[Troubleshooting] - Fixing Leagues seems difficult

[MRC]

Hey everyone! Still in the midst of fixing all other leagues in my European Super League database before I can move on to actually finishing the system itself.

Have fixed a couple of leagues by now (as in, filled them up manually; while the game seems to fill up the leagues of some nations automatically and therefore makes them eligible even without them being fixed in the PGE, it seems to cause issues with both drawing teams into cups that shouldn't be drawn and the file crashing around september/october), right now looking at England.

So it seems like I was finally getting to an end after many leagues filled up (and many, many editor crashes during testing comps in between), the most recent testing comps looked like this:
 

Spoiler

Seems easy enough, doesn't it?
So I filled these up with unassigned U21 teams from clubs of the north/south.

As I ran the test again, this showed up:

Spoiler

Right, so 8+9 adds up to 17 as far as I can remember, but apparently the game only sees 16 of them and apparently the parent competition expects to have 20 teams. Now I tried to fix this two different ways, both produced the same result - the first was to add teams to north/south until each had 10 teams that got recognised in order to get the 20.

The other attempted workaround - since the first was a failure - was to just add the teams to the parent comp in hopes that this would somehow work.

Testing after both of these led to this:

Spoiler

Not gonna lie, I feel like a programmer - fix one error and a mountain of different ones show up. All while working with a broken tool to begin with (save + test comp results in crash of the editor).

 

If anyone has a solution for this, it's very much appreciated!
 

 

EDIT: All of this still happened in Basic Rules. I wanted to fix as much as I could before I switched to advanced rules for the stuff I may have to do there. Perhaps a stupid idea as switching to Advanced seems to mess stuff up again at times.

EDIT 2: G*ddammit. God f*ing dammit. I think I got it. It seems like the culprit was Barnsley's U21. They were assigned to Div 3 North and showed up there, but it showed up there as being in Div 2. So it wasn't eligible for Div 3 but took up a spot which caused there to be too many teams when I added others.

I solved it by assigning Barnsley to Div 2 and getting another team for Div 3 North, and it seems to work just fine now!
Still no idea what was up with the third Nation Error window that showed up before, but for now I'm happy that things seem like they're fixed for now. So if anyone has a similar issue, make sure to thoroughly check those leagues and their parent league for discrepancies. I'll take the flawed database out.

Thank you to anyone who put time into this!

Edited December 3, 2022 by MRC
It seems I found a solution

[Wolf_pd]

Yes, fixing errors in the editor does make you a developer. The errors usually don't make sense, unless you go very deep and then discover the root for them. Hard to judge what Barnsley was doing exactly. I have seen that with youth teams the placement of the main team can throw up such error. Can't explain what the reason is for it though.

[MRC]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Wolf_pd:

Yes, fixing errors in the editor does make you a developer.

That makes my statement earlier sound quite arrogant - just to clarify: I'm not in any way saying that the job of a dev is as easy and straightforward as the superficial stuff I'm doing in the editor.

I was merely referring to "Fix one issue, suddenly encounter several new ones", which is to my knowledge a running gag in the coding space. Wasn't trying to be presumptuous.

 

Anyways, I managed to fix some more of my leagues but I found that adding teams to leagues didn't work several times when I was in advanced rules doing it. Specifically for the belgian leagues. I filled them up, and whether I tested rules and saved before that or not, when I was testing comps I got the "only 12 teams out of 16" again and my changes were undone. So overall there just seems to be a lot of dodgy stuff happening in this years' editor.

Last year it seemed fine for me, only messed up the schedule somewhat when doing advanced rules (exactly the same db: Saved in Basic rules - being able to enter early pre-season at the end of May; saved in Advanced Rules - 4th of July is the best we can do)

[Wolf_pd]

10 hours ago, MRC said:

That makes my statement earlier sound quite arrogant - just to clarify: I'm not in any way saying that the job of a dev is as easy and straightforward as the superficial stuff I'm doing in the editor.

Relax  It wasn't meant to make you sound arrogant in any way.

Some of the errors are sometimes so counter-intuitive you really need to work out how things work in the editor. So if you are able to fix the more complex errors that turn up (and even the most common errors can have different causes), you are allowed to say you feel like a developer. As a mod I usually delve deeper into the editor as it is part of my mod description, but I am happy my hair is so short I can't pull it out in frustration  

[MRC]

vor 12 Stunden schrieb Wolf_pd:

but I am happy my hair is so short I can't pull it out in frustration

I feel you 

The next thing I've encountered (although "just" annoying), is that the testing comps often doesn't realise the changes you made to leagues, like adding new teams (although editing the teams to a certain division seems to work a bit better than adding teams to the division) and the changes are undone after you test.

I found that a workaround is to just save, load database, then load your editor data again and run the test.

However, the "Save, load database, load editor data" seems to cause the editor to crash regularly. I had 3 crashes in the space of an hour yesterday, so I think that should add up to every other or every third time.

In a way it's almost interesting to find out about the bugs and how "normal" interactions just cause the editor to crash. If only it didn't cost so much time.

Or stuff like this:

So I added 2 teams that were without a division. Nothing more. Save - Load Database - Load Editor Data - Test Comps

So, now this is where it gets interesting. After trying around and googling to check what I thought might have happened, the polish Ekstraklasa had a change and went from 16 to 18 teams in 2021/2022. The editor doesn't tell you this as it just requires a minimum of 16 teams, but then has no rules for that because it actually expects 18.

Counter-intuitive, as you said, but if anyone has that specific problem - the editor requiring a certain amount of teams for a league but then not knowing rules for that amount, check if there were any changes to the amount of teams irl. Or just try adding 1-2 teams more and check again.

Edited December 5, 2022 by MRC
Another issue + fix added

[Wolf_pd]

For some errors there are multiple places to change things, so you might have missed one of those places.

For instance, you have the required amount of teams at nation lelvel per division, you have the requested amount of teams for a competition and you have the requested amount of teams at stage level inside the competition.

[MRC]

vor 10 Stunden schrieb Wolf_pd:

For some errors there are multiple places to change things, so you might have missed one of those places.

I think I may have just reached the place where this is relevant.

I've now gotten the entirety of Europe to go through competition testing just fine, with one exception:
Northern Ireland.

The NIFL U18 Academy League has decided to be the bane of my life.

I think it's also the first time I've seen "New stage 0".

I checked the 16 teams in there, couldn't make out discrepancies that tell me why one team wouldn't be registered.

I tried to remove teams one by one to find out which one was not counted at least, but as I started that I found that it doesn't work. I was gonna do it alphabetical, so I wanted to remove Ards FC Under 18s first. But even when I remove it, check that there are only 15 teams in all tabs for the competition, SAVE and reload to test comps, I get the same error and Ards is suddenly back in the NIFL despite me having saved the data as I checked that it was removed.

Perhaps you have an idea - because right now, I have none. Probably taking a couple hours of break at least to clear my head before trying again.

 

Edit: I'm thinking, maybe that competition somehow has it hardcoded that it want's the youth team from Linfield, which doesn't exist in N. Ireland anymore due to Linfield being in my European Super League.
 

MRCX European Super League FM23.9.2.fmf

Edited December 5, 2022 by MRC

[Wolf_pd]

I think that Linfield thought sounds plausible.

[themodelcitizen]

Does the NIFL have Linfield, Ards etc in "registered teams"? Is there "reserve" rules somewhere in N.Ireland telling it where to draw teams? Anyway as a last resort you could just swap the NIFL info into a different unique ID and put the original one somewhere that does has 16 teams, lol. Change all the history and records between them. Trick the game when it checks to make sure that ID has 16 teams

[MRC]

I've actually tried to look at the state of it in the default database and at least under basic rules the Linfield FC youth team doesn't show up there. In fact, their "To create" U18 has no division assigned to it. 

But funnily enough, the NIFL U18 Academy League only has 15 teams assigned to it as it is by default and goes through testing fine. So perhaps there is a connection I can't see. Or perhaps they draw from the "U18 to be created without division" for some reason and I don't have enough.

Just in case someone else encounters a similar problem I'll share my findings, testing as I write this:

• let's just assign the Linfield FC U18 to another division in the default database and run a test, that should show us already: Right, so when I test comps after doing this it still goes through. But looking at the back at the Academy League, there are suddenly 17 teams listed in there, one of which is the Linfield FC U18s despite it being assigned to another league.
• I'll run a default test in FM23 now: Yes, Linfield FCs U18s start in the first stage of that division. Seems like we're onto a winner. Although whether I'll be able to fix it without bunning off Linfield from my ESL is yet to be seen.

[MRC]

vor 13 Stunden schrieb themodelcitizen:

Does the NIFL have Linfield, Ards etc in "registered teams"? Is there "reserve" rules somewhere in N.Ireland telling it where to draw teams? Anyway as a last resort you could just swap the NIFL info into a different unique ID and put the original one somewhere that does has 16 teams, lol. Change all the history and records between them. Trick the game when it checks to make sure that ID has 16 teams

As per default it only has Linfield Rangers (different team) and Ards Youth in "teams", "teams for next season" and "teams for next season (secondary division)", while it has 13 U18s teams from clubs in the first & second division (including Ards again but not including Linfield FC), nothing in "registered teams".

But when I then test N. Ireland via "Test competitions" (this is the default database right now, mind you), the test is cleared but suddenly the competition shows 17 "teams" (+ the other categories mentioned above), only the 13 "reserve teams" stayed the same.

So basically each of the "to be created" reserve teams had U18s created into "teams", etc.

And additionally to those the U18s of Linfield FC, Larne & Portadown were added.

Out of those 17 teams, the one that does not get put into the 2x8 group system ingame is Linfield Rangers, the one "First Team" in there. It's all just a bit odd.

Yeah, I could do that last resort, but honestly I'll probably just kick Linfield out if N. Ireland is acting up like that and get a team from somewhere else for the ESL.

Edit: And that's what I did. Put Linfield FC where they belong and got a team from Nicosia to fill in for them in the European Super League. It works for me, since realistically, neither of those teams is probably getting used.

Edited December 6, 2022 by MRC
Worked around the issue.