Corrupted save file and resim

[Canadice]

Issue and Decision

It was discovered on the 22nd of April that the save file with the results of the first leg in the S3 SSL Cup Quarter Final aired on the 21st of April had become corrupted and could not load by any simmer, BoD member or manager. Unfortunately the earlier save that was available were from just prior the start of the first leg.

Initial attempts were made to resim the first leg of the quarter final with the exact same results. After around 50 attempts by multiple simmers during approximately two hours, the odds of getting the exact same result as the original airing was calculated to roughly 1 in 102400 attempts...

After some deliberation by the BoD we came to the following decision that was notified to the managers yesterday (Friday):

We looked at 3 main options. The first was an attempt to re-sim and get the exact same results and as stated above this proved to be an impossible task. Another option that we considered was a complete re-sim but ultimately we decided against that as we want to retain the the results that occurred in the first leg as much as possible. This leaves us with our decision:

During a number of resims, a couple of them gave results that was similar to the original airing both in terms of who won the leg and the goal differential. The one resim that the BoD decided to use as the new results of the first leg had only one game that different in goal differential. The following new results were registered:

1 - 2 (perfect)
2 - 1 (Athênai 1 more goal)
4 - 2 (both teams one more goal)
1 - 2 (both teams one more goal)

We understand that this does potentially affect away goals, but felt that this was our best option going forward given the nature of the issue and our options we had in front of us. This option keeps the winners intact, while only 1 game being affected by goal differential (HFC vs ATH). As a consequence of this issue and late decision, we are also pushing Leg 2 of the Cup until Tuesday, meaning only Matchday 11 will be played today (Saturday).

Moving forward

The issue with corrupted saves is a "common" problem that can occur while playing FM that we were fortunate enough to not have experienced up until now. We are fortunate that we have save files prior to every matchday so that a corrupted file only risks to cause an issue with the latest day that was completed. Of course if this error would occur our hope is that it would not cause any effect at all on the games we have already played. FM gives an opportunity to autosave, using multiple files rolling auto saves, either on a daily or weekly basis. The BoD are discussing with the simmers how to best implement this feature to reduce the risk of a corrupted save file requiring a resim of an earlier matchday.

Canadice and Rashford on behalf of the BoD