S17 State of the League

[Canadice]

S17

With yet another draft concluded we are geared up to start the 17th season in the SSL. 29 new prospects have entered into the different SSL organizations which is the largest class size for a while. We hope to see the trend continue next season with an even larger class!

It's been a while since the last state of the league so I thought it time to get back into the routine of posting some summaries in the beginning of each season.

Portal

The Portal launch has been overall a success, with our first regression being run completely within it this past week. As always with projects as big as these there are always going to be bugs, but all in all no major issues has been reported that wasn't easily fixed. As mentioned in the end of season post, retirements in the portal are automatic within the season they are submitted so anyone retiring before the start of the upcoming season will not get a corpse season for their player. We've also had to adjust the start of the new draft class to fall in line with the start of the season and we will see the first couple of creates for the S18 draft class dropping into the academy this week!

Development on additional features of the portal has ground to an almost complete stop due to my real life work-load kicking back up after the summer holidays. If you are interested in delving into R and Shiny, do let me know and we can talk about possible contributions to the development!

As part of the portal there is also a developing API that opens up access to different data from the portal and index. I've created a template Google Sheet for those that use them, with examples of how to connect Sheets to the API. When you make a copy of the sheet, you also need to copy the App Scripts that go with them as they are used to both load and update data from the API. The full list of API functions can be found here.

Updates to the engine

For this season we have made some adjustments in the FM24 database that is used for the SSL sim file. The adjustments focus on reducing the home field advantage that has been found to be overwhelming in FM24 compared to previous iterations of the game. These changes include:

• Reduce the size of all stadiums to 80k from 150k,
  
• Moved all the clubs to one single city (only for engine purposes)
  
• Moved all the stadiums to one single city (only for engine purposes)
  
• Fixed the neutral stadiums for SSL Shield and SSL Cup Final
  

Even though FM24 is nearing its end of cycle and we are starting to hear release dates for FM25, the SSL will continue to use FM24 for the foreseeable future. If you didn't manage to get FM24 while it was free via Epic Game Store, I would recommend acquiring it before it is shelved as the availability of the game is next to none when the next version is launched.

SSL Jobs

As seems to be the norm with these announcements, I want to push for more users getting into the behind-the-scenes of the league whether it be helping out with recording or commentating the matchdays, setting up and grading point tasks, creating league graphics such as the player renders for the draft, helping new creates get into the league, or joining the discussions about the future of the league within the Board of Directors. The league would not be able to run if it were not for the users that dedicate some of their time to all of these different aspects.

Be on the lookout for the various job opportunities that will be posted in the SSL Jobs subforum and don't hesitate to reach out if you don't find a job specifically doing what you would be interested in doing.

World Simulation Football Classic

The first ever international tournament in the SSL, the WSFC, was held during the holiday season of last year and we are slowly starting to plan to get the work started on the second iteration of the tournament in a couple of months. If you would like to be involved in the planning stages of the work, please let me know!


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This was it for this season, thank you for reading and being a part of the growth of the league!