Home Ground Advantage

[Docking]

I was wondering if anyone found a way to increase home ground advantage.

I have been gathering stats on several seasons (The first using default stats, the second with my own player stats mods and the third with Goleels stats patch) and I've found that it's far more common for the AWAY team to win matches.

I have calculated a percentage of 61% of victories were away teams which was calculated over three seasons. I found this to be pretty strange.

So back to the original question, is there any way to increase home ground advantage or is there no such advantage?

 

[NPK]

Fair enough idea...I personally can't think of a way to implement it though.

 

[[furrycat]]

It is supposedly in the game. Although, It is a hard-coded string and it does not seem very useful to be searching. It would be a multiplier somewhere in the .exe file, somewhere near the Gamestart Jumper I suppose. I suppose there is a way, if it actually exists in the game.

 

[Paullyboy]

I havent noticed any advantage either. The only thing they need to do is turn up penalties against away teams slightly and it would be good enough. And maybe make it easier to kick for goal at home.

 

[Alan]

Looking at a percentage of total wins across all the teams would generate a flawed result - i'm no expert but I think the only real way to tell (and even then, it would be approximate) would be to look at each team individually. There's no point, for example, including the results of a team of easy beats when they get thrashed at home by the eventual premiers. The result of that match should only be looked at in the context of each team.

Not sure if that makes sense, but hopefully it does - in Maths whiz kids in the house? Might jam with Mario about it, he's something of an expert at this kind of thing

 

[Mario]

Home advantage does exist, but it is a subtle modifier (it affects the overall confidence factor of the home team, which in turn affects other things which happen during the game).

There are many factors which determine which particular team wins on the day. The only way to isolate home advantage statistically would be to create equal teams of equal players and ability and pit them against each in the first match of a season (as confidence is modified throughout the season depending on wins and loses).

Even then you will still be at the advantage of randomness, so your results could go either way as the effect is small (although if you ran 1,000 matches or so you should get a definitive result).

As far as I am aware, the only way to increase the effect of the home advantage modifier would be to hex edit the executable - but thats real "needle in haystack" material.

 

[The Engineers Room]

Make a four team comp between four custom teams that all have the same attack, defence and willingness stats and the exact same teams.

Run this season about five times and record all the results, this should give some idea.

 

[Mario]

Run this season about five times and record all the results, this should give some idea.

You wouldn't be able to run through a season to perform the experiment, as confidence carries over between games depending on how the team has been playing which would skew your results.

You would have to just use the opening match of each season.

 

[Docking]

Would it be possible to test this using single games or is it not applicable?

I ran through the results of last years NRL draw (excluding finals, double headers and matches at grounds like Westpac Trust stadium) to determine if having games at home provided a clear advantage.

Home Wins: 91 - - - 53% of matches
Away Wins: 82 - - - 47% of matches

So not a big factor, it's probably as subtle as what Sidhe intended but I'm gonna try for the same kind of percentage as the real competition through team mods and see if that works.

 

[Mario]

Would it be possible to test this using single games or is it not applicable?

I'm not sure that it is a factor on Friendly matches.

I ran through the results of last years NRL draw (excluding finals, double headers and matches at grounds like Westpac Trust stadium) to determine if having games at home provided a clear advantage.

Home Wins: 91 - - - 53% of matches
Away Wins: 82 - - - 47% of matches

So not a big factor, it's probably as subtle as what Sidhe intended but I'm gonna try for the same kind of percentage as the real competition through team mods and see if that works.

Doing it off real data is flawed for the same reasons that it is in the game - team and player abilities are different and therefore you can't test the home ground advantage in isolation.

Your percentages could just as easily been the other way around.

 

[Docking]

It doesn't look like the teams overall ratings have any bearing on friendly games, I've tried this stacks of times using identical players but the team attributes modified to their extremes and I saw no evidence of the stronger team being any stronger than the opponent with the lowest rating.

 

[The Engineers Room]

I think it does in the season though. I have a Canberra team that is fairly awesome and they still can't match it with the Dogs who suck (with respect to players)