       |  Lothian Thistle       |
|                      |  Forfar              |  Linlithgow Rose     |  Morton II             |
|                      |  Formartine          |  Motherwell II       |  Partick Thistle II    |
|                      |  Livingston          |  Nairn County        |  Pollok                |
|                      |  Montrose            |  Preston Athletic    |  Queen of the South II |
|                      |  Peterhead           |  Rangers II          |  Raith II              |
|                      |  Queen's Park        |  Ross County II      |  Rothes                |
|                      |  Spartans            |  Selkirk             |  St. Mirren II         |
|                      |  Stenhousemuir       |  St. Johnstone II    |  Strathspey Thistle    |
|                      |  Stirling            |  Turriff United      |  Threave Rovers        |
|                      |  Stirling Uni        |  Vale of Leithen     |  Tynecastle            |
|                      |  Stranraer           |  Whitehill Welfare   |  Wick Academy          |

[Carlito85]

This looks awesome. Can't wait to download this as I'm gonna be starting a new save with Rangers soon.

Just a question about the Championship playoff that seems to be flying over my head at the minute, but what determined Livingston getting a pass to the semi finals over Ayr? I'd have thought the 2 teams with the highest points tally would have gotten that, which I can understand with Dundee Utd.

[mjaferrie]

18 minutes ago, Carlito85 said:

This looks awesome. Can't wait to download this as I'm gonna be starting a new save with Rangers soon.

Just a question about the Championship playoff that seems to be flying over my head at the minute, but what determined Livingston getting a pass to the semi finals over Ayr? I'd have thought the 2 teams with the highest points tally would have gotten that, which I can understand with Dundee Utd.

Trying to find that out at the minute, I think I'll need to change the seeding rules of how they're drawn into the Championship playoff.  Thanks for picking that up!

I'm still having no joy with the European places in the Premiership though.  I tried changing it to just using the Overall Table, but what happened is that the winners took the Champions League spot, and then it skipped the 2nd/3rd place who'd qualifed for the Playoffs and allocated the Europa League spots to 4th-6th instead.  Working on that too

[mjaferrie]

I had it set to use the League Position in the last stage, so what I think is happening is that the 2nd place teams go into the Quarter Final, like they should, and then a random 1st place team joins them there.  It could easily have been Dundee United in that scenario... Not ideal.  I'll change it up and see if I can get it working like it should.

[Reiver]

You might need to create a hidden stage for the european places.

[mjaferrie]

1 minute ago, Reiver said:

You might need to create a hidden stage for the european places.

The most obvious solutions never come easy huh.  Thank you sir!

[mjaferrie]

1 hour ago, Reiver said:

You might need to create a hidden stage for the european places.

 

2 hours ago, Carlito85 said:

Just a question about the Championship playoff that seems to be flying over my head at the minute, but what determined Livingston getting a pass to the semi finals over Ayr? I'd have thought the 2 teams with the highest points tally would have gotten that, which I can understand with Dundee Utd.

I think I'm going to need a hidden stage here too.  Now I changed it so that it took teams into the playoffs based on their points from the Shield, so the teams with the higher points should have got straight into the semis, but the wrong teams qualified again.  What I think is happening is that it's only taking the results from that specific stage.  How I had it before was that the position in the groups determined the playoff place - meaning that only the group stage results were the factor.  Now I think that only the league stage results are the factor, i.e. the results against a'bdy else.  So the best team is qualifying in that sense, but it's not exactly what we're looking for.  Neeeext...

[mjaferrie]

Finally got continental qualification working properly, no hidden stage needed.  Running another test now just to be sure.

Edit: Bollocks, not quite.

[Carlito85]

27 minutes ago, mjaferrie said:

Finally got continental qualification working properly, no hidden stage needed.  Running another test now just to be sure.

Edit: Bollocks, not quite.

Isn't it the worst.

[mjaferrie]

24 minutes ago, Carlito85 said:

Isn't it the worst.

I got it so that the 4 teams at the top of the OT qualified for Europe, so I was like sorted!  Then I realised that the team who won the Autumn season got the Champions League place, rather than the OT.  Celtic won both in the first test so it tricked me into believing it worked, Aberdeen won the Autumn Season in the 2nd and took the CL place.

It's working now though!  Next to tackle are these lower league playoffs.

[mjaferrie]

Alright, in the first test the lower league playoffs are now working as promised.  A couple of tweaks to go and I should be able to release a Beta version this evening.

Edit: Bollocks, not quite.

Haha, a bit of deja-vu here but I've tried about a million things all day trying to get this to work.  I'm going to settle on how it is for now and post versions of the file very soon!

[cel1234]

Looks very interesting which team are in

 Ladbrokes League 2

[mjaferrie]

Hi @cel1234!  In the non B-team version, League 2 has all the remaining teams from the Highland League and Lowland Leagues, + Auchinleck and Linlithgow Rose.

In the B team version, 15 teams move down from league one and the 30 spots are made up of B teams from the Premiership and the Championship.  I feel like that's a bit excessive at the moment, and it's causing a lot of problems with promotion and relegation, so I'm going to ease it off a bit.  I'll give you an answer when I have the final teams!

[mjaferrie]

@Carlito85 I've uploaded files to the first post.  These are the normal, winter football versions.  If you're waiting on summer football I'll hopefully have that finished today

@cel1234 I'll add a team list to the 2nd post now.

[Carlito85]

1 hour ago, mjaferrie said:

@Carlito85 I've uploaded files to the first post.  These are the normal, winter football versions.  If you're waiting on summer football I'll hopefully have that finished today

@cel1234 I'll add a team list to the 2nd post now.

Hell yes. Gonna give this a whirl later. Hopefully it turns out to be compatible with the other save files I'm using.

[mjaferrie]

36 minutes ago, Carlito85 said:

Hell yes. Gonna give this a whirl later. Hopefully it turns out to be compatible with the other save files I'm using.

Nice one!  I made it with the 17.3 update, so it might not work with other files from the original database.  I couldn't get the seedings to work in the lower reaches as would be ideal, as a heads up, but if you're going to be managing as Rangers then it won't affect you too much.

Keep me posted how you get on with the file and if there is anything you'd like to see different.

[mjaferrie]

One observation when running tests on the summer versions is that it doesn't seem to benefit Rangers for some reason - on both runs they finished in a low mid-table place during the first phase, picked up in the second, but only qualified for Europe from winning the Scottish Cup beating Hamilton in the final both times.

Bear in mind that when running the tests I'm doing so as an unemployed manager to get through the season as quickly as possible - so a human controlled manager would no doubt fare much better.

Edit: I forgot to mention, in the first run Aberdeen won the league.  In the second, Hearts won.  It seems to be working in terms of creating that unpredictability.

[Super Bladesman]

This looks really interesting. I always love an alternate Scottish league structure. Will definitely give this a go if I ever get time to play FM again!

[mjaferrie]

12 minutes ago, Super Bladesman said:

This looks really interesting. I always love an alternate Scottish league structure. Will definitely give this a go if I ever get time to play FM again!

Ah come on, what could possibly be more important?  

[mjaferrie]

All files now complete and attached to OP.  Fire away!

[mjaferrie]

I'm running a 10 year test now on the summer file with the B teams.  Something weird happens in 2022, doesn't cause any problems, but for some reason it seems to overlap into 2023 even though no fixtures from the 2022 season were actually played in 2023.  Like I said, it doesn't seem to 'break the game' but does cause a couple of nuisances:



Here you can see there is no league finish marked for the line representing season 2022, but two marks for 2023.



And how that is represented in the history...

A bit annoying, and I've got no idea why it happened.  No league or cup dates were hung over into the next year...  I have the Season Update day as 1st January, so I might push it back until the 20th or so to see if that'd prevent this happening.

[mjaferrie]

Okay!  The ten year test went through nicely apart from that weird 2022 season.  I've now started a save proper in the Summer w B teams file at Celtic and am into August.  Biggest result so far?  Aberdeen qualifying for the Europa League group stages at the first time of asking!  It seems like summer football, and 4-5 months of match fitness before the European qualifiers, is no bad thing at all.

[cel1234]

On 16/03/2017 at 08:47, mjaferrie said:

@Carlito85 I've uploaded files to the first post.  These are the normal, winter football versions.  If you're waiting on summer football I'll hopefully have that finished today

@cel1234 I'll add a team list to the 2nd post now.

Excellent mate thanks what about teams that are a SFA members ??

[mjaferrie]

On 18/03/2017 at 02:05, cel1234 said:

Excellent mate thanks what about teams that are a SFA members ??

I used all the teams from the SPFL and the Highland/Lowland Leagues, and then filled the spaces with the highest rep. teams from then on.  I know the reputations are quite far off with the others, but I'm not really looking for an element of realism with this file

One pretty big problem I'm having with this is that when you set the bonus payments at the start of the season, they get paid out 3 times - for finishing top of Spring/Autumn/Overall.  Any ideas how I could fix this?

[cel1234]

Divide the payment by 3.

[mjaferrie]

59 minutes ago, cel1234 said:

Divide the payment by 3.

How do you do that? 

(As in - I don't mean the prize money.  That's fine.  I mean the bonus that the board pays out at the end of the season for winning the league, cup, Europe etc.  Is there a way to divide that in the editor?)

[cel1234]

Instead of paying the full amount just divide that by 3 then clubs will get 3 amounts adding up to the correct bonus payment.

[mjaferrie]

2 hours ago, cel1234 said:

Instead of paying the full amount just divide that by 3 then clubs will get 3 amounts adding up to the correct bonus payment.

Yep, I understand what your saying man, but how do you actually achieve that in the editor?  There isn't an option to determine that, as far as I'm aware.

The amount you pay to players is decided in game, not in the editor.

[Anaconda Vice]

@mjaferrie

With regards the "known issues", are they game breakers?

I really want to use the B team version.

[mjaferrie]

13 minutes ago, Anaconda Vice said:

@mjaferrie

With regards the "known issues", are they game breakers?

I really want to use the B team version.

I did a 10 year test and it didn't break the game - although it seemed like the AI really didn't prioritise the B teams at all as they all end up at the bottom of the pyramid after 10 years.  Now I'm doing a proper play through, at the end of season 3 and no problems so far.  (A few annoying things, but nothing major).

[Anaconda Vice]

19 hours ago, mjaferrie said:

I did a 10 year test and it didn't break the game - although it seemed like the AI really didn't prioritise the B teams at all as they all end up at the bottom of the pyramid after 10 years.  Now I'm doing a proper play through, at the end of season 3 and no problems so far.  (A few annoying things, but nothing major).

What are the annoying things? (Sorry, I just like to know before I commit to a long save)

[mjaferrie]

54 minutes ago, Anaconda Vice said:

What are the annoying things? (Sorry, I just like to know before I commit to a long save)

• The board will pay out a squad bonus 3 times at the end of the season in the top flight - one each for the Spring/Autumn/Overall.  In the first season it's a bit of a ****er as they pay out what they'd normally pay for a single season, so it hits your budget a bit.  After the first year it balances out and the board, while still paying 3x, pay an amount that adds up to a sensible amount overall.
• When the season ends, you get a message that you've been paid £x amount for your B team coming in 0th place.  The amount paid is correct according to their finished place, it's just annoying that it says 0th for some reason and not 1st-30th.  
• It is not possible for the B teams to be player-managed (as in, you can't choose them as your team).  This is because I created them in the reserve team like the Dutch/German ones usually are, instead of creating a new club like the Spanish ones.
• Board confidence - I added the ranking level info in the editor but for some reason it confused the file.  Now I've removed them but it means that board confidence for your league position is inaccurate.  I'll have a look at this just now and see if I can fix it.

Were you looking to use the summer football or winter football version?  I can prioritise fixing that one first. 

Regarding the known issues I mentioned above - the seeding of teams in the championship playoffs of lower leagues is annoying but not a game-breaker at all.  A potentially unfair challenge to overcome if you want to manage at that level but won't affect you at all if you're managing a top-flight team.  In my save at the moment, Celtic II are at the top of the Championship, and it looks like it's going to work as it should (as in, the team placed 2nd will be promoted).

Edit!  And no worries about asking!  It's for sure annoying when you're 5 seasons in and everything goes tits up.  I'll admit it's not perfect - I'm going to work on an update which will hopefully fix the annoyances I've listed above - but it certainly works well enough to play  

[Anaconda Vice]

1 hour ago, mjaferrie said:

• The board will pay out a squad bonus 3 times at the end of the season in the top flight - one each for the Spring/Autumn/Overall.  In the first season it's a bit of a ****er as they pay out what they'd normally pay for a single season, so it hits your budget a bit.  After the first year it balances out and the board, while still paying 3x, pay an amount that adds up to a sensible amount overall.
• When the season ends, you get a message that you've been paid £x amount for your B team coming in 0th place.  The amount paid is correct according to their finished place, it's just annoying that it says 0th for some reason and not 1st-30th.  
• It is not possible for the B teams to be player-managed (as in, you can't choose them as your team).  This is because I created them in the reserve team like the Dutch/German ones usually are, instead of creating a new club like the Spanish ones.
• Board confidence - I added the ranking level info in the editor but for some reason it confused the file.  Now I've removed them but it means that board confidence for your league position is inaccurate.  I'll have a look at this just now and see if I can fix it.

Were you looking to use the summer football or winter football version?  I can prioritise fixing that one first. 

Regarding the known issues I mentioned above - the seeding of teams in the championship playoffs of lower leagues is annoying but not a game-breaker at all.  A potentially unfair challenge to overcome if you want to manage at that level but won't affect you at all if you're managing a top-flight team.  In my save at the moment, Celtic II are at the top of the Championship, and it looks like it's going to work as it should (as in, the team placed 2nd will be promoted).

Edit!  And no worries about asking!  It's for sure annoying when you're 5 seasons in and everything goes tits up.  I'll admit it's not perfect - I'm going to work on an update which will hopefully fix the annoyances I've listed above - but it certainly works well enough to play  

I would be looking to use the winter football one (I believe that is August to May football?)

So can I use the B team to send my youth prospects to? I will be managing Celtic for example.

Thanks for your response so far. Very helpful and I am very excited to play this.

BTW How easy would it be to do this in another league? I mean creating a B team league.

[mjaferrie]

4 minutes ago, Anaconda Vice said:

I would be looking to use the winter football one (I believe that is August to May football?)

So can I use the B team to send my youth prospects to? I will be managing Celtic for example.

Thanks for your response so far. Very helpful and I am very excited to play this.

BTW How easy would it be to do this in another league? I mean creating a B team league.

Okay, yep, the 'normal' version.

Yes, absolutely you can send your youth prospects to the B team and also hire staff for it - you just can't choose it as your team to manage.  Hopefully this screenshot makes it a bit clearer - you can see that you could be the manager of Airdrie for example, but Celtic II and Rangers II are both greyed out.



In terms of creating a B League, it's a bit time consuming - but very easy!  You could create a complete separate league system for only B teams (like Northern Ireland has) - but I think if you're going for this then why not just a reserve league?  Or then you could create B teams in one of two ways as I mentioned in the previous post, and then add them to the senior league set up.  As long as you remember to prevent them from being promoted to the top flight, or actually whichever league you'd like, then you're grand!  If you had a specific idea about that, I'd be happy to help out

[Anaconda Vice]

4 minutes ago, mjaferrie said:

Okay, yep, the 'normal' version.

Yes, absolutely you can send your youth prospects to the B team and also hire staff for it - you just can't choose it as your team to manage.  Hopefully this screenshot makes it a bit clearer - you can see that you could be the manager of Airdrie for example, but Celtic II and Rangers II are both greyed out.



In terms of creating a B League, it's a bit time consuming - but very easy!  You could create a complete separate league system for only B teams (like Northern Ireland has) - but I think if you're going for this then why not just a reserve league?  Or then you could create B teams in one of two ways as I mentioned in the previous post, and then add them to the senior league set up.  As long as you remember to prevent them from being promoted to the top flight, or actually whichever league you'd like, then you're grand!  If you had a specific idea about that, I'd be happy to help out

I'll take a read over these posts after work and will be in contact with you. Many thanks mate.

[Anaconda Vice]

@mjaferrie

I think I am going to start a save with the Winter B Team one. I shall see how it goes.

My dream as far as B teams are concerned would be to have a Gibraltar database with the teams there having B teams.

[mjaferrie]

1 hour ago, Anaconda Vice said:

@mjaferrie

I think I am going to start a save with the Winter B Team one. I shall see how it goes.

My dream as far as B teams are concerned would be to have a Gibraltar database with the teams there having B teams.

Nice one mate - I'm playing the Summer B Team one so if you come across anything major with that one let me know!

I'll message you about the Gibraltar file so as to not go off topic here

[dburnsdundeemad]

This has to be one of the best, rework's of the Scottish League I have seen, works so well, and is planned out well. Credit to you @mjaferrie

One thing I would suggest is moving back the season update day in the winter season one,  it doesn't update till June 24th or something at the moment, which seems to be ages after the end of a season and very little time before the start of the new season.

[mjaferrie]

Thanks for the comment mate!  Do you have the editor?  I'm away with work until mid-May, so don't have access to FM.  If you would be interested in loading it up and fixing the season update day that would be brilliant!  Otherwise, I'll get that done when I get back!

[dburnsdundeemad]

On 4/14/2017 at 16:58, mjaferrie said:

Thanks for the comment mate!  Do you have the editor?  I'm away with work until mid-May, so don't have access to FM.  If you would be interested in loading it up and fixing the season update day that would be brilliant!  Otherwise, I'll get that done when I get back!

I do, i've played about with it but the advanced editor bamboozles me at the best of times. I've moved the season update day which is working as I intended it to, i've only moved it back 1 week from the 25th to the 18th of June instead.

I've also realised that loan players tend not to get played due to the squad registration rules so i've tried removing these testing this now to see if it'll work, left in the trialist stuff as i believe that is in line with what currently exists but i think in removing the squad registration rules it's going to allow a team to field a full team of foreign players which is not what I want so i'll play about with this a bit more and see if I can get it working as I intend it for myself.

Edit: Okay, got the rules working the way I want them as well, so no more squad registration in the edit I have, which should make loan players more likely to play.

Personally i'm going to keep this as a separate file and then create a new one to fix some other things i'm not quite satisfied with but it's mostly just down to prize money in League 2 and the Scottish and Challenge cups, which I feel is too low and creates debt in teams in League 2

[Spurs08]

It seems like European qualification is broken when you use the Summer file and start with a non-Scottish start date in the summer. Was making some additional edits and testing them when I noticed this, but it applies with just your file too. If you select the Scottish and Welsh Premierships and set the start date to the start of the Welsh season, the game picks up the wrong teams for European qualification, not just in the first season but every year.

[mjaferrie]

7 hours ago, Spurs08 said:

It seems like European qualification is broken when you use the Summer file and start with a non-Scottish start date in the summer. Was making some additional edits and testing them when I noticed this, but it applies with just your file too. If you select the Scottish and Welsh Premierships and set the start date to the start of the Welsh season, the game picks up the wrong teams for European qualification, not just in the first season but every year.

Hmm, that's worrying - can you give an example of what you are expecting and what actually happens?

[Spurs08]

Just now, mjaferrie said:

Hmm, that's worrying - can you give an example of what you are expecting and what actually happens?

What I'm expecting is the standard continental qualification system - the league winners qualify for the UCL, 2nd, 3rd and the cup winners for the UEL, with 4th qualifying if the cup winners are also in the top 3. This normally works fine. However, when you load the "summer football" version, and pick a July or August start date from another league, the wrong teams are chosen. In particular, the team finishing 3rd in the league table never qualifies for the Europa League, with the place instead going to the team finishing 4th or 5th. Notably, the "Season Summary" screen on the nation's page shows finishing positions that don't match the league table.

(This was tested with the no B teams version).

[mjaferrie]

*****, I was having the exact same problem in the first file and I thought the update had fixed it - I've played through the summer B teams version for a while and had no problems, but I started with a Scottish date so that could be the thing.

Just to be clear - the European qualification is not affected by the champions playoffs, so the team who 'wins' the league (as in via the playoffs) won't qualify for the Champions League unless they also come 1st in the overall table.

Like I said to @dburnsdundeemad I'm away until mid-May with work so I won't get a chance to look at it until then.  Let me know if you find anything in the meantime!

[Spurs08]

3 hours ago, mjaferrie said:

*****, I was having the exact same problem in the first file and I thought the update had fixed it - I've played through the summer B teams version for a while and had no problems, but I started with a Scottish date so that could be the thing.

Just to be clear - the European qualification is not affected by the champions playoffs, so the team who 'wins' the league (as in via the playoffs) won't qualify for the Champions League unless they also come 1st in the overall table.

Like I said to @dburnsdundeemad I'm away until mid-May with work so I won't get a chance to look at it until then.  Let me know if you find anything in the meantime!

Yep, starting with the Scottish date it seems to work fine, so you might just want to put that in the OP since it's a perfectly decent workaround?

 

And yep, I'm not expecting the playoffs to do anything, the game is just misinterpreting the league table when it comes to select the European teams for some reason. Other than that though this looks brilliant, thanks so much for your time making it!

[Spurs08]

7 hours ago, mjaferrie said:

*****, I was having the exact same problem in the first file and I thought the update had fixed it - I've played through the summer B teams version for a while and had no problems, but I started with a Scottish date so that could be the thing.

Just to be clear - the European qualification is not affected by the champions playoffs, so the team who 'wins' the league (as in via the playoffs) won't qualify for the Champions League unless they also come 1st in the overall table.

Like I said to @dburnsdundeemad I'm away until mid-May with work so I won't get a chance to look at it until then.  Let me know if you find anything in the meantime!

Another small thing - you've got League Cup Group Stage matches scheduled for 15:00 on weekdays, which is a little odd and presumably an oversight?

 

EDIT: And this one's purely my opinion, but for me it makes more sense to have Goal Difference and Goals Scored as the criteria before Results Between Teams given there's only one round of fixtures. Currently if two teams finish level on points whoever's at home in the game between them is far more likely to go through.

EDIT2: The League Cup Group Stage also gives prize money to the teams finishing 2nd-5th, but not 1st nor 6th. I'm guessing that it was intended to be awarded for 1st-4th, in which case you need to move each prize one position down in the editor - first place in the group is "Position 0", second is "Position 1" and so on in editorspeak.

[Spurs08]

You've also got a Scottish Cup date set during an international break that doesn't seem to move itself when half of Celtic is called up.

[mjaferrie]

@Spurs08 thanks for the feedback - I'll get those fixed when I get back to my computer!