Developer Notes: 6.27.26

Or how to break scouting for AI teams

In my college team tennis sim, Play To Clinch, there's no actual way to take over a team I just sim in a god mode that lets me see how things play out. One of the things I worked on recently was the recruiting portal that both does the intake of new players, but also reallocates talent from one program to another.

What I wanted to fix. On the first season of a sim, the game creates too much surplus talent that ends up in Division 3 & 4 (D2 as well, but that'd be less egregious) and it doesn't make any sense, we're talking D1 1/2 singles starters stuck on D3/4 programs in far-off outposts. While it feels fun in a way -- everyone knows someone too good for their level, just didn't have the right relationships to get upward -- it makes my game not as fun for me.

So I instituted a Fall semester transfer window that launches after the Fall tournament, that lets many of them flow upward. To keep the system circular, the outgoing program gets the worst walk-on from the school receiving their player as a 1:1 trade.

I'm making some other changes to the player recruiting model too, in the form of rankings. It took a few spins to get it right. The agent was converting STR (our synthetic UTR parallel) from the player's overall (OVR) ability rating, while tracking a second dynamic STR which operates akin to the real life metric.

I've fixed this now so that the STR stays dynamic and OVR becomes visible for me in God mode but not otherwise. I also updated the Lineup Lab with conversions for UTR and OVR for much better viewing and seeing where/how players stack up.

All of these latest QOL improvements have made the tennis sim both more realistic and fun to watch.