Penalties!

[MrDNA]

My team keeps getting hit with stupid pentalties in the worst situations and I'm not sure why. Is it a function of one of my coaches' attributes? Team chemistry? Anyone know?

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Coach's discipline rating for sure. Some also think cohesion plays a role. Then there's a random element.

[GMO]

My Head coach had G or VG in discipline and my team still gets much more than the average number of penalties so something else probably affects it.

[dj_morton]

intelligence maybe?

[GMO]

My team regularly gets more than a 100 yds in penalties per game. The last game it got 17 penalties for 150 yds. And the penalties occur at the worst times. About 40% of my touchdowns are called back because of penalties in every game.
It almost looks like it's fixed.
The team has excellent to very good cohesion.
There seems no way to stop the penalties.
It spoils the game.

It's only my team and one other team that seems to get clobbered by penalties.

[TimL]

Originally Posted by GMO

My team regularly gets more than a 100 yds in penalties per game. The last game it got 17 penalties for 150 yds. And the penalties occur at the worst times. About 40% of my touchdowns are called back because of penalties in every game.
It almost looks like it's fixed.
The team has excellent to very good cohesion.
There seems no way to stop the penalties.
It spoils the game.

It's only my team and one other team that seems to get clobbered by penalties.

It's the dumbass ones that I hate. Too many men on the field, Unsportsmanlike conduct. Delay of game (when we have a time out left) Urgh!

[MrDNA]

Originally Posted by GMO

My team regularly gets more than a 100 yds in penalties per game. The last game it got 17 penalties for 150 yds. And the penalties occur at the worst times. About 40% of my touchdowns are called back because of penalties in every game.
It almost looks like it's fixed.
The team has excellent to very good cohesion.
There seems no way to stop the penalties.
It spoils the game.

It's only my team and one other team that seems to get clobbered by penalties.

How's your coach's discipline? I checked mine and he's only "average." I always thought that it refered to team discipline (like what the Bengals lack). Anywho, my coach's contract is up and I'm thinking of going with a guy who has Excellent discipline and seeing if I notice the diffence (although the guy with poor discipline just won be a championship...)

[GMO]

My coach's discipline is Good. The one I had before was Excellent. It doesn't seem to make a major difference.
With the Excellent-in-discipline coach I had 152 penalties for 1224 yards, the worst in the league.
With the 'Good' coach I'm still the worst in the league (157 penalties for 1278 yards).

[marcmoustache]

it's likely that there's an "undermatched" element to it, e.g. your on offense and the D is blitzing and your O line is undermatched, then you will probably see holding calls.

Stuff like that.

[Carman Bulldog]

How are the affinities and conflicts? Any red flags? Perhaps this is somehow affecting it.

[GMO]

New Jersey has the lowest number of penalties and their Head Coach is average for discipline.

There are no conflicts and no red flags.

I have a good Offensive line. By the Roster Strength screen my starter Gs are 7th best in the league, my Ts 1st and Cs 10th.

[MrDNA]

Seems like there is a very random (or perhaps unknown to us) element in the penalties. Preliminary indications with my new guy (I actually went with a Very Good discipline guy) are that the team is still commiting a heaping helping of mistakes.

[GMO]

From Ethan Potter of Solecismic "It takes years to reduce a team's propensity for penalties. The only factor that matters is the head coach's discipline rating."

[DolphinFan1]

Originally Posted by GMO

From Ethan Potter of Solecismic "It takes years to reduce a team's propensity for penalties. The only factor that matters is the head coach's discipline rating."

"Years", Oh boy, is my team in trouble.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Originally Posted by GMO

From Ethan Potter of Solecismic "It takes years to reduce a team's propensity for penalties. The only factor that matters is the head coach's discipline rating."

You learn something new in this game everyday.

[beargrowlz]

I imagine number of plays run also impacts this. If your team controls the ball for 35 minutes and runs 70 plays and the other team 25 minutes and runs 40 plays, just sheer percentages say you're going to have a lot more penalties.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by GMO

From Ethan Potter of Solecismic "It takes years to reduce a team's propensity for penalties. The only factor that matters is the head coach's discipline rating."

Riddle me this, Batman (directed more at "Ethan Potter" than GMO here). Why in the bloody hell is my IHOF team so plagued by penalties, despite having an HC that has been there for 8 years and is Excellent in discipline??

http://www.fof-ihof.com/season/teaml...ar=2013&stat=6

[Subby]

Small sample size?

KIDDING

[QuikSand]

I wonder if a league that transitioned from FOF 2q004 to FOF 2007 might have somehow had this notion of coach longetivity reset, either by design or by accident?

Small sample size caveats in play of course, but that would be one theory, at least, if there really is something to this. If every team is essentially being penalized by having a "brand new coach" then that might explain a global increase in penalties, and perhaps a lack of differentiation between teams who supposedly have the means in place to prevent them. *shurg*

[MrIllini]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

Riddle me this, Batman (directed more at "Ethan Potter" than GMO here). Why in the bloody hell is my IHOF team so plagued by penalties, despite having an HC that has been there for 8 years and is Excellent in discipline??

http://www.fof-ihof.com/season/teaml...ar=2013&stat=6

it's probably operator error

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

I wonder if a league that transitioned from FOF 2q004 to FOF 2007 might have somehow had this notion of coach longetivity reset, either by design or by accident?

Small sample size caveats in play of course, but that would be one theory, at least, if there really is something to this. If every team is essentially being penalized by having a "brand new coach" then that might explain a global increase in penalties, and perhaps a lack of differentiation between teams who supposedly have the means in place to prevent them. *shurg*

I can buy that, and I think it's probable that coach longevity didn't carry over (even then...coach longevity? who knew?).

Now, I'd like an explaination on 2012...

http://www.fof-ihof.com/season/teaml...ar=2012&stat=6

Or 2010...(2011 we were only 10th, whee!)

http://www.fof-ihof.com/season/teaml...ar=2012&stat=6

Um, or 2008.

http://www.fof-ihof.com/season/teaml...ar=2008&stat=6

(btw, what the heck do the refs have against Fort Worth??)

[QuikSand]

Bumping... I think the consensus among those at IHOF (a pretty longstanding league that transitioned from 2004 to 2007) that penalties are indeed way up.


I think my own degree of frustration with penalties is heightened because of watching Solevision -- actually watching a long offensive gain get called back due to a penalty adds a lot to the experience. So, I don't know whether this issue is perhaps being expanded by that effect. But I know that I'm getting awfully used to seeing penalties have a major impact on the outcome or character of a game.


Is this just a lost cause? Nothing we can do about it?

[Solecismic]

I don't understand why anyone would think a problem report is a lost cause with Solecismic Software. My record in addressing bugs in the game should speak for itself.

I don't know what happened in this case - I obviously copied down the penalty totals over the last couple of years in the NFL incorrectly. Rechecking that work a couple of weeks ago, I found the game is awarding 27-32% too many penalties. This will be fixed along with everything else reported. No time estimate on 6.0e completion, but I am actively working on it.

There is no code in the game tying penalties to key plays. The only adjustments made are penalties that make no sense, like Intentional Grounding called on a completed pass.

[Kodos]

Glad to hear it. Thanks Jim!

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Is this just a lost cause? Nothing we can do about it?

Originally Posted by Solecismic

I don't understand why anyone would think a problem report is a lost cause with Solecismic Software.

By this, in the present tense, I was just asking the FOF-playing community (the people who regularly participate in these threads) if anyone had found anything that helps in this regard. I'm genuinely frustrated, right now, in IHOF... and am wondering if there is *anything* that I can do about it with my team there and in other similarly situated leagues.

By "lost cause" I really just meant "nothing we can do until there might be a patch to address it." Sorry that you took it to mean something so much more insidious.


But glad that this is indeed on your list to address. I honestly do think it's one of those things that we'd at least like the sense that we can control it in some fashion -- whether it's a larger allocation of camp time toward team-building stuff, coach discipline, or whatever. And if that's beyond the scope of a patch, it's not the end of the world... but in general I suspect text sim players are control freaks, by and large, and at least would like the *chance* to manage this problem like any other.

[Subby]

w00t!

[Sgran]

Yesterday i got a delay of game called on me while my team was in the hurry-up. Not a regular pattern, but you might want to look at the hurry-up in general

[SFL Cat]

^^^Not something you commonly see, but it does happen every now and then.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

(btw, what the heck do the refs have against Fort Worth??)

WORD.

[Cotton]

Intelligent linemen and disciplined coaching seem to make a slight difference for me. But I haven't really taken an in-depth look at it.

[cuervo72]

Has anyone figured out a plan on minimizing penalties yet, or at least gotten any insight on what factors into the number of penalties a team might generate? Because my guys are at it again.

When last we left IHOF's FRM, they were leading the league in penalties for 2013. They finished first, with 159 penalties.

Since then, 2014 has come and gone. FRM once again led the league, with 131 penalties for 992 yards (both tops).

We had our first game of the 2015 season today. 11 penalties, 85 yards (both equaled by Telluride). Now, this isn't really unexpected - the results are consistent. But I can't figure out why this is.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by P. Luxx

Intelligent linemen and disciplined coaching seem to make a slight difference for me. But I haven't really taken an in-depth look at it.

I can buy this, and had wondered it. The C on FRM (11th year guy) has a *5* for intelligence. The RG, a 30. Tough to isolate though w/o penalty assignments.

[cuervo72]

Bump. Because my team is still being plagued by penalties, and I still don't have any inkling how to avoid this. Quoting myself from a results thread at IHOF:

Originally Posted by cuervo72

I was just speaking specifically to the "things aren't going your way so cheat" idea, if that was missed by any - if that was the case THAT early, yeah we'd be in trouble!

In this case, I was going for the sheer number, listing them for effect. The timing in this game was particularly bad, and we weren't able to step around them like we may have in other games. But the "Frederick leads the league despite" part is where I'm annoyed too. Because it's not just this year. It's darned near *every* year.

2015: 94, 1st (2. AAR, 88 )
2014: 131, 1st (2. MUS, 125)
2013: 159, 1st (2. AAR, 156)
2012: 119, 2nd (1. FTW, 120)
2011: 102, 12th (Wha? 1. FTW, 119)
2010: 124, 1st (2. FTW, 117)
2009: 96, 17th (1. WIL/TEL, 111)
2008: 130, 2nd (1. FTW, 137)
2007: 116, 2nd (1. MIN, 125)
2006: 116, 8th (1. TEL/AAR, 129)
2005: 123, T1st (T1. MIN, 123)
2004: 92, 22nd (1. BKN, 141)

Ok, so we have 5 1sts, 3 2nds, an 8th, a 12th, a 17th and a 22nd. But finishing at the top of the penalty list is a rule rather than an exception. Why? This seems to be a large enough sample to not be random (and some other teams - AAR and FTW notably - have had similar problem stretches). I'd just like to know what I'm doing or not doing. It can't be coaching or tenure, unless it works upside-down. So what then?

(maybe I should ask jkat)

Now, the owner of FTW noted that he is usually plagued by penalties (he indeed is), and he has a coach that is VG in discipline and has been with the team for 10 seasons. AAR is also often near the top of the league, and has an EX coach that has been there for 12 seasons. It would seem to me that in these cases these teams would be some of the least penalized, not the most.

-------------

Dutch's quote was part of a RL justification that as teams are getting beaten, they may need to resort to cheating to get an edge/get back into the game (my concerns started again after we lost a game 24-9 in which we had 15 penalties for 129 yards). I later countered that our team was called for holding on the first two plays from scrimmage, the first negating a 42 yard gain (RL situation vs simulation randomness).

-------------

As regards cohesion, which was postulated at one point (but not mentioned by Solecismic support): FRM has cohesion ratings of 97/100/78/90.

-------------


Any further thoughts on this topic?

[QuikSand]

cuervo, do you know what NFL team your IHOF team is coded onto? I wonder if there might be some sort of hard-coded setup residual issue there... like Fort Worth might be the Raiders, and you might be... uhhh... I dunno... the Eagles? Just a thought... not based on anything of substance.

[cuervo72]

Well, we are the Eagles. I wasn't aware they were prone to penalization though. This is probably something we could check against GEFL easily (and any number of leagues, really...but as a "VPI" league, easier here).

1987 - 9 (25-27th, through 2)
1986 - 82 (30th)
1985 - 92 (27th)
1984 - 89 (24th)
1983 - 82 (27th)
1982 - 81 (30th)
1981 - 78 (29th)
1980 - 85 (28th)

Doesn't seem to be baked in to team id. In fact, there seems to be something there that is contributing to PHI being consistently among the least penalized. Not being in the league, there isn't an easy way for me to examine their coach.

[RedKingGold]

I do.

[RedKingGold]

Looking at penalties and coaches over the past few years, I noticed that teams with lower penalties had good or better ratings in motivation and discipline and cohesion.

Thus, my theory? Penalties come from a combination of a head coaches motivation and discipline rating combined with a team's cohesion. Also, perhaps each player's intelligence rating factors in?

Of course, it would be nice if some hint about this was made public. If an OL continues to cause a false start or has a tendency to hold if beaten, we see it?

[cuervo72]

Well, the FRM coach is EX with motivation too, and as I said above, our cohesion is pretty good (always has been).

I would very much like to know which players are being flagged, if it is broken down to that level. And I conceptually like that it could be due to intelligence, or for holding a poor pass block rating, or for interference a poor coverage/diagnosis rating...but we just don't know that.

I can see if I can use interrogator outputs to put together team aggregates for intelligence and see if that correlates to team penalties, though that might not be useful if its based on who is actually in the game (I suppose with game output you could find the number of plays each player logged and weigh that somehow...).

[Narcizo]

Or instead of getting the players to jump through hoops to try and figure out the reasons someone in the know could actually come out and say whether player intelligence is figured in this (the reply from Sole suggests it isn't) and explain why some teams who have had a high motivation coach for a long time are still plagued by penalties. This reminds of the RB endurance bug when a whole heap of effort was put in by a lot of people to find out the reason for the number of carries a running back could make only to find out that it was all a bug all along. It's all very well saying that some things should be in a black box (what red flags actually do etc etc) but for people to be happy about that they have to have faith that it's not just a bug causing a problem they might be having. When we're not presented with enough information that someone in real life would have access to (like which player is the cause of a penalty for example) then it means that people are just going to throw up their hands about trying to figure stuff out and just do things on faith, which is not really what a sim should be about. If anything a sim should be providing you with more information about abstract things to counterbalance the fact that you can't actually see what's happening, and can't see how players are interacting, performing etc etc.

I used to think that calling long passing plays makes you susceptible to offensive holding but that was in FOF2004 and I don't really call long passing plays anymore and still seem to figure high up on the list of penalties.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by RedKingGold

Thus, my theory? Penalties come from a combination of a head coaches motivation and discipline rating combined with a team's cohesion. Also, perhaps each player's intelligence rating factors in?

Of course, it would be nice if some hint about this was made public. If an OL continues to cause a false start or has a tendency to hold if beaten, we see it?

Well, if we trust the source, there has been at least a hint made public... in this very thread, even...

Originally Posted by GMO

From Ethan Potter of Solecismic "It takes years to reduce a team's propensity for penalties. The only factor that matters is the head coach's discipline rating."

I guess that's open to interpretation... whether that means that the only factor *for coaches* is the discipline rating, or the only factor *period* is the coach's discipline rating. But that does seem to rule out, pretty clearly, that the motivation rating is important here, at least.

*shurg*

[RedKingGold]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Well, if we trust the source, there has been at least a hint made public... in this very thread, even...

Yeah, I posted before I actually read this thread. [smacks head]

[cuervo72]

Ok...I'm trying to find a link between intelligence and penalties, and here's my methodology. Maybe it's flawed, but here goes.

My first step is to use the FOFL data from the past three seasons (those in 2k7) to arrive at a "team intelligence" of sorts. Interrogator extracts pass, run, and special teams plays, so we're going to dig those up with the following:

$sql = "SELECT pg.player, p1.intelligence, sum(passplays) + sum(runplays) + sum(st_plays) as totalplays, pg.team FROM `fofl_gs_playergame` pg, fofl_gs_player1recs p1 WHERE pg.team = $team AND year = $year and p1.player = pg.player group by pg.player";

We're running nested "for" loops on team (0 - 31) and year (2014 - 2016) to grab data for each team year (maybe there is a more concise sql approach that can be taken, but looping through in php is quick enough for me). The results of this can be found here (and let's hope linking doesn't blow up the FOxL db):

http://www.thefofl.com/league/teamintel.php

So we have year and team id which are self-explanitory, "player plays" which is the sums of the pass, run, and st plays for each player on the entire team. "Team Plays" is this sum divided by eleven (theory being for any given play eleven guys see the field - which may or may not be true!). Intellisum is each player's total plays multiplied by his intelligence, summed for the entire team. "IPP" or Intelligence Per Play is Intellisum/Team Plays - a rough idea of the total intelligence on the field for an average play for a team.

Now, the thought is that the higher the IPP for a team, the lower the instances of penalties. I joined this data with penalty data taken from the game in this excel file:

http://www.thefobl.com/users/cuervo/...lty%20Data.xls

...and I'm not sure that there is any correlation. So at least on a team basis, it doesn't appear that player intelligence plays much of a role, at least not that I can find with my approach.

[cuervo72]

Bump. Considering a penalty dynasty thread at this point.

From our latest IHOF game:

3-9-ORL33 (3Q: 04:01) Ted Wolf pass was dropped by WR Glen Dodge. The defense looked very familiar with that play. The quarterback threw into double coverage. PENALTY: Frederick was called for Defensive Holding.

3-10-ORL43 (4Q: 14:09) Ted Wolf pass fell incomplete, intended for TE Norman
McClover. OLB Bobby Abreu defended the pass. The defense looked very familiar with that play. The quarterback threw away from the double coverage. PENALTY: Frederick was called for Unnecessary Roughness.

3-5-ORL46 (4Q: 05:46) Ted Wolf pass fell incomplete, intended for RB Nick Marchetti. DE Reggie Hardy hurried the quarterback into a bad throw. The defense looked extremely familiar with that play. The quarterback threw
away from the double coverage. PENALTY: Frederick was called for an Intentional Face Mask.


Three drives extended on penalties, two of them that are nothing but a lack of discipline. For the game, 11 penalties, 90 yards.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

Now, the thought is that the higher the IPP for a team, the lower the instances of penalties. I joined this data with penalty data taken from the game in this excel file:

http://www.thefobl.com/users/cuervo/...lty%20Data.xls

...and I'm not sure that there is any correlation. So at least on a team basis, it doesn't appear that player intelligence plays much of a role, at least not that I can find with my approach.

Ok...I've updated the above link to include a couple of charts that attempt to find any relation between coach ability and the ordinal ranking of penalties (yes this is crude, but it was a quick way of accounting for differences in the number of penalties from year to year - or version to version). In the one chart, I just assign values for coach ratings, where EX = 10, VG = 8, G = 6, etc. In the second, all I do is add these values to tenure. I didn't set an intercept or anything and really I wouldn't mind having the ordinal penalty rank flipped...I'm rusty with both my chart theory and excel. And some points overlap (in each of the three years, the least penalized team had an average coach - three points in the same place). But what I have so far seems to indicate that things may be flipped - the better the coach, the GREATER the penalties. I welcome others to work with the data, or add to it.

[cuervo72]

12 for 91, w00t!

[RedKingGold]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

12 for 91, w00t!

Don't worry, Ann Arbor won't rest until we're first in the league in penalties!

Actually, we're only behind you in the overall tally by 6 penalties (FRE has 133 penalties to AAR's 127) and is actually in the lead by overall penalty yards (a whopping 1014 penalties yards given up this season).

Oh, by the way? Ann Arbor has had the same head coach for 12 years and has an "Excellent" rating in Discipline.

Sorry, but this is broken.

[Hoya1]

I'm glad I came across this thread. This has been a huge issue for one of my MP teams, causing major problems with my winning %. We finished the season 5-11 despite being in the top 5 offensive yardage and top 8 defensive yardage. My HC is only rated G discipline and my cohesion is vg-e across the board.
Penalties just killed my team, and was very frustrating. It's hard to cope with this because there's nothing that you can tweek or change to affect it. grrrrr.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by RedKingGold

Sorry, but this is broken.

This is the conclusion I'm coming to - I just have no other explanation for it.

[timmynausea]

Yikes. I don't know if I should be glad to hear that this is happening to others as well or just sick about it. My coach has the second longest tenure of anyone in the CFL (currently in his 9th year with us) along with being excellent in discipline, but we've routinely been among the worst 2 or 3 in penalty yards. Even worse, our 11 penalty 69 yard performance in the CFL Bowl last year arguably cost us a very tight game.

[QuikSand]

In the WOOF league, I decided I was sick of penalties...so I dumped my head coach and went out to get a new one with a sucky discipline rating. I suspect we will be a well-oiled machine in the coming season.