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Tag: statis-pro football (Page 3 of 4)

Football Sims

December 2, 2011 /

A lot of folks visit my site because of the Statis-Pro for Windows and Statis-Pro cards downloads. Despite lots of RPG posting, I still enjoy many Football simulation games.

I love Statis-Pro. Despite issues around gaming the system, I really enjoy the individual stats, the ability to have fantasy leagues with it, and that the knowledge to create teams is available from multiple places. In fact, many visiting my site looking for the cards created by Lee Harris.

The good news is that Lee Harris is working on his website. He aims to repost everything from the old Bomber'sGolf site. I can't wait until he's back.

I also enjoy Second Season. This game was designed for solo play, so it play better alone. Even better, the Football America set features an entirely fictional league. Now when I'm playing football, I'm not concerned with emulating reality, I'm only concerned with football. Like I did with Electric Football, I sketch out articles with a commentator's description of the game. Had I the time, I would do magazines like I did when I was a kid. My cousin has about 20 seasons of storyline he and I wrote.

Also going for Second Season is that I purchased the rules to create teams. Unlike Statis-Pro, team making for Second Season is more of an art. There are also lots of fiddly bits and making up sub-systems happens. For example, a running back's rating may have a note that says "Rating is AA for the first five plays". Something about this kind of fiddling evokes the First Edition DMG.

Yeah, I know. Don't cross the streams.

I also enjoy playing Paydirt. The wonderful things about Paydirt is the incredible compactness. The team fits on one page. Using dice, you look up results on various charts and record the result. It plays quickly and does a great job emulating the ups and down of a game. I only wish that I knew how to create teams for it.

Speaking of the formula, Matt Floray passed away (requires login) earlier this week. I only knew him from reading the Paydirt Yahoo group. Condolences to Matt's family and friends. He will certainly be missed.

Matt had the formulas used by Dr. Nicely to make charts. Occasionally, he made charts. Otherwise, charts are available from two or three folks that developed their own formulas. Sure you don't have individual players with as big a role, but the elegance of the design compared to Statis-Pro is beautiful. If I ever got the formula, I would develop the ability to do Fanatasy Football with Paydirt. The system is that good.

Anyway, I am still working on my Football sim based on Statis-Pro. I hope to address certain issues that I personally find annoying, but YMMV. I do not like the gaming of the system by using certain players that had a minor role in a team's play.

For example, if a running back managed a breakaway for 30 yards once in a season, but averaged 2 yards a carry for his remaining carries, his card comes out like an All-Pro player. The card would make it seem that he can get 5-6 yards every time he touches the ball despite the reality of his actual play. To mitigate this, Statis-Pro invokes a rest rule that says that this player can only play in the game for a certain length of time. This creates all kinds of strange play calls. If you have a guy that is almost guaranteed a 10 yard run or a 20 yard reception, but can only play once a quarter, when does he play? That's right, he comes in the game at critical moments. This is backwards!

I hope to use a different statistical method to shave off these odd cards. The cards for these players will still be made, but there should be no need for a rest rule as the player's contribution to the team will not be artificially inflated. He will still be able to get the big gain, because he got it in real life. However, he won't be able to get larger gains on average than he did in real play.

I recently got about 8 seasons of play-by-play data. When I get done with my analysis, I hope to have a system to make teams that's as straightforward as the current system to make Statis-Pro teams. Here's to hoping! I may find out that I crunch all the numbers just to recreate the original system developed by Avalon Hill.

Great Folks Still Playing Statis-Pro Football

July 9, 2011 /

The UK Statis-Pro Footbal League is still going strong. I briefly joined, but it was ill-advised timing for me. My kids were in-and-out of the hospital and we were dealing with a very unique diagnosis for three out of the four of us.

I never got the play or do the games the way I wanted. I had a good team and ruined it by mismanagement. Ugh.

One of the innovations that have include a draft and salary cap. I say that because their cards are slightly different (extra information, different player rating system), but they are quite good.

If they are still playing in a couple years, I might try again. Either way, since my site comes up so much in regards to Statis-Pro, I felt like I should point folks to people that still play Statis-Pro Football on a regular basis.

Re-Engineering Statis-Pro Footbal Cards

July 8, 2011 /

One of the things I really do not like about the original Statis-Pro Footbal game is the player rating. Players with a rating of 4 could be played once a half. Often they had the best cards due to a limited amount of stats. For example, if someone ran the ball once a season and got 15 yards on their one run attempt, their card would make them almost unstoppable on the ground. This is because the original cards only took the average rushing into account. The average for 15 yards a carry, so the card would reflect that. It didn't matter that there was only 1 carry. The effect was more pronounced in receivers.

When I redesigned the process, I wanted to use a minimum of stats, mainly due to the fact that many detailed stats were just not available for earlier seasons. One way of doing this was to make a rough guess at the standard deviation to understand how often a person gained a certain amount of yards. Doing this would differeniate a player that averaged 4 yards a carry, but ran for 1300 yards versus a player that averaged 5 yards a carry, but ran for 1100 yards. The former would have smaller numbers due to average, but more of them would be above average. The latter would have larger numbers up front, but smaller numbers at the end.

This is better explained visually, especially folks that have not played the game for years. Let's take one of these rating 4 backs, DJ Dozier:

On the original card, he had better normal and short gain numbers than Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith, the two leading rushers that season. Because of the relative rarity of a breakaway run, DJ Dozier would be a very desirable card if it weren't for the pesky rating of 4 under his name. With the new version of the card, he can play all he wants, but he is now much less valuable. He can still breakaway for 20+ yard gain (He had two that year), but otherwise he will not dominate anyone's offense.

Speaking of Detroit, let's look at Barry Sanders that year:

Okay, I know. The short gain rushing yardage is much less and the pass yards are more spread out. One reason for this is an average 4.5 yards per carry that year. Another reason is that he didn't play in game 1 that year. The main contributing reason is that Barry didn't have but seven running attempts of 20 yards or more. Most games, he longest rush was 14 or 16 yards. I could be wrong, but I feel like the new card better reflects this. Let's compare to Emmitt Smith's cards:

Wait a minute, didn't Emmitt take the rushing title that year? Why does he have a worse New card than Barry Sanders? The main reason is that he had a lower yards per carry, 4.3. After considering his 75 yard run, he really didn't have any other huge runs that year. (I need to confirm this, I don't have the stats for him in front of me right now.) Despite catching more passes, his average per reception was more than two yards lower than Sanders. The ultimate reason that Emmit's card is not as valuable as Barry's is that Barry had more yards from scrimmage that year at a higher averages than Emmitt.

You know, of course, that this system make Thurman Thomas' card the most valuable RB card in 1991. He led the league in yards from scrimmage.

Next time I talk about Stais-Pro, it will be time for QBs and WRs.

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