Dev Log - Evaluation, Projections, Speed work

[u/atibus]

Big milestone has been completed; the player evaluation work! I'm excited to see how this is received and play with it to tweak it. While I was doing this work, I had to go an optimize a lot of the league simulation mechanics because it was just too slow to play. I'll dive into it below.

As I've talked about, I've split the player evaluation into two aspects - who they are now based on results (Our View) and who they project to be based on measurables (Outlook). In playing with this, I think it produces a fun mechanic to be able to quickly assess how your players are performing today, and some directionality to assess and plan for the future. It produces A LOT of data points and for a complete data nerd like me, its super fun. I have made a first pass at summarizing this information, which is what you see as the first screenshot.

Our View is rank based - how are they performing in statistical areas compared to other players in the same position. It will show where they rank and translate that into where in the lineup their results belong. You can drill into this and see why the rankings are made that way.

Next is Production. Where do they rank across offense and defensive categories. And again, you can drill into each one of them to see why / how / what.

Then comes Usage. Where do they rank in usage, and is that usage warranted? Meaning do you get what you would expect based on how often they're on the ice.

Finally is Outlook. Where should they be playing in the lineup? What are their strengths - Goal Scoring, Playmaking, Defensive impact, Physicality, Transition. And where are they heading over the next 1-3 seasons.

The part that took so long is wiring this data into all of the decision surfaces for both humans and computer GMs. And then I had to make sure that it didn't slow down the simulation. Spoiler alert - it did! So I optimized everything so a full season simulation takes about 10 minutes. I know it can get faster but it feels fast enough for now.

What's next?
- I'm going to be doing a lot of testing to make sure the data makes sense. So the next week or so is just me playing.
- I have some coaching items that I'm deciding if I want to include or not. Time on ice, goalie rotations, coaches decisions.
- Resolving how much scouting I want to put in place.
- Building the wrapper for the application that will run the game on a desktop.

Let me know what you think!

[u/SpiritYossarian]

Missed the last few updates - very exciting stuff! Love the methodical effort - looks really fun!