quiksand
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Post by quiksand on Feb 12, 2022 18:26:16 GMT -5
Friends,
Lots of fun discussion here on how important various components of the game are. You all peg me as the "chemistry guy" and that's fine. I definitely use the affinity system to try gain an edge.
What about cohesion? Open questions about how it is calculated, and how it works... hard to settle those matters.
However... how important do we think cohesion is? Let's discuss here.
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quiksand
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Post by quiksand on Feb 12, 2022 18:33:19 GMT -5
Have a look here, at FOFC from a long time ago... forums.operationsports.com/fofc/forumdisplay.php?s=&f=34&page=1&pp=50&sort=lastpost&order=desc&daysprune=-1We did a special challenge... I set up a single player game files set, and posted it for others to download and play. The rules, IIRC, were basically: draft your entire team from this year's draft class, never add any more players, and play out your career over ten years and see how you can do with them. Now, this was meant as a way to simulate some multi-player challenge element... it was fun, we got people talking, etc. Anyway... side show. People posted their results in this dynasty sub-forum linked above, and I felt like this was a way to measure cohesion. We know that the first season or two would be saddled with a lot of in-development players, but by season three and beyond, this is an interesting body of data. Each team has its own batch of players, consistent over the span of its cycle, and that's as close as we can easily get to "everything the same except for cohesion, which grows over time." Understand, that injures were ON for this challenge IIRC, so each team should have had some decline in its talent level... so why would teams be better in years none and ten than in four and five? The central explanation would be that by the end of this cycle, these teams are cohesion MONSTERS with every single player a multi-year veteran on this team. Anyway... I'll have a little bit of a look. |
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quiksand
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Post by quiksand on Feb 12, 2022 18:44:43 GMT -5
Daimyo (a good forum guy and smart fella in his day here)
Year Team Eval Perf Diff Proft FrVal Record Playoffs
2018 MER 58 81 81 54 21 12-6-0 Conference Final
2017 MER 50 66 81 44 28 11-6-0 Wild Card Round
2016 MER 43 52 81 37 31 8-8-0 None
2015 MER 55 83 80 43 30 11-6-0 Wild Card Round
2014 MER 43 60 82 33 26 11-5-0 None
2013 MER 51 81 82 37 25 14-5-0 Conference Final
2012 MER 45 52 83 47 9 8-8-0 None
2011 MER 51 69 83 46 19 11-7-0 Division Final
2010 MER 61 48 82 81 11 8-8-0 None
2009 MER 28 19 81 33 5 6-10-0 None
2008 MER 58 31 83 86 7 6-10-0 None
2007 MER 65 0 67 100 73 0-16-0 None
Someone named T-Storm:
Year Coach Record Playoffs Top Passer
2017 P. Vaughn 4-12 None C. Taylor (3572)
2016 P. Vaughn 11-5 Division FC. Taylor (3937)
2015 P. Vaughn 8-8 None C. Taylor (1598)
2014 P. Vaughn 11-5 Division FC. Taylor (3175)
2013 M. Bates 14-2 ConferenceC. Taylor (3383)
2012 M. Bates 7-9 None C. Taylor (2709)
2011 M. Bates 10-6 Division FC. Taylor (3739)
2010 M. Bates 8-8 Wild Card C. Taylor (2832)
2009 M. Bates 7-9 None C. Taylor (2390)
2008 D. Cooper 2-14 None C. Taylor (2670)
2007 D. Cooper 0-16 None S. Bellisari (1742)
Logan, listed earliest to latest, from his own thread::
0-16
1-15
2-14
1-15
2-14
0-16
4-12
4-12
6-10
I didn't dig into every thread... but my vague sense here (and I think this was true with my own team) that most of these teams got far better toward the end (at least seasons 6-7-8 before injuries wiped them out)
I found this persuasive at the time that cohesion matters, and possibly more than most of us recognize.
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Post by bylanta on Feb 12, 2022 19:49:12 GMT -5
Just as a response to that exercise, I might suggest that cohesion would be more of a boon in that SP environment. Here in MP, more people will keep players around to keep their cohesion up, thus lessening the relative effectiveness of it in comparison to your opponents.
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quiksand
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Post by quiksand on Feb 12, 2022 20:29:33 GMT -5
Hmmm... not sure I buy that, if your implication is that cohesion is purely ordinal in nature. I just figure it's an overall modifier... something like a team with all new players would end up with a 0.96 multiplied by all ratings... and a team with all 8th year players would end up with a 1.04 multiplied by all ratings. Or, if not ratings, some comparable effect on actual play outcomes arising from base ratings (the dice roll on whether the receive catches a pass that gets thrown to him, frex).
So... even if most teams here have higher cohesion than in a SP setting, I don't see how that makes it any less important. Perhaps a lesser edge relative to a given opponent or the field, but... not less important or less impactful.
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Post by clown on Feb 12, 2022 21:08:29 GMT -5
I only have emotion feeling on this nothing Scientific
It feels like cohesion smooths out the lows
When cohesion is low the randomness and inconsistencies seem to show up
Cohesion=Crispness in the way the gameplan is implemented through the talent of the roster.
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Post by bylanta on Feb 12, 2022 23:34:05 GMT -5
Hmmm... not sure I buy that, if your implication is that cohesion is purely ordinal in nature. I just figure it's an overall modifier... something like a team with all new players would end up with a 0.96 multiplied by all ratings... and a team with all 8th year players would end up with a 1.04 multiplied by all ratings. Or, if not ratings, some comparable effect on actual play outcomes arising from base ratings (the dice roll on whether the receive catches a pass that gets thrown to him, frex). So... even if most teams here have higher cohesion than in a SP setting, I don't see how that makes it any less important. Perhaps a lesser edge relative to a given opponent or the field, but... not less important or less impactful. Lesser edge is the entirety of my idea. I'd say your average opponents multiplier will be higher in MP than SP, so the edge gained is smaller(at the top end of cohesion). At the same time, it becomes more important in MP to keep up with the Jones's if you are on the lower end of the scale, because of the higher average cohesion and your comparative disadvantage if you aren't keeping up. |
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Post by Nick on Feb 13, 2022 3:54:03 GMT -5
There are so many variables in this game, and major ones like player talent. If you compare best versus worst in a league, or a study, of course the effect will be larger. But best versus worst probably won't lock horns that often. Is it swinging many games on a weekly basis? Probably not. Over a whole season, yeah I imagine it does.
I am just throwing it in to the melting pot of mini battles I consider and try to win. Chemistry, STs, Cohesion, gameplans, talent, dice rolls. It all matters. But because there are so many factors it limits the impact one factor can have. That's the best answer I have.
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quiksand
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Post by quiksand on Feb 13, 2022 14:10:44 GMT -5
I am just throwing it in to the melting pot of mini battles I consider and try to win. Chemistry, STs, Cohesion, gameplans, talent, dice rolls. It all matters. But because there are so many factors it limits the impact one factor can have. That's the best answer I have. I think that is basically the optimal way of looking at it.
I (and most of us) suspect that, all told, player quality is the largest factor at work ... but exactly where you optimize by investing in each of these things is more art than science. And those who really push any one factor to the point of excess (tzach with gameplanning? QuikSand with chemistry?) perhaps the relatively small factors end up being more powerful than originally envisioned. |
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quiksand
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Post by quiksand on Feb 13, 2022 14:16:00 GMT -5
Anyway, I think the main point from dragging in the One-and-Done teams was that even among those who drafted really well, the team you made through this process was reliably the worst overall roster in the 32-team league, often by a wide margin. But even with that handicap... the over-time results for nearly everyone who gave the thing a decade or so followed the same general pattern: awful initially, a bit better as players developed, then meaningfully better with nothing really to explain it but growth in cohesion, and then eventually collapse due to injuries.
If we were to run the whole thing again today with today's FOF game, I think we'd find basically the same thing. Going from mediocre to outstanding cohesion might be enough, by itself, to turn a 4-12 team into an 8-8 team... and I think on balance that would suggest a stronger effect than most of us would have guessed.
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Post by KO on Feb 13, 2022 15:25:19 GMT -5
I never seem to get my cohesion to the point I really want, but most of that is due to the Jimmy's and Joe's not being good enough to keep around on 2nd and 3rd contracts. I also wonder if it's more important for certain position groups. Currently working on a multi season project to develop that in my O-Line, where I suspect it might be most important.
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Post by murph on Feb 13, 2022 17:28:42 GMT -5
I don't know how much difference cohesion makes. I have a team in another league. I tore it apart, trading away my top tier QB and everything else. My defense has TWO returning players from last season. 10 offensive players and my special teams (K, P, LS). 1 of the 10 offensive players is suspended for the year, so isn't playing (my top WR). Only two offensive players (3 if you count the FB) are starters. My team is 6-5 right now. I have the youngest team in the league. I am tied for 10th WORST cohesion passing, last on offensive line, 3rd to last on defensive line, and dead last in the secondary.
If cohesion makes that big of a difference, my team should be 9-2 or 10-1 if they had been together a while. Over half my team is a rookie, 2nd or 3rd year player (28 players). Most of my starters are not fully developed yet (12 of 22 starters). Most starters are still young (9 rookies, 2 2nd year players, and 4 3rd year players).
We were a playoff team last year (9-6-1), and won our Wild Card game before losing to the eventual champs in the divisional round... so it's not that I have a super easy schedule.
This is just one instance, but I think with how bad my cohesion is... and how young and undeveloped my team is... I don't think cohesion is a big deal. I'm not saying it won't help a good team, but I don't think there's a downside worth mentioning. I only think it ADDS to, not subtracts from, your overall team's effort.
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quiksand
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Post by quiksand on Feb 16, 2022 12:45:08 GMT -5
I'm not saying it won't help a good team, but I don't think there's a downside worth mentioning. I only think it ADDS to, not subtracts from, your overall team's effort. Mathematically, that's awfully counterintuitive, isn't it?
Hard to imagine how this could even be coded to work this way. I guess if the cohesion number for a given play is scaled from 1-100 you could implement something like "the greater of #Cohesion or 50" but that would take extra work for a one-man coding shop who... well, I'd submit he hasn't shown any leanings in such a direction.
I think the Occam's Razor direction here is that sure it matters, but not so much that you can't pluck an exception here or there. Put to extremes, it can be a big deal. On the margins we tend to occupy with most MP teams, fairly little. But you'll feel it at the extremes, even amidst perpetual small sample sizes.
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Post by murph on Feb 16, 2022 13:25:13 GMT -5
Sorry, I don't know shit about coding or computers or anything like that.
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Post by hildebrand on Feb 16, 2022 13:38:37 GMT -5
I think one of the best examples I've seen for cohesion effect in our league was when Mike took over the Jags. He made a lot of trades within a few years and built a great roster, but because they had so much player turnover, they were on the bottom of the league in every cohesion, so the team played well under their potential. Mike slowed down trading for a couple seasons, built up cohesion to serviceable levels, and managed to win the bowl.
I personally try to keep my starters as long as possible because cohesion can sometimes prop up a low talent team, but every GM probably has a line they draw for when it's time to move on from a long time starter.
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