Fri Nov 01, 2019 6:29 pm
Looking at Terry's / Bob's remarks, Lakeview's remarks, and a couple bullets from Rant...:
Some of the points seem more achievable than others (in my opinion). One thing we know about coding in general is change management, testing, and secure / failsafe design are very expensive and increases exponentially with complexity and integration. The simpler and more explicit we present SOMO with requirements, the better chance they have of developing it.
- After the commish populates a league, subsequent draft picks are placed on the manager's team automatically
(Steve) We have a live draft platform....
- Managers post their drops on the new platform resulting in their deletion from the team
(Steve) Some additional functionality with the live draft platform, namely, perpetual rosters or ability to upload rosters (possibly with import / export features) and further control of adds and deletes.
- Trades are posted and automatically reflected on the 2 teams
(Steve) A separate trade interface could be complicated and unnecessary. Managers keep track of their trades and add / delete them manually (as per the above).
- Leagues can track 40-man rosters, with active vs. inactive, as in the Windows version
(Steve) Extensible rosters (to however many) with carded and non-carded toggle. This will also have a manual element. A non-carded pick won't have any error checking. It will simply be a user text entry and not a player card. It could be Mahatma Gandhi, your mother, or qwerty poiu.
- Automatic lists of available players are updated from season to season
(Steve) This sounds complicated unless we're just importing the previous season's exported final rosters and having the back end reconcile player cards available based on who isn't on a roster.
- Timed drafts with proxies are allowed, as at StratDraft
(Steve) Just so, StratDraft seems like the natural platform to start from.
- Logs are maintained of future draft picks traded and un-carded players held
(Steve) Roster functionality to have user text, non-carded slots. The platform won't know anything about the user text (other then not reconciling it with the player pool).
- There is either a prospect database or prospects can be entered manually, as at StratDraft
(Steve) DB is complicated - has to be manual user text if uncarded.
1. Draft grid
(Steve) Not sure what this means. Extended functionality with the drafting platform will reconcile players on rosters vs players available. Draft order established as usual. Manual modification of draft order to reflect trades.
2. Player available list for FA draft (regardless if carded or not)
(Steve) This is research managers have to be responsible for. I don't see the draft platform being able to support the research. Baseball America provides a tremendous amount of scouting information. Not sure how to avoid the work of researching it.
3. Using carded-only players
(Steve) The draft platform seems to already do this. The perpetual rosters, extended roster management features, and non-carded roster spots are the challenge.
4. Format of players names (last name, first name)
(Steve) I think the draft platform supports this. Forget what the platform's format is, but, it probably isn't necessary to change.
5. Dependable managers who regularly check the boards, we all know this is a hobby and all have our own personal lives and things come up and SOM takes a backseat for periods of time.
(Steve) We can vote for the Totalitarians in the next election. Resistance will be futile.
Things that are time consuming/unresolved issues for some leagues:
1. The so-called combined players tab, that probably takes the longest to update, though also the best when looking for trades.
(Steve) May not understand this as a necessary or achievable requirement.
2. The dreaded cannot trade 10th round FA pick/cannot trades picks that you do not own seems to come into play a few times each year. I think there are ways around this, but not many have tried to address this one.
(Steve) Complicated, esoteric requirement.
League spreadsheets all have their variations, keeping them updated during Oct-Mar is easy, its Mar-Sep where some additional time is required to have a league run smoothly.
(Steve) The extended feature draft platform will have one look and feel, I suspect.
Having a spreadsheet now of who played in previous year in addition to L/R splits, etc. helps, and then when SOM puts out their ratings guide, to be able to merge together (with some work of course) helps me get things going for the upcoming season.
(Steve) I think this is a difficult requirement and wouldn't be part of the draft platform - research is up to each manager. You might find a fantasy platform that has some functionality like this, but, it will cost money and you will still have to do some work to adapt it.
1. Provide the ability to export active rosters off of SOMO.
(Steve) Import / export or perpetual rosters is a must have requirement. Both have defects. Perpetual requires storage. Import / export opens the DB up to miss-use -> error checking to avoid corruption might be difficult to code and assure.
2. Expand maximum roster to 40 in game. Leagues could cap voluntarily as we do now, and with an export function, keeping track of players becomes much easier. With different caps it makes me believe the coding for different roster sizes shouldn't be too onerous, but a simple set expansion should be fairly easy.
(Steve) Agree.
(Steve) My take from all of this is that we have four primary requirements.
A. Perpetual rosters or import / export roster functionality in the draft platform.
B. Manual roster functionality to add / delete, extend to X number of roster slots, and indicate non-carded, user text roster slots.
C. Draft platform engine would need to successfully reconcile (imported) carded players on rosters against available player pool.
D. Extended draft functionality to modify draft order after draft order had been entered.
So, the commissioner and manager audience has to vet all of this and refine the requirements. Then, we attempt to present it to SOMO.
