A plethora of suggestions...

[DocBBall35]

Okay, maybe not a plethora, but I've got a few. One of the things I didn't like about TDCB was the hard coding of the 320 team limit. I tried to do a mod on Indiana High School Basketball, which has 384 teams and it didn't work due to the 320 team max. I know it won't take long after the release of the game for someone to work on a mod for Division 1-AA football, which, according to ncaasports.com, will have just 1 more team than Division 1-A next year. Hmm, who do you suppose we leave out? Or to get even more in depth, I'm sure a Division II or III mod would end up in the works. I'm not sure how many Div. II teams there are, but I'm sure there are more Div. III teams than 1-A teams. I'm just trying to think for how the game will be used in the future. I'm not a programmer, and I don't know what effect hard coding has on the game. I'm not even entirely sure what the term "hard coding" means, I just use it because I've seen others use it. I think that if the number of teams could be left somewhat open ended it would allow more playability. Oh yes, I almost forgot, hard coding number of conferences could pose problems as well. In addition to this, along the same lines, we must also discuss playoff options. I like having options between a BCS system and playoff system. However, only one option for the number of playoff teams and formats could be problematic. Sticking with our same example as earlier, if I'm not mistaken Div. III football uses a 32-team playoff. I liked the idea of 11 automatic bids with 5 at large for Div I-A, but I think other options should be available, such as a 32-team format. Someone posed the idea of re-seeding after each round of the playoffs. Any other sport, and I would disagree, but football is unique. The physical demand of the sport requires a spread out single elimination tournament. However, I think that re-seeding should be a commissioner option (whether that be the one person playing or commissioner of an online league). Using my examples above, I'd like reseeding if I were to do a playoff for Div I-A, but I wouldn't want reseeding for a 32 team format, such as in Div. III. The boards seemed to have been slowing down. Maybe my comments here can defibrillate the posting, and get the ideas flowing again.

[Arlie Rahn]

While I do plan on being more open with the allowed number of teams and conferences, I am going to be very stingy with the options for different engine, playoff and rules combinations. Remember, this is a first version and the sheer scope of testing a new game, a new engine, numerous playoff scenerios, numerous league and postseason formats, as well as numerous engine options would simply be too daunting for this version. Once we get the basic parts working and the game doing well as it was designed, I will certainly look more at adding playoff/engine options for future versions. That said, I don't know of anything in the game that restricts the number of teams to the D-IA limit.