This update is almost all about recruiting, with several big features to talk about! If you want the short version, scroll down to the concise list of changes at the bottom of the announcement.
Bonus priorities in recruiting:
The first addition is bonus priorities in recruiting, which will add bonus points when targeting or pitching recruits. These are meant to be on the side from the regular main priorities, and some recruits will have all four as 'important', while others may only have one or two. They are:
- Program stability: recruits will give bonuses if your coach has high AD opinion, and will give a penalty if they think your coach is on the hot seat. There's also a bonus for first year coaches as they build a foundation.
- Coach pedigree: Some recruits like to play for coaches who have won big in the past. There will be a nice bonus for coaches who have won national championships and can flash those rings to the recruit, and smaller bonuses for conference championships.
- Team draft success: Some recruits, especially blue chip prospects, value how the school will prepare them for the pros. Teams now get bonus points when targeting recruits in a position that they've had success in the draft recently. For example, multiple 1st round WRs in the past few drafts will rightfully make WR recruits take notice.
- Coach connection: Some recruits out of high school now like it when a coach is from the same hometown as them, as they can relate to their situation. Also, transfers will give bonus points to coaches who they played for previously, just like in real life.
As mentioned, each of these bonus priorities can either be active or inactive for recruits. You can see which ones are, as well as details for each pursuing team, in this new dialog available from the priorities tab in recruiting.
https://i.imgur.com/t0HmJhA.png
Recruiting fog of war:
Two other features in recruiting that should help the realism and excitement of battles are new 'relative' interest scores, and 'estimated' battle points. Each can be turned on individually, and are meant to provide more of a "fog of war" during recruiting, so you don't exactly know the status of other teams in their pursuit.
The first is relative interest scores, which changes interest from a raw 0-100 value into a more nebulous "Very low" to "Very high" scale. This scale is also **relative** to other teams in the battle, unlike the previous absolute 0-100. This means that if you're a high prestige school with great attributes, a lot of 2-star recruits will have "very high" interest in you, compared to other mediocre schools pursuing them. And in reverse, if you're a low prestige school trying to go after a 5-star, that recruit will probably have "Very low" interest in your school, and "Medium" or "Med-high" interest with the other big names pursuing them. This system is a lot more realistic, and I encourage using this setting!
The second is a new "estimated" battle points setting, which makes it so you know only a range of points for other teams in the battle for a recruit. For example, you might see that you're ahead in a battle by 200 points, but the team behind you has a points range from 2700 - 3300, so you can't be exactly sure whether you're ahead or by how much. Each week, there is a chance for a smaller "true" point value range to be revealed for other teams, which can help you narrow down where the competitors are and adjust your strategy if needed. If this setting is enabled, the NIL deal size and previous action points of competing teams will also be estimated.
One note about estimation: for each team & recruit pair, the estimated value vs true value is random, but it will
always be different in the same direction and rough magnitude. For example, a CPU team pursuing QB John Doe may have a true point value of 2750, but show 2500 as their estimated score, with a range from 2200 - 2800. This means that their true point value is on the
high end of the estimate range. If we advance several weeks into the battle and now see that their estimate is 4500, with a range of 4000 - 5000, that true point value will
also be on the high end. This knowledge can help you narrow down where the true values are, given those random reveal weeks mentioned above.
https://i.imgur.com/ZPMIJ0v.png
Recruiting penalties and rubberbanding:
Two more smaller mechanics that have been added are penalties and rubberbanding for recruiting battles. Now, a penalty will be applied to a team's recruitment of a player if they have offered a player but have not targeted them that week; the recruit feels ignored and will subtract points. Secondly, if a team is very far behind in a recruiting battle, they will receive a boost of up to 2.5x to their target and pitch points, to allow them to catch up if they join late for a recruit that does have very high interest. This feature can be disabled if desired.
Signing ceremonies:
This is a smaller feature meant to provide some excitement when players actually commit to your team, both during the season and in the offseason during Signing Day. Now, the winner of the recruiting battle isn't immediately shown, with an opportunity to do a quick "signing ceremony" instead. This even shows some crystal ball predictions from (fake) journalists, which sometimes have good intel, and sometimes not.
https://i.imgur.com/9Gd62Nf.png
New recruiting UI, including a spreadsheet view for "All Recruits":
I've also done a lot of work in the recruiting UI, changing various things in the recruit priorities table, the "My targets" actions header, and more, with the goal of improving the look and also providing slightly better spacing on smaller screens. Perhaps the best addition is the new "spreadsheet view" that was added in the "All Recruits" tab, which lets you do way more advanced sorting and filtering and find those diamonds in the rough to target.
https://i.imgur.com/huLBhnK.png
Better auto-recruit:
Lastly on the recruiting changes, I've improved the auto-recruit logic and added several options, so now you can control exactly what is and isn't allowed by the auto-recruit. For example, you can now let it assign scholarships and NIL, but not rearrange or change your targeted recruits. It's also smarter now when grabbing targets and assigning pitches, but still not as smart as a good player!
https://i.imgur.com/ptcH14g.png
Schedule and custom league improvements:
Finally, on the non-recruiting side, I made some big under-the-hood improvements to the schedule generation, to improve the Home/Away balance and FCS opponent distribution. Now, you should rarely if ever see teams with 8+ home (or 8+ away) games. And teams now should never play more than 1 FCS opponent per season.
Additionally, I've added support for 18 and 20 team conferences in custom league universe files. The 18 team conference must have 2 divisions of 9 teams, and the 20 team conference must have 5 divisions of 4 teams. They also must adhere to the rules about divisional rivalries. Since these conferences exist IRL I felt like they should be added, but their schedules aren't great; for example, schools in a 18 team conference will play 8 divisional games and only 1 cross divisional game. Maybe in the future I can think of ways to implement division-less conferences, but for now this will have to do.
See the full list of changes below.
New recruiting features:
- New bonus priority system, where teams earn bonus points for draft success, coach pedigree, program stability, and coach familiarity
- Fog of war options, so you can only see an estimate for other team points, and can show relative interest scores from "Low" to "Very High" instead of the raw value
- New "signing ceremony" UI so you can do a fun reveal for recruits when they commit, both during the season and on national signing day
- Enhanced auto-recruiting logic and configuration, so you can say what actions are allowed (offers, NIL, visits, etc)
- Recruiting "custom order" has been renamed to "priority order", and can be set even when auto-recruit is on
- Penalties for recruits who are offered by a team but not targeted
- Rubberbanding for recruiting battles, so teams very far behind will receive up to a 2.5x boost to their target/pitch action points (can be disabled)
- A new 'spreadsheet view' in the "All Recruits" tab, which lets you do more advanced sorting and filtering, and see all attributes in one big table
- Other UI changes, including a new priorities table, better 'actions remaining' section, and more
Other features:
- Add support for 18 and 20 team conferences
- Better FCS opponent distribution; now should be extremely rare for a team to play more than one FCS team in a season
- Better Home/Away game distribution; now should be extremely rare for a team to have 8+ home games (or 8+ away games) scheduled
Minor improvements:
- Better League Settings UI
- You can now change injury and recruiting settings during the 'Advance Year' stage
- Add button in "Game Settings" to open the local game files, as well as the save ID
- Add banner during Coach Updates stage when you can change coach preferred scheme to make it more obvious
- Change player personality icons to be unique
- Other minor UI and text changes
Bug fixes:
- Remove several bad zipcodes from the list of player/coach hometowns
- Prevent canceling draft retention promises in the transfer stage
- Don't play tagged RBs (fullback, 3rd down back, short yardage back) if they have severe injuries
- Clear user game plan on New Game to prevent old ones sticking around
Thanks for playing!
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