Bug or Not? Some Jr League players are not included in pro league draft but should be based on age

[Tiger Fan]

Is this a bug or am I missing something? It is a fictional world with a 6-team major league, two minor leagues and a 12 team junior league which supplies draft picks to the major league. The league (online if it matters) began anew with FHM10 at the start of the 1949-950 season. We are at July 7, 1950 and the draft is being conducted.

The problem that I am thinking must be a bug is the game seems to pick and choose a few 18-year-olds to be draft eligible and ignores the rest of them. When I look at the draft screen on draft day and filter by defense there are only 10 rearguards available. That is sufficient for our draft I suppose as we only are doing three rounds but in reality, there should be roughly 40 defensemen eligible based on the birthdates of players in our junior league. (It is the same for forwards and goalies as not all that should be eligible based on age are appearing in the draft pool)

It is clearly not just choosing the best players to be draft eligible because the first player in the image below (Ben Yoyechek) appears to be a certain first rounder in comparison to others that are listed. His birthdate is fine as it falls in between two of the other defensemen who are in the draft pool.

So, is this a bug in that the game refuses to make all draft eligible players from the junior league actually eligible for the draft or is there something we are missing? My assumption is only players listed on the DRAFT tab during the draft are eligible to be selected or is that simply not the case? And if not, how do we draft a player who is eligible based on age but not listed as being part of the draft class?

It is not a game breaker but really seems like something that should be addressed - unless I am missing something obvious to others here.

It also leads to the follow up question of what will happen when Voyechek (and the others not in the draft) use up their junior eligibility? Their NAHC (pro league) rights will be "Free" at that point so do they suddenly become free agents' teams can sign or do they vanish from the game?


Note - I blacked out the shortlist and List number for players on that first image because our draft is ongoing at the moment but here is a filtered list of all defensemen eligible for the draft and an image showing based on birthdate Voyechek should be on the Draft eligible list.

[boscoJJ]

This is why i don't include junior leagues in my custom saves

[Tiger Fan]

Originally Posted by boscoJJ

This is why i don't include junior leagues in my custom saves

I appreciate you at least responding, as unhelpful as the response might be. Fictional leagues sure can be frustrating to play, that is for certain.

[Sebastian Palkowski]

I looked in the source code and don´t see any error so far. But with fictional setups there might be so many possible reasons that it would help if you could upload the save, even if the date/draft is already progressed, maybe we can see something else why this (and other) players are not included.

Possible reasons might be: the player was generated after the draft class was created (a year before the draft), the player was not with a junior team when the class was generated, maybe a major league team already had rights (highly unlikely in this case) and so on.

So, if possible, please upload the save and tell me a few more players that should have been in the draft class but were not. I will take a look once I get it.

[Tiger Fan]

I have uploaded league file from the day after the draft. It is an online league so that is the only one I have but within the zipped folder I included there is a second zip file which I believe is an earlier copy of the league, so it may give you a pre-draft comparison as well.

I believe there are some others who did not appear in the draft pool but should have based on age but the only name I remember because of his potential ratings was Ben Voyechek - the one in the screenshot above. The league file was made fresh for FHM10 and I know that Voyechek was part of that initial file and junior draft as I created it for our commissioner, copying all of the pro players across one by one.

The only unusual thing that I can see is the Voyechek's history lists two separate entries for both his mock draft position last August and his actual draft position. The correct one for the actual draft plus one spot earlier, a spot he was not actually selected at.

I am just uploading the saved game now. It is called BenVoyechek_draftIssue.zip

In the subfolder included in the zip there is also an earlier save game zip file so I am thinking that may just give you a pre-draft version of the league file as well, to aide in your investigation.

Let me know if you require anything else. Thanks.

[Sebastian Palkowski]

What exactly do you mean with "copying all of the pro players across one by one"?

[Tiger Fan]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

What exactly do you mean with "copying all of the pro players across one by one"?

Manual editing of player attributes and names in game. I started a new FHM10 league file with the real historical 1949-50 NHL as a created new league along with fictional minor and junior leagues. I then renamed and edited all NHL players to as closely as possible match the same players we were using in FHM9.

We had numerous issue with our FHM9 league so needed a fresh restart. I only mentioned that to point out I knew for certain that Voyechek was a part of the Junior pool at league creation as I still have a copy of my created league on day 1 and Voyecheck is indeed in it along with the guys who were included in the draft.

Voyecheck was not a player I edited though as I focused only on getting the pro players to match our FHM9 teams, not juniors.

[Tiger Fan]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

So, if possible, please upload the save and tell me a few more players that should have been in the draft class but were not. I will take a look once I get it.

Any luck on figuring out what happened. For some reason, Voyechek is now showing as eligible for the 1951 draft (we have advanced to September and he is listed in the draft pool) so I guess in the big picture it is not a huge deal.

However, that still does not explain how the game decides who and who isn't eligible for a draft since Voyechek's birthday fell well within range that he should have been included as part of the 1950 draft class. It may impact other players too; I have not had a chance to look. He just jumped out as he would have been a first rounder had he been included in the 1950 class.

[Sebastian Palkowski]

I was not able to reproduce it with a new save and the same setup. So my guess is: the draft class is created after the previous draft (so a year in advance) or, in this case, when the game is created (since it is the first draft). So I think he (and maybe others) where just not available when the draft class was generated at the start of the game but entered the game after the edit stuff (does that make sense?). It would explain why he was correctly available a year later.