SoMFootball.com - How To Set Up A Solo Draft League

How To Set Up A Solo Draft League
By NFLed Berro

(Reprinted from the Stratomatic Fan Forum)

Here is an outline of a procedure I recommend for solo draft leagues (in which the computer manager CM will control some of the teams). This has a lot of detail which could take some time/work and you can just skip steps which don’t seem important to how you want to play.

1) Create a league, I recommend setting “looser substitution restrictions” on in the rules so that LCB’s can play RCB etc. because that will likely affect how teams are drafted

2) Draft the teams using Draft-O-Matic

3) Go into Manage Rosters for each team and click Regen Depth Chart to have the CM create depth charts for the team

4) Go into Manage Rosters for each team and choose the defensive card you want – I recommend setting each defensive card to the same for every team such as average run defense / average pass defense (or maybe good/good or good/average if you have fewer than 24 teams, it’s just personal preference); when choosing defensive card look at the personnel to decide whether they should use 3-4 or 4-3

5) After choosing the defensive card (including 3-4 or 4-3) quit out of League Manager altogether (or else the change in defensive card won’t be set for the next steps)

6) Go20back into Manage Rosters for each team and set the penalty and team QB/rec fumble cards the same for every team; set the opponent kick return and opponent punt return to something appropriate (you probably want to set it to the team the kicker/punter played on so if you have S.Lechler on the team then use the OAK punt return coverage … or you can just use the same coverage for every team for simplicity)

7) Go into the defensive computer manager for each team and click on Import – choose an appropriate defensive CM: for current era teams (1998-2007) choose a CM which does not have a number (other than 6) at the end as the 67, 78, and 89 filenames are for older seasons; choose the 4-3 or 3-4 Stand CM if you want to be quick or you can choose the CM which is appropriate for the presence of 6-rated LBs on the team. For example, if a 3-4 team has a 6 OLB and a 6 RILB then the 6x6x CM is appropriate (because it looks for 6’s from left to right) while if a 4-3 team has a 6 MLB then the x6x CM is appropriate

8) Go into the offensive CM for each team and click on Import – choose an appropriate CM for the formation they should use: in reality, probably only the BB Set, BB Set Fast TE (for great TE’s who can go deep), or BB Set Bad TE (for teams with mediocre TE’s, this CM uses more 4WR 1HB formations rather than 3WR 1HB and frequently uses 3WR 2RB rather than BB Set on 2nd and long) should be used for20current era teams, Pro Set would only be good if a team has two decent RBs with one of them positioned at FB (that might be good for teams without a full-time RB); there may be other appropriate CMs but none of them will use 3 or 4 WRs a huge amount of the time (except the 1990’s run-n-shoot CM) without manual modification of the CMs

9) Go into the depth chart’s Pro Set Offense and 4-3 or 3-4 Defense for a reality check to make sure the best players are in the game – use the Replace button if they are not

10) You may want to turn on in-game rest so that starting RBs and WRs will be substituted for a bit during the game; or if you want to fine-tune it so a team with RB-by-committee actually rotates RBs in and out of the game frequently (or at least to avoid RB fatigue) then you will need to manually enter that info into the CMs. If you don’t modify the CMs then you may want to turn off RB fatigue so that teams with starting RBs under 200 carries aren’t overly-penalized by not being able to swap RBs frequently enough.

Here is how to modify a CM to have it substitute HBs, step-by-step:

1) In league manager click on the team you are working with, click on Team, click on Computer Manager to bring up the depth chart

2) Click on the Offensive Plays tab

3) Import the CM you want – for example, click on Import and choose the NFLed_BBSet_O offensive CM and click Ok

4) Where it says “Special Situations” click on the plus sign to the left of that to reveal several more options

5) Click on Special Substitutions to highlight it; now you are ready to tell the CM what situations and substitutions you want

6) With Special Substitutions highlighted click on Condition to bring up a screen showing various game conditions

7) Choose one set of game conditions for this substitution – for example, choose Down = 1st, 2nd; Quarter = 1st; Time Remaining in Quarter = 0:00 to 5:00; once you have your conditions set then click Ok – this will put you back at the main screen and add a line under Special Substitutions with the conditions you set

8) Click on this new line to highlight it

9) Click on Action to bring up a screen with only one option

10) Click on Substitution to put a mark in that bubble

11) Under Position choose Halfback

12) Under Player choose the HB you want in the game during this part of the game and click Ok

Now you’re set, in the last 5:00 of the first quarter the HB you chose will be in the game on 1st and 2nd down (but since you didn’t specify 3rd or 4th down the starter comes back for that).

13) Repeat steps 5-12 for each situation you want another HB in the game.

You can choose as many situations as you like. For example, if you want a certain HB in the game 3rd and 5+ then just set that i n the conditions; 3rd and 5-50 substitute the HB.