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1953-54
NOTES
A clerical note: I operate the pace of the season in three stages. The OOC until January is very up-tempo, then the game slows down during the conference season, then we slow it down way more during the tournament period, because I find this gives bad teams a chance at being competitive and creates the potential for more upsets. I'm able to control this by changing the "Time" modifier in the FBCB.ini file. I started doing this ages ago, because I felt like the game doesn't generate high enough scoring using the defaults and spending years IRL playing fantasy college basketball, I got a sampling of what the stats looked like and the game didn't really fit what I thought the modern game was looking like.
The other thing I did was change the height modifiers, so it's possible to get bigger guys playing guard positions because Ben Simmons wouldn't have been generated in the stock version of the game. So it's possible in my universe if you're paying attention to play more "position less" basketball. I haven't tested it with a team myself as a coach yet, but I suspect given where we are in the calendar, it's something I'll attempt down the road.
The last under the hood thing worth noting is that I will relocate recruits to create more geographic balance. The game by default generates too many players in some states and barely any other in others. Obviously the big states like California and Texas have a glut of players, but at least the South has enough schools to bring those guys to college, whereas the west didn't until I added more programs. Even with that, even states like Massachusetts and other other Northeast states just don't have their same share of talent relative to the number of schools located there.
The game should do a better job of distributing those players, but since those schools typically are lower prestige, they're not able to compete for guys who'd otherwise be at their level meaning that a lot of guys who are good enough for scholarships end up as walk-ons, especially in my universe where I've already increased the default/recruit talent levels (which is why you see so many 5/4 star recruits being signed to even minor programs) because it's a way to simulate things like Loyola Chicago being able to make a Final Four or Gonzaga getting elite recruits to go there, because if you essentially make it like real life -- where a 5-star rating isn't necessarily a guarantee that a player is going to be good, just a guideline -- it means you have to scout but it also means that there's a bit of randomness and luck to it all just like real life. (I think a lot of people play in online leagues expecting this kind of certainty, but in this line of thinking, Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry would've been Hall of Famers, and Mike Piazza would've sold insurance. Text sims are just not especially good out of the box at generating these kinds of random outcomes without a lot of tinkering. Luckily, I've spent a lot of time over the years trying to find a sweet spot that appeals to my sensibilities.)
If I had injuries on like I did before, it'd increase the level of randomness even more and eventually I will turn it on again, but for now, I'd just like to see what guys can do with 4 years in school and without having to worry about them getting hurt.
I'm thinking the next iteration of this experiment is to flood a particular city/market with lots more local talent -- in-game you just don't have big city players proliferating like you would IRL -- to see if you could assemble a team of relatively local talent in a major market and then seeing if how far you can take a program like that. Right now, we're futzing with Chi State/DePaul, but in the future, it could be cool to see if you could take over a program like New Orleans or CCNY or whatever, flood the local city with more talent (from game-generated players..I usually just repatriate foreign players since they're ready made and just change their names) and see if you can create a legacy of talent by doing this.
You kind of have to be more hands-on here, because the AI just isn't very good at finding these players *at all* and will always opt to recruit elsewhere first, plus you can only change the name/locations of players after the game generates them in June or something, meaning teams will fill their call lists before you can relocate anybody which is problematic. Still, it's an effective strategy for getting international guys who will get zero interest or very few feelers into highly coveted recruits because you've gotten them out of international distance purgatory and its cheaper to try to woo them no matter where in the states you stick them -- even Alaska or Hawaii, tbh
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