UHS Build 6524 – May 22 2014
This is a pretty massive build considering the time it took me to work on it.  Originally we had been focused on the Max Farm Ratings and publishing our Guides to replace the old Help files we had previously.  Our focus quickly shifted to revamping our penalty system, tweaking player shooting decisions and allowing centers to participate on special teams without penalties.  I’m probably going to be taking a bit of a break as more work on UHS = more time on the computer = more health issues for me.  I’ll still look at quickly fixing any reported bugs, but I would think the next build would come as late as July.

Max Farm Ratings
We’ve implemented a new setting that puts a limit on the skill level for players being moved to the farm team.  This setting relies on a secondary setting: MaxFarmSkillAge.  The Age setting will let you toggle whether the MaxAgeProtected value (set in the Protection area) is used or whether Age is completely ignored when determining whether a player can move to the farm.

If Age is used, if the player is at or under the MaxAgeProtected, they are able to move to the farm, regardless of their skill.  If they are over the MaxAgeProtected value, they will be unable to go to the farm.  In addition they will also be unable to be placed on waivers (as they are tied together).

If Age is not used, if the player’s total skill is over the MaxFarmSkill value, they will be unable to be moved to the farm (also waivers is off-limits as above).

If a team has lost too many players to waivers (as set by the COM), players will still be unable to be moved to the Farm or Waivers if they do not qualify via the MaxFarmSkill or MaxFarmSkillAge values.

Guides & Walk-throughs
This build was going to be aimed primarily at creating a ton of guides and walk-throughs.  One was initially created before my focus was shifted back to the Sim Engine.  We’re releasing this section along with the published guide for skills descriptions and what they do as well as the placeholders for some of the guides I have planned.

Please review the placeholder guides and let me know if there are any guides you’d like me to tackle that aren’t already on the list.

You can find the guides in two places:
– Logged into UHS: Support > Guides & Walk-throughs
– League Public Site: UHS > Guides & Walk-throughs

Special Teams Ignore Position Penalty for Forwards
When a player (let’s say a Center) is placed on a line in the LW spot, that player will incur a position penalty that modifies all rolls during a game.  This rule will be changed for Special Teams lines: Power-play and Penalty-killing.  You will now be able to use a C, LW, RW in any of the C, LW, RW spots for the PP or PK… the player will no longer suffer the Position Penalty.

Please note the Position Penalty is still in effect for Even-Strength lines.

Penalty Changes
We’ve reviewed our penalty calls and made adjustments as per the NHL Rules (available on their website).  All penalties called in Regular Season games during April 2014 were considered when evaluating frequencies of calls.  Penalties will no longer have a chance to called on each cycle.  Instead penalties will only have a chance to be called in the following circumstances:
– The Defender attempts to Check the player.
– A Player is Injured.

Further, the default Referee Tolerance value will be changed from 5% to 3%.  This change will also be applied to all leagues.

Breakaway Penalties:
These are the penalties that could be called if a foul is commited on a player on the breakaway (and a penalty shot is not called).
– Holding
– Hooking
– Slashing
– Tripping
– Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Common Penalties:
These penalties will together account for 99% of the calls that can occur after a typical foul.  Each penalty’s frequency will vary, however, combined it totals 99%.  The remaining 1%will trigger a check in the Uncommon Penalties section.  When called, some of these penalties have a 5% chance to be upgraded to a Major.  When upgraded to a Major the player also receives an Automatic Game Misconduct.  FIghting is the exception to this as this penalty is handled outside the Penalty Determination code.
– Cross-Checking – 5% (minor or major)
– Delay of Game – 5% (minor)
– High-Sticking – 10% (minor or double-minor)
– Holding – 12% (minor)
– Hooking – 18% (minor)
– Interference – 10% (minor)
– Roughing – 15% (minor)
– Slashing – 10% (minor or major)
– Tripping – 14% (minor)
– Uncommon Penalty – 1%

Uncommon Penalties:
While common penalties together account for 99% of the penalties called, uncommon penalties only incur a 1% chance.  These penalties will range from being minor penalties to match penalties.  Each penalty call has an equal chance to be called.  Some of these penalties have a chance to be upgraded to a major… if so, the major penalty also comes with an Automatic Game Misconduct.
– Bench Minor (minor)
– Boarding (minor or major)
– Broken Stick (minor)
– Butt-Ending (double-minor or major)
– Charging (minor or major)
– Checking From Behind (major)
– Check to the Head (minor)
– Clipping (minor or major)
– Closing Hand on Puck (minor)
– Concealing Puck (minor)
– Diving (minor)
– Elbowing (minor or major)
– Headbutting (double-minor or major)
– Holding the Stick (minor)
– Kicking (match)
– Kneeing (minor or major)
– Misconduct* (10-minutes)
– Slew-Foot (match)
– Spearing (double-minor or major)
– Throwing the Stick (minor)
– Too Many Men (minor)
– Unsportsmanlike Conduct (minor)

* Misconduct penalties are typically handed out along with a minor or major penalty, however, there are also cases where the player was given the Misconduct with no other penalty.  In UHS Misconducts will always act as a separate penalty and will not occur in conjunction with another penalty.  The player will serve the 10 minutes but the team does not have to kill off a 5-minute major like you would with a Game Misconduct or Match penalty.

Goaltender Penalties:
Goalies will only be able to receive minor penalties, regardless of the call.  Perhaps sometime in the future I’ll add the full range of the penalty to the goaltender, however, now is not the time.
– Cross-Checking
– Delay of Game
– Diving
– High-Sticking
– Holding the Stick
– Interference
– Roughing
– Slashing
– Throwing the Stick
– Tripping
– Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Penalties Due to Injury:
When a player if injured in a game the offending player is checked to see if a penalty will be called.  Injuries will happen in a game regardless of whether they have been toggled off.  Toggling Injuries off only prevents multi-game injuries…  a player can be hurt just for that particular game if he’s hit hard enough.  Anytime a penalty call is made, one of these Match Penalties are called.  Each penalty has an equal chance to be called.  All Match Penalties mean the offending player is ejected from the game and the team must also kill off a 5-minute major.
– Boarding
– Butt-Ending
– Charging
– Checking From Behind
– Check to the Head
– Clipping
– Cross-Checking
– Elbowing
– Headbutting
– High-Sticking
– Hooking*
– Kicking
– Kneeing
– Slashing
– Slew-Foot
– Spearing

* The Hooking call actually gets called as a 5-minute Major for Hooking and a 10-minute Game Misconduct (as opposed to the usual 10-minute Match Penalty… in either case, the player is gone from the game and the offending team must kill off a 5-minute major).

An example would be an offending player injuring another player gets two calls against them in the Penalty Details:
– 5-minute – Major – Elbowing
– 10-minute – Game – Match Penalty

Players Serving Majors or Misconducts
When a player is serving a 5-minute Major or 10-minute Misconduct, they will now no longer be able to rejoin the game until the next stoppage.  These players will get substituted on to whichever line happens to be on the ice for the face-off.  This is only temporary…  one that line cycles off and then back on again it will be restored to the players that were originally set.  This is done to allow players serving those penalties to get a bit more ice-time after having just missed 5+ or 10+ minutes.

Fighting
Previously fights could only happen with players that had an Aggression skill of 7+ and a Penalty skill of 4 or lower.  This has now changed to allow ANYONE to participate in a fight as long as their rolls beat their AG and PN skills.

Due to this change, we’ve decreased the chance that a fight can happen from 5% per cycle down to 1%.

If there is an altercation and the Aggression skill checks fail but both Penalty skill checks pass, both players will be assigned coincidental minor Roughing calls instead.

Scoring
Scoring decisions have been changed slightly, however, the impact has been large.  Previously there was a set chance for a player to either take a Slapshot or a Deke.  The chance of a Slapshot was heavily weighted to encourage more of a chance to tip a shot in, thus adding more assists to a goal.  We have had code put into the engine previously to encourage more passing before a shot was taken and from testing we don’t see a dramatic dip in Assists.

Scoring decisions for Slapshots and Dekes will now be based on the player’s PW and SK skills respectively.  If a player has a higher SK skill, they’ll tend to deke more and fire slapshots less.

Due to this change, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in scoring at our current Scoring Chance default of 10%.  This makes sense…  since players with a low PW skill are no longer forced to take slapshots, they will tend to use the shot-type that they have the better skill for.  We were seeing scenarios where 20 players in a 82-game season had more than 100 points.

We’ve decreased the default Scoring Chance from 10% to 8%.  This change will be passed on to all leagues immediately.

Miscellaneous
– When creating the Pro league Regular Season schedule, COMs will now see a “75% mark” to help determine their league’s Trade & Free Agency Ending Deadlines.
– When creating players manually, players aged 19 and over will now be marked as being eligible for Free Agency.
– AutoGMs will now use free agency to round out their pro team if they have less than 25 players.  If they have a real farm team, they will bid on free agents until they have 25 Pro players and 25 farm players or 50 players in total.
– I’ve added a new piece of code that will update all leagues Public Sites so that I don’t have to do it manually.  Whee.  Less for me to do!

Bug Fixes
– Fixed a bug where Coach Stats were not being displayed on Public Websites.
– Fixed a spelling error for Commissioner’s Corner on the UHS site.
– Fixed an issue where OTW, OTL, SOW, SOL, Ties were not being shown in standings on Public Websites.
– Fixed an issue where the player’s age was not appearing in the Draft List.
– Fixed an issue where the Total Skill of a player was not being shown for players in Free Agency in leagues where skills are visible.
– Fixed an issue where the Total Skill of a coach was not being shown for coaches in Free Agency in leagues where skills are visible.
– Fixed an issue where a GM could not view their coach’s skill values despite Skills Shown being enabled.
– Fixed an issue where Available Coaches were not being displayed with their skill values when Show Skills is enabled.
– Fixed an issue where Recent Team Activity was not grouping up activities properly by date.
– Fixed an issue where the Last Login time was not appearing for user’s with an apostrophe in their user name.
– Fixed an issue where the bottom advertisement would appear in the main page if the GM had used up all of their Player Training points.

Hot Fixes
– Fixed an issue where the Salaries page on Public Websites was not using the Farm or Junior Salary Percentage set by the COM.  Released on May 13 2014.
– Fixed an issue where Draft Picks from rounds exceeding the Entry Draft Rounds value as set by the COM were appearing for trades for GMs.  Released on May 16 2014.
– Fixed an issue where Draft Picks from rounds exceeding the Entry Draft Rounds value as set by the COM were appearing for trades for COMs.  Released on May 16 2014.
– Fixed an issue where GMs could continue drafting past the number of rounds that were set by the COM.  Released on May 17 2014.
– Fixed an issue where AutoGMs could continue drafting past the number of rounds that were set by the COM.  Released on May 17 2014.
– Fixed an issue where Teams could not see their Arena information when logged into UHS.  Released on May 18 2014.
– Fixed an issue where PlayOff series could not be deleted.  Released on May 20 2014.
– Fixed an issue where Farm Team playoff games were not being shown in the Upcoming Games section for the Team Home page.  Released on May 20 2014.
– Fixed an issue where the AutoGM wouldn’t make a coach offer if it didn’t already own a coach.  Released on May 20 2014.
– Fixed an issue where team salaries were not being paid during the regular season.  Released on May 21 2014.