Hiring Assistants

[Miral]

Perhaps to overcome the problem of A/I hires (the way it is in Bowlbound now), perhaps instead of a week 3 option of 3 coaches, the structure of coach hiring should be that a team can put out offers to several coordinators at the same time, in level of priority. That way if your top priority guy doesn't agree to sign, the game then goes to the second priority one, and so on down the line. That could possibly speed up the assistant coaching part from 3 weeks to 2 or even 1. Most people agree this is a very boring time (ref: dartboards). :D

[Johnny Slick]

One way you could seriously simplify the assistant-hiring process, at least on the player side, is to implement a sort of cronyism. What I mean is, when it comes time to pick your WR coach, you don't get to pick from the 400 million potential guys out there. You get to choose from, let's say, 3 or 4 guys you know. Realistically, teams don't usually look at a massive pool for each assistant position. They go with a guy who used to play for the team who wants to try his hand at coaching, or a guy the coach or one of the coordinators played with. This often works both ways. A guy who doesn't know you from Adam might be reticent to sign a contract to fill a role where his concept of that role may be different from his higher-ups'. Putting *all* that in might be hard to code, though... so maybe random chance + retired players = a small pool to choose from.

[Xenophon]

[QUOTE=Johnny Slick;388257]One way you could seriously simplify the assistant-hiring process, at least on the player side, is to implement a sort of cronyism. What I mean is, when it comes time to pick your WR coach, you don't get to pick from the 400 million potential guys out there. You get to choose from, let's say, 3 or 4 guys you know. Realistically, teams don't usually look at a massive pool for each assistant position. They go with a guy who used to play for the team who wants to try his hand at coaching, or a guy the coach or one of the coordinators played with. This often works both ways. A guy who doesn't know you from Adam might be reticent to sign a contract to fill a role where his concept of that role may be different from his higher-ups'. Putting *all* that in might be hard to code, though... so maybe random chance + retired players = a small pool to choose from.[/QUOTE] This idea sounds great but also sounds hard to implement. [QUOTE=Miral;388210]Perhaps to overcome the problem of A/I hires (the way it is in Bowlbound now), perhaps instead of a week 3 option of 3 coaches, the structure of coach hiring should be that a team can put out offers to several coordinators at the same time, in level of priority. That way if your top priority guy doesn't agree to sign, the game then goes to the second priority one, and so on down the line. That could possibly speed up the assistant coaching part from 3 weeks to 2 or even 1. Most people agree this is a very boring time (ref: dartboards). :D[/QUOTE] This I would love to see. There is nothing more frusterating then losing out on that coach and then having to go and look through what is left after that. Especially if it takes 2 weeks for that coach to turn you down.

[udlb58]

MP leagues should give the commish the ability to manually sign coaches in the final week of coach hirings if they are limited to a certain # of weeks. That way, GMs can submit a short list with offers and the commish can sign coaches to the highest offer.

[Xenophon]

Something I have always wanted but could make the highering process longer, is positional coaches. I really dislike the fact that I can only sign one offensive coach that may be great with QBs but horrible with RBs. It would be nice to be able to sign an Offensive coordinator with his strengths and WR, RB, QB, and OL assistants with their strengths. Each of the assistants would have their own grouping of strengths and weaknesses allowing us as head coaches to specialize our rosters more. Some of those strengths could be: QB Coach Accuracy Arm Strength Vision WR Coach Hands Speed Route Running RB Coach Moves Hole Vision Speed OL Coach Strength Pass Blocking Run Blocking Those are just basic ideas off the top of my head and of course the defensive side would need some too.

[Arlie Rahn]

The reason I've fought the idea of positional coaches is similar to the reason for individual scouts. In theory, it sounds great. But, the practice of going through and signing 8-9 more coaches each offseason in a manner that's efficient but doesn't throw off the gaming balance seems fairly daunting. If you had the 10-12 coach staff most teams do, you would need to be completely engrossed in signing staff guys for weeks every offseason and the budgeting would be a bit of a nightmare. Plus, the gaming balance would be tough for my end. IE, trying to setup the proper budget constraints to where the staff salary/production doesn't involve a ton of "cheats/shortcuts".

[Arlie Rahn]

[QUOTE=Miral;388210]Perhaps to overcome the problem of A/I hires (the way it is in Bowlbound now), perhaps instead of a week 3 option of 3 coaches, the structure of coach hiring should be that a team can put out offers to several coordinators at the same time, in level of priority. That way if your top priority guy doesn't agree to sign, the game then goes to the second priority one, and so on down the line. That could possibly speed up the assistant coaching part from 3 weeks to 2 or even 1. Most people agree this is a very boring time (ref: dartboards). :D[/QUOTE] This isn't a bad idea. Maybe allow everyone to rank their top 3 and use ranking/salary and preferences to determine who goes where. The only way this would work would be to have all the first choices together - choose a winner. All the second choices together, choose a winner and so forth. So, if someone else had coach A as their 2nd choice and another team had coach B as their 1st choice - the second team would always win regardless of offer/preferences. The only other way to do it would be go from the top assistant to the worst and work down. Then, it would look at all 3 choices. The problem here is that you could end up having a top rated assistant as a 2nd choice and getting him when your top choice (maybe more of a value guy) goes unsigned because no one else had him.

[Meat]

[QUOTE=Arlie Rahn;388691]The reason I've fought the idea of positional coaches is similar to the reason for individual scouts. In theory, it sounds great. But, the practice of going through and signing 8-9 more coaches each offseason in a manner that's efficient but doesn't throw off the gaming balance seems fairly daunting. If you had the 10-12 coach staff most teams do, you would need to be completely engrossed in signing staff guys for weeks every offseason and the budgeting would be a bit of a nightmare. Plus, the gaming balance would be tough for my end. IE, trying to setup the proper budget constraints to where the staff salary/production doesn't involve a ton of "cheats/shortcuts".[/QUOTE] Thank you...Please please do not add all of the scouting and individual position coaches, it would be a drag on the game. I like the idea of budget allotments for positional scouting rather than individual scouts.

[cody8200]

I don't want to see position coaching positions either. Hell, even hiring 3 coaches once a year (like it seemed I was doing in BBCF every year) felt annoying. In the NFL this wouldnt be as much of a problem (because they could have 3 or 4 year contracts) but I'd rather not have to hire so many people.

[cappyboy]

Can't really comment on how Bowl Bound handles things. Between lack of interest in the college game and having struggled to learn the BB interface, I'm still at Total Pro. But one thing in TPF that always bugged me in this regard was how I could get ten or fifteen years into a single-player game and all the available assistants would go completely to seed. The pool wouldn't refresh. Even though realistically guys who'd retired early on in my game should have been position and possibly co-ordinator candidates in that time. Keep the pool from drying up in longer term games and I'd probably be happy where this goes.

[Bobbert]

[QUOTE=Arlie Rahn;388693]This isn't a bad idea. Maybe allow everyone to rank their top 3 and use ranking/salary and preferences to determine who goes where. The only way this would work would be to have all the first choices together - choose a winner. All the second choices together, choose a winner and so forth. So, if someone else had coach A as their 2nd choice and another team had coach B as their 1st choice - the second team would always win regardless of offer/preferences. The only other way to do it would be go from the top assistant to the worst and work down. Then, it would look at all 3 choices. The problem here is that you could end up having a top rated assistant as a 2nd choice and getting him when your top choice (maybe more of a value guy) goes unsigned because no one else had him.[/QUOTE] Wouldn't this algorithm work [CODE] COACH-LIST = all coaches with at least one bid on them. WHILE COACH-LIST != EMPTY FOR EACH COACH IN COACH-LIST Evaluate all bids, no matter priority, and assign coach to best bid. END FOR Clear COACH-LIST FOR EACH TEAM FOR EACH SIGNED COACH IF TEAM HAS ANOTHER SINGED COACH WITH HIGHER PRIORITY Remove the teams bid from coach Add coach to COACH-LIST END IF END FOR END FOR END WHILE [/CODE] This algorithm will ensure that each team gets the highest prioritized coach interested in them. It also ensure that no team ends up without a coach when their bid was better than the team that got the coach. Time complexity isn't much of an issue, it should be very fast with the number of teams and coaches we're talking about here.

[Arlie Rahn]

That's fairly similar to what I had, but there is an issue with it. Let's take an example. You have "Coach A" who rates Team 1 at 95 and Team 2 at 90. Team 1 has Coach A as their 2nd coach. Team 2 has him as their first. Coach A comes up and decides Team 1 has the best offer - so he goes to Team 1. However, Team 1 had Coach C as their No. 1 coach and he had no other offers. But, because Coach A was decided first, team 1 is already taken by the time Coach C decides. At the end of the first round, Team 1 has their 2nd choice (A) and their first choice (C) is unsigned.

[Bobbert]

No that won't happen in my algorithm. Because it will assign both coach A and C to Team 1 in the first run through. Then in the second part of the while loop, it will detect that Team 1 has 2 coaches, and that coach A has lowest priority of those two, so Team 1:s bid on coach A is withdrawn, and coach A added back to the list of coaches to be assigned. Then on the second running through of the while loop, coach A will then be assigned to team B. And then if team B had already got another coach that they has ranked lower, that coach will be released and possibly signed to another team, and that will go on until all teams just have one coach and no more coaches has any bids on them.

[huskers]

Here's a thought...how about when you need a coach, you hire a search firm. When I say "hire" I don't mean necessarily having it impact your budget at all; i.e, the search firm will always be there and cost nothing to make it easy on everyone. Dealing with too many budget considerations is just a headache. So maybe you select an option or two citing what you're looking for - i.e, rate several categories on importance: experience, connection, personality, whatever. Then advance, and the search committee returns a list of names, 3-6, that you can look over and then hire from that list. A step further, maybe needlessly complicated (but nevertheless fun) would be the ability to select a few to interview. Instead of "make offer," then advance week, you would select a couple to interview, then advance week. The outcome of the interview is an email detailing the results of the interview...staff evaluation on the coach (i.e, ratings for motivation, match, ability, whatever would be pertinent here) and the coach's expressed desire to be hired. Say, the outcome might be this coach was high ability ratings across the board but only medium interest; this other one is unproven but is totally committed to the idea of coaching this team, who do you offer? And then you can add a little small percentage randomized drama; for instance, the guy who said he would join your team if offered declines anyway and you're left feeling peeved, and then you have to go for another option.

[Arlie Rahn]

[QUOTE=Bobbert;391975]No that won't happen in my algorithm. Because it will assign both coach A and C to Team 1 in the first run through. Then in the second part of the while loop, it will detect that Team 1 has 2 coaches, and that coach A has lowest priority of those two, so Team 1:s bid on coach A is withdrawn, and coach A added back to the list of coaches to be assigned. Then on the second running through of the while loop, coach A will then be assigned to team B. And then if team B had already got another coach that they has ranked lower, that coach will be released and possibly signed to another team, and that will go on until all teams just have one coach and no more coaches has any bids on them.[/QUOTE] OK, I see. I think that would work. I will play around with it for a bit. I like Husker's idea from a general standpoint, I just wonder if it would end up being too cumbersome (esp for MP). Maybe a nice middle ground would be to have the game email you 2-3 options per spot during the first week based on your system and budget. Then, it would atleast allow you to have a reference for your initial search.

[laser]

I like Huskers idea a lot for solo leagues.

[cappyboy]

As do I. But then I also like Arlie's compromise version as well. It's almost like having a shadow search firm without the formal coding and complications for multi-player leagues. Either way would work for me. Don't know coding well enough to have a feeling about Bobbert's algorithim. But if Arlie feels it comes close to what he'd already been thinking, I'm sure it must be good. When it comes to programming, I trust Arlie's perspective on things. I'm still playing Total Pro after all these years after all.

[Druez]

changed my mind.

[gopokes]

position coaches I kind of like the idea of position coaches myself. To me it would be neat to be able to assemble groups of coaches and see how they develop (postion coaches becoming coordinators, cooridanotor becoming head coaches, etc.)throughout the history of the league. i.e the 49ers coaches under Walsh the Packers coaches under Holmgren, the Patriots coaches under Belichek, etc... Maybe just offensive, defensive, and special teams coordinators, oline/dline coach, skill coach (WR, RB, TE, QB), backfield coach (CB, S, LB). I know it would be kind of tedious to hire QB, RB, TE, WR, OL, DL, LB, DB coaches each year but maybe some kind of a compromise on this. This was the one part of EA's NFL Coach game that I liked. Maybe even having one assistant offensive coordinator and one assistant defensive cooridantor could be an option that would be a compromise.

[cappyboy]

Sure would solve the problem of the diminishing quality of coaches in out years that Total Pro had and give new life to those 17 year veteran 1.0 skill guys. You might not want them on your roster in uniform but maybe you could hire them as position guys to grow the next crop of coaches. Maybe have a pool of the recently retired players to draw from as well. And you know, I don't get why everyone's thinking the positional level coaches would all turn over on a yearly basis if they were included. Having to replace guys who got hired away at higher levels of the coaching ladder or fired for poor performance maybe. But not even teams as perpetually bad as the Cardinals and Lions do wholesale positional coaching changes year in and year out. Positional coaches aren't a necessity to be sure. We could have a game that rocks the socks without them. But being able to grow coaches into co-ordinators as well as players into superstars could be fun if properly handled.

[ConStar]

I'm not sure of the value it has in the pro game -- although personally, more is always better than less and I would like the option to handpick every assistant -- but it is CRITICAL for the next version of the college game. Reason? Recruiting. In real-life college football, you have coaches on your staff that are geniuses on the field but cold fishes on the recruiting trail, and then you have guys that could sell air conditioners to Eskimos but who can't coach a lick. It would also be nice to have this option so you could develop future coordinators. One of my least favorite options in the college game is when a coordinator leaves and the game automatically promotes someone. If you don't agree with the promotion, you have to fire the guy before you can hire a replacement.

[cappyboy]

[QUOTE=ConStar;411742] It would also be nice to have this option so you could develop future coordinators. One of my least favorite options in the college game is when a coordinator leaves and the game automatically promotes someone. If you don't agree with the promotion, you have to fire the guy before you can hire a replacement.[/QUOTE] Very much agreed. The automatic promotion thing is a Total Pro anachronism. I can understand folks feeling that hiring every last position coach might be a bit too much micromanagement. But surely there could be some balance between no position guys and folks who might want to develop their future co-ordinators