First of all, having to add bots to fill positions doesn't reflect supper well on the league. With every bot that gets added it's one more chip from the whole "everyone is a real person" block. Because of this I would be hesitant to go through and add bots for every position. However, I definitely think that at the least D-line bots and even LB bots could be added. I don't know how accurate the position tracker is but these two positions are by far the weakest in relation to the number of starters needed. Of course by adding bots some active front seven players may feel pressure to switch to a position that couldn't be filled by bots. I don't really think other positions would benefit enough from the addition of bots to make it worthwhile (maybe the secondary) and again I would be concerned with adding so many bots so quickly (again, "league of real people"). I think that introducing bots at one position seeing how it goes for a while and then adding more bots if necessary is the way to go here.
One idea that I was thinking about was possibly slow down the regression of inactive. If I'm being honest with myself, inactives are pretty much bots with a bit of personality already. If they regressed at a slower rate, the fact that the league is built on a bunch of S1 and S2 bodies might not sting as much. We obviously wouldn't want a whole bunch of inactives putting up crazy career stats because they played for longer than an active player, but I don't think that would be an issue (active player> inactive for slightly longer time)
I just had another idea while writing this last paragraph. We could have inactives regress at normal pace or even an accelerated pace, and then when they fall below a certain threshold, retire them and reintroduce them into the draft as fillers with the starting TPE level. They would have different names and be different entries in the sim, but each "filler" would share the same max TPE as one of the current inactives. As the season goes on, the filler would gain TPE weekly based on how much TPE the player had when they went inactive. Maybe a percentage of max TPE, or maybe it could be spaced out over the course of a couple seasons. In this way you pretty much get a more interactive and fluid type of "bot" player that gains TPE until a cap.
There are some issues with this idea that are pretty apparent. The bulk of inactives are S1, so if they got reintroduced into a draft once they all regressed to a certain point they would all be in pretty much one draft class. Someone would have to come up with a way to sprinkle them throughout a couple seasons worth of drafts. Second issue is that there are a lot of inactives, and many of them wouldn't provide value even at their max TPE. Someone would have to go through and find inactives that would provide value to teams. If there aren't enough inactives that would provide value, maybe some of these "fillers" may actually need a higher TPE cap than the inactive player ever had to begin with (someone would have to figure out a good TPE cap). One other idea to make sure that fillers provide value is to have more than one filler based on the same inactive player. So an inactive 260 TPE WR could cause three 260 capped fillers of three different positions DT, LB, CB, or whatever is needed.
The more that I think about it, the more I think that you don't even have to have inactives for this to work. You could just add the fillers in and not necessarily base them off any inactive player. Someone could create filers and then a week or two before the draft you could have a "filler prospect list," where the fillers are listed by their max TPE. Again, the number of fillers and their max TPE would depend on what we need as a league. Then the fillers would be drafted at 50 TPE and gain some TPE every week until they are maxed. Again, this gives a more dynamic and interesting way of introducing bots into the league.
Honestly I don't even know if this is the answer the league needs but I wrote it all and I'm leaving it there.
Lastly, I think folding real NSFL teams is asinine. Yes there are probably too many teams, that was what many people said when it was announced that two more were being added. But this is the sim-league-house we built and we have to sim-league-live in it now, getting rid of NSFL teams would hurt the league in an irrevocable way imo. I think that if anything, the DSFL should be the first to go before we even discuss folding NSFL teams.
Sorry for rambling, thank you for your time, do I get a media payout for this?
One idea that I was thinking about was possibly slow down the regression of inactive. If I'm being honest with myself, inactives are pretty much bots with a bit of personality already. If they regressed at a slower rate, the fact that the league is built on a bunch of S1 and S2 bodies might not sting as much. We obviously wouldn't want a whole bunch of inactives putting up crazy career stats because they played for longer than an active player, but I don't think that would be an issue (active player> inactive for slightly longer time)
I just had another idea while writing this last paragraph. We could have inactives regress at normal pace or even an accelerated pace, and then when they fall below a certain threshold, retire them and reintroduce them into the draft as fillers with the starting TPE level. They would have different names and be different entries in the sim, but each "filler" would share the same max TPE as one of the current inactives. As the season goes on, the filler would gain TPE weekly based on how much TPE the player had when they went inactive. Maybe a percentage of max TPE, or maybe it could be spaced out over the course of a couple seasons. In this way you pretty much get a more interactive and fluid type of "bot" player that gains TPE until a cap.
There are some issues with this idea that are pretty apparent. The bulk of inactives are S1, so if they got reintroduced into a draft once they all regressed to a certain point they would all be in pretty much one draft class. Someone would have to come up with a way to sprinkle them throughout a couple seasons worth of drafts. Second issue is that there are a lot of inactives, and many of them wouldn't provide value even at their max TPE. Someone would have to go through and find inactives that would provide value to teams. If there aren't enough inactives that would provide value, maybe some of these "fillers" may actually need a higher TPE cap than the inactive player ever had to begin with (someone would have to figure out a good TPE cap). One other idea to make sure that fillers provide value is to have more than one filler based on the same inactive player. So an inactive 260 TPE WR could cause three 260 capped fillers of three different positions DT, LB, CB, or whatever is needed.
The more that I think about it, the more I think that you don't even have to have inactives for this to work. You could just add the fillers in and not necessarily base them off any inactive player. Someone could create filers and then a week or two before the draft you could have a "filler prospect list," where the fillers are listed by their max TPE. Again, the number of fillers and their max TPE would depend on what we need as a league. Then the fillers would be drafted at 50 TPE and gain some TPE every week until they are maxed. Again, this gives a more dynamic and interesting way of introducing bots into the league.
Honestly I don't even know if this is the answer the league needs but I wrote it all and I'm leaving it there.
Lastly, I think folding real NSFL teams is asinine. Yes there are probably too many teams, that was what many people said when it was announced that two more were being added. But this is the sim-league-house we built and we have to sim-league-live in it now, getting rid of NSFL teams would hurt the league in an irrevocable way imo. I think that if anything, the DSFL should be the first to go before we even discuss folding NSFL teams.
Sorry for rambling, thank you for your time, do I get a media payout for this?
The user formerly known as xdave2456
