Australian Football Coach 2023-24 News

Today's update is a fairly significant one and with thanks to the reporting users, fixes a number of issues with the game.

First off, AI list managers were still drafting over-age players in the main draft. Considerable time and resources were spent trying to fix this problem, as users had said it's not immersive to see a 27-year-old drafted in the draft. At the same time, if a 27-year-old is clearly by far and away the best pick in the draft, the AI would be justified in drafting them, but this should happen very, very rarely if at all. After a number of fixes in previous patches which addressed this issue specifically, it turned out a single line of code was missing. AI list managers make informed decisions, but the code wasn't forcing them to include young players in their analysis as it should have, even though they were correctly down-weighting older players. This has been fixed.

Also fixed in a slightly less elegant way: teams will always draft three rounds worth of players in the National Draft. This is accomplished by forcibly delisting the worst players on AI teams the day before if they haven't made space. This should be re-written in the next complete edition of the game so the delist won't be necessary. Teams were also over-selecting rookies in the rookie draft, ignoring the rookie maximum, and this is now strictly enforced.

The match engine also sees some significant improvements. Players now dispose the ball slightly less efficiently in order to increase the number of hit-outs and players make more informed decisions about when to kick at goal when no set shot is involved. Players are now a bit more likely to kick at goal overall, but less likely if they're under pressure or far away. While these are minor changes, they continue to make player statistics more realistic.

These changes will be immediate when you update the patch. Hope you enjoy the increased realism!

Full change log:
- Fixed not tested: AI teams were going over their player limit/salary cap
- Fixed: Rookie draft always went six rounds
- Fixed: The AI was still frequently selecting over-age players in the draft in spite of hours and hours and hours spent trying to fix this without forcing a strict age limit, and it turned out a single line of code was missing
- Fixed: Tweaked the disposal code to make sure players were not always disposing to the best option (incorrect disposal rate depends on skill)
- Fixed: Teams were not adhering to the maximum number of rookies on a team rule
- Fixed: Drafted players will revert to developmental roles, even though this gets reset at the start of the next season anyways
- Fixed: Teams will not draft rookies if this puts them over the salary cap
- Fixed: Children will now age properly
- Improved: Teams are less likely to offer players extensions
- Improved: Teams should now spread contract extensions over a longer period of time
- Improved: Teams should offer more two-year extensions
- Improved: Teams will now forcibly de-list players before the national draft in order to ensure they pick for three rounds, even if it leads to strange outcomes (easier to implement)
- Improved: Made players slightly more likely to kick at goal
- Improved: Players less likely to kick at goal when under pressure
- Improved: Expansion teams have over-age player down-weights removed after the sixth round of the draft

Don't get too excited for this one - all this mid-week patch does is fix the bug causing the year to not roll over properly (the patch from last weekend only got halfway there), makes ball-ups slightly more likely on the ground, and changes player's spoiling behaviour in an attempt to make hit out numbers/stoppages more realistic.

That's it. More in the works soon!

Another patch ready for the weekend - what you'll notice most are the new next unread message and read all messages buttons, but this also fixes some things under the hood.

You'll also notice players will run with the ball more when watching the match. Players still greatly respond to pressure, but players were barely running at all, and the logic needed to be updated.

There's also been some minor adjustments to AI list management which will hopefully make for a more interesting offseason.

Version 2023.1.17 (released 11 May)
- Fixed(?): 31 December year rollover bug
- Improved: changed national draft weights further for overage players
- Improved: players should run with the ball more often
- Improved: AI promoted rookies will not be immediately delisted
- Improved: player retirement code
- Improved: Older players less likely to be traded if happy
+ Added: Mark all messages read button
+ Added: Next unread message button

This week's patch adds the "2023 2027 Expansion" scenario, adds the depth chart screen from the draft to your list management panel, and makes a lot of tweaks to the match engine!

First, some friendly modders have made some great content for the game, including some historical scenarios, available in the game's Discord. To better support these scenarios, recent patches have allowed the game to automatically update teams and rules from year to year, and this means mods can expand or merge teams automatically as time passes. This new feature has been used in the new scenario to add a new team to the game for long plays without anyone needing to do anything manual. This has not been made the default scenario, though, per user feedback.

The match engine has also received some fairly significant tweaks. A bug meant substitutes were never being subbed on after a certain point, and no code existed for tactical substitutes until this version, so you should now see the AI make tactical subs. Substitution rules for each league were one of the league editor variables that have been added as well and future support for number of substitutes in a league is planned.

The match engine has also been re-weighted fairly significantly. New rules on when and where players will pass the ball backwards have been implemented. The kick-to-handball ratio was slightly in favour of kicks and has been slightly re-weighted to be more handball-friendly. The other major change impacted the players being nominated for the awards at the end of the game - goals were significantly down-weighted and a new predictive formula which up-weights effective disposals has been implemented.

The depth chart panel on the draft screen was always meant to be duplicated and a friendly nudge from a user means it's not available on your list management screen. A small number of additional league editing variables were added to the league editor screen as well and some really dumb errors with save games were fixed.

Finally there were some minor adjustments to how form and fitness is calculated, and AI coaches will delist fewer players at the end of the season.

Hope you enjoy the new version!

Version 2023.1.16 (released 6 May)
- Fixed: players with non-forward primary positions and forward secondary positions were not getting some forward bonuses
- Fixed: code which flags whether the substitute has been used now exists at the moment of interchange, not when the interchange is decided, to ensure cancelled interchanges don't make you lose the sub
- Fixed: bug which was preventing substitutes from entering the game has been removed
- Fixed: Substitution rules now work properly across leagues
- Fixed: Variables relating to 666 rule and which days games should be scheduled for were not saving properly
- Fixed: Re-wrote form message to be more performance orientated
- Fixed: Excess player de-listing was ignoring rookies
- Fixed: Tweaked handball/kick ratio (increased handballs)
- Improved: Adjusted Most Valuable Player game score calculations based on real life modelling
- Improved: Players will now make backwards disposals with more intelligence
- Improved: Tweaked fitness increase rate very slightly
- Improved: Code for kicking goals now more closely correlates with player attributes
- Improved: Code for winning a loose ball contest now more heavily favours better players
+ Added: Depth chart screen on list management panel
+ Added: Additional league editing features (maximum number of players on a team not including rookies, grand final stadium, substitution rule)
+ Added: Modders can now disable form from being used in their simulations by including ignoreform=1 in the Settings.csv scenario file
+ Added: 2023 2027 Expansion scenario

Another quick patch for the weekend players fixing several small but not unimportant issues. The biggest new feature is a positional drop-down menu on the draft screen. A near-future patch should have an additional scenario for long players where a Tasmanian team gets added to the league in a few years and this cleans up several small issues in preparation for that update.

Version 2023.1.15 (in progress)
- Fixed: youth skills in Settings.csv were still being overwritten on player creation
- Fixed: game no longer automatically simulates to preseason (bug introduced in 2023.1.14)
- Fixed: game was trying to delete unmatched statistical rows on the season stats load, but instead it was deleting valid rows instead from the start of the file
- Fixed: bug with events file league triggers
- Fixed: game was sometimes simming past its intended date after a new year, now force-stops on 1 January
- Fixed: background leagues were not storing total goals and behinds properly
- Fixed: bye rounds for leagues with an odd number of teams should at least start to work properly again, but need to keep testing
- Improved: Added positional sort to draft