Alternate History Sports / Simulation Methods/Resources

**Posted by WithaCapitalG** 5/21/2019 7:14 pm

For those who will be simulating your seasons, what are some methods of you simulating (i.e. Microsoft Excel, Random.org) for results? Any other resources you can offer someone else.

**Posted by CCLXXXVII** 5/21/2019 7:29 pm

It's a bit unorthodox, but my idea was that I would give each team in the league a 1-100 rating, and then generate the amount of numbers per games in the season. Any number less than or equal to the rating would count as a win, and anything greater than would count as a loss.

**Posted by NoE38** 5/21/2019 8:05 pm

I give each team a half-random half-season record, based on how they did in the offseason. I then manually simulate games, with certain factors such as home field, recent games, and head-to-head taken into consideration. RANDOM.ORG and Randomlists are mainly what I use.

**Posted by DoctaC** 5/21/2019 8:17 pm

This is from my NAFA thread:

DoctaC wrote:
How I Simulate
Each of the six original teams was assigned a rank based on the story. This is the only thing that isn’t random. The best team received six points, second five, third four, etc. Then, each team was entered into a list a certain number of times based on the amount of points they had.

The next year, the points are based off of the standings from the previous year. So the champion gets the most, runner-up second most, etc. The process is the continued for each season.

When there is an expansion team, a rank is randomly generated from the bottom half of the league. The team then takes this rank and pushes all other teams down a rank.

For the championship, the two teams are entered into a list the same way as during the regular season. However, the team with home-field advantage gets added an extra time (Home field advantage will no longer be a factor in 1955, when a neutral site will begin hosting the Continental Championship).

**Posted by n00bthtpwnz** 5/21/2019 10:17 pm

I've always thought xkoranate was a great program for simulations. It pretty much has any sport that you can think of and once you figure out how it works, it is really easy to use. I was using it for some personal projects, but the laptop that had xkoranate bit the dust over the weekend so I don't have a way to use it. I've got a Chromebook, but of course xkoranate doesn't work on a Chromebook, like pretty much any other somewhat big program

**Posted by ZO82** 5/21/2019 10:41 pm

n00bthtpwnz wrote:
I've always thought xkoranate was a great program for simulations. It pretty much has any sport that you can think of and once you figure out how it works, it is really easy to use. I was using it for some personal projects, but the laptop that had xkoranate bit the dust over the weekend so I don't have a way to use it. I've got a Chromebook, but of course xkoranate doesn't work on a Chromebook, like pretty much any other somewhat big program

I have xkoranate and i have no idea how it works

**Posted by Steelman** 5/21/2019 11:34 pm

I usually use xkoranate in conjunction with my own methods for determining each team's overall. It's kind of a weird program but not too bad once you get the hang of it. I'll probably make an official post with my method when I get a chance to write it all down.

Veras' Excel-sheet method was fantastic. I used that for mostly football leagues as it doesn't translate as well to other sports. I'll have to dig that back up. I know he revamped it later but his old system was pretty solid.

I really wish I was a coder so I could make a really simple text-based baseball season simulator for these types of projects. I have all the data that would make it interesting, sans detailed stats, but no programming knowledge. Anyone here do coding or know of people who do? It would sort of take xkoranate's principles but better applied to seasonal baseball simming with simple roster and staff controls.

**Posted by Dan O'Mac** 5/24/2019 10:59 am

The way I work things for my football league (COMING SOON!) is that each team gets a score between 0 and 100 for offense, defense and special teams. Those are then merged with weighting based on whether the coach is offensive minded, defensive minded or balanced, and always 10% on special teams. So for an offensive minded coach, it's Offense 55%, Defense 35%, Special Teams 10%. Defensive minded coach flips offense and defense scores, and balanced moves those to 45-45-10. Rating numbers have the decimal place then moved one spot to make the rating between 0.0 and 10.0 (important for the simulation).

Off-season, each team's rating for the three will be modified to account for players getting better, worse, player additions and player losses. Much of this is random, however, I'll move the numbers manually if I feel they added or lost something very important. In later seasons, there will also be a separate QB score that will be factored into things, as, much like the NFL, QBs are going to be the most important position.

From there, I simulate the results of each game using an online dice roller, home team gets a d12, away team gets a d10 with their rating added to the roll. Ties broken with a d4 added to each.

**Posted by ~Bear** 5/24/2019 11:29 am

For baseball leagues, I imagine OOTP would work fairly well. The downside would be the cost (you could buy an earlier version for cheaper), but if you enjoy simulations its fun to play. It also generates player names for you, which is something that for me personally is hard and takes an immense amount of time.

**Posted by Steelman** 5/31/2019 10:40 pm

Dan O'Mac wrote:
The way I work things for my football league (COMING SOON!) is that each team gets a score between 0 and 100 for offense, defense and special teams. Those are then merged with weighting based on whether the coach is offensive minded, defensive minded or balanced, and always 10% on special teams. So for an offensive minded coach, it's Offense 55%, Defense 35%, Special Teams 10%. Defensive minded coach flips offense and defense scores, and balanced moves those to 45-45-10. Rating numbers have the decimal place then moved one spot to make the rating between 0.0 and 10.0 (important for the simulation).

Off-season, each team's rating for the three will be modified to account for players getting better, worse, player additions and player losses. Much of this is random, however, I'll move the numbers manually if I feel they added or lost something very important. In later seasons, there will also be a separate QB score that will be factored into things, as, much like the NFL, QBs are going to be the most important position.

From there, I simulate the results of each game using an online dice roller, home team gets a d12, away team gets a d10 with their rating added to the roll. Ties broken with a d4 added to each.

I'm very intrigued by this! Are you doing this in Excel to crunch the numbers or just manually? I definitely want to hear more about this.