Independents Cup 10 Sign-Up Thread

[The Calculator]

Enters.

[Fujai]

That time already? We're in of course!

[Graintfjall]

We sign up.

Withdrawn.

Withdrawing our entry, apologies!

[Silver Beach]

In.

[Space]

Do not forget, please

[Port Ember]

In! Tired of 3rd place...

[Sajnur]

Sajnur in

[Hot Skitty on Wailord Action]

(✿ ◠‿◠) Why hello, there. I’m here to stretch out your group tables!

[Omerica]

(✿ ◠‿◠) Why hello, there. I’m here to stretch out your group tables!

Confirming this to be me.

[Recuecn]

I promised this bid a long time ago, so my apologies for the delay; moving to another continent has a way of taking more time and preparation than expected.

Continuing to address you, dear reader, as the user behind Reçueçn, I will start off by mentioning that as you are aware, I have already hosted a recent edition of the IAC. So why am I bidding again? Well, I began my last bid with some musings on the IAC itself, as a tournament. Its unique identity and way of doing things means that it is still my personal favorite event on the NS Sport forum, bringing together its own fun little community with a reverse-engineered identity we struggle to understand. I also am looking for another excuse to build my hosting resume and practice with something new: this bid is for a Casaran (Swiss system) tournament, something that I'm hoping may be a good fit for the Independents, as quirky as we already are.

"Casaran" will probably be the main info you need to know/identifying feature of this bid, but below I'll provide some additional info, both in and out of context.

In context, Reçueçn is a small, multicultural nation nestled in the Western Alps: west of the Rhône and south of the Rhine, east of Bern and north of Turin. Reçueçn is largely francophone, but does have notable German and Italian-speaking minorities, as well as a small number of Arpetan-speakers. Despite its small size, the nation has a large passion for football, having qualified for the last three world cups and hosted the 8th IAC. The same stadiums that hosted the IAC last time will be pressed back into service this time, as well as additional venues should signup numbers require it. Last time the FNRF (Reçuecian football's governing body) hosted the IAC, Les Licornes won in front of the home crowd. Obviously the nation hopes that if the bid is accepted, this will happen again, but could they be so lucky?

Out of context, my hosting experience includes, obviously, the 8th edition of the IAC, as well as spearheading the FFI, running two cycles of a small tennis tournament, co-hosting the Pan-pacific Cup, running my own domestic league, and hosting some regional sporting events for the West Pacific (my region), including a rugby world cup, a college football season, and most recently co-hosting a regional olympics.

Regarding format, I am proposing a Casaran-style tournament format. Teams will play in one large group, and each in each round will be drawn against other teams with similar records against whom they have not yet played. I will be using FFR's Casaran scheduler tool. The first round will be seeded. If a team would be drawn against a team they have already played, the schedule will be adjusted to avoid that with as little displacement as possible. A Casaran format allows a tournament size of any even number, a big strength of this bid. I won't use a numbers puppet, since dropping points to a numbers puppet would freaking suck, but rather just wait for one more signup if we wound up in an odd-numbered situation.

After 5-rounds of Casaran play, the top-ranked 8 teams will play a knockout bracket from quarterfinals on. This means, assuming about 32 signups, that my proposed format will actually be one matchday longer than a traditional group-stage format, and that every team is guaranteed two extra games (assuming groups of 4 in a traditional format). I may or may not include a break day after the Casaran phase. I wouldn't begin the tournament before the FFI results are posted (which should happen a day or two after IFCF results go up). Cutoff time daily, TBD.

Tiebreakers will be points, goal differential, goals for, head to head points, head to head goal differential, and head to head goals for. This isn't what I think is the most fair set of tiebreakers given the way scorinators work, but it is my preferred list based on real life.

Regarding scorinators, I'll be using the latest version of xkoranate with SQIS and additive style mods. I'll give myself a "home advantage" of one day's worth of rp bonus. I'll be using WCC ranks, but nations who have been regular participants in the IAC but not the world cup will get "rank bonuses" to account for their past participation. Also, participants will have to post a roster for their rank to be counted. As before, I will put an emphasis on RP (although I think that with more experience this time around I'm able to scale that more appropriately). I'll use a gently degrading rp bonus.

Please feel free to ask questions, and let me know if I've forgotten any pertinent details.

Edit because I forgot to mention this earlier and don't think this justifies a new post: If it is decided that we want to have our own IAC ranking system moving forward, I'm open to using that if Drawk wants to put it together. Either way is fine for me: using WCC ranks and then individually creating ranks for the people without KPB rankings is less work but idk if that's what people want.

[Chromatika]

Enters.

This one is mine. Feel free to cut if needed for numbers.

[Fujai]

Props to both bids so far, they're outstanding!

Personally, Casaran!IAC sounds like a direction that I'd really enjoy going. I especially like having 5 matchdays instead of 3 (with standard 4 team groups). The one downside I can see is the lessened chance for "cinderella" matches in the Casaran stage, as low ranked and high ranked teams would see each other (but that's probably countered by a higher chance of low ranked/consistent RPers reaching the knockout stage). Considering our turnouts, it's also really nice that we only need an even number and not doing groupigami to make proper multiples, and no uneven groups. From KitKat's bid (and HUE's IAC 9), I really like matchdays every other day. However with 5 matches scorinated every day instead of 3-4 matches every other day things may even out?

Apart from scheduling fun, Casaran may alleviate group tunnel vision and instead focus everyone on the larger community, something I think us Indies would be interested in.

Re: IAC rankings: yes please — I don't enjoy RPing for the World Cup nearly as much as the IAC (and I suspect others feel the same, especially those that don't do the WC at all), and having rankings that reflect that would be amazing. While I can only assume that would be a lot of upkeep work, if we give unranked nations temporary ranks, then why not extend that to everyone?

[Darkmania]

*Darkmania slaps a giant "I will take part"- comment on this thread*

[Woryand]

Heya, looking to join and probably immediately crash out of this tournament. Sign me up (:

[Indusse]

In!

[Silver Beach]

Amigos! The Independents Cup.

I'm already signed up. And since we obviously don't have a regional RMB or whatever to discuss this, I think it's a discussion that ought to be had- our own ranking system.

We obviously have a number of members who do not participate in the World Cup. Our lack of a ranking system hurts those members(obviously I'm a biased party) who do not participate in the World Cup, since they've always got to start from the bottom each time around. So I think we should make one.

Using the Copa Rushmori formula as the basis(As it's far easier to work than the AOCAF formula), I've worked to create an IAC Ranking formula.

You'll see two systems in there- one that is the raw CR formula, and the second one that is also the same formula, but cut in half. It gives points based on performances in the prior three editions of this tournament, plus an additional amount of points based on your KPB ranking(aka advantaging players who are in the World Cup and put their "mains" into this tournament, as they should be). That second formula is titled the Banija adjusted formula.

I'm not sure how we'd go about doing this, but I'd support adopting either this or some sort of similar formula to give ranking points, so that regular participants who do not play in the World Cup have an opportunity to earn rank points as well.

[Tequilo]

I think this has really good potential, great work.

I would say when the IAC was founded the idea was a really good RPer with no KPB could still have a shot at the title (the text remains in the sign-up template to that effect) and I think if the IAC is to stay true to that sentiment, rank should not become the be all and end all, even if we do have our own shiny internal one. It was designed not to allow coasting and I for one hope that persists. Some testing might be a good investment!

[Omerica]

I was today years old when I learned that the Copa Rushmori rankings suck. The mix of arithmetic decay (3–2–1) with a system (KPB) that uses geometric decay (4–2–1) really sticks in my craw and I absolutely do not want to replicate that here.

[Hopal]

For the first time Hopal will participate in the Independents Cup.

Hopal is In

[Omerica]

First off, thank you to Ban for forcing me to actually put forward my idea.

I have an alternate proposal that is based on and effectively formalises the “replacement bonus” system we’ve traditionally used in the IAC. The system calculates a “replacement bonus” for all teams that have taken part in any of the last three IACs as follows:

4×(PPG in IAC n) + 2×(PPG in IAC n–1) + (PPG in IAC n–2)

If a team’s KPB divided by 2 is larger than their replacement bonus, they take half their KPB points as their rating; if not, they take their “replacement bonus” as their rating.

Why is KPB cut in half before comparing? To make the numbers more directly comparable: points per game in the most recent World Cup finals is multiplied by 8, so KPB stretches out to some ridiculous heights. I think cutting KPB in half still adequately rewards teams who are doing well in the World Cup without unduly punishing teams that don’t participate in it or do better in the IAC than World Cup qualifying.

The “replacement bonus” system avoids silly things like the reigning IA champions or the reigning World Cup champions being down in Pot 2 or 3, both of which I think are important to avoid, and give the IAC a distinctly different “Indies” feel from the proper regionals. It’s an IAC tradition and one I think is worth keeping.

EDIT: I just noticed an error where I multiplied PPG for IAC 8 by 3 instead of 2. That error has now been corrected.

[HUElavia]

I'm down to see our own rankings for this tournament, both of them are solid Rankings that can really set us apart from the Big 3 Regionals.

[Megistos]

I'm down to see our own rankings for this tournament, both of them are solid Rankings that can really set us apart from the Big 3 Regionals.

same, it sets us apart, like you said.

[Trolleborg]

Contrary to views already expressed I think it will be much better to have a real and differentiated awards for a RP than ranking. At the last CoH and partly WCQ it's visible that existig system rewards real work only to a small extent, and at about the same rate as outright attempts to do the least of the possible, just for the sake of keeping out appearance of roleplaying and some teams just moved forward due to the high ranking only.

One who played better than others won the World Cup (altought maybe not without the luck), not one who just have high ranking and doing nothing.

[Fujai]

More proposals you say? No? Oh well!

I've got two ideas, one more radical than the other, we'll start with the more radical. At a basic level, it seems folks are interested in our own rankings because we're already using KPB, so we might as well use our own instead to help non-WC folks. Any ranking system should not bar an unranked nation from reaching the final. This may include mandating a certain minimum RP bonus or something similar.

RP-Based Rankings

Why? If we want to keep our high value on RP, then why not take it into account when crafting rankings? This takes a nation's cumulative (without decay) RP bonus at the end of each competition and scales it to a 1-10 scale (more on this in a bit), and adds it to "stage points" which are a set number awarded to nations that get to each stage of the competition as follows:

• Pool (group) - 0.5
• Ro16 (or equivalent, if any) - 0.65
• Quarterfinals - 0.7
• Semifinals - 0.75
• Champion - 0.8

KPB is valued slightly lower than Banija's proposal, at 0.05*KPB. While it's nice to benefit the folks that play in the WC, as they do a lot of RP work for it, own focus on RP should overshadow those rankings. Both decay at a heavy rate of 5-2-1 to help avoid nations getting entrenched at the top, but include some consistency. The final weight ends up at about 75-25 between RP and stage points+KPB. This could be very easily tweaked, of course.

The issues:

• Transparency: Only the cumulative RP bonus would be published, not the grade of each individual RP. There are a lot of valid concerns about publishing any type of RP grade, but at the very least, I think the IAC has a better chance of avoiding the issues that could lead to.
• RP scaling: Not sure how to solve this one easily, but if the highest RP bonus is really high, it would proportionally lower the value of other RPs in relation to other competitions. This would have to be solved before it could be implemented, probably using a minimum or median scaling instead of maximum.
• RP carryover: We already carry match and competition results over, why not RP? Devaluing results and revaluing RP would balance things out so things aren't really being "counted twice."

Pool Stage-Based Rankings

This one is a bit different—it takes the points earned in the tournament's pool/group stage, and adds them to the same stage points as the previous proposal. That's mostly because I didn't want to troll through every knockout match. This proposal would synergize well with a Casaran system as well, as it would remove the issue of differences in group draws.

In this proposal, the weights are such that there is an approximately 50-50 weight between pool points and stage points+KPB. It uses the same KPB weight as the above proposal.

Edit: fixed an oops because I can't read

[Free Republics]

Why can't hosts just increase the RP bonus scale so that RPing unranked nations have a chance of beating a rank coasting top ranked nation?