I finished up the draft this morning. Once we got past round 4, I found that I was running out of interesting per-player observations and just needed to power through the picks. I’ll post the full draft results pretty soon….
I did have some observations that I want to get down before I forget. It was an interesting exercise, going through each player and team with focus and attention. You kind of lose perspective when all you’re doing is hammering out code every day. It was fun to look at everything as a game again.
Observations:
- The teams that were focused on specialists were easy to draft for in the first 4-5 rounds. It makes intuitive sense to look at top-end talent in single categories. The balance focused teams were a lot harder in those rounds. It was hard to find the right balance between high-end talent and picking players who could fill multiple roles.
- After around the 5th round, it flipped. The specialist teams got harder to draft for, and the balance teams got easier. The specialist teams had a TON of holes that needed to be filled with mediocre talent, and they had fewer roster spots to fill them with. By round 5, the balanced teams usually had 10-12 depth chart needs filled with 5 players. That allowed them to use the remaining 7 picks on any position they wanted. This flexibility made for some real value picks later on.
- I had no real strategy for the Greens, other than picking interesting players. I ended up falling into old patterns of looking for the best player ratings, without regard for flexibility. I ended up paying for that later in the draft when I was picking poor talent just to fill depth chart needs.
- 12 roster spots feels about right. For this draft, we could have gone down to 11 or 10 spots. Once injuries make it into the game, I think 12 will be the right number.
- I’ll need to play with it more to be sure, but my early impressions of decision making is exactly what I want from the game. That tension between talent and flexibility, applied to limited roster spots, creates the difficult decisions I’m looking for. That was kind of fun.
- I didn’t put much emphasis on kickers because I don’t really have a lot of kicker/punter skill implemented in the engine. I’m going to develop that as we go, and experiment with the different teams.
- Something in the back of my mind was special teams. (not the KR, the actual special teamers) The Purples were the only team that picked guys specifically for special teams. I’m curious how big of an impact that’s going to make. Based on my previous testing, it could end up being a huge deal. It’s going to be fun to see what happens.
Right now I’m finishing up a few things, before we can kick this off.
- I have most of the stat recording implemented. I just need to make sure stats are being generated correctly.
- I need to create something to automatically update the computer depth charts. I don’t want to have to do that manually. I probably should figure out a way to save/load depth charts, too.
Other than that, everything is ready to go!