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The most common way to enjoy Football Mogul is to take control of one team and try to build it into a dynasty. This is the most fun when this task is challenging but not too challenge. This is why Football Mogul was created with a simple 4-level difficulty system:  You can start on 'Fan' level the first time you play. When that gets too easy, you can change the difficulty level in the Options Dialog, or you can start a new game on a higher difficulty level. There are lots of ways to may the game more difficult. The best option would be to create computer opponents that are smarter than you, but that's not an easy task. So I implemented these difficulty levels by adjusting multiple aspects of the game: Simulation Higher difficulty levels reduce the performance of your players and increase the performance of your opponents. The adjustment is only about 3%, but it's enough to make it harder to build a championship team. Finances Higher difficulty levels decrease your team's revenue. This doesn't matter much in General Manager Mode, but it is one way that the difficulty level affects the game. Trades Computer GMs demand lopsided trades, sometimes to the point of absurdity. For example you might put a #1 draft pick on the Trading Block and the best offer you get in return is a 2nd round pick in next year's draft. Contracts Players demand a higher salary from your team than from other teams. This includes both free agents and players seeking contract extensions. The problem with this system is that you, the game player, might not enjoy the different ways the difficulty level is implemented. Maybe you don't mind overly greedy players, but you don't want the computer to actually cheat during game play. Or you hate that the computer teams insult you when you offer perfectly reasonable trades. For Football Mogul 25, I've split the 'Difficulty' rating into each of it's individual components. You can now use the Options Dialog to set how the game tweaks each of the aspects listed above.
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This year's version of Football Mogul adds improved statistical projections for the 2024 season for more than 1,400 individual players. (In the past, I relied primarily on career stats through the previous season to calculate ratings for the 2024 rosters.) The end result is a more accurate simulation at the player level and team level. I'm attaching below the results from 100 simulated seasons. (This output comes from Football Mogul's Single Season Simulator.)   The 'Won' and 'Lost' columns show the average number of wins and losses per season and the 'Scored' and 'Allowed' columns show the average number of points scored and allowed per game. The remaining columns show the number of times that the team finished with this result out of 100 simulations. For example, the Patriots finished in last place in their division in 76 out of 100 simulations. Excel files attached below:
I'm currently working on adding blocked field goals to Football Mogul, so I'm calculating the rate at which they should occur. From watching football, it seems that longer field goal attempts are blocked at a higher rate than shorter field goals. This makes logical sense, with longer field goals requiring a flatter trajectory than "chip shots" and extra points. So, I used Stathead's Field Goal Finder to look at all attempts over a 10-year span (2010-2019).
 I get three kinds of emails about injuries in Baseball Mogul: 1) "Baseball Mogul has too many injuries. My entire pitching staff is decimated!" 2) "There aren't enough injuries. I got to the playoffs with none of my starters on the DL." 3) "Please make it possible for players to get injured in the middle of a game." I'm working on #3 for Baseball Mogul 2025. As for the first two, I get more complaints about there being too many injuries than about there being too few. This is true despite the fact that the rate and severity of injuries in Baseball Mogul is somewhat lower than in real life. The good news is that you can tweak injury rates yourself: To adjust the rate and severity of injuries that occur during the simulation, go to the League Menu and choose League Settings. The lower left section of this screen lets you increase or decrease 'Injury Frequency' and 'Injury Severity':  "Injury Frequency" refers to the number of injuries that occur per season. "Injury Severity" adjusts the average length (in days) of each injury. The percentages shown are relative to the default setting. If the simulation is generating 500 injuries in a season, then changing "Injury Frequency" to "+20%" will increase the number of injuries to about 600 per season. Clearing All InjuriesIf you want to clear all injuries that have already occurred, go to the Tools Menu and choose Advanced Tools. Then click this button in the upper left part of that screen:  I’ve done a ton of research over the years for Baseball Mogul and Football Mogul and I think it makes sense to try to share it so it doesn’t get lost to the sands of time. Today’s post is about batters reaching base on an error. Most baseball simulations use the defense's stats to determine if a fielder commits an error — but ignore the fact that faster runners are more likely to reach base on an error than slower runners. Cal Ripken might bobble a hard ground ball to short. But if he keeps it in front of him, he probably still has time to throw out a runner like Cecil Fielder. Against a batter like Roberto Alomar, the same ground ball goes in the record books as a fielding error. To estimate this effect, I created two groups using data from 1980-2022. “Fast Runners” were defined as the top 20% of players ranked by Bill James’ Speed Score. I designated the bottom 20% as “Slow Runners”:  Translated to Baseball Mogul, a player with a Speed Rating of 90 is about 50% more likely to reach base on an error than a player with a Speed Rating of 60. There's also a difference by handedness. Lefties start a step closer to first base, but right-handed hitters are far more likely to hit a ground ball to the left side of the infield (SS and 3B) where most infield errors are recorded. Overall, righties reach base on a error about 20% more often than lefties (after adjusting for running speed). This advantage is fairly consistent across all seasons. The difference is smaller before 1940, probably because hitters were less likely to pull ground balls.  Two-Base Errors About 18% of the time that a batter reaches base on error, it’s due to a throwing error. Some of those throws let the batter reach second base. These two-base errors are much more likely with fast runners than slow runners:  This isn’t a surprise. We’ve all seen fast runners take the turn and head for second on an overthrow. But a sim that only uses fielding stats to decide when errors occur (and what type) will fail to reflect this nuance of the game.
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