Backup qualifying? (skip teams with fate)

[themodelcitizen]

Anyone mastered the settings for assigning qualifying spots in a league/group, but getting the game to skip over teams who have already qualified from another stage (that runs concurrently?) Is that possible? "Skip teams with fate" is there, and I imagine I have to assign a league fate from the other stage that they're qualifying from, but just can't seem to figure it out...

[rusty217]

There's probably a way to do it. Does the other stage finish first? That may be the issue doing it with fates. It probably can't assign the fate to the other stage if it finishes first, but if at assigns it after the other stage ends, the qualifications may have already been done. There is an option to make teams qualified for the finals an exception, if this is a qualifying tournament or something that could do it too?

If all else fails you could also do it through Other Stage Rules > Stage Actions. Or I suppose even set up a 3rd hidden stage and transfer results/fates from the first 2 stages to that then qualify non-excepted teams from the 3rd stage? IIRC 1 of the default competitions in the Americas actually does that latter method.

[themodelcitizen]

They use the same set of fixtures so they end at the same time I can pull the teams I want using "get league stage teams" or whatever, I just want the game to know that teams are getting a backup qualifying spot even if they missed out in one of the visible competitions. How would the latter method work? Teams "qualify" from the visible stages and also from the hidden stage?

[rusty217]

20 hours ago, themodelcitizen said:

They use the same set of fixtures so they end at the same time I can pull the teams I want using "get league stage teams" or whatever, I just want the game to know that teams are getting a backup qualifying spot even if they missed out in one of the visible competitions. How would the latter method work? Teams "qualify" from the visible stages and also from the hidden stage?

Ah, yeah if the fixtures end at the same time that definitely makes it more complicated.

For the latter I was thinking the stages ended at different times, you could qualify normally from the 1st stage, then effectively use the 3rd stage to qualify teams based on the 2nd stage while skipping over teams that already qualified from the 1st.

Qualifying through other stage rules might be the best method here then. You could tell it to draw the top team from each group in the 1st and 2nd stage or something and qualify those. Since it won't allow duplicates if any teams finished top in both stages you can then tell it to fill up the list with 2nd or 3rd placed teams or something instead. I use it for my Nations League > Copa America to exclude the host nation from qualifying. It's a pain in the butt to setup, but seems to do the job.

[themodelcitizen]

It's 5 division winners, and then the next 3 best teams in an overall table. So hypothetically one of those best 3 teams could even be 2nd in the overall table. But it's easy enough to get those next best 3 teams with "max teams in overall list", I just want the game to know there are backup spots waiting... i.e. the media and chairman won't think you missed the spot and then you magically end up in the playoffs. I swear I had something like this working in FM18 but the file was on a long-deceased laptop... I vaguely remember copying a default setup somewhere but can't think of what

[rusty217]

6 minutes ago, themodelcitizen said:

It's 5 division winners, and then the next 3 best teams in an overall table. So hypothetically one of those best 3 teams could even be 2nd in the overall table. But it's easy enough to get those next best 3 teams with "max teams in overall list", I just want the game to know there are backup spots waiting... i.e. the media and chairman won't think you missed the spot and then you magically end up in the playoffs. I swear I had something like this working in FM18 but the file was on a long-deceased laptop... I vaguely remember copying a default setup somewhere but can't think of what

Oh, that makes it significantly easier! If you have the divisions set up in a group stage (if not you could add something like that as another stage) and do the qualifications entirely in that stage. Do the division winner qualifiers normally, then add extra fate places in the group settings, like this:

Set the New League Place to be the same as whatever fate you gave the division winners (either Top Playoff or Qualified?) and then you can set the Number Of Places to 3 to get the next 3 best teams in an overall table. Max Teams in Group To Check probably isn't needed here, it'd just be if you wanted to limit the number of potential teams per group that can qualify (eg. only the best 2nd placed teams rather than just the next best x teams overall). It will apply the same fate to them that it did to the division winners and give them the same qualifications too.

You can also add a section to ranking levels to specify what ranking teams should get for being in the Top Playoff/Qualified etc. regardless of their finish in the group. So then the media\chairman would correctly see the qualification. eg.

Doing it this way will also show it in the in-game competition rules too. See the qualification section here:

"The best 2 teams from the rest qualify..."

[themodelcitizen]

The groups are all discrete child divisions, and the wider table is a conference within a parent competition, so ideally the "rules" of the wider league table/conference would be the one saying something like "3 teams qualify (who have not already qualified elsewhere)".

I thought of trying to utilize a "best runner-up" type strategy like you mention but couldn't think of how to structure it given that each "group" is a child division (and the wider table is just a substage in the parent comp that collects results from them). Thanks to you I'm realizing I can just set up a hidden group stage in the parent competition where each division is mirrored exactly in its own group and this is where qualifying occurs, with the group settings sending the next best teams, but this group stage would be hidden and ideally not sending any qualifying news at all (because that's taken care of in the visible child competition).

To make things worse it's actually 2 (out of 4) conferences that have an uneven number of conferences and need the extra spots/qualifying rules

[themodelcitizen]

I guess then the chairman/media would at least know you have a backup option to qualify, although they wouldn't know it from looking at your actual division rules (just the hidden stage in the parent comp), so maybe not... I'm sure there's a way to just transfer the league fate so that the "skip teams with fate already" actually works how it should, just can't think of how

[themodelcitizen]

OK, I think I might have got it with the various machinations of the hidden stages... thank you for pointing out the expansive utility of the extra league fate places!! Previously I always gave the teams with "other" the new fate of "promoted" instead of "qualified or "top playoff" and it still works for best runners-up, but going with "top playoff" here just to be sure

Actually hold that thought... still looking for a way to transfer that fate from the child comp to the parent comp

Edited November 26, 2023 by themodelcitizen

[rusty217]

You were able to sort it out? Nice!

[themodelcitizen]

2 minutes ago, rusty217 said:

You were able to sort it out? Nice!

Thought I was. Turned out I just forgot to remove the "teams" entry in the latter stage that was a backup for when qualifying the extra teams didn't work

[rusty217]

54 minutes ago, themodelcitizen said:

Thought I was. Turned out I just forgot to remove the "teams" entry in the latter stage that was a backup for when qualifying the extra teams didn't work

hmm, so the divisions are their own competitions, not just another stage? And this is qualifying for a parent competition playoff? I don't suppose it's possible to not setup the overall league table that qualifies the extra teams until after the divisions finish? Then while getting teams you could assign a seeding to the division winners, there's an option to exclude a specific seeding from qualifying so you could use that to filter those teams out and just qualify the best 3 non-division winners. Then use Set Other League Fate to transfer that qualification to the child competition too and the fate ranking places to update their rankings to reflect they made the playoff.

[themodelcitizen]

It is, BUT I like having the overall conference league table active during the season so it can produce, like, an all-conference team of the week. LOL, I know I'm just putting up barriers at this point. Either way I could do a new stage (hidden or otherwise) that just exists to collect teams at the end and hand out the remaining spots.

What I want may not be possible with the current setup. I went back and found my old FM18 db in the trash folder of an old Mediafire account and it turns out I didn't have a sophisticated setup there either, just a clunky system where some teams would be told they were qualifying from the conference and then not make it.

Considering dropping the child comps entirely and having them exist as groups in the parent comp now... that would allow "group settings" to settle everything. I just feel like a team should always be in the "division" that their "division" is set to, not entirely sure why (and for hard-coded US newgen reasons these teams have to have their "division" set to, say, "USL2 Northwest" and not "USL2" the parent comp)