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1. To get started use the New Turnsheet link on the softsim website. Then you can make initial selections and input your gameplan.
2. Gameplans can be imported from existing advanced leagues. Email me and say which league and team (from and to).
3. The default format for reports is PDF. If you want the text format you need to ask for it.
4. Situation numbers in the advanced game are now 1-16 on offence and 25-40 on defence.
5. Situation numbers appear in the play-by-play listing when you play against warmup teams, same as in all previous versions.
6. During pre-season you can name your whole roster including the no-star players. See the entries for 6th & 9th April.

Turns can be bought the usual ways, either online using the softsim website (there's now a PayPal option) or by sending me a cheque payable to Software Simulations Ltd (address is Software Simulations, P.O. Box 2758, Yeovil, Somerset, BA20 2XH). The first batch of turns you buy I will credit two-for-one (ie. if you pay for ten you get twenty, if you pay for sixty you get a hundred and twenty... how many you go for is up to you).

Roster updates (for updated player names and shirt numbers) have been received and processed for the Bears, Bengals, Browns, Cardinals, Chargers, Cowboys, Eagles, Giants, Packers, Panthers, Ravens and Vikings.

Coaches whining about needing "compensation" when they have no players retiring will deserve what they get (ie. nothing).

Gameplan turns were done and sent yesterday (Thursday) as normal, NuGameplan was done this morning (Friday). NFLCB came out okayish, but there are a bunch of things to fix in NFLCA. Please don't waste time telling me about it until after I've had a chance to conduct an initial bug hunt as you'll just be telling me stuff I already know. Wait until later and tell me about the stuff I miss.

There's a re-do of the NFLCA reports with the playoff schedule filled in correctly, and that should mean you do get a scouting report (if you should have had a scouting report). The 4th quarter section in the re-done report will be blank as that used transitory game data. I haven't re-done the scout/report stats for the same reason - the player usage part is rubbish but I already put in some changes for next time. I cleaned up the draft planner a bit in the re-done reports but there's still more to do.

The analysis of player play skills didn't work at all (even though it does work in testing) so that's going to need some attention.

Lots of fiddling with reports and layouts this week. I've removed the report stats from the experimental page since they seem to be okay in the scouting report and had a go at cleaning up the scouting report. The newest section in the test page should show the formations and plays in your gameplan and which play calls have a play player skill and which don't - later we could use it to highlight which players are on the sidelines in each formation/play combination if we decide that's needed.

Mostly I've been working on things that aren't visible (now we process incoming emails, what the uncoached teams do, the internal formats of game reports and some extra stats keeping) so I haven't had much to tell you about.

I've connected up the player play skills in NFLCB but I'll hold them back in NFLCA until after the playoffs. It's maybe a bit early, since we haven't really seen the CO and CD actions working yet and they may need debugging, but it shouldn't be that critical at this stage of the season where most teams have over-trained on the plays they're actually using (and there's a few more turns before you kick into the playoffs).

In NFLCA we should have draftsheets appearing in game reports this week, but in the form of a "draft planner". We'll see how we need to change them and what information needs to be included as we go along. To start with I haven't changed anything except the name. Feedback will be needed if the draft planner is to be useful.

All turns went out on time this week. Two coaches missed the deadline by submitting orders late. Found a fixed a fault in the stats keeping for the fourth quarter status line and another missing the stats for passes thrown to FBs (in the scouting report stats breakdown). Both fixed for next time.

The QB ratings don't look right, but I think I've fixed those and they'll be right next time, and we can maybe start looking at other options for the player stats page. We don't have to use the same format every week. We could rotate which ones appear and the order in which players are listed to highlight different stats.

There are now a couple of places available in the advanced game with the draft just about to start - it'd be a good time to join if people were to put the word around.

There should be rankings and QB ratings added in the player stats this turn but I haven't tested them so they'll probably be silly. The rankings are based on the top stats in each category (the best in the top 20) with each player being rated for what percentage of that score they achieved (so to rank 100% a rusher has to have the best total yards, best average yards, most TDs and fewest fumbles). That means the rankings are always relative to the rest of the current player group, and comparing the rankings from different leagues or different seasons makes no sense, but it is a fairly simple and flexible system.

Converting the ranking points to a system that works like QB ratings would be just a matter of replacing the dynamic part (best value in the top 20) with fixed values representing the "ideal" player (that's pretty much what the QB rating calculation does). Then you'd have values that could be compared between leagues and seasons.

I don't know if we can do career stats and "best ever" season stats as well as best stats on the season - it depends what we need to do if you cut a player and then sign someone else with the same shirt number. We'd have to start dropping stats into a proper database to do that and I'm not sure it's worth it.

We now have two actions for coaching player play skills, CO on offence and CD on defence (see the Version 2.18 rules page for details). The LP cost is the number of play skills the player already has and potential does count as normal (this means the action could easily be LP-free if a player has lots of potential, but that means it'll cost potential instead). Note that players can only have up to five play skills and the action is available the same turns as other coaching actions (I think that means not during the draft).

Anyone who gets their turns in early this time shouldn't be surprised if they show up in the report as multiple inputs (especially if you actually input multiple turns, obviously) as I'm working on a new version of the turn reader (much more efficient than the old one) and I'm processing turns in dribs and drabs (instead of leaving them all until deadline day) and doing lots of re-runs. I'll be trying to keep the data tidy, but that means manual edits and you should all know what that means.

It's not just a cosmetic issue, mind. If you submit two turns they might both get loaded and you end up with a mess (if the second one doesn't completly cover the first). It's not an interactive system - you're supposed to input your orders only once... .

NuGameplan turns are done and sent. There are layout problems in the new sections, as always, and the last page (the one with the supplementary stuff for testing and checking) is missing but is already fixed for next time (I can redo and resend reports if anyone cares but I'm guessing you don't). The final score in the fourth quarter stats context line should be corrected next week, as should the number of catches in the receiving stats.

So far I've spent most of the day dealing with the revenue and with accountants. I am amazed by how poor the software and processes are at at HMR&C - primitive does not describe it. Our old DOS software is something out of Star Trek by comparison. And I'm reminded why we pay accountants all that money (not that the revenue people were bad to talk to, they just didn't seem connected to the real world) and now I know why they keep sending me angry demands over missed payments in PAYE together with not-angry-but-confusing statements telling me I've overpaid (something many of us could fix in less than the time it's taken to write this paragraph).

Gameplan is running right now and should appear on time (ish) today but NuGameplan might not make it until tomorrow (run time is very variable, as it depends on how much goes wrong).

Part of the plan this turn was to start adding something to the report to show how your roster and team strength will vary accoridng to formations, but that turned out to be pointless - to tell you anything useful it would have show all the different combination of plays and formations. Not actually impossible (if limited to ones you actually use) but even then it's rather a lot of information. If we think about it we might be able to do it in a form that alerts you to possible problems rather than giving a huge table of infomation you can work out yourself.

I've been running some investigations into how teams will be affected when roster skills and strengths are limited by formations and finding it's mostly a lot simpler than I expected. The complications appear only when you target a wide receiver who isn't in the default lineup according to the formation, because it's not obvious who he replaces (if he's the selected receiver for that play call then he will be on the field, provided the formation does include someone he can swap with).

By way of examples, if you call a pass for which the selected receiver is TE2 it's obvious he must be in and TE1 is out (unless you're in a formation with two tight ends and they're both in the lineup) but what when you call a pass for WR3 in a formation with only two wide receivers? Who came out when he came in?

The most practical method is just to take out the lowest ranked player, so WR1 is your #1 receiver and he stays on the field almost all the time. I think that corresponds to how most fans think the game works, although coaches actually see the split end, flanker and slot as different positions needing different skills and they'll have different schemes of substitutions. I figure it'll work well enough for us - WR3 is added when you go to three or more receivers, and he replaces WR2 in a two receiver set when he's the receiver selected on the play call. If you want the skills of WR2 and WR3 together on the same play then you go to a three or four receiver set - or move one of them to WR1.

If we decide we want something more sophisticated then we'll need to do that through the play definition by having a second player selected on the play (normally a key blocker, but maybe a selected decoy on a misdirection play or a combination route). But I'm hoping we can get by without that. It would appear very daunting for someone new to the game.

It'll be time to be looking at adding the fatigue rules soon, which should help encourage more balanced play calling and make the player stats look more realistic. First up, be thinking about whether your gameplan is going to be giving you problems (stuff about wearing the defence down is already in there, of course, so I hope we don't need to bother about that).

I think there should be three elements, based on how many different plays are used where a particular player is the designated runner or receiver (which could make him less effective right from the start) how many times each player takes a handoff or is the target on a pass (so his individual skills could drop off later in the game) and how many stats a player generates over the season (which could impact his reduction and retirement risk).

We just have to pick some limits in each case and see what happens, so I'll be sticking my nose in everyone's stats and trying to decide what doesn't look realistic. I'm going to assume that modern one-back offences are over-using their half backs and that's the reason they now have such short careers (so you might find following the current fashion isn't that good an idea - our limit is going to be below what a lot of modern running backs are having to cope with).

For the special/extra skills to qualify for coaching player play skills on offence, see the table below. This isn't a list of all the skills, only the extra ones picked out to allow coaching of player play skills in addition to the runners or receivers permitted for the play (I might restrict that to just the runner or receiver actually selected). Feedback?

QB - DMP	CP DP FP HP LP SP
QB - QBR	QD QK QR QS
QB - QPA	FW PI PL PO PS RN
QB - QPF	CI CL CO CS
QB - SCR	OP OR OT PA
FB - RBI	RI RL
FB - RBO	PW RW SW
OL - OTR	CW DE DR DT DW QD TR

I've start moving the report stats to the scouting report and those will need checking once you see them. I've added a line to the fourth quarter stats to give you some idea of their context - it's supposed to show the biggest winning and losing margins and the result, and also the number of times the score was tied. It's also written into the play by play log at the end of the fourth quarter (after the quarter stats) not because it's needed but so we can see whether it's right or not.

Gameplan turns are done (printing and emailing right now) and NuGameplan turns should follow later today.

Plenty of fixes to check for this week in both versions (extra workout actions, player movements in reports, LP values on the draft list, fourth quarter stats on defence) as well as changes (run-pass balance, alphabetical order in play call lists, some sorting in the report stats) and the draft list should turn up in NFLCB. I've also made quite a lot of internal changes that shouldn't be visible (but might be if I got anything wrong) and might cause the play balance to wobble a bit (you guys will have a better feel for that than me) and I've installed some new analysis that will allow me to keep an eye on what's happening inside the game.

Player play skills aren't yet connected and the actions for coaching play skills aren't yet ready, but they're getting closer.

An option for us to consider is to add "compensation" when a free agent from one team is picked up by another. In this game the value would be small since you already get good value for a player when you release him - the extra might be one or two points per strength and I think it would apply only to uninjured players - but enough that you can release a player wanted somehwere else and get full value to spend on someone new. But you wouldn't get to restrict were the player goes after - free agency is an open market.

Looking the extra "key" skills on each play call (because I want to link them to the coaching actions for adding player play skills) is throwing up some interesting questions. For the most extreme defences (IX, OX, BZ, WC, ZB, ZD, ZS) I haven't been able to identify key players and "extra" skills at all (one player doing something of particular interest, over and above the fundamental team/positional strengths defined for the play). Those plays are all about your main team strengths and coordination, so they're probably going to be uncoachable for individual players.

We don't have a skill for defensive linemen who drop out into short zones or to "spy" (essentially swapping roles with linebackers). Neither DPS or HWK seem suitable - I'm not convinced we could justify a DPS DL adding to overall team strengths (it's not an every down strength) and HWK is too specific. Maybe we could redefine the DOR "Option Read" skill (which currently applies only to linebackers) as a more general DRR "Read & React" skill that could apply to defensive linemen - that would fit okay with drops and spies. Or we can leave it as a skill that applies only to linebackers, who already have the necessary skills, as it doesn't really impact the game that much.

The current list of combinations is below. Feedback? Different from what you expected?

	DNG	DBZ	COV	HWK	DOR
DE	-	FD GL ES	-	-	-
DT	-	FD GL TS	-	-	-
ILB	RD OV UN	LB	LJ PD	LD	MD
OLB	RD OV UN	JB KB	LJ PD	LD LS	MD
SB	RD RS OV UN	FS WS SB SS	ID PD SD TD	DD	-
CB	CB CR RD OV UN	-	ND PD	CD	-

Now to do the same on offence. Erk.

Where we have lists of play calls (training, stats etc) they're currently listed in an order that is fairly arbitrary (mostly the order in which the plays have been added to the game) and maybe it's time to sort that out and either put them into logical groups or in alphabetical order, or maybe in groups and then alphabetical order within each group. Opinions? What's going to make the listings easiest to read and understand?

The option draw (which is defined as a passing play, in spite of the name) is primarily a feature of multi-receiver spread offences, and we've got it handing off to a DE (Delay) play for the fullback even though in the spread the back is normally going to be a half back (although blitz pickups are a major part of the skillset for a spead option half back, he's still an RB in our terms, not a FB). It probably isn't affecting the game at present but it's going to be a problem in the future - one day you'll wake up with lots of confusion penalties on offence (or maybe fumbles when the QB tries to hand off to a FB who isn't in the formation).

So we're going to need another play, a halfback delay audible. Or we rename the option draw (pass) as a passing play and then use OD as the draw play like the name suggests. We could probably make the audible hand off to the full back if present or the half back if he isn't (on the grounds that if you do it with a full back in the formation then he's the blocking back and your half back is probably a receiver). We could do the same with the option screen (where the OS is the downfield pass and the DC is the screen, which I think it confusing for anyone getting into the playbook for the first time).

We may need extra formations (or play calls) to allow coaches to decide whether to keep the full back in a single back formation. We could maybe have one or more formations with two half backs and no full back - or for dropping a tight end into the backfield instead of a fullback. But I don't think these are a priority.

I've made some changes in scouting reports to provide give the run-pass balance of the opposition according to downs and formations. The balance by downs data should have been accumulating ever since those first appeared in the game stats, but the balance by formations (actually personnel groupings rather than formations) is new and will only start accummulating next week. As usual, please keep on eye on those stats to see if they look right. It's very easy to get them wrong. In the formation breakdown the TE-2 column is two wideouts and two tight ends - the other columns are just about the number of wide receivers).

At present I'm only giving these stats for the opposition and not giving self-scouting stats. Have a think about whether being able to see your own stats is worth the extra space in the report. Real life scouting reports do include self scouting data (I think that's what quality control coaches are for).

The extra workout actions didn't work, should be good next time. The transactions/player movements section of the league report is missing from game reports. I've copied them into the feedback section below and the league report next turn should include the missing action reports from this time as well as any new ones. The fourth quarter stats on defence still aren't showing up in scouting reports, should show up next time.

NFLCA - ACTION REPORTS
---------------------------------
Browns coach OQB OL no 55, Alex Mack LT
Browns start no 90 at DLE and 70 at DRE
Ravens workout with draft no 6
Giants sign FA 121 as 66, David Diehl at LT
Eagles workout with draft no 7
Eagles start no 34 at HB1 and 25 at UB
Cardinals workout with draft no 4
Cowboys workout with draft no 21
Lions sign FA 113 as 97, Boss Bailey at LOLB
Saints coach OPS QB no 10, Chase Daniel QB
Falcons workout with draft no 34

NFLCB - ACTION REPORTS
---------------------------------
Jets sign FA 113 as 6, Doug Brien at KK
Bengals sign FA 104 as 11, Jordan Shipley at WR4
Redskins start no 84 at WR2 and 80 at WR4
Bears workout with FA no 153
Lions sign FA 133 as 73, Stockar McDougle at LT
49ers sign FA 148 as 29, Ahmed Plummer at DCB
Panthers sign FA 142 as 4, John Kasay at KK

Gameplan turns went out Thursday, NuGameplan turns done and sent Friday morning. Blood test came back okay and the lump has just about disappeared, must've just been a some strange flu variant. No particular hankering for acorns, truffles or potato peelings, so probably not swine flu.

Currently you can select the runner or receiver for each play call on offence, or allow the software to make the selection for you. A next step might be to add a further player selection for another key player on each play. That might be a key blocker, but it could also be a key player on a defence play (picking a blitzer or a spy or the doubled corner etc) or something else when necessary. It'd mean going through the whole playbook and deciding on a key player for each play (and probably a key skill at the same time).

I'm adding the actions to coach additional play skills. The cost in LPs is equal to however many play skills the player already has (it's not allowed for no-star players). Potential reduces the cost and is reduced the same as for other coaching actions. But do we want some rules for which players you can coach on which play? I'm tempted to make the choice quite limited by restricting it to runners and receivers - and then add a few other specific skill matches. Opinions? Ideas?

Not much feedback on LP values on the draft and free agent lists - I will go ahead and change the minimum bid values (for free agent signings) to be the same as the waiver value of the player (except the 10 LP minimum will still apply) and the same value will be the one quoted on the draft list. That eliminates a rule that I think we don't really need any more.

There's also not been much feedback on setting values for draft picks when drafting down - I've settled for using the actual waiver values of the players on the draft list. Again, it avoids having to make up a rule with a formula or a big table of draft values. A coach can see the expected value of a pick just by looking it up on the draft list itself. We'll drop the adjustment for the most vaulable player available - the value we use will be the value of the player at your position in the draft order (ie. if you're picking 9th then the expected value for your 1st round pick is that of the guy at number 9 on the list, for your 2nd round pick look at the guy at 33).

A possibility might be to activate it only if the difference is more than a few points - but I'll only put that rule in if it seems necessary and at the moment I'm thinking it isn't. We've added enough extra things that you want to spend LPs on (that won't bung up your rosters) that I think the ability to beg a few extra LPs a going to be useful.

Scouting actions this time ignored the draft list and scanned only the free agent list (that's correct in NFLCB but not in NFLCA) because I didn't update the action to know the draft list was available (it was working according to whether the draft was in progress, which it isn't).

The LP values in the NFLCA draft list are wrong - what appeared this week are the mimimum bid values (again, confused because the draft hasn't actually started). Should be fixed next time. It seems like having two different values is a complication we could remove, either by using minimum bid values on the draft list (ugly) or by the changing minimum bid values to be the same as waiver values (that being what the LP values are). I think player strengths and skills are a lot more varied in this version so there doesn't really need to be a premium on minimun bid values anyway - there's no reason you should pay more to sign someone than you get when you release him. Especially as the values are only different for players who don't have extra or special teams skills.

Thursday's other turns were done and sent on time, but NuGameplan is running Friday again. Probably a good thing considering how many turns came in late. Two rounds of painkillers today (Friday) and I'm just about fit to sit in front of a computer again. Still not well, blood tests next week. Lots of bug-chasing while running NuGameplan today - I guess that shows what happens if you write software with a thick head - but it's now done and sent.

In order to integrate the defence formations properly I think we will need to set some default formations - there are defences it makes little or no sense to call from a base formation. The trick is going to be to decide which ones, and whether to make a "no selection" different from an actual selection of base formation (eg. if you want to call wide coverage width only four DBs then we want that to be possible, but if you haven't made a decision then your defence formation should presumably be a dime).

One option is to simply decide which standard defence formations are needed and have those set when a gameplan is first created (and also applied to any where it hasn't already been done) and then leave it alone after that. That's simplest. It would be annoying for anyone who's reset any plays to their base defence and really wants them that way, but I doubt there are many of those.

I'm still working on the balance for option draws - don't forget this is a completely new form of play call (it's not like an option pass or an option run because it has an audible before the snap instead of an option in execution) and it may take some time to get it working right. Giving it some exercise and analysis would be a good idea.

You may find you need to think differently about how you defend against an option draw attack. Rather than look for a killer defence (which the offence may be able to read and react to) you need to be smarter. They're going to run or pass according to what the defence appears to be doing, so use defences that disguise what you're doing and use defensive formations that don't match your play call. Bring unexpected or delayed blitzers. Put a man in the box and then drop him into coverage. Throw defensive backs into run defence from outside the box.

I'm not promising those will work, but they all have elements that tip the odds in favour of the defence - whether that will be enough, I don't know. When these offences first appeared (as the "run and shoot") the preferred defence was all out aggression. That might work. But maybe fiddle with the formation as you do it so as to avoid showing your hand.

The new WORKOUT action (code is WO) should be available in the special actions box on the online turnsheet. You put the draft (1-99) or free agent (100-170) number of the player you want to look at it in the SHIRT box and that gets you a full report of the strengths and skills of the player you've asked for. Workout actions should be listed in the league report so coaches can all see who's looking at what. An action to create a free agent or a scout action that finds only one player should provide a workout report as well (these aren't listed in the league report). There's an extra fixed action for workouts as well.

I've been designing an easter egg hunt today, so for you guys I have an alternative to search this site for the new player skills I added this week. They're already in the software but no-one has them on their rosters and they're not on the draft or free agent lists. I haven't added them to the turnsheets either since there aren't yet any players to scout for.

I've extended the changes to the layout of the draft list - the way nominal and extra values are shown in old Gameplan looks pretty untidy in this version so I've changed it to show two values all the time as main-extra (eg. ILB 2-1 DRO for a 2-point ILB with an extra strength) and I'm including LP values in the draft list as well (I think the order players are shown on the draft list is the order of their LP values). I've removed the age column to show potential instead.

We'll need to do something to replace the current rule for drafting down since the new skills mean actual player values are higher and nominal values are not as relevant as they were. We probably need something based on the draft order (how many places you drop relative to the top man available) or on LP values (the difference between the highest value available and the player you actually draft) or maybe assigning an LP value to each pick (which is closer to what happens in a real draft, but seems less useful than using the LP values of the players actually available).

If we can't think of anything smarter I'll change it to go by LP values instead of nominal values (simplest to go 30, 20, 10 for each round instead if 3, 2, 1) although that does mean drafting a 3-0 or a 2-3 in the first round would be worth compensation - unless we treat the players on the draft list as being full effectiveness or value them by minimum bid values instead.

In NuGameplan we're going to stick to 24 team leagues, so we have the option of extending the draft with a fourth rounds (24 teams => 96 players and we have 99 on a draft list). The late picks would might often find themselves with no-one available they can use, but the rules already cope with that.

In the end I decided to revise the play skills the same on offence as on defence and I've re-done them this time. Depending on feedback this may be the final run and we can start looking at connecting them up and deciding what actions we want for adding or deleting them. The next step is going to be to add the same data to the players on the draft and free agent lists.

The online turnsheet has been updated to allow the new player types in free agent actions (scout and create) and we're working on adding the workout action. I haven't yet decided which extra actions (if any) are needed for scouting and workouts. At present I'm leaning towards no extra scouting action (you use the special action) but adding either one or two workout actions and/or adapting the free agent bid box for workouts (so any failed bid, including one with a blank price, would involve a workout - which seems reasonably logical).

The player play skills will need to be re-done again next week, but I think we're mostly done fiddling with those. I will be taking out the old FS and FA actions (scouting and creating free agents using the draft codes) and then I will eliminate the draft codes from the rules (the coaching codes will remain).

If you do any coaching you should find the LB codes work on both inside and outside linebackers, the DL codes work on defensive tackles and ends, the DB codes on both corners and safeties and the RB codes should now work on both FBs and RBs.

At least two coaches had actions fail due to the player types - one a select starter and the other a scouting action (you need to use the new player types - the website doesn't know about those yet but it will soon).

Both leagues are now done and sent. It was a slow turnaround this time as there were some changes to finish (and test) so that the the draft list in NFLCA could appear this time as planned, with the new player types.

I've done the split of DL to DE and DT, LB to ILB and OLB, and DB to CB and S, and hopefully nothing will go mad. Players on rosters and on the free agent list should collect the new player types, so there's some risk of actions or signings failng this time if they've been made illegal by the changes (apologies if that does happen, but with me having been off sick for four weeks we can't afford the extra time tip-toing around to avoid a few failed actions).

I haven't done the changes with OLs because I haven't really decided whether to opt for two player types or three - I think people expect to see three and it's going to be easier to go with that (given we do expect to make up a rule that allows players to play out of position to some extent).

We might also be thinking about whether to have separate types for nose tackles and middle linebackers. At present those roster spots are for a DT and an ILB respectively.

The player play skills should be redone this time as well. I've changed the defence ones to a much simpler scheme since coaches seemed to have trouble understanding it (if you call a pass defences there are still players whose job it is to stop the run, and if you call a run defence your DBs are still in the game... etc). In the new scheme I've just assigned each defence to a limited group of players and checked for one or two main team strengths - you'll only see very broad connections between the player strengths and their play skills. I had a quick look at doing the same on offence, but it started to look complicated very quickly.

Not much changed this time around, as I'm in day fifteen of a heavy cold and I know better than to make software changes while I'm running a temperature and my brains are addled. Probably a slow turnaround today for the same reason.

This time with the report stats we're looking not just for the right stats being extracted from the league report and game summary, but for adding them up right. Ought to be obvious. If the fourth quarter stats come out right this time then next time we could see if we can start adding them up for the whole season although I'm not convinced that's useful (you need to know the context in which they were generated - maybe we'll be able to work out some stats that show what the fourth quarter situations were - maybe the number of drives starting in each score situation).

I've tweaked the "breakout" description on running plays to appear only on the second missed tackle. If only one tackler misses a FB he'll be described as "powers for gain..." (could be imnproved) and an HB will be "cutback for gain..." (not sure that shouldn't really be a tactical description that depends on the play call). Haven't thought of suitable text for WRs or QBs.

Not much to report so far. The league stats part of the scouting has a large font size - if you need it changed I can fix that and re-send the turn easy enough in NFLCB (in NFLCA you've got the full league stats anyway so that part of the report is already redundant). The fourth quarter stats in the scouting report showed the whole game stats instead of only the fourth quarter, should be fixed next time. Didn't see many of you shifting players around ahead of the upcoming changes in player types.

I will disable the free scouting action for anyone that moans about it.

Done and sent, but in a bit of a rush. A small change in Gameplan opened up a whole can of worms - it turned out the backups in the Linux version weren't working correctly in much the same way as they weren't working in NuGameplan and I had to put the data back together again by hand - so I spent all day getting the turns together in that.

Changes to look out for this time are the definitions changing on the plays using running backs and full backs, the customised league stats (didn't appear in NFLCB, did in NFLCA), some additions in the game stats and changes in the play descrptipns. You might also see the new workout action - it hasn't been added to the website yet but I did a few manually for teams that weren't using their special action (it's pretty much working as intended, although it does needs a tidy up). And maybe the report stats will have cleared out properly (we need feedback on that). Also look out for the flying pigs.

Another small tweak this time is I've increased the proportion of the new skills that appear in the free agent list.

If I add a rare tackling skill for kickers and punters covering their own kicks and punts what field position do we think you can reach before they get to join in? They're only effective on long returns, obviously.

The RB-FB split turned out to be simpler than I expected (I hope I'm not temping fate by saying that) and it's the most complicated of the position and player type changes, so I think we can push on with the other changes very soon. This means you need to attend to your rosters and get people swappled into the spots you want them (corners vs safeties, inside vs outside linebackers, defensive tackles vs ends, offensive tackles vs interior linemen).

Among defensive backs we have to decide which player types to assign for the NCB and DCB. To make roster management easy it's tempting to go for one of each, but star rated safeties are rare and adequate corners are common so I'm tempted to go for both backups being corners. Which would mean replacing a safety is going to be harder to manage since the next guy up isn't going to be already on your roster. But that's not going to be a problem unless rosters fill up in this version like they did in the old one.

I intend that centers and guards will be interchangeable but I will introduce a SNAP skill that you will want for your center (so linemen that have it are good centers but can also play guard, ones that don't have it are only guards). I might even go for separate skills for shotgun and long snaps, although the latter would mean adding an otherwise not very interesting long snapper to the roster and doesn't really add much to the game except some extra rules.

Later we can think about what actions we want for selecting players out of position (which I think I like better than changing player types). The obvious things to fiddle with are reduced/full effectiveness, potential and experience.

At some point, probably not very soon, I will want to look at adding some player stats on defence, and that's going to mean finding a way of selecting individual players on each play. The method on offence is based on the play call, and that obviously ins't going to work on defence: I'm going to have to assign players according to where the event occurred and what the offence was trying to do and the skills of the players on defence - except sometimes it'll be about what the defence was doing. It's not going to be simple. I might stop short of allocating tackles and passes defended, at least to start with, and just go for sacks, safeties, interceptions, fumbles caused and recovered, and return yardage.

The next thing to look at is scouting the free agent and draft lists - we're only a few weeks from the first draft list appearing in the advanced league. You can already scan for particular combinations of player type and strength/skill and that will be the easiest way to get the information you're looking for - but I'm thinking we might add a new action to take a closer look at a particular player by bringing them in for a workout (to get most or all the same data you get on signing someone). The wrinkle would be the other coaches would see you did it and they'd know who you're interested in.

I think I'd like to push ahead and delete the old actions for scouting and for creating free agents, as well as most or all of the draft codes (the new ones, at least, but probably all of them). The idea being that you're supposed to scout in advance of making your draft picks and the draft codes should no longer be needed. So that's a rather clunky and cumbersome rule we could get rid off.

I'm going ahead now with updating play definitions and team strengths to separate FBs and RBs properly. This means you need to be clear who you're giving the ball to (and how) as your running backs are no longer interchangeable (eg. an FB-OPS will have little effect on a pass to a HB) and you need to know which players are effective in which formations (currently your FB is only on the field when you have two backs together in the backfield). Any existing selections of runners or receivers that are the "wrong" player type shouldn't be affected, but you shouldn't be able to order any new ones.

Eventually I think we might need to add extra formations according to which backs are doing what, or we might be able to get away with modifying some of the ones we've already got. In the long run we may need separate plays for RBs lining up at HB or TB and backs lining up as H-Backs or up-backs or wing-backs. Or we do something clever with using them on plays for tight ends since that's pretty much the position they're playing.

At present the comparison of the seasons stats takes up about a third of a page in the scouting report, but we could put out the same information by including the whole season stats every week and highlighting the two teams inside that. That would be better since the numbers would be in context with the other 22 teams and I could put other stuff in the scouting report. The downside is two extra pages in the report but all the feedback I've had so far is from people who are happy with the idea, so I'll go ahead and phase it in. We could also look at what's in the game stats that would be useful in the league stats or in the scouting report.

I'm making small changes to the text of the play by play report, and adding some extra stats keeping. Anyone with any ideas along those lines, now would be a good time to let me know. At the moment I'm trying to think of a play description of an pass that's incomplete when the receiver is dinged (at present I think you only get the description if he fumbles it) and we also need text to highlight when a receiver drops a pass due to being dinged previously (as they do). We should probably have a toughness skill for receivers who don't care about being dinged (or even being resistant to being dinged in the first place) although it's more noticeable for the players who lack it.

The changes so far are that when the defence makes a play on the ball to defend a pass, the description should read "pass defended" and when they ding the receiver for an incomplete pass the description should be "pass broken up". We only say "dinged" or "popped" etc when they catch and fumble. For the time being you can't hold on to a pass when you're dinged (not because you can't do it but because it wouldn't count as a ding if you still have the ball). You should see "pass dropped" only when a receiver is hearing footsteps (most of the previous dropped pases should come out as "defended"). Passes defended and dropped are now in the game stats.

Dumpoff receivers still only get reported when they catch a pass, so they still don't get dings or jump balls or sticky hands catches, and also don't get the blame on incomplete or dropped passes.

Every time I see a real life team stuff up by putting a bad prevent defence in place I wonder if we do that adequately in Gameplan. In real life we usually see the offence is up for it - good offences look smooth and well practised against defences that look unready and unpractised. I guess that's partly because of the change in personnel and partly because their in-game adjustments go out the door. Offences live and breath those situations, defences focus on getting into them but not on what to do when they get there.

How about we have a separate set of bonus plays, strengths and keys for late in the game? That apply always in the fourth quarter? That would give coaches some tough nasty decisions to make. The first ones being whether to use those orders to support your offence or your defence, and to chase the game or protect the lead. Or some of each, for balance. And there would be nothing to stop you having the same bonus and keys in the fourth quarter as the rest of the game (ie. same as now).

And yes I already thought about doing it only in hurry up and prevent, but in that case you need two sets and there are awkward interactions with how your write your gameplan and limiting how the situations are defined - some coaches will be using fake hurry-ups and disguised hurry-ups etc. We don't want the choices made by one coach to control how the gameplan written by the opponent is interpreted. Also, if the choices depend on the situation they're pretty much automatic and not interesting.

Done and sent. The differences this week should be the new FB player type and the new FB/RB passes, plus the dummy/sample play skills being regenerated (I've made some changes, so do look them over again, and there will be more changes again next turn when the FB play definitions are changed) There are changes in the team schedule listing and the scouting/report stats page, and there's the rewrite of the logic on options, scrambles and dumpoffs. And the play by play now identifies the timeouts since I figure now is a good time to look at them and tweak the rules as needed.

As usual, feedback is needed on any of the changes and stats keeping. The report stats didn't reset like they were supposed to, due to a fault in the backup and restore routine (which tried to be clever and restored the deleted files).

I'm going ahead with introducing FB as a separate player type with immediate effect. Those of you who have an RB in the FB slot on your roster will need to tell me if you don't want his player type changed from RB to FB (say what and why so I can look at tweaking the rules for everyone). Same goes if you've got a back you want at FB and he's in one of the other slots as you won't be able to swap FBs and RBs around (unless or until we have actions for changing player types, which won't be happening anytime soon). I've done a quick scan of the rosters in both leagues and I don't see any teams that should have a problem. You need to let me know in good time - well before the coming round of turns - so I can make the necessary adjustments.

I'm adding a new set of play calls (HI, HO, HL, HP and both HC ad FC) which are currently exact copies of the existing FI, FO, FL, FP and SC passes. This week both FBs and RBs should count their skills on both sets of plays but after that the "F" plays will be passes to the fullback and the H plays and SC will go to the RBs (halfbacks or utility back). Note the HC & SC screen pases will still be duplicates after the FB change but it seems best to have a consistent set of names for the new play calls. Training already done on the old play calls should appear on the new ones as well.

For coaching codes the FB code is for the FB (the only thing you can coach a FB in is ORI) and the other RB codes are for RBs only (so those guys can be coached in ORO and OPS but not in ORI).

A little bit down the line we may run into some issues over which backs are on the field in which formation, either when you have only one back and want it to be your FB or when you have two backs and don't want your FB. Maybe we'll need more formations, or maybe we'll be able to make the choices automatic, depending on team/training strengths The RR action is limited by the player types, so you won't be able to use that to exchange roles unless we make a deliberate tweak so that you can - but I think any selections you've already made will be unaffected.

A small change for new players created is the HWK skill for linebackers (interceptions) should associate only with a DPS strength as it doesn't make much sense for a LB who can't cover passes to be good at intercepting them. This won't impact players who already have the skill added (for now). Some of the existing strengths have always been linked this way - and there are also some that are exclusive (if a player has the one, he won't have the other). Anybody got ideas for more skills that should interact with each other like this? Combinations that go together, and combinations that don't go together?

Now there's no turnsheet I think using a layout/planning sheet for writing your orders is a sensible thing to do (although I think most coaches just write on the previous gameplan) but there’s no reason for it to be part of the game report. It won’t all fit on a turnsheet any more anyway. Anyone have any good ideas for things to put on a planning sheet? It'll probably be multiple pages. I can have it turned out as a PDF and downloadable if you guys want to knock it together.

The average and relative strengths on the listing apply to your roster, not including form. We could have values for average and relative home and road strengths, but in practice would we want your home strengths against everyone else’s home strengths? Or against their road strengths? Those are what you’d be playing against if you meet them. And your road strengths and their road strengths? Or against their home strengths? That all seems too complicated to be worth doing. Better you have your roster strengths compared and leave it to you to judge whether your form is good enough to fill in the gaps.

The listing of game stats and training for dumpoffs and bootlegs were still wrong this week - but at least they were wrong in different ways to last time. The team schedule listing is still not reliable. Should be fixed for next turn. The scout/report stats keeping is wrong for defences in a rather random manner and the quick fix is to delete this week's stats and try again by starting over next time. The tally of best plays didn't work right but that should come right next time.

The logic on option draws didn't work right this week so I've done a rewrite. The changes are quite major, of the sort that might have unintended impact on other events (especially in relation to how we handle making plays that are different to the original play call - like on options, scrambles and dumpoffs - so keep an eye on those in the coming weeks). At present I'm not completely sure we can use this play without defence formations being assigned on every play - it might be we'll need to assign default formations for any defence calls where the coaches haven't made a selection. It doesn't make much sense to have the formation modifiers without using them on plays where the change is personnel is obvious. But we'll see what happens with the revised version.

Expect the new play calls to take a while to settle down as I work on the balance and definitions and you guys work out how to use them and scheme against them. Don't forget this is an experimental version of the game - work on new features takes priority over fairness and you can win or lose games due to me fiddling about. Although I do try to keep it within reasonable bounds, the priority is working towards a future stable version. More mess now means getting a better game later.

Turns are done and sent. The differences this week should be the new play calls, plus the dummy/sample play skills appearing on rosters, and the new scouting/report stats page.

This turn the scouting/report stats should show the same plays and formations as the league report, plus the longest plays and scoring plays extracted from the game summary. I hope enough of you will take the time to check these, and do the same next time when the stats for that week are added - once we're happy it's showing the right data we'll move the information into the scouting report (so you'll get that information for what your upcoming opponent has been doing). The point is to provide a better scouting report using the information already available.

Also on that page is a count of how different formations each play call is used with in your gameplan, just as a convenient place to put it while I see whether it's adding up right and what the numbers look like.

The player play skills at this stage are not connected up and are likely to change from turn to turn as I fiddle with how they're allocated. The idea is to have the play skills related to some degree to the other skills of the player concerned - so I want feedback on whether that's working (look at the plays allocated and think whether you're getting plays where you expect that player to be relevant or important).

The new playbook is in place and the play calls are available on the turnsheet. Some of the new skills will become more relevant now the corresponding play calls are available. I hope you've noticed where some of the old play calls might be more useful where they use the new skills.

I've modified the way new players are added to rosters, aiming to get them to drop into the highest empty slot (previously they often took the second slot when there were two places available).

I've also changed the way fumbles are assigned with fewer fumbled snaps in shotgun formations but more fumbled handoff - and more fumbled snaps when the QB under centre as you seem to have all managed to eliminate those entirely.

The listing of game stats and training for dumpoffs and bootlegs were wrong this week - it repeated all the other offensive plays instead. The defensive confusion penalities still showed zero yards in reports but were assessed correctly and the formation training box if left blank was reverting to "A" formation instead of repeating the previous selection. All these should be fixed for next time.

All done and sent. The only difference this week should be new skills appearing on rosters. The new scouting and free agent actions are available but will probably go wrong as soon as anyone tries to use them. What, you want me to be cheerful? In December?

Yes, I know the results in the team schedule are wrong (they're relative to the road team instead of the owner of the report) and that's already fixed. And yes, I know scores from before I started the report aren't in there and I'm not bothered about that.

People sometimes think we are missing intermediate and medium range passes in Gameplan because we classify pass plays as being either short or long, but we're not - the meium range paases are the short-and-go and the the deep-and-comeback patterns. Either you're running a pattern into the short zones and go beyond - or a pattern goes into the deep zones for a catch in front of the safeties. Some of these depend on OPL skills and some need a combination of OPS & OPL together (or another speed skill).

I've decided not to implement the new draft/scouting codes as they're too clunky. We've got two new actions instead - CR creates a new free agent (like the FA action) and SC scouts for players already on the free agent list (like the FS action). On Create you can enter a value in the shirt number box, the same as for the FA action.

The new element with the CR and SC actions is the text in the name box is the player type and the strength (in that order and with a dash in between, eg. QB-OPL) and nothing else. The website won't stop you trying silly combinations - but the action will fail when I process it. The coaching codes and actions are still valid (for coaching and drafting by type) as before. The FA and FS actions are still working - they just can't see the new skills and combinations because they're stuck with the same old draft codes.

Currently the FA action that creates new free agents is not allowed during the draft, but I can't see why. You're allowed to bid for them, and your only advantage is that you have a scouting report and the other coaches probably don't. Any guesses? Maybe it could be allowed. We have more than enough rules already, so removing some pointless ones would be a good idea. Opinions?

I think we can put the new playbook into place after this coming turn so don't be in a rush to get your turn next time (because we'll need the website to be updated and that sometimes takes a while). Either that or do your turn without using the new play calls.

This turn I think it makes sense to go around and add some of the new player skills to rosters and see if those introduce any obvious problems. The plan is to add a fixed number of skills to each roster, but they'll be very random. Anyone that doesn't get their full quota (three) should get extra LPs instead. I'll leave the free agent list without updates as usual - new arrivals might have the new skills but the guys already there will still be who you expect them to be.

We'll need to start looking at changes to the draft fairly soon. The major one is creating the draft list earlier in the season and allowing you to scout it properly. Then I can eliminate the draft codes and drafting by type - you'd have to scout the players you want beforehand and then pick by number. That would make the rules and processing simpler (replacing a very clunky rule with something a lot more natural) and it would give you something else useful and forward looking to do at the tail end of a season.

Also added, but not yet having any effect because they're not included on rosters are new player skills
  SPD for speed, set against the breakout skill,
  COV for coverage when playing tight man to man, WRs and DBs,
  HWK for ball hawks when playing for interceptions
  DOR for option read, defending against run options and misdirections,
  JMP is also available for DBs defending against jump balls, and
  SCR for scramble is also available for running backs scrambling on broken plays

The corresponding draft/scout codes will be
  DC for DB-COV, DX for DB-SPD, DA for DB-HWK, DJ for DB-JMP, LA for LB-HWK, LR for LB-DOR and
  WC for WR-COV, RS for RB-SCR.

Not much reported so far this week - I've actually spent more time chasing false error reports than real ones. The defensive confusion penalties weren't formatted right but they do seem to have worked correctly. The team fixtures list (half of you are saying "what?" because you haven't seen it) needs work but it's not a high priority and I'll continue tinkering with it as we go. There is/was an obscure path by which defensive play calls could get into your catchall situation on offence and that's been fixed. But I shouldn't think many of you are using catchalls and if you are then you've probably put your own play calls in place (it's only the default ones could be wrong). There was also a problem with renaming actions, now fixed.

Free agents who were already on the list won't have new skills added because that would change their minimum bid values. Newly created free agents CAN have the new skills, even before I've added them on existing rosters.

If your game reports aren't coming out right, check if you've got the font installed on your computer. I dunno how it goes on a Mac, but Windows and Linux both seem unable to find suitable fonts to use instead (although they claim they do). At the moment the the font I'm using is Lucida Sans Typewriter (LST). If you don't have this then pick one you do have (there's a box at the bottom of the turnsheet) or selected EMBED so you don't need it (that puts the font information inside your game report - the downside is the file is that much bigger). If you want the font we use in the old version then pick COURIER.

NFLCB is done and turns have been sent - it took more than a dozen attempts - I will return to deal with NFLCA later today once I've had time to look at the reports and scan for anything that wants an immediate fix. If you're in NFLCB then you might do the same - I can only spot formatting errors not stuff that's silly according to context (like, right shirt numbers, events relating to skills and play calling etc).

Things that should be different this week are the breakout skill, jump balls, sticky hands catches, shirt numbers and increased confusion penalties. There is a risk of other stuff tripping in by mistake with all the new skills and play calls having been added even though they're not yet available, so keep an eye open for anything seriously strange.

I did notice during a recent update that I already included a tweak in the basic game that downrates your training for a situation if you make drastic changes in formation for that situation relative to your previous game - because a big change like that would need lots of practice. I might do something similar for changes in first down formations inside a gameplan as well, so that they need to be reasonably similar (to each other, or each sepaartely relative to your base offence).

That's all a bit clunky, so it would probably be a good idea to revisit this when we're looking at how to apply training on formations. I'm also not ruling out doing similar things in the advanced game, but they're probably not necessary in that as the opposing defence can read your formation before making their play call. The logic that justifies it still applies, though.

I've extended the scouting reports to separate the weakside runs from the other outside runs (the distinction up to now has just been inside or not). I haven't changed the quarter stats - they still show inside and outside - but there isn't room there for more information and I think the quarter stats should probably be just run, pass short and pass long. More interesting if we were to extend those would be information on defence - blitzes, hurries, zones etc.

Here's a project - let's replace the standard teams with new ones that have different (named) playing styles and team strengths. A power team, a west coast offence, a run and shoot, a trapping offence, an option team, a cover 2 takeway defence, an aggressive defence, whatever themes we can come up with to make the warmup phase more interesting and useful (especially important in the future when there are new coaches starting up).

Also added, but not yet having any effect because they're not included on rosters are new player skills
  QPA for play action, QPF for pump fakes,
  TIP for Passes tipped at the line of scrimmage, DNG for ding, causing fumbles, OTR for trap blocks,
  RBI for lead blocks inside, RBO for lead blocks outside, HAN for sticky hands and JMP for catching jump balls.

The corresponding draft codes will be
  QP for QB-QPA, QF for QB-QPF,
  OT for OL-OTR, DT for DL-TIP, LD for LB-DNG, DD for DB-DNG,
  RH for RB-HAN, RI for RB-RBI, RO for RB-RBO, TH for TE-HAN,
  WB for WR-RBO, WH for WR-HAN, TJ for TE-JMP and WJ for WR-JMP.

We still lack draft codes for DPC, DKC and BRK (because those are spread across so many different player types - maybe we need to introduce a different order format).

We also have shirt numbers in the play by play listing from this week (for the nominated runner or receiver) and I expect to have to do some work to get these to come out tidy. I need you guys to let me know if silly things turn up, or are badly formatted or when the shirt numbers are missing and stuff like that. At present I've put the number where available together with the position (eg. pass complete to WR 82) although the point of putting the position in the listing originally was that it would be a placeholder for where the shirt nubmer would go later.

You can find descriptions of the new play calls in this version in the Version 2.18 Playbook page (there's a link at the top of this page). These plays are not yet available but they could be added very soon. In the meantime you might want to think whether any of the new things give you ideas about what else might be added.

I've added the path for dealing with jump balls on the sideline. We haven't yet added the skill needed for catching them (for big and agile basketball-style receivers) but you should see a small number happen on out patterns to wide receivers and tight ends anyway. I'm not adding separate play calls - instead a proportion of out passes will be catchable as jump balls and not otherwise.

The modifier for sticky hands has also been added - this is a second chance at a catch on incompletions that would otherwise be dropped. But how do we want these catches described in the play by play? I've done the same as with jump balls by allowing a small number even when the skill is absent, and then the number will increase later when we add it.

I've inserted a small change that might limit the number of very long gains on end arounds and reverses without having much impact on the more modest long gains (10-20 yards). Keep an eye on these plays and let me know if the change is visible.

I've stepped up the rate of "confusion penalities" on offence a little. Those are the ones you get when you call plays that don't match the formation - and they could probably go further still. I've also added confusion penalities against the defence where you call run defences with extra defensive backs in the formation (so a GL D6 might result in someone jumping offside when he realises he's plugging two gaps instead of one). I figure what's good for the offence is good for the defence.

I'm in the middle of separating the punt and kick return skills from the "breakout" skill (running in open field and after the catch). That will make it possible to make the breakout skill available to players who aren't eligible as returners (tight ends, michael vicks, etc). Players already on rosters with punt or kick return skills should have the new breakout skill added, but new players created could have either (and can still have both).

I'm introducing an additional feature where some play calls are up-rated for other play calls you've made previously. That's where one specific play sets up the defence for some other play (over and above the generic stuff like rushing sets up play action etc). So how about you guys have a think and provide some feedback on what plays you think set up which other plays (and by that I mean say why, don't just give me a list). We'll see which ones match the plays I've got already and whether I've missed any. Some of the new play calls to be introduced soon use the feature, so you can also think about play calls we don't already have.

And no, I won't be telling you the answers, or which ones are included and which aren't. Real coaches have to work it out for themselves - but thinking about it now might help when it comes to deciding what to try later.

We could think about having derivative plays on defence as well. Some defensive coordinators and schemes are known for setting up offences by tempting them into unfortunate adjustments.

It looks like we have a few cases of passes being tipped at the line of scrimmage on running plays, fixed for next time (it's to be attached to a new skill for defensive linemen - and on running plays it should be about forcing fumbles, obviously). FS actions still aren't working right but they are getting closer and will probably be okay next time.

Scripts, the catchall situation, overcalls and hail mary plays should all be enabled and working, and available on turn sheets. There was also a fault with setting situation names last time (the turnsheet was sending your yards to line setting in the situation name field) but that should now be fixed.

I'm currently looking at how to introduce max protection, which I think to be a small set of play calls (a very small set - there's really very little you can do once you decide to keep everyone home to protect the QB) and a tackle eligible pass play (existing calls look sufficient for the running and scrambling that already benefit from the extra blocker).

It looks like the DE Play 0 to reset a defence to base formation wasn't working, should now be fixed. There was at least one actual FS action that found a suitable free agent, and said so, but failed to report back which one (duuuh...). If you made a bid this week for a free agent with extra skills (special teams, scrambling) according to the minimum bid values reported last time then the correction already in place will have meant you didn't get you man (because his minimum bid value will have been corrected) and his description should have changed with the extra strengths and value now showing in the game report.

Note that when I'm updating player data for new skills the routine for players on rosters is different from the one for players on the free agent list or draft list. On rosters you might gain strengths and LP values might change, but for free agents I try to preserve the LP value of the player so that anyone bidding still gets what they bid for (the issue with bids this time was the reporting error last week, not the player data actually changing, but it does show why it needs to be this way).

Incidentally, if players on your roster are updated ways that increase their LP values then then that will feed into the allocations of LPs at the end of season (at the start of the draft) except when I'm adding strengths for everyone (as I will be doing shortly - I'll roll out some of the new skills by handing out a set number to each team).

Not much feedback yet, making me nervous... . Did the corrections to the valuations of scrambling quarterbacks and special teams players come out right? The FA list looks okay although I don't see anyone with DPC or DKC skills (but maybe there aren't any). I have one report of someone sorting his gameplan and having it it come out right. Clock times seem to be reported correctly in game reports. Did anyone see a CP play? A DP play? Anyone get both in the same game?

I think the fixed DE and RR actions worked okay this time. The default FS action isn't working yet, because I think it carried over faulty data from last week, but that isn't important and should come right next time. The listing of special actions in the league report os still untidy (the special actions are right, but I missed the free agent signings in the same section) but that's now fixed.

We've still got some silly dates showing up, but they're soon fixed once spotted.

After the turns this week I think we'll be able to put all the pending changes into play. That's scripted situations, overcalls, the catchall situation and hail mary plays. Probably all in the turnsheet by the weekend.

You'll probably notice new play calls appearing in parts of the game report - I'll let you know when they're available for use. Some will probably be available after next turn (in a couple of weeks). The CP play is already in use - it's a Checkdown Pass that currently is an exact copy of the DP play (you can't call it anyway so it doesn't matter whether it's available on the turnsheet or not). Later I might adjust the yardage function on the two plays so it's slightly different. The ability of a secondary receiver to get open deep or by breaking off in comeback pattern might be different as well.

It's mainly to de-clump the receiving stats - the routine making that matches receivers to play calls will try to allocate the SP, CP and DP plays to different receivers (when we add a fatigue rule you'll want to give it a hand so not all the plays go to the same guy).

The final round up of warmup and unscheduled pre-season games and the league startup for NFLCB are coming out today. The last team selection turned out to be a coach who decided ages ago not to bother and also decided not to bother telling us. Nice. Ever wondered why GMs are not quite as player-friendly as you'd like us to be?

Anyone who didn't already have a gameplan will have had one written by the computer and then had a pre-season game against a warmup team (so as to generate a report with your gameplan in it). Perhaps in NuGameplan the league startup could include a round of unscheduled games as a matter of routine since it doesn't cost extra paper and postage and handling like it would have done in the old version. I've set a longish deadline so that both leagues will run together.

Let me know about any gremlins you spot. I already know about some dates coming out silly, and I think I've hunted that one down and squashed it. And you already know what day it is, so no problem.

The values of the scrambling QBs on the free agent list aren't right, but should be corrected before you can do anything about it - so leave them alone. It looks like the same goes for players with kick and punt coverage skills (since there are none that are visible) and probably all the special teams skills (I can't see any kick or punt returners, and the kickers and punters look under valued). I've run some tests and I think it's fixed.

Work on adding stuff for the recent additions to the turnsheets is in progress, but the new things won't actually work (they should input okay but not be read into your gameplans) until I connect them up - and that can't be done until after NFLCB has started (I'm waiting on one last coach) and I've processed all the turns written before the website changed.

Still chasing gremlins... the "fixed" DE and RR actions weren't processed this week. I think the normal action should have been (except blanks ones, see below) and the fixed SS action should have been okay as well.

I'm considering adding a module to introduce some really rare random events, perhaps including punt returners distracted by rodents on the field of play and probably some more sensible ones. Perhaps we should start making a list of interesting things that might happen? Or that have happened? Onfield events for sure, maybe off-field events as well.

There's a fault in NuGameplan game reports (looks like it's been there a while) so that play timings are wrongly reported when the number of seconds in the time gone is less than ten (the zero to pad the number of seconds was being inserted one character to the right, so if time gone was 59:08 it would appear as 59:80). Actual timings aren't affected, just the report, now fixed.

Surprisingly considering you guys played a squintillion pre-season games, no-one noticed that sorting in advanced gameplan wasn't working (it works okay with manual input, but not with online turns in NuGameplan). Now fixed.

And I inserted the wrong standby coach. Bears coach is John Coleman, not Iain George, who is already at the Dolphins. This was way easier when we had paperwork, I could only process it once.

I tweaked some of the static rules and changes pages a little while ago so you might find some of the waffle has changed a bit. Mostly just with stuff that has appeared on this page (otherwise you have to do a text search with your browser...) but also with a few things I thought I'd written about but only in emails.

It's the first round of regular season games this week, so various bits of the software and reports that we haven't used up to now will kick in and there will probably be a whole herd of gremlins for me to chase. Little ones, I hope. If you've got a scrambling QB please pay particular attention to what he's doing to see it's changed much from before (the data definition and access methods are completely different so all sorts of mistakes are possible).

The email utility failed part way through having done most reports but not all, but the log file failed as well so I don't know which ones worked and which ones didn't. Let me know if you didn't get yours. Also let me know if you got two copies: I made a guess at which ones didn't make it and re-sent them.

So far I've cleaned up the messy listings of special actions in the league report. The strange FS actions in your game reports are because if you make no actions you get a repeat of your last scouting action - but you don't have any previous scouting actions so it repeats a blank one. I'll tweak it to do a random one if you didn't do one before.

A soon as I'm happy with this round of games I'll run the final batch of unshceduled games in the NFLCB and issue the startup turn for that. Once that's been done we'll be able to start moving some other things forward. I will be trying to put in some new play calls as soon as I can: most of the changes so far are in the advanced game and I think we need a bit more activity in the basic version.

I've introduced the first of the changes to the range of player skills, starting by eliminating the "main" or "squad" ORO strength for quarterbacks and replacing it with two "special" or "extra" skills, which are QBR (quarterback run) for designed plays and SCR (scramble) for broken plays and mobility.

I've replaced them one-for-two so the waiver value of a scrambling quarterback is the same as before even though his nominal value will be reduced, and the player should function the same as before. But in future we can have QBs that have only one of these skills (either) or they can still have both (more variety) and there's a third QB running skill to be added later.

The draft code QR now means QB-QBR instead of QB-ORO, and there will be a new draft code QC for QB-SCR. There's going to be a bit of a run of these imcomprehensible codes for a while but I figure you guys can cope - so I'm only going to clean them up when we go over to a fully interactive online system when you'll be able to pick things from selection lists with proper descriptions instead of inputting awkward codes.

One change you might notice is that a scrambling quarterback will no longer effect your team strengths on running plays where he's not involved. I think that's right - his impact should be in providing extra plays you can run effectively, not counting a strength when your backs are running a sweep. Although QB blocking skills are another possible addition.

I'll hold off doing any more of these until we've seen the listings and actions etc come out okay.

The scripted situations in the advanced game seem to be working fine with all the different settings of reactions (but be warned a scripted situation generally won't demote itself if numbered reactions are used - I had to make deliberately bad play calls in order to make it happen in testing) but the option is not yet on the turnsheet. We need to have the Catchall situation available before we can bring scripted situations into play - or on a bad day you could run out of play calls.

PS. On predictive texting, it probably reveals something about the vocabulary and programming habits of the people who wrote the Android operating system, but my phone just tried to change "badgers and foxes" to "bodges and fixes". Very appropriate. System programmers, spit.

The "Catchall" situation (which replaces the default calls previously made in the advanced game if your gameplan fails to provide a play call) is now visible in game reports and seems to be working okay, but you can't yet use it because it hasn't been added to the turnsheet (there are some default play calls provided - but you can't make changes, yet).

Overcalls are also visible in advanced gameplans and seem to be working okay (the code was still there from before - it looks like they've been working all along and all I did was block the token plays on input) but those also haven't yet been added to turnsheets so for now all you can do is use the default play calls (which aren't what you want),

Well that's the first full round of turns done. Spent the whole day so far chasing bugs, but only little ones so far. Some coaches attempted to select Hail Mary plays, although those aren't available yet. For now you get SX and SXD no matter what - I will tell you when you can change them.

The command for setting your own email format didn't work, should be OK next time. Training on formations didn't work, should be right next time (I think everyone will have trained on I formation). Free Agent bids didn't work for anyone but should be okay next time. The scouting report for passing plays shows Completions/Completions:Yards instead of Completions/Attempts:Yards and should be fixed next time. The SF action showed a gibberish shirt number and a bad response code, but actually worked fine and should now be fixed. There were a handful of dumpoffs to tight ends when there weren't any on the field, but that should be right next time (and it's only giving the play to the tight end instead of someone else, so not really very important).

The run/pass balance on first down needs a cleanup of the listing, and the stats were wrong this time and should be now be fixed (note: they're based on the plays called, not what the plays made).

Cross your fingers, cross your toes, cross anything else you like, here goes. League startup reports should be in your email. I'm still not happy about the reliability and durability of the system, but I think we have to push ahead and hope it hold together - and that the next version turns out to be reliable. In the meantime I'm going to be cautious and go with two week deadlines because you're all used to those and I think they'll improve the chances of fixes being made and feedback acted upon in a more timely manner.

Now maybe we can get back into the business of improving the game itself. It would help if I could remember what things things I was working on before the stoppage. Anyone wanting to be busy, don't forget the roster updates - lots of teams still have outdated data rosters (see the list above).

The system software is now back up and running and there seem to be no crashes or hang-ups during input or processing. I hope it's now stable and we won't have any further interruptions - there are still issues to be resolved with backups and software configuration management, but I think these can be dealt with in the background while the game is running. I anticipate issuing the startup notice for NFLCA during the coming week, and NFLCB as soon as NFLCA has cleared the pre-season (that's so if there are any wrinkles to fix I can deal with those before the second league goes through the same process). There's also at least one coach to replace before we can start.

I can't say I was all that impressed with the NFL/Ticketmaster process for "registered fans" booking tickets for the Wembley game. The only tickets available seem to be the least desirable ones, and the booking form has a timeout that ensures you don't get to read the terms and conditions (and which presumably increases their server load due to the frequent do-overs). It took several hours and many messages, phone calls and internet searches to resolve enough of the questions to actually complete the transaction. If I hadn't already made arrangements with other people to go this year I think I'd have knocked it on the head as a bad job.

We made it through re-running a lot of turns in a dummy league, although without doing any input or touching the data in the real leagues (I refuse to do that until the system problems are fixed). The good news is I've checked out and cleaned up the game reports up to week 15 of the season (I didn't have the heart to tackle the draft just now). The bad news is the latest set of system changes don't work at all, and the software now crashes on startup so I can do nothing at all until that's fixed.

The quick fix is in place, and the system hasn't locked up since, which is promising. There are a couple of lesser problems with the updated version. It runs in a window the size of a postage stamp (albeit a large postage stamp, but more "keyhole" than "window") and updated files are often invisible (so I have to close down and restart the file windows in order to access game reports) but those mostly matter only during testing and should go away with further development (should go away...).

Next is we need a complete re-run of all the testing so far - the dummy test league did get as far as passing the league startup previously but I still have to take that through pre-season and into the season proper. We also need to replace the system backups (which are unreliable and therefore useless) by writing one of our own.

The recent changes have involved a lot of manual actions to move files around, rename them, change configurations and so on - there's quite a high risk of errors and data loss. There are definitely some stats files have gone missing (pre-season games that were played but aren't in the stats and won't appear in the league report). Currently I'm hoping this is only due to manual actions (always liable to introduce errors) or problems with the version management system.

All in all I have to say Linux is not better than Windows, and neither is anywhere near as capable as the operating systems they replaced. Things that were reliable and easy to use on old and "obsolete" systems are now unreliable and awkward, user interfaces are dreadful and documentation is pathetic (when it exists at all).

We have a plan, which is firstly we can replace the unit that appears to be the locking up with a similar one that other people have been using without problems, and bring forward part of the next phase of work to remove that emulator from the process (at least from the gametime software, which is where it matters). The fault rarely appears in the edit/configuration/management side of the software and it's not so important there anyway (annoying, but easy enough to work around - it won't result in lost data).

That could resolve the problem as early as next week. But with software, and systems software especially, the problem might turn out to be something completely different, in which case we're back to a hunting for a bug that is intermittent (so when we look for it, it won't be there, but it'll turn up again when we don't look for it).

Had a system update this week which was supposed to spot/report the system errors that are preventing us going forward. Ran a few pre-season turns, with the usual faults and no errors reported. The system continues to think it's running fine when it has stopped interactimg with the display and keyboard. On this occasion we had a game that hung up on starting, so I had to restart it, only to subsequently find that it had actually run after all (so the on-screen displays went missing, and the stop-and-confirm keyboard inputs - inserted to ensure stuff like this can't happen - must've indicated I was pushing confirmation keys when I wasn't).

There's no way we can start a season with the system in the current state and have any realistic hope we will get to the end without losing data (rosters, stats, standings, credits, LPs - all subject to being updated wrongly or lost). I don't think we've ever had a Gameplan league fail during play (except for an outside GM who decided he didn't need to keep backups) although it's happened often enough to other PBM companies. I'm not going to have that happening now.

Choices at the point are
1. To force an in depth look at the i/o system as it is clearly faulty. I am not confident this is going to get the job done.
2. Assume the i/o system is the problem, throw it away and start over. This will take a while but is more certain of getting a result
3. Abandon the project as unworkable

The problems in the PDF report formats are nearly/mostly fixed, hopefully just down to a few final adjustments. Garuda doesn't work and never will, but we have some other options that are better.

The change to Hail Mary situations are now in place and under test. I've introduced a specific play to replace the DL play call and changed the way it's processed in a separate routine instead of using the normal play-by-play process (like a special teams play instead of a regular down). I've eliminated unncessary complications like fumbles, interceptions and returns. Currently there aren't even any completions short of the endzone: either you make it or you don't.

I decided the range for choosing between a Big Ben play and a gadget play isn't very relevant, although we might come back to that later. Instead I've opted for cleaning up the decision making on "short" hail mary situations where you can throw a forcing pass to a selected receiver. You pick a range (for what you think is short) and a receiver. The defence tries to guess which receiver and bat the ball away. If they guess wrong you get a fairly good chance of hitting your guy in the endzone. So it's sort of a mini-game within a game. It's a fairly rare event, don't forget. It was tempting to make it entirely driven by coaching choices with no element for player skills - maybe that's something we could come back to.

Initial settings for the hail mary options in your gameplan are 10 yards, SX and SXD and you can't actually change them yet (they won't be available until a few weeks into the season).

I've made a change so the maximum for accumulated keys is 9 instead of 7. Accumulated training is still limited to a maximum of 7. I'm still thinking about how to tie training, formations and play calls on offence together, so that training applies to a play call in a given formation, or is needed in proportion to the number of formations you use for that play (it being fairly obvious the more formations in which you use the play the more training should be needed to make it work).

Other tactical situations that we could be looking at are fake punts and field goals. For these we need purpose built play calls to fit the players available in the formation and options to decide when to go for them. And a limit of how many you can do.

We could also look at expanding the range of option on punts and punt returns, kicks and kick returns. Maybe some choices that are match-or-mismatch against each other, changing the chances of the various different outcomes. They could even have proper situations defined for them, instead of having vague "strategy" style play calls that apply every time.

While we're looking at fourth downs we could have a think about the current system of fourth down options to see if we want to change any, and also to look at the restriction of two failures after which you can no longer go for it on fourth down. I'd like to change that to one failure - but only apply it to fourth downs that aren't obvious/sensible/consensus decisions. To do that we need to see if we can achieve a consensus on which ones shouldn't be restricted.

While we're waiting for the problems with the system and report utilities to be dealt with (at the moment I can't actually generate game reports at all) we can still be working on some other parts of the game, especially some of the fiddly bits we've not been able to do much with before. Starting with the routine for the last play of the game.

At present with a lead we down the ball if we're not backed up too close to the goal line. We go for a field goal if we're within long range and it's enough to win or tie. If within short yardage needing a TD to win or tie we throw whichever pass we completed most in the game so far. Outside short yardage we throw DL from D formation against WC, no matter the distance to go.

Possible changes are to introduce new play calls to fit the situation instead of using normal ones that are only approximately similar, and a decision point for the maximum range at which to throw a hail mary pass into the endzone (beyond that you have to throw it as a buck and wing play with the receiver throwing a lateral or pitching back to another player). That would mean a set of forcing plays whose chance of success depends on the range and skills (like a field goal attempt) rather than a normal play. With a choice of which one to use at short range? And what field position should count as short range?

I don't think we need to use a shotgun formation, so we need a new formation defined for the purpose (swapping to S formation isn't right as we don't want to keep a man in the backfield - he's got to go downfield with the others).

There's also a decision for the range at which it's worth throwing the hail mary when the scores are tied - and when it's better to go to overtime than risk the ball coming back at you.

At present the updates to our PDF report writer utilities aren't being added to the version that's downloadable from the website as we think this version is no longer needed - it's the one that allows you to print it yourself after receiving your report in text format and and we don't think anyone does that any more (since we went over to sending game reports in attached PDF files). We think everyone opting for text reports uses other print and display methods, not our utility. Tell us if we're wrong, if you think it matters. I'm guessing it's likely someone will need to update or replace the utility you are using sometime, but since it's not one of ours I don't think we need to worry about it.

I've added stats keeping for recording first downs won by run or pass or penalties, for run and pass balance on first downs and in the redzone, plus stats for the number of drives reaching the redzone and how the drives finished. We also have runs for loss, runs for no gain, dumpoffs and throwaways, all in the game stats. There are stats for field goals of 50 yards or more, made and missed, but I haven't decided what to do with those.

Most of these will appear initially in the game stats only - we can work them into other reports later. I've done nothing to check or test any of these, as I figure you guys can do that during play. I'm sure you'll notice if the stats don't add up. Any more suggestions for new game stats to be added?

Next is the second test run of the season startup routine. There are also some faults in the reports (the layout tabs seem to have wandered out of place) and there are still the system problems to be addressed. We can't run the game on a computer that keeps freezing up, or where the backups aren't working, let alone when we have both problems together.

There's been a fair amount of feedback on improved scouting reports. Providing a large mass of raw data is not what we're going to be doing. That would benefit a small number of coaches and make the game even less accessible to everyone else. What we want from scouting reports is to make the game easier to play, by accumulating and summarising the information already available.

The obvious additions are to accumulate the best plays and formations in the league report, and the best plays and scoring plays from the game summary (information that I think a lot of you are currently not using). I'll look at adding the stats-keeping needed for red zone stats and analysis, stats for first down calls (specifically for the run-pass balance on first and ten) and first downs achieved (by run, pass and penalties).

I think we've now got the system back together again after problems with servers being wrongly configured during a system update, preventing us from making changes, and problems with emailing turns annoyingly misreported as a server error when it wasn't but at the same time as real server problem, and illness. Must remember to avoid cucumber and bean sprouts.

I think I've now caught up on turns entered, including people who input multiple turns (please don't do that - the system isn't designed for it). I've run the first test of the league startup routine, and now I'll need to run another with the corrections arising from the first test (bear in mind we haven't run a startup in years and the routines was already out of date even before the current round of changes).

You can't see scouting reports at present (having no scheduled opponents to scout) so I've started including the game summary from your own game as part of the game report (we're all using email so no trees should be harmed in adding the extra pages to the report). Ideas for more information that could be provided in scouting reports? In game summaries?

Still waiting on getting the instructions for the new report formats added to the online turnsheets, and also investigating some system problems that had better not be around once the season starts for real. I hope to make a dummy run of the season start in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile we can now use colour in our game reports again, but what do we want to use it for? Is there anything that would be clearer with some colour coding? Things that need highlighting? Stuff that would look prettier with a dash of colour? Initially I've switched the colour option back on and we'll see what colour was available in the old version. I think we used it only in the old Superbowl version, so it will probably appear in the game summary in scouting reports.

The new formats for PDF reports are now available, although the online turnsheet doesn't yet recognise them (it will do soon - in the Email Format box at the bottom of the turnsheet). The typeface normally used in PDF reports should now be Lucida Console, which I think is much clearer than the old one (which is Courier New - we only ever used this because it was all that was available when we introduced the system).

Allowable formats are COURIER, GARUDA, MONACO, LUCIDA and LST (which is Lucida Sans Typewriter, which I think is actually the best of the group and the one closest to the typeface used in the original design). These commands just set the typeface and for the report to display correctly you need to have that font installed on your computer (these commands are mainly intended for people using Linux and Macs who will want Garuda and Monaco respectively - nearly all Windows users will have both Lucida Console and Courier New). And you can go back to Courier if you really want. Or Lucida Sans Typewriter if you've got it and agree with me that it's actually the best available.

The final option available is EMBED which embeds the font in the file so the report will display correctly whether you have the font on your computer or not. The typeface will be whatever the GM has set as the default (currently Lucida Console). The disadvantage is the file is much larger than it otherwise needs to be, but with fast broadband you probably don't care.

NFLCA now has a full set of initial drafts, although there are still six teams with no gameplans and one with no credits. The turnsheets are ready, although with so many changes there are likely to be some bugs still to be hunted down. At the moment I'm not kicking out coaches with no credits - I've set teams with negative credits to play down instead. NFLCB still has two teams unassigned and several teams with no rosters. Only about half the teams have gameplans. On the other hand we a had new coach arrive last week and another one this week, so we're getting closer.

I will be holding up the league starts until after I've done and tested the structural change to assess roster strengths down by down instead of game by game. This will be only the first stage - where the balance of play should be the same as it was before - so we need to run it and check the game hasn't gone haywire. Then we can start integrating the changes to formations (which we'll be doing during the season) and have a reasonable idea what changes have what effect on the balance.

I'm not expecting a lot of problems in leagues with rosters coming from the initial draft as you won't have picked many players you can't put on the field all at once - the changes will be when the rosters get bigger and when you go to the more extreme formations (in both cases there will be players inactive and not counting).

The turnsheets are now up to date with the extra bonus play boxes, formation training on offence, the SF action to select your base formation on offence and a new box for selecting the format of your game reports (either text or PDF) instead of having to ask me to set it for you. Later the format box will allow some other options for formatting PDF reports differently.

I've added a new special action SF to select your base formation on offence. There's also a formations box added to the front of the row of training boxes on the turnsheet. Neither of these actually has any effect on the game but I figured we'd get the easy part done at the start.

Later we'll probably have base offences selected by proper names (eg. West Coast) but to do that we'll need to group the formations we use and map them to the named offensive schemes, decide on names for ones that aren't currently in use, add formations for any in use that we don't have, and add interesting historical formations and plays we'd like to use in a throwback league. Then we can have a throwback league.

Training and keys should now accumulate in pre-season the same as in the regular season but won't count in game strengths (otherwise the teams that play alot of pre-season games will get stronger and you'll have no idea whether your results are due to your gameplan or just a mismatch in playing strengths). Current training, keys and bonus etc will still count as normal. The point of this change is to help the player stats routine prioritise plays when allocating runners and receivers.

I'm also adding some extra boxes to use for bonus plays during the setup phase. These are already done in the software, with some default selections, so you can use them as soon as they appear on the turnsheet.

Accumulated training on formations (accumulated from your "most used" formations each game) should appear on game reports as well, although at present they don't do anything. We'll probably need a formation training box on the turnsheet as well. And maybe it'll link in with having starting formations on offence.

Accumulated player stats are now included in game reports, in pre-season as well as during the regular season (they should be reset in week 1 as you'd expect) but not during the post-season. We'll look at where to write them into scouting reports, league reports, stats reports etc later. Don't need to be dealing with it right now.

The first batch of pre-season games with special actions didn't work very well, due to a mismatch with the online turnsheets (I run my tests with manual inputs). Should now be fixed.

I've added a new page for the accumulated rules changes and I'm labelling the NuGameplan rules as version 2.18. Note that all the pages linked at the top of the page have information about the current changes - the latest updates on each page are the ones in maroon text. No-one responded to the question about including the printed turnsheets so I've taken them out.

Apparently the setup phase for college leagues includes a normal training camp, including graduations and recruiting. That's an odd thing to do with rosters that were only just selected - some of the players you picked will graduate before they've played a game - when we get closer to the time I'll run some tests and tweak the software so the first season starts with the rosters created by your initial picks.

I've done the changes to allow special actions during the setup phase (ie. now). You can't do stuff that spends LPs, but you can do Rename, Select Starter, Swap, Select Defence and Select Runner/Receiver. The softsim website will allow you to input any actions you like, but these are the only ones that will work. Let me know if you think of any others that are needed.

I've also added extra boxes for Select Defence and Select Runners & Receivers actions in the same way as the extra Select Starter action boxes - they're not on the online turnsheet yet but you should be able to use them as soon as they appear. They should work in pre-season the same as they do as special actions.

The feedback I'm getting on player stats seems to have wandering off topic, being all concerned with generating realistic player stats across the season rather than how to prioritise player allocations when you don't have lots of accumulated training. If we don't get the business of allocating players to plays right there's no point thinking about adding them up across the season. We need to address this question first.

Sensible player stats aren't really on the agenda anyway until after we've made the change to assessing team strengths play by play against the current formation, and that doesn't happen until after we introduce starting formations. They'll also depend on bringing in some fatigue rules so you don't overuse individual players (either in-game fatigue, or fatigue across the season, or both, either affecting just the allocation of stats or impacting your playing strengths as well). That's serious stuff to be thinking about.

A limitiation on making season stats look like real life is we don't have players missing through injury. In real life a team might use six or seven wide receivers in a season, even though only four of them suit up for any given game, but we have the same four all the time. At the top end the best players will not miss any games and get higher stats (not higher than the best, since those are usually the guys who don't miss any games, but we'll have more players at that level). Players at the bottom end we should get more stats, because there will be fewer players with only one or two games, but no-one cares about those. I'm thinking these will be acceptable differences. It's over-using players within a game that really matters.

Game stats are very clumped at present because the allocation of players to plays is made only once at the start of the game and then doesn't change. Except for quarterbacks getting benched. The stats-keeping routine is perfectly capable of coping with the player selections changing during the game (as it does for quarterbacks) so once we introduce a sensible scheme for making changes we'll have de-clumped stats. An obvious first step would be to bench players when they get tired, similar to the way we we bench quarterbacks. It would be clumsy, but it would work, and we could refine it later.

I think we've established that the allocation of players to plays doesn't work properly in the setup phase, with the allocations being very random. This is because the routine normally uses your accumulated training to work out which are your priority plays and allocates the highest value plays to those. I see several ways to tackle this, by adding a bunch of training boxes to the turnsheets for the initial draft, or adding a bunch of bonus play boxes to the turnsheet during the setup phase, or counting up the number of times a play appears in your gameplan and using that instead.

Another more complicated option would be to have the "best plays" in each pre-season game accumulate into your training like they do in normal games. That would mean the more pre-season games you play the more training you have - unless I also tweak the system so accumulated training doesn't count in unshceuled pre-season games and is wiped out when the schedule starts. That would mean the player selections would be refined as you go along in pre-season. The more games you play the more your starters should take over the stats. Like in a real pre-season.

I haven't had much useful feedback about using the four running backs, so I've gone ahead and changed to naming and allocating them as FB, HB1, HB2 and UB with the reserve back designation disppearing. The effect should be that HB2 takes the part the RB had as backup to HB1, but doesn't play backup to the FB. The UB is a backup to either, and all four backs count equally as receivers. I haven't made the UB the key receiver on any particular plays at all, although it's something we might add later, probably by deploying him as a wing back or scat back with some new play calls specific to those positions.

The question about report formats is probably only going to be resolved by using embedded fonts, which will increase the size of the reports files. But that's probably not the issue that it was when we first introduced email reports. It might be we can make it an optional setting, so we only embed the font if you tell us you want it. We'll run some more tests.

We've been taking a look at improving the quality of the PDF game reports, experimenting with changing to a better typeface or improving the style sheet, and getting some surprising results. It looks like the current version works okay on Macs but goes bold and italic on Linux, and the typeface we'd like to use (Lucida Console) doesn't work on either unless we embed the font and double the size of the file we're emailing.

So the first feedback question is who's using what, other than Windoze? I'm sure we have Mac users, and I'm keen to encourage other people to stop wasting their money on you-know-who and spend it on interesting or useful things instead - so we definitely want our reports to work on Linux.

I've started the setup of the advanced college league, which is the NCLA (I've changed the naming sequence because the old one ran out of numbers) but there's only four coaches in it so far. In the NFLCA (advanced) league there are now only two coaches still to make their initial picks. In the NFLCB (basic) league there are still four teams unallocated and only about half the initial picks have been done.

In the college version if you want a running quarterback and don't get one in the initial draft tell me and I'll change an OPS to an ORO. In subsequent seasons you recruit players by draft codes so it's only an issue in the initial setup. Maybe we should change the composition of the initial draft list for college leagues.

We've still got paper turnsheets attached to the back of the game reports. Are these a waste of space in this version? Even if you use them for writing draft orders before you start the online turnsheet you could just as well be using a separate template or spreadsheet or whatever.

We've had some feedback on the numbers for ount returns in the early pre-season games, that suggest the initial changes to the balance in this version may have been a little too extreme. Bear in mind that in addition to kickers and punters and returners you now have blocking and coverage skills, so the range of abilities is going to be larger than it was before. I've now tweaked the balance some more, so that extreme results won't be quite so common as they have been so far. The range of skills is still wider than it was before but there's some tapering off in the effect of higher values.

I seem to be saying it quite often, but the DPC and DKC skills count for blocking on punt and kick returns as well as coverage to prevent them (eg. someone with DPC helps on your punt returns as well as preventing opponents making return punts against you).

There are several things we need to address very soon. The question of how to use the FOURTH RUNNING BACK has generated no responses at all, and if the HB & RB combo is to be changed to HB1 and HB2 I'd like to see that go into operation during the pre-season rather than have it kick in during the season proper. It's quite likely to be a difficult transition, as we're in the same area that raised problems with wandering nose tackles and tackle-eligible tight ends.

I would like to know how the allocation of PLAYER STATS is looking in the current pre-season games. Are they very random? Are the no-star players involved more than you expect? I don't know if we've had that part of the game functioning during a league startup before, so I don't know if the routine has enough information about your gameplan to prioritise the player allocations (the runners and receivers section) properly. Normally it uses your training totals but at this stage of the game you don't have any and it might not stabilise until a few weeks into the season.

Before we get the season under way we'll need better ways of selecting runners & receivers and defence formations and we could be doing that now, deciding what we want to add to the turnsheet. Use dedicated special actions, the same as Select Starter? Extra boxes in the training and bonus section? A new section with a few boxes in? A large area where you can set anything and everything all at once? My view is that these changes should normally be made at a modest pace, only a few at a time, but maybe you could reshuffle the lot in training camp. It's a training camp sort of thing, isn't it?

It's probably time we started a page listing the actual rules changes for ths version, to make things easier to find. Though maybe it's a bit early since a lot of things are still undecided.

Let me know anything you think of that needs to be repeated in the reminders bit above, which is for the stuff new arrivals need to pick up quickly without hacking through half a dozen pages of waffle.

I've put in a minor tweak for the report to show special actions as unavailable in unscheduled games (previously it'd say "OK" if you input an action, but it wouldn't be processed). Hopefully someone will tell me if it works or not. We can't change the online turnsheet to remove the input boxes because the online turnsheet doesn't know it's an unscheduled game you're playing. On the other hand, maybe some actions should be allowed in unscheduled games. But which ones? Select Starter? Select Defence? Runners & Receivers? Rename? Not coaching, no bids, no spending LPs I reckon. Have a think. This will need to be done while we're still in pre-season, so it needs to be given some priority.

At some point we could have a look at fake field goals and punts. At present they're pretty much disabled because of idiots who called them every down, but now we can add extra inputs to call properly. We need to limit how many are called, limit the choice of play calls to things that make sense, and extend the range of special teams calls so the matchups are relevant to each other.

During the startup phase if you input a turn I run an "unscheduled" game. If you haven't done your initial roster selection you get a warmup game since that's the only format that's possible without a roster.

Your first game afer doing your initial draft will normally be a pre-season game against a warmup team (the Portland Bills, most likely) where their roster will be the same as yours. That format allows you to explore the strengths and weaknesses of your roster from the other side of the ball. If you want to skip this game and go straight to the next stage you need to tell me and hope your email arrives before I run your turn.

After that I'll normally run your game against a real opponent and there may be a delay while I wait for a suitable opponent to show up. If you want to play a warmup team instead then you need to tell me and hope your email arrives in time (they usually do). I can run a game without you changing your gameplan - you just have to tell me that's what you want.

Seems quiet today. Maybe these days you all spend your Saturdays shopping with the missus, or in the nice weather you're sipping G&T's in the garden? Or organising the first barbeque of the summer. Meanwhile I'm in here slaving away over a hot computer. Initial selections, imported advanced gameplans, roster renamings, normal basic and advanced turns, warmup and pre-season games now all seem to be working okay so it's time to push on and get more teams up and running.

I've now got the utility for reading player names working okay and processed the first several teams. The common faults so far are getting the position codes wrong (you need to say WR1, WR2 etc, rather than just WR, for example) and including other formatting and labels that I have to remove before the software can read the file. Neither is too time consuming or difficult, though. You all know by now that duplicate shirt numbers make a mess, so do try not to do that.

I've corrected some allocations of plays in the player stats (mostly a lot of tackle-eligible plays on passes to tight ends). It's another variant of the wandering nose tackle problem. A couple of coaches have played games since the correction for that problem was installed, so I'm going to assume it's now fixed and start running initial drafts again.

Situation numbers only appear in the play-by-play listing in games against the warmup teams. That's because in those games you're the only coach that sees that report. When you're playing anyone else the other coach is reading the same file. The situation numbers don't appear, because otherwise you'd be giving away a lot of information about the structure of your gameplan. This isn't something new, by the way, it's always been like that.

Today we've got some teams playing their second pre-season games, and I think that's probably the first time we've done that since we introduced online turnsheets. It will be interesting to see if the process copes with changes to a gameplan the same week the gameplan was already changed (not something that's possible in the normal run of events).

At present your special teams stengths do appear in roster totals for draft listings etc, where they do matter (having them is relevant, adding them up isn't) but not in totals for game-day team strengths. You should find it's no longer possible to get form gains in special teams strengths (it didn't happen often before) so there's no need to include them in the game-day totals. Don't forget that form gains are going to be spread more thinly, being counted separately at home and on the road.

I started running pre-season games today, and will wait until I've had some feedback from those before I do anything more. Mainly I want to know if the corrections for yesterday's wandering nose tackles and lost middle linebackers has worked okay (it seemd to in the ones I looked at, but you have a better idea what you were picking and what you were expecting than I do).

Note the team data used by the warmup teams (always the Portland Bills at present) in a pre-season game is your own roster, so if the balance of the game is screwy that's probably because your roster is screwy. In warmup games by constrast there are no rosters, only standard team strengths all round.

I have several sets of player names to deal with next, as well as some pending team selections and pre-season games. Right now it's looking like unscheduled pre-season games really should be sent as week 1 and not week 0 (so I can tell them apart from the initial draft turns when coaches send both at once).

Started running the first dozen or so roster selections today, will see what feedback comes from those before doing any more. I have half a dozen gameplans to process next and those will run as pre-season games against the warmup teams. That's the first time the new team data and rosters will kick into action, so I expect it will be slow.

Some of the initial rosters got processed with a trailing colon added to player names, but those will correct themselves as we go along. If there were any players with names 20 characters long then the leading character will probably have fallen off, and I'll leave it to the coach to clean up later. The first batch all have the NT or MLB wrongly located in rosters, but they'll relocate themselves correctly as soon as you play a pre-season game. In a couple of cases this did some strange things to other positions (includng a couple of defensive lineman turning up at wide receiver) but I think those will correct themselves as well.

Player names on your rosters should be as your orders for the players you selected, with the no-star players filled out from the old default/data rosters. Some of you may want to do something about cleaning up the OUTDATED NAMES - I suggest emailing a CSV or spreadsheet or text file with Posn,Num,Name (all formats the same as your roster listings - check you've no duplicate shirt numers, names are no longer than 20 characters and don't forget the UB and DCB). You'll need to do that during pre-season if you want it applied to your roster - after that I can still use it to update the data rosters but not current team data.

The first batch of game reports all came out in text format instead of as PDFs. I've re-formatted and re-sent them this morning and fixed it. Anyone who actually wants text text format will need to ask for it - the default option is now PDF.

If you've been using more than one email address and it matters which one your reports come to then email me a reminder to check I use the right one - for now I've simply nabbed email addresses out of the feedback folder so you're likely to get reports sent to whatever reply address you were using when you emailed me.

Situation numbers in the advanced game are now 1-16 on offence and 25-40 on defence. Some turns came through the website with the old situation numbers but I think that's been fixed (and I will adjust for the faulty ones as I go). The first game reports showed only situations 25-35 on defence on the first page, although the situations are still in your gameplan and should show up in the play by play report. Let me know if you need a re-run of any warmup games that were done before this was fixed.

Still finding and fixing problems in the lower levels of the software, but we're otherwise making steady progress. Imported three advanced gameplans from existing leagues and ran them as warmup games today. Haven't yet processed any initial roster selections, or read any gameplans from the online turnsheets, or updated any credits, and there's a queue of all of those building up. Bear in mind that with Danny out of the office a lot there may be delays with credits being forwarded.

Please note the week number for warmup and pre-season games should be zero (no you don't need to correct any that have already been sent - the software will cope but it might give you a reminder about using the right week number). Remember for warmup games you get your situation numbers listed at the end of each line of the report, and at this stage it's worth checking those carefully. First to check your gameplan, and second to check my software. I have been chasing bugs out of that section and who knows if I found them all?

When you do get turns back, please let me know where the layout has been messed up (if things don't line up properly) as somewhere in the conversion process (from UCSD->DOS->Windows->Linux) some idiot system programmer decided to replace a random selection of blank spaces with tab characters. I've had to redo ALL the page layouts, not just of the reports, but all the source code as well. A total waste of time. Spit!

Okay, the online turnsheet for the Initial Draft is done, so I think it's time to get started. During April we'll restrict ourselves to warmup games, initial draft selections and unscheduled pre-season games. The league names are NFLCA for the NuGameplan Advanced league and NFLCB for the NuGameplan Basic league. If you can't remember how to register for a turnsheet on the softsim website let me know.

At the end of April I'll replace any no-shows with other players, so don't worry if you want a team but haven't got it (yet). There are always some no-shows.

We don't have an Initial Gameplan form/button for the advanced game yet, but most of you aren't going to want that anyway. If you have a gameplan in an existing league I can extract that and read it into NuGameplan (I'll run a free warmup game with it so you can see what you've got before trying to amend it). Just let me know what league and team (my copies were all extracted late on 1st April). Otherwise you're all capable of using the standard/extended form to input a full gameplan.

Turns can be bought the usual ways, either online using the softsim website (we added a PayPal option, dunno if anyone's used it yet) or by sending me a cheque (address is Software Simulations, P.O. Box 2758, Yeovil, Somerset, BA20 2XH). Payable to Software Simulations Ltd. The first batch of turns you buy I will credit two-for-one (ie. you pay for ten, you get twenty).

Another day, another round of bugs in the initial draft sheet. Back again tomorrow. And again Thursday. Also decided to add some extra knobs and whistles using javascript, might take some extra debugging.

We also need to decide whether to do player names via a page on softsim, or reading from spreadsheet files. Since I think we're agreed most of you want to be able to replace the outdated default names. I think reading from a spreadsheet (using a csv file) is going to be simplest and quickest.

Still trying to debug the online turnsheet for initial drafts (we never had any new leagues setting up since we started using online turnsheets, so it's never been needed until now). I have now managed to process an initial selection, but only by a lengthy series of manual steps working round a lot of errors.

We may be able to start the advanced league without waiting for the Initial Gameplan turnsheet - the standard one already lets you input a whole gameplan in one go (if you like typing...) and I also have a routine that will extract a gameplan from an existing Advanced league and read it into a NuGameplan league. It seems to work okay. Most of you have gameplans in existing leagues and would probably like to use those as your starting point, yes?

Hopefully it will be only one more round of fix and test with the initial draft and we can get started with warmup games, initial drafts and pre-season games. The basic league should be able to follow almost immediately.

I've added potential and additional/initial experience to player strengths along with kick and punt coverage skills (DKC and DPC). Currently potential and experience don't count in waiver and minimum bid values, but the coverage skills should count the same as the other special teams skills. They apply both sides of the ball, for blocking on your kick and punt returns and in coverage when the kick or punt is being returned against you.

Additional experience counts in your favour when you want it (it's added to the "age" value) but doesn't count against you in terms of age on speed skills or for injury and retirment risks. Potential currently just reduces the LP cost when coaching or fixing that player (eg. coaching with no potential costs 15 LPs, coaching with 3 potential costs 12 LPs and one potential).

Another minor tweak for scouting (the FS acton, looking at the free agent list) is when you don't do a special action you repeat your last scouting action instead. That doesn't apply during the draft and camps (when you'll be doing lots of actions anyway - if you have any spare for scouting you can do them yourself).

It's been a heavy week, due to illness and injury. Got quite a lot of work done, mind. I've added two more player slots to rosters, these being the Utility Back (we'll be splitting the two roles of the RB into separate positions) and Dime Back (DCB, an extra DB for balance because DB strengths tend to get fragmented so much). A point for discussion is whether the backup running back should still be listed as RB or specifically as HB2, which is the role for which we intend the slot to be used. In the meantime both the UB and the DCB are just extra reserves available in the rotation but with no specific roles.

The Initial Draft turnsheet is nearly ready but needs a bit more testing. NuGameplan turnsheet is ready although not yet any different from the ordinary one (we'll probably start that way and introduce changes as we go along). We'll want to run as far as some warmup and pre-season games without too much different, to iron out any accidental problems introduced during the conversion (separate from any introduced while making actual changes).

While you're following draft previews this season, keep thinking about which of the player qualities being discussed are interesting and relevant and could be applied in Gameplan. Quite a lot of draft coverage is nonsense and it has a tendency to pander to the American view that individual skills are all-important (in reality this is a team game and it's how you combine player skills across the team that matters) but keep on the lookout for useful ideas for making rosters and drafts and individual players more interesting.

At present if your gameplan (in the advanced version) doesn't provide a play call when one is needed you get SW on offence or MD on defence. If we have scripted situations (that delete themselves when you run out of plays) then the risk of falling out of your gameplan is going to be a lot higher, and a lot less predictable. Many coaches will have a catch-all situation to ensure there is no way of failing to provide a play call, but a sensible option might be to program this separately, probably with a selection of play calls. So maybe we want the default call (or a set of default calls) to be a standard part of the gameplan.

At the same time we could reintroduce play tokens, using either the same set of play calls or another set. These were some dummy "token" play calls you could put in your gameplan, which would be selected like normal plays and then substituted with a real play call from an extra situation (an example would be that you call XO in an ordinary situation, and the actual play call is made instead from the group you've set for XO, say RT PW PL SC). That achieved three things: you could change your play calling across a range of situation just by changing the calls in the token boxes, you could call more than just four plays in a given situation, and the reactions to the plays would change across all the situations the tokens are called from. So the results in one situation can influence the play calling in another. I think we only took it out to simplify things and make room on the turnsheet.

Looking at the original version of the game we actually had ten play calls per situation. Are we sticking to four? We went to four mainly to make everything fit on the turnsheet. Plays and formations were called independently on each one. Probably too radical a change and probably unnecessary. You won't get that far down the list that often. Might want more play calls for scripted situations, but that can be achieved easier by having more situations.

For feedback do please try to put useful subject lines in your emails and retain them throughout the thread if there is one. It can be a bit of a pain sifting through lots of emails with the same title looking for the one that said something I want to review. It's also best to run separate subjects in separate threads rather than pile everything into the same email.

So far the only problem with the new time & score system is there are a few coaches who are using the time column to make arbitrary changes to their play calling in an effort to create situation mismatches. I think this is trying to play in the cracks in the rulebook and not the game - no real life coach is looking at the clock and deciding to change his play calling in a three minute spell part way through the second quarter. I think very few of you are doing this, and I don't think many of you will start now know about it. It's very imprecise (you don't know you're going to have the ball within the time frame, for example) and you can't prevent the plays repeating when you don't wan them to.

The actual issue here isn't that you want to change your play calling based on the time, but you want to be able to call a few plays differently and then take them out of your gameplan. This isn't about defining game situations, it's about reactions, and we already have a proposal to do this properly through scripting (with a reaction setting that has the situation remove itself from your gameplan once all the plays have been called). I think these fiddly time-based situations are going to disappear once you can connect to a better selection of real game events (achieving a yardage target, or completing a set sequence of plays, for example).

The stats-based options will need a lot of thought and experimentation to make them work. Several people have asked they should be based on completion percentage or average rush yards but those are completely impractical. Total yardage accumulates and has a real meaning, but average anything will fluctuate wildly - it would have to be fenced together with lots conditions (like, the total yardage has reached a meaningful total). This will be quite a complex area.

Since the list for the advanced league filled so quickly I've added a waiting list for a college league to play advanced as well. I'll also keep a list of anyone waiting for a place. Anyone on the main list wanting to swap over to the college league, please let me know. The coaches marked with an asterisk are conditional and waiting on someone making a space.

I understand there's a plan for the next cricket world cup to leave out the weaker sides and restrict the competition to the big names. So that'll be Ireland included, and England can stay home? Hey, it's my blog and I'll go off topic if I feel like it,

Since it looks like the advanced league is going to start quite soon, We'll need to decide how to deal with initial gameplans. The extra charge for extended gameplans will disappear in this version, so experienced coaches are probably going to input their whole gameplan right away. For the rest I think we want to use a variant of the old system (where you send formations and play calls, and those slot into an existing gameplan) but maybe we have a button to pre-fill the online turnsheet and let you take it from there.

Otherwise we give you something that looks like a basic turnsheet and we use it to make an advanced gameplan, like we did in the past. Not done it for a while, but it's probably not a lot of work to bring the software up to date.

Feedback on the subject of the new time and score options has been fairly light, although if we start without having all the options you want or need you're going to find it difficult to write your gameplans. I've added a new Time & Score page with a list of the codes we've got so far. Look at your gameplans and see what you do at present you can't do with these.

I've added to the sections on stadiums and weather in the Rosters & Draft page. And yes I know the "correct" plural is "stadia" but "stadiums" is clearer and unambiguous and simpler and I'm going to go on using it. Also added player stats to the status page although that's probably going to need some other things to progress a little before we can do much with it.

With the selection of runners and receivers already in, I guess we should deduct some training from that play call when you change the player. Reduce by half? Or just the odd point or two?

Spent the whole of yesterday just answering emails. For every three or four I answered another would arrive... presumably the rate will settle down in a bit. Note much feedback on time-score combinations so far - you're going to want these when you start. The advanced league is fairly close to filling and we could start running warmup games (necessary in the advanced version) but we have some stuff to decide before we start (see the coloured sections in the Progress Report).

I'd like to have some new player data already in use before we start making initial selections as well so let's start with adding more special teams strengths (I want to test the mechanics of the changes before doing the more important stuff). Shall we have blocking and coverage on kick and punt returns as a single skill? Two skills? Four skills? Let's make that a FEEDBACK priority.

I've added an item in the Formations page on linking offence formations and play calls for training, or maybe changing offence formations to work the same way as defence formations (ie. used to customise the play call instead of being called separately). That's a radical change, though.

At present you can't target an individual defender on a roster, or an individual in the blocking scheme. We'd have to go through several stages to separate positions and strengths between right/left side and/or strong/weak side and/or inside and I think that means first breaking down the player positions further (at least between inside and outside). But it's a possibility in the long term.

In the long run I anticipate there being a variety of leagues working different ways in terms of rules variations, the same way the basic game is is cut down by having a standard gameplan. Another might have rosters with an absolute salary cap (ie. fixed values) but that's not part of what we're dealing with at present.

Am getting lots of feedback on the DP dumpoff play. Let's clarify - a play is logged as a DP whenever a deep pass is completed to anyone other than the primary receiver. It's still completed or not according to the original play call. The idea that we've been running different plays to the ones the coaches called is too silly for words. You all know better than this. Also by my reckoning you can't catch a DP on a hurry. Not at all.

I've added sections on hail army plays and secondary pass routes (ie. dumpoff passes) in the Playbook page and play-by-play roster strengths in the Player Skills page.

Not been able to update sidetracks since Thursday due to a denial of service attack. Probably not directed at us specifically. A DNS server patch seems to have dealt with the problem. Hoping to catch up on emails today.

Top priority for FEEDBACK is I want you to look through the situations defined in your gameplans (in the advanced version) and the combinations of the time and score columns you actually use (examples: late & losing, late & winning, two minute warning & losing, second half & losing, second half & winning, leading by two scores, losing by two scores, and so on). I'm going to want to start the game with as many of these as possible already defined. Initially they might be specified by a list of character codes (the way formations are done at present...) but we'll be able to code the online turnsheet using selection lists instead.

Example: Instead of ordering say, score -1 to -21 and time HT to 75 you'd simply enter "L" in the time-score box (if "L" is the code for late-and-losing).

Well, that's an impressive response to opening the waiting list for test leagues. Interesting that it's the advanced game that's filling quickest - I'd better move the advanced changes up the list of priorities. Not been able to do much this week, was away from home midweek and I still have a folder full of emails to answer (all I've done so far is scan them quickly for startups).

But I can make some quick comments on my impressions of the initial feedback...
1. The idea in the current phase is to enhance the existing game, not chuck it out and design a new one. We're especially interested in things that take advantage of the increased resources and limproved input methods. The fundamentals of the design aren't going to change. We want to improve the current game and hope to avoid breaking it.
2. I realise a lot of coaches don't know what's a tweak and what's a fundamental design change (although there are also plenty with software backgrounds who probably do). What I'm saying is don't be offended when I say you're outside of the scope of the current project. I think we're going to be able to do some pretty amazing things later, but for now we're catching up on maintenance and the "continuous improvement" process.
3. If you find yourself saying "more like the NFL" in your justifications for why you think something is wanted, then go back and think again. That's not where we're going.
4. I'm not planning to join or run a forum - there are other people who are quite capable of doing this and it will probably work better if what I see is filtered by you guys first trying to form a consensus amongst yourselves or at least filtering out the stuff I don't need to see. I need to maintain focus on the things I'm actually working on and avoid bouncing around all over the place.
5. Long experience has shown that real coaches playing for real, albeit at a bit of a discount, make for good testing. When we've done free test games they didn't work (we get little feedback and the players don't really care or make much of an effort).
6. I favour short deadlines because I want the game to move fast. With two week deadlines it'd be next Christmas before we reach the draft, and with everything online we've taken three or four days of dead turnaround out of the old fourteen day schedule. Then again, a game is a lot easier to play if you've got two weekends between the turns and I want people to have time to think about what they're doing and exchange feedback. Opinions?