The World Cup Discussion Thread (OOC, Version IV)

[Union of Socialist Alpine Republics]

I have a question.

Am I allowed to transfer country rankings to another nation even if there's no IC relation between the two nations? When I transferred Prusy Krolewskie and Southern Democratic States rankings to the Alpine Union, the Alpine Union was the IC successor of both.

But now I'm tired of the Alpine Union, my leagues are too big i'm gonna reduce them. I wanna completely change my team names too and I wanna role play with a new nation. I have thought of an half french canadian and half polish nation with some americans and croats. This nation would use the same players names but it wouldn't have any IC ties with the Alpine Union.

Can I transfer the Alpine Union's rankings to Terre Septentrionale or I'm not allowed because of no IC ties?
The Alpine Union would also withdraw from the World Cup.

[South Covello]

I have a question.

Am I allowed to transfer country rankings to another nation even if there's no IC relation between the two nations? When I transferred Prusy Krolewskie and Southern Democratic States rankings to the Alpine Union, the Alpine Union was the IC successor of both.

But now I'm tired of the Alpine Union, my leagues are too big i'm gonna reduce them. I wanna completely change my team names too and I wanna role play with a new nation. I have thought of an half french canadian and half polish nation with some americans and croats. This nation would use the same players names but it wouldn't have any IC ties with the Alpine Union.

Can I transfer the Alpine Union's rankings to Terre Septentrionale or I'm not allowed because of no IC ties?
The Alpine Union would also withdraw from the World Cup.

There generally has to be IC ties. If the players are the same people IC-ly and moved to another country for whatever reason, that would probably be acceptable - I seem to recall the entire Free Republics team defecting to Falatulu at one point during a political crisis, Falatulu then inherited FFR's rank. When the crisis resolved, they returned to FFR, who got its rank back. However, if they were different players who coincidentally had the same names, and there was no other connection, that probably wouldn't be enough.

[Saintland]

I have a question.

Am I allowed to transfer country rankings to another nation even if there's no IC relation between the two nations? When I transferred Prusy Krolewskie and Southern Democratic States rankings to the Alpine Union, the Alpine Union was the IC successor of both.

But now I'm tired of the Alpine Union, my leagues are too big i'm gonna reduce them. I wanna completely change my team names too and I wanna role play with a new nation. I have thought of an half french canadian and half polish nation with some americans and croats. This nation would use the same players names but it wouldn't have any IC ties with the Alpine Union.

Can I transfer the Alpine Union's rankings to Terre Septentrionale or I'm not allowed because of no IC ties?
The Alpine Union would also withdraw from the World Cup.

There generally has to be IC ties. If the players are the same people IC-ly and moved to another country for whatever reason, that would probably be acceptable - I seem to recall the entire Free Republics team defecting to Falatulu at one point during a political crisis, Falatulu then inherited FFR's rank. When the crisis resolved, they returned to FFR, who got its rank back. However, if they were different players who coincidentally had the same names, and there was no other connection, that probably wouldn't be enough.

Falatulu seceded from the FFR then later rejoined the FFR but that pretty much describes the precedent regarding rank transfers. I remember a rank transfer where there was "too little" IC connection being controversial a few years back so I'm guessing transferring rank without an IC connection would not be allowed.

If you don't enjoy RPing your existing nation and think you'd enjoy the new nation more, you can always enter the new nation as a puppet or just enter it instead of the older nation. If it hasn't entered the BoF before, the new nation would then be BoF eligible.

[Terre Septentrionale]

There generally has to be IC ties. If the players are the same people IC-ly and moved to another country for whatever reason, that would probably be acceptable - I seem to recall the entire Free Republics team defecting to Falatulu at one point during a political crisis, Falatulu then inherited FFR's rank. When the crisis resolved, they returned to FFR, who got its rank back. However, if they were different players who coincidentally had the same names, and there was no other connection, that probably wouldn't be enough.

My players will be different players who coincidentally have the same names.

Falatulu seceded from the FFR then later rejoined the FFR but that pretty much describes the precedent regarding rank transfers. I remember a rank transfer where there was "too little" IC connection being controversial a few years back so I'm guessing transferring rank without an IC connection would not be allowed.

If you don't enjoy RPing your existing nation and think you'd enjoy the new nation more, you can always enter the new nation as a puppet or just enter it instead of the older nation. If it hasn't entered the BoF before, the new nation would then be BoF eligible.

Ok I'll enter this nation and maybe withdraw the Alpine Union.

[Nephara]

Time to open a can of worms in the off-season. I want to preface this by saying that I'm not saying that UICA is too slow and WCs are coming too fast; this is just about how to adapt to the ratio of UICA:WC that we have had for the past like three RL years.

I think it's obvious that we haven't had a ratio of two UICA seasons to every one World Cup for a while, and anyone aging their players through a 1:2 ratio has had to fudge a lot of numbers to deal with desynch. We're all dealing with that desynch in different ways, and that's translating to the fact that... nobody really has any idea how old anyone is meant to be anymore. When the seasons ran more in that synch, it was relatively easy to track who aged .5:1, who aged 1:2, who aged 2:4 and who aged in real time / not at all / whatever edge-case. Now some people are only aging with every UICA or WC and forcing the other to fit, some are going 2:2 or 1:1, I'm aging 1.5:2 which is weird as shit and I acknowledge that... et cetera. And we're getting ages wrong a lot, and that's kind of very important in the domestic game.

Do we just want to bite the bullet and try and roll out a near-universal timescale? I'm not advocating forcing anyone to adhere to anything, but a loose, standard 'canon' of how long it takes between seasons and World Cups. A 'default' option, from which people can deviate if they wish - but a few opt-outs are going to be easy to keep track of, rather than everyone just having their own way of dealing with the desynch.

Right now, my suggestion for a 'default' would be 2:3. It's the best compromise between the most common 1:2 and 2:4 systems, though it might alienate 1-year-per-WC users. It uses whole numbers. It also preserves the feeling that, like... absolutely a WC should be further apart than a single season, and really, a season can't stretch over more than two years.

EDIT: A few people have brought up that UICA time and WCC time don't necessarily need to be in synch at all. I'd say that Andreas Swoboda being 27 and reaching the prime of his career in UICA, and 33 and approaching his twilight years in the WCC, at the same time, creates very obvious RP and team construction difficulties.

[South Covello]

Time to open a can of worms in the off-season. I want to preface this by saying that I'm not saying that UICA is too slow and WCs are coming too fast; this is just about how to adapt to the ratio of UICA:WC that we have had for the past like three RL years.

I think it's obvious that we haven't had a ratio of two UICA seasons to every one World Cup for a while, and anyone aging their players through a 1:2 ratio has had to fudge a lot of numbers to deal with desynch. We're all dealing with that desynch in different ways, and that's translating to the fact that... nobody really has any idea how old anyone is meant to be anymore. When the seasons ran more in that synch, it was relatively easy to track who aged .5:1, who aged 1:2, who aged 2:4 and who aged in real time / not at all / whatever edge-case. Now some people are only aging with every UICA or WC and forcing the other to fit, some are going 2:2 or 1:1, I'm aging 1.5:2 which is weird as shit and I acknowledge that... et cetera. And we're getting ages wrong a lot, and that's kind of very important in the domestic game.

Do we just want to bite the bullet and try and roll out a near-universal timescale? I'm not advocating forcing anyone to adhere to anything, but a loose, standard 'canon' of how long it takes between seasons and World Cups. A 'default' option, from which people can deviate if they wish - but a few opt-outs are going to be easy to keep track of, rather than everyone just having their own way of dealing with the desynch.

Right now, my suggestion for a 'default' would be 2:3. It's the best compromise between the most common 1:2 and 2:4 systems, though it might alienate 1-year-per-WC users. It uses whole numbers. It also preserves the feeling that, like... absolutely a WC should be further apart than a single season, and really, a season can't stretch over more than two years.

Absolutely not. Let people do what they want. If they want one year per World Cup, great. If they want two, great. If they want four, great. If they want their nation to exist outside the fabric of space and time making all this irrelevant, great. If they want to have a time skip of 37 years between World Cups to help their RP, great. Let people do what they want. That's the magic of NS.

[Velestria]

It defeats the whole purpose of people’s individual calendars to make a default system for aging. And then you got o remember some people like Bonesa don’t even use IC calendars and use rl months so keeping our individual systems despite how jumbled up they are is best

[Nephara]

what if people actually read the part where i said 'people are free to do whatever, this is just to have a default that people could opt out of, which is a shitton easier than having to remember what specific way every single nation opts into'

what if people read that part and didn't strawman

And, Covello, IIRC you haven't transferred anyone abroad in literal RL years. Nobody else has to keep track of your ages, so you don't actually have a dog in this fight. This only affects people who do both domestic and international football. Velestria, you had to ask me how old my players were literally yesterday. What if you didn't have to do that?

[Kita-Hinode]

Do we just want to bite the bullet and try and roll out a near-universal timescale? I'm not advocating forcing anyone to adhere to anything, but a loose, standard 'canon' of how long it takes between seasons and World Cups. A 'default' option, from which people can deviate if they wish - but a few opt-outs are going to be easy to keep track of, rather than everyone just having their own way of dealing with the desynch.

Right now, my suggestion for a 'default' would be 2:3. It's the best compromise between the most common 1:2 and 2:4 systems, though it might alienate 1-year-per-WC users. It uses whole numbers. It also preserves the feeling that, like... absolutely a WC should be further apart than a single season, and really, a season can't stretch over more than two years.

I think it'd be fine to have a default option. Granted I say this as a person that wouldn't adhere to it anyway, but if the lot of you want to have like a consensus scale with a few outliers, there's nothing bad about it.

[Schottia]

Time to open a can of worms in the off-season. I want to preface this by saying that I'm not saying that UICA is too slow and WCs are coming too fast; this is just about how to adapt to the ratio of UICA:WC that we have had for the past like three RL years.

I think it's obvious that we haven't had a ratio of two UICA seasons to every one World Cup for a while, and anyone aging their players through a 1:2 ratio has had to fudge a lot of numbers to deal with desynch. We're all dealing with that desynch in different ways, and that's translating to the fact that... nobody really has any idea how old anyone is meant to be anymore. When the seasons ran more in that synch, it was relatively easy to track who aged .5:1, who aged 1:2, who aged 2:4 and who aged in real time / not at all / whatever edge-case. Now some people are only aging with every UICA or WC and forcing the other to fit, some are going 2:2 or 1:1, I'm aging 1.5:2 which is weird as shit and I acknowledge that... et cetera. And we're getting ages wrong a lot, and that's kind of very important in the domestic game.

Do we just want to bite the bullet and try and roll out a near-universal timescale? I'm not advocating forcing anyone to adhere to anything, but a loose, standard 'canon' of how long it takes between seasons and World Cups. A 'default' option, from which people can deviate if they wish - but a few opt-outs are going to be easy to keep track of, rather than everyone just having their own way of dealing with the desynch.

Right now, my suggestion for a 'default' would be 2:3. It's the best compromise between the most common 1:2 and 2:4 systems, though it might alienate 1-year-per-WC users. It uses whole numbers. It also preserves the feeling that, like... absolutely a WC should be further apart than a single season, and really, a season can't stretch over more than two years.

EDIT: A few people have brought up that UICA time and WCC time don't necessarily need to be in synch at all. I'd say that Andreas Swoboda being 27 and reaching the prime of his career in UICA, and 33 and approaching his twilight years in the WCC, at the same time, creates very obvious RP and team construction difficulties.

I don’t think anything you’ve said is remotely controversial. I guess you are speaking, predominantly, to users such as me, who are ‘all-in’ in terms of running a domestic league while competing in the WCC and Regionals. I age players currently at 1:2, and you’re right, it doesn’t work anymore. It used to be a neat fit, where, ICly speaking, the WC was in one domestic off-season, and the regional tournament in the other.

If the consensus amongst other users in a similar boat were that a 2:3 aging system was the new norm, then I’d get on board with that for consistency.

What you’re suggesting clearly isn’t going to affect everyone (probably only a tiny minority of WCC members actually). Mostly it affects users who have large amounts of their players playing in foreign leagues, and play host to others in return. (I had actually been considering switching to a system where I scored two leagues for every one UICA cut off, just to try and keep my own player database moving a bit quicker – but I’m not sure how that would work if I were the only one doing it.)

Things seem to have slowed down a little on all fronts. It is just what it is – like you, I’m not calling for anything to be sped up or slowed down further – things just change sometimes. For that reason, I think it probably makes sense to adjust aging – in the way you have proposed – to allow a smooth continuation in the way our teams progress.

[Savojarna]

The main issue I'd have with this scale, and the reason why I'd opt out even though I definitely wanted to restart UICA once my domestic league overhaul is completed (I'm on a major project of giving every team much more defined identities, including logos and kits, and that takes more time than I currently have), is how it matches with international competition.

For me personally, UICA takes a clear backseat to WCC and the Copa (and potentially the U21 competitions). Currently my aging system is one year per international season. Non-internationals technically age along, although I decided to put them into stasis during the overhaul as otherwise, with the length of the overhaul period unknown, I may have to retire half the league and be stuck in a vicious cycle of constantly coming up with new players rather than actually RPing stuff. If it were 3 years per WCC, that is a bit confusing for regionals - are they just mid-period? Half years? That seems odd because it makes things feel very irregular to me.

I'd suggest aging is based on international competitions and in UICA, players just have whatever age they have based on the international aging cycle. The main benefit here is that we base aging on the one competition that has probably the most predictable schedule - Regionals and WCC neatly switch. Additionally, I'd assume that internationals do receive somewhat more attention than UICA, so prioritising them makes sense to me. It does potentially emphasise the less predictable ratio of UICA seasons, but this is something that is always going to be awkward unless we have a fixed ratio.

[Nephara]

I figure the IC Calendar probably looks like:

Regional Tournaments / BoF at the end of Year 1
World Cup Qualifiers throughout Year 2 and early Year 3
World Cup / COH at the end of Year 3

This does mean that tournaments often happen mid-season, which isn't ideal... but, I mean, that already happens IRL, with Asian Cups happening during European seasons, and World Cups happening during most Asian and some American seasons.

Basing ages entirely on the WCC is a massive pain for the domestic side in practice. Running a league, I want to just open the rosters for the new year, age everyone up by 1 or 2 years (as per the players' owner's preference), and then forget about age until the next cycle begins. Having to go through your rosters and aging up everyone by one year mid-season is going to be a massive pain unless you have a fully automated spreadsheet. Similarly, it's a lot easier to just age up international players by a year with each new roster - regionals, WCQ, WC - than to have to cross-reference everyone's age in UICA every time.

[Bears Armed]

When I was involved here on a fairly regular basis I used a 4-year cycle IC for World Cups & such _
Year 1 = DBC, regional cups, BoF
Years 2 & 3 = World Cup qualfiiers
Year 4 = actual World Cup, Cup of Harmony.

... but then I didn't really go into much detail about the domestic situation...
... and there was the occasion when two cycles somehow (as was noticed IC) took place at the same dates even though one of them was experienced as following the other...
... and the fact that I was also using a 4-year cycle for the Olympics, although those take place OOC less frequently than World Cups, meaning that my nation came to be at significantly different current dates IC for the two series of events even though other nations seemed to experience the Cups and Olympics in their shared OOC order...

[Savojarna]

I figure the IC Calendar probably looks like:

Regional Tournaments / BoF at the end of Year 1
World Cup Qualifiers throughout Year 2 and early Year 3
World Cup / COH at the end of Year 3

This does mean that tournaments often happen mid-season, which isn't ideal... but, I mean, that already happens IRL, with Asian Cups happening during European seasons, and World Cups happening during most Asian and some American seasons.

Basing ages entirely on the WCC is a massive pain for the domestic side in practice. Running a league, I want to just open the rosters for the new year, age everyone up by 1 or 2 years (as per the players' owner's preference), and then forget about age until the next cycle begins. Having to go through your rosters and aging up everyone by one year mid-season is going to be a massive pain unless you have a fully automated spreadsheet. Similarly, it's a lot easier to just age up international players by a year with each new roster - regionals, WCQ, WC - than to have to cross-reference everyone's age in UICA every time.

I have a master spreadsheet that updates with the internationals, but then I also never had more than one domestic competition at the same time. This does make somewhat more sense I guess

[Free Republics]

For what its worth, if I was doing UICA, I'd probably age my nation at 1 year per UICA cycle rather than 1 year per WC cycle.

I don't think there's any way to unify the timeline now after we've had fluid time for 16 or so years but if lots of nations want to get together and create a shared timeline, thats probably good.

[Commonwealth of Baker Park]

This will say more about my own laziness than anything, but I've been through 3 WC cycles now, and I have players on my AOCAF roster that are only 4 years older than they were in DBC 42 or the BOF.
Jamari Bozeman--was 21 on the DBC squad, is now 25
Veronica Navarro--was 21 on the BOF team, is now 24(!)
DeAngelo Simmons--18 on the SWC 5 team, is 21 now.

Seriously?

That's me being too attached to particular IC players far too much.
I'd be more consistent with parameters to follow, even as a voluntary guideline, b/c I'm just not good at self-regulating.

EDIT--and if didn't already have guilt, just writing this out makes me feel guiltier.

[Flavovespia]

For what its worth, if I was doing UICA, I'd probably age my nation at 1 year per UICA cycle rather than 1 year per WC cycle.

I don't think there's any way to unify the timeline now after we've had fluid time for 16 or so years but if lots of nations want to get together and create a shared timeline, thats probably good.

As someone who plans to roleplay more towards the domestic side of football than the national tram, that was my plan for ageing.

[Drawkland]

Drawkland (and Saltstead too I guess) are proud to present the first bid for World Cup 83! Comments and criticism welcome!

[Free Republics]

Given that we finally have a bid for the World Cup, we need a BoF bid as well to avoid excessive delays. I'm looking to do a bid for the BoF that will be much more conventional than that World Cup bid. If interested and you've hosted something before, please TG me or get ahold of me on Discord.

I have heard that there are other WC bids in the works but I'm unaware of anybody else looking to put together a BoF bid

[Valanora]

DBC 45 Everything Thread is up for those who are participating, complete with draw and schedule.

[Audioslavia]

Time to open a can of worms in the off-season.

Nice worms!

The problem with syncing UICA tournaments to international tournaments is that while international tournaments are run by the community as a whole, UICA tournaments are run by one person. That the Globe Cup, Champions Cup et al are solely the product of one user's vision has a myriad advantages. Easily synchronising the tournaments to international football is not one of them. If CH ever decides to retire and leave domestic football for the rest of us to figure out (and god help us all if that ever happens) then we can figure out a way to get things in sync. Until then, my advice would be to simply not think about player ages too much. You'll go mad.

[Bears Armed]

Time to open a can of worms in the off-season.

Nice worms!

The problem with syncing UICA tournaments to international tournaments is that while international tournaments are run by the community as a whole, UICA tournaments are run by one person. That the Globe Cup, Champions Cup et al are solely the product of one user's vision has a myriad advantages. Easily synchronising the tournaments to international football is not one of them. If CH ever decides to retire and leave domestic football for the rest of us to figure out (and god help us all if that ever happens) then we can figure out a way to get things in sync. Until then, my advice would be to simply not think about player ages too much. You'll go mad.

You like cans of worms?
With the Bears now re-starting participation in international sports (at least for this DBC), I've "re-booted" their history so that their current date for such activities is now 2019AD.... even though their last WC qualifying campaign was previously stated to be taking place c.2130AD, and putting all of that history -- plus the intervening World Cup cycles, too -- before 2019 would now give it a starting date lonng before this nation first became open to the outside world. It will probably take them quite a while to work out how this happened from an IC viewpoint... if they ever do.

[Commonwealth of Baker Park]

You like cans of worms?
With the Bears now re-starting participation in international sports (at least for this DBC), I've "re-booted" their history so that their current date for such activities is now 2019AD.... even though their last WC qualifying campaign was previously stated to be taking place c.2130AD, and putting all of that history -- plus the intervening World Cup cycles, too -- before 2019 would now give it a starting date lonng before this nation first became open to the outside world. It will probably take them quite a while to work out how this happened from an IC viewpoint... if they ever do.

Holy Space-Time Continuum/Flashback Mode!!

I saw this movie--Star Trek: First Contact

[Valanora]

DBC Host Announcement

As a result of intermittent power outages in my area all evening, tonight's scorination has been moved back to tomorrow. The schedule will otherwise remain unchanged.

[Bears Armed]

For the DBC, at the group stage, how do we know which stadium is being used for which match?
Is it first stadium that's listed for the group being used for the first match listed for each match-day, and the second for the second, or what?