GAMEPLAN            

CHANGES IN THE ADVANCED GAME

VERSION 2.15

The advanced game was hardly changed in the big version 2.15 update. There were a number of changes that were on the drawing board at the start, but these got edged aside by the range and depth of the changes in the basic game. I think it's probably time to put this right and work out what improvements we'd like to make.

We have a lot of experience with the advanced game now. We know a lot more about what we're doing than we did when the game was first put together. We should be able to refine the design. We can throw out some stuff we know we don't really need. We could add stuff that we know would be interesting and more realistic.

INITIAL GAMEPLAN

One thing that did change in version 2.15 was the basic gameplan, but the "initial gameplan" in the advanced game (which previously matched what was in the basic gameplan) didn't get updated. But then I've never thought it was appropriate that it should. When someone starts in the advanced game they should have something that shows off what the advanced game does. Not something they could already do in the basic game.

Also, when you arrive in a league in the advanced game you usually take over the gampelan left by the previous coach, which means you have to hack through it and work out what the guy was trying to do, and how he was trying to do it, and then make your changes on top of that. Which isn't a user friendly way of going about it.

So one of the first things we coould to do in the advanced game is build a new "initial gameplan" and a blurb to explain what it's doing and how. I think this is a job for experienced coaches, with the help in the way of feedback from some new ones. Show off some of the features, without doing anything too clever, too complicated, or too contentious. Any volunteers?

TIME AND SCORE

At present an advanced situation is defined by (1) the down, (2) the yards for the down, (3) the field position, (4) the score and (5) the time. The time and score values appear only in a few combinations. We could chop these columns out, and replace them with a range of named combinations (look at the definitions for the fourth down options to see the sort of thing I mean). It's simpler, neater and cheaper to run (less stuff to fill in) and it would actually be more flexible (because the range of named combinations could include things other than the time and score - see the next section).

Having started on this idea, I'm inclined to wonder whether carrying it through we might find we end up with the basic and advanced games actually moving closer together. If the down, yardage and field position also appear in combinations the same way as the time and score, and can be replaced by named combinations, then the order of situations is also liable to be standardised and the difference between the versions is only the length of the gameplan and the amount of detail.

At one point there was a proposal for an intermediate version that used the system for the advanced game, but where everyone had the same gameplan (like the basic game) and just filled in the play calls. You could have a much better gameplan that way, and it could be improved quite often, but you wouldn't have the big swings of results and it wouldn't take so much effort to get started.

REACTING TO STATS

Real life coaches with real life gameplans look at the stats their team is producing and adjust their gameplans accordingly. And they do react according to what they see the opposition doing. Coaches don't call play action unless they've first established the run, or seen that the opposition is playing the run, for example. In Gameplan we've got reactions. The balance of your play calls within each situation changes according to what works and what doesn't. But that only works within a given situation. We originally had a mechanism for spreading reactions from one situation into another, but it wasn't much used. Today, it might be.

An alternative would be to work out a set of conditions for which stats to react to, and write them into the situation definitions. So you could bring in a different first down situation in the third quarter according to how many running yards you achieved in the first half, for example.

At present you can only react to the score, and guess what events led you to the position you're in. You might be able to run all over someone, but their pass rush is killing your passing game. You could be losing on turnovers, so that although the correct strategy is to run hard and pass short, but the most likely reason for you losing is that your running game is failing... so your current gameplan will probably change to a longer passing game, and you get killed even worse. It's an example that probably comes up quite often. This limitation also leads people to use more extreme tactics in order to get a clearer idea of where they stand, and it's a major reason why games aren't closer more often. A lot of the time you guess wrong as to how you got into a bad situation, and that makes it more difficult to get out.

A GAME OF TWO HALVES

Real life coaches can do things that are much more radical. The simplest approach to gametime adjustments would probably be too brutal. But we should think about it anyway. At present you write a gameplan, and then we play the game. How about if we stopped at half time, so you could look at your gameplan and change it?

At first sight this is going to cost twice as much per game (the same amount per turn). But not necessarily. We could get around it by having two gameplans per team (one for the first half and one for the second) and then playing two games at a time (overlapping, so that for a given turn you play the second half of one game and the first half of the next).

This is probably an idea only for the jumbo version. It's actually pinched from the outline of the first class version of Run Chase (the variations in situations in the second innings of a game of cricket are so wide there seems no realistic way of writing a single gameplan that would cope).

OPENING SCRIPTS

A lot of real life coaches script a series of plays at the start of the game. They don't react to what the opponent is doing and they're usually not trying use one play call to set up something else (they way they do most of the rest of the time). The usual idea appears to be to test out how the opposition will react to a variety of things, and to test the matchups of personnel to see what might to work and what probably won't.

This also makes sense for us if the results of the scripted plays can be used to change the subsequent play calling. The simplest way to do this would probably be to modify the reactions on calls in the rest of the gameplan according to what happened in the scripted part (so that other situations react as if the scripted calls were in the same situation). Which would work in the basic game as well as in the advanced. On the other hand if an advanced gameplan can react to stats then running a script at the start of the game, so that you know exactly what's being called and when, means you know what you're reacting to.

DEFENCE FORMATIONS

We've had defence formations in the advanced game before, on an experimental basis. But they were a lot of extra work (making the game more expensive to run), and they really demanded some follow-up to add some more things (see the next few sections) that weren't available at the time.

There are three obvious ways to use defence formations, that are distinct from the current rule of the same name, which is actually about base formations. One is to add a formation box with every play call box. So instead of calling MD RD PD you might call MD 434, RD 434, PD 335. Time consuming and expensive!

The next is the most obvious, to call a formation in each situation, the same as on offence, so that on long yardage, say, you call 335 and if you want to call a run defence then it's going to be weaker because you've brought the wrong players.

The third option is smarter and simpler, and might even be usable in the basic game, with each defence "customised" by the defence formation. In this case all your PD calls would use 335 (say) and all your ZD and WC calls might use 326.

The third case looks the best to me. The formation you show really restricts the range of defences that might be called, because it can only be one that uses that formation. You daren't use stipid ones, but if you call WC from 623 then you don't get to call WC any other way. The range of defence calls you might use is going to be wider, because you'll want to use different but similar defences to allow you to vary your formations. Having the formation chosen for the situation doesn't really tell anyone anything, except what situation it is (and that's something you already know).

AUDIBLES

Once we add defence formations to the game, and make them meaningful indicators of what the defence is going to do (or is able to do) then we can have audibles as well, and that opens up several types of offensive scheme that it's not actually possible to run in the existing versions of the game. We can have offences that change the play call before the snap, according to what the defence is showing.

MOTION

As soon as we're introducing audibles we can add motion on offence. The main benefit of motion seems to be to deduce the type of coverage or to shift potential blockers or receivers around the formation. But there's no point trying to work out what the coverage is unless you can do something different according to what you see. So motion is only relevant if you've got audibles.

NO HUDDLE

Defensive formations also allow us to add no-huddle offences, because the main point is to prevent the defence from making situational substitutions, forcing defences to adapt to "wrong" formations and personnel, provided the offence can write a gameplan to exploit the advantage (if their is one). Which isn't going to happen in the basic game, I think.