UHS Build 7221 – September 7 2014
It’s been exactly a month since our last release. This build focused a lot on the AutoGM logic… to reduce some of the restrictions on the trade logic, re-write the free agency logic and basically review everything in the script since there seemed to be something causing an infinite loop (I suspect it was the use of a critical variable in different parts of the code).

I’ve also added in Lawyers (something else to spend your money on), added a setting for Trade Notification emails, added a setting to allow Forwards to play in Defense positions, changed the cosmetics of the Upcoming Games section for your team as well as added the opponent’s record, and finally Player Trade Requests.

For Player Trade Requests, I believe it should cause just enough of a churn to get some of the better players moved off stacked teams and give those hopeless teams a better chance at improvement.

Donations Page – Thank You!
We added a Donations page to provide a forum for thanking everyone that has donated to us via KickStarter and PayPal. This was deployed as a Hot Fix on August 8 2014.

AutoGM Trade Weights & Logic Changes
Currently it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make a trade with the AutoGM. This even applies to AutoGM to AutoGM trades. Previously the thresholds for incoming players/picks were weighted at 75% of their regular value. We’re going to change that to 90%. Additionally, players/picks leaving the AutoGM team were weighted at 125% of their regular value. We’re going to change that to 110%. This was deployed as a Hot Fix on August 12 2014.

The logic was further modified to remove extra checks like whether the trade would violate the Trade Initiating Team’s salary cap…  as long as it doesn’t violate the AutoGM’s salary, the trade will be good. The AutoGM will no longer look at whether the potential Incoming Players have had a positive rerate last season. This was skewing some potentially solid trades for the AutoGM just because they didn’t rerate up the previous season. We’ve also incorporated the new Tiebreaker settings into the logic when it looks at draft picks.

The AutoGM will now be more likely to make bids on free agent coaches that other teams have already made bids on. There were also some additional checks added to the AutoGM when looking at free agents to bid on…  this should finally resolve the issue of AutoGMs going crazy for free agents. These additional changes went live as a Hot Fix on August 24 2014.

Further to this another adjustment was made to the AutoGM’s free agency “poaching” logic to ensure the team will only be looking at players in one of the following cases:
– the Pro team has less than 26 players.
– the Farm team has less than 26 players.
– the Free Agent Player in question has a higher skill level than the top Pro/Farm players currently owned by the AutoGM. This part will impose position limits: Top 5 Centers / Left Wingers / Right Wingers, Top 15 Forwards (including C/LW/RW), Top 8 Defensemen, Top 3 Goalies. If the AutoGM has a real farm team, these limits are doubled.

The following changes were not hotfixed in and have gone live as of this build deployment:
– Pro Roster, Pro Goalies, Farm Roster and Farm Goalie checks and attempts at filling in spots will now only happen after the Entry Draft has been completed and the SeasonType is PreSeason, Regular, or PlayOff. This change was made since expansion teams with AutoGM were creating makeweights to fill in spots despite Free Agency not being tested.
– Players can now be sent down to the farm team is the SeasonType is PreSeason in addition to the original criteria of Regular and PlayOffs.

Lawyers
Teams can now hire lawyers to attempt to lower the number of games remaining in the player’s suspension by half. This is an important point… the reduction amount is based only on the games remaining in the suspension… not the initial amount. It will be key for GMs to use their lawyers as soon as they know a suspension has been handed out.

Lawyers are handled similar to Medical Staff in that you can purchase them, must pay a seasonal maintenance fee and can recoup 25% of the purchase price if you want to purchase a different lawyer. Each lawyer will have an Appeal Fee… this is charged to your team for every appeal you make… regardless of whether or not the appeal was successful. The Chance field shows the chance your appeal will have to be successful.

Only one appeal can be made for a player per season. If the player is suspended again later on in the season, the lawyers will not be able to help.

Roster – Farm Manual/Auto setting
We’ve moved the drop-down to change whether UHS will set your farm team’s roster / lines to the top of the roster options. If this is set to Auto, your roster and lines will always be managed by UHS… any changes you make will be over-written. We’ve moved this setting to the top so it’s a little more visible to the eye at a glance.

Upcoming Games
The Upcoming Games section in your Team page has been changed slightly to use zebra striping and show you the record of your opponent. The record will take into consideration things like season OT type and show OTW/L and SOW/L records if those categories award points differently than a regulation win/loss. The record line will show this data: Wins-Losses-Ties-OTWins-OTLosses-SOWins-SOLosses.

Example: if a league awards 3 pts for a regulation win and only 2 pts for an OT win, the record line would be something like: W-L-T-OTW. As long as the OTW or SOW pts values are different from a Regulation Win pts value, then OTW / SOW will be shown. The same goes for OT Losses and SO Losses. Ties will only show up if your Regular Season OT Type allows for Ties.

Forwards Allowed on Defense Positions
We’ve added a setting in Settings > Game Settings to allow a COM to toggle whether forwards are allowed to play on a defensive position. By default this is disabled. If the COM has enabled position penalties the forward will get a -10% on any event (Pass, Skate, Shoot) if Even-Strength, however, on Power-Plays and Penalty-Kills, there is no position penalty even if position penalties are enabled.

Please note that using the Auto Lines feature will not set your forwards into your defensive positions, you will have to do that manually. You should also be aware that enabling this could potentially allow a team to run with no defensemen at all.

Auto-GM teams will never use this functionality… they will attempt to fill their roster and lines with players of the appropriate positions.

Request to be Traded
We’ve added in functionality to make a check for players requesting to be traded. The chance at the request is a flat 1%. If a player requests to be traded, the team will no longer be able to offer a new contract, similar to the player refusing to negotiate with the team. In fact it is treated exactly the same. As such we have added a new bubble on the Team Home page to show Player Contract Issues: this will show players with Contract = 0 or Requesting Trade or Holding out for Free Agency.

To trigger a Trade Request check one of the following must happen:
– The player is placed on waivers.
– The player’s current Ice Time Average (Minutes for goalies) is less than 75% of the average from the previous season. This is only applicable during the Regular Season from when the player’s team has played 10 games to the Trade Deadline.

Trade Notifications
We have updated the Email Notifications section for your account profile (click on your account name at the top right when you are logged in). You can now opt-in to UHS Admin messages, Incoming Trade Notifications and Completed Trade Notifications (for COMs or higher only).

By default the Incoming Trade Notifications are enabled and Completed Trade Notifications are disabled. Your regular UHS Admin message opt-in setting has not been changed.

Cron Jobs & Inactive Leagues
Leagues that are considered inactive (no logins for 30 days) will now be ignored by most system cron jobs to reduce unnecessary system usage.

Bug Fixes
– Fixed an issue where the Coach Stats page on Public Websites was not functioning.
– Fixed an issue where COMs could not add teams if a non-default setting was used for drafting.

Hot Fixes
– Fixed an issue where the rookie designation was not being updated. Released August 16 2014.
– Fixed an issue where the AutoGM would get stuck in an infinite loop when a trade initiation check was successful. Released August 19 2014.
– Fixed an issue where a player’s type would get reset when the league changes from pre-season to regular season…  this meant the player would have to clear waivers again even if they had cleared it earlier in the season. Released August 19 2014.
– Fixed an issue where the schedule generator would time-out when creating schedules for leagues with an odd number of teams. Released August 31 2014.