This was my 4th full season replay (1969,1971,1981 and now 2021). The first 2 were completed many years ago using the old version of the game.
I have some rather unorthodox ideas for APBA Football that I realize others may not care for, but I’ll share my thoughts anyway.
Thanks to all that have contributed innovations to the game. Innovations that I used in this replay were:
Phil Molloy’s revised penalty tables, fumbled snap chart, Hail Mary chart and QB sneak chart (I think those last 2 are Phil’s).
Mark Zarb’s special team ratings.
Oguard’s method of play with some exceptions and slight modifications (I don’t use Greg’s blitzing and I made some keying adjustments of my own).
Fletch67 for defensive alignment.
My own defensive play calling for other defensive calls.
APBA Journals sack and interception ratings that I calculated myself. I think what I use is very similar to Mark Zarb’s sack and interception ratings.
Ray Dunlap’s field goal charts.
My own yards per catch innovation.
My re-calculated QBs and running backs and my modified receiver locators.
I tried to stick to a 5/55/35/5 Screen/Short/Medium/Long pass ratio.
I’ll continue to use all of these mods going forward. For the modern game Phil Molloy’s penalty tables are probably my favorite innovation. A special thanks to Phil.
My main focus of the replay was to see if my theory of how to fix the APBA 3rd down conversion shortfall would work. I’ve found that although APBA can accurately reproduce almost all the player and team stats quite well, there seems to always be a problem reproducing the league 3rd down conversion percentage. The 3rd down conversion percentage seems to always run low which leads to an increase in the number of punts and field goals in almost every replay I’ve done and those that have been posted at Oguard’s site. Punts and field goals are almost always 10% or so higher than actual. The DOS football game had the same 3rd down issue. My theory is that the way the R-columns and P-columns are constructed leads to too many big losses and too many big gains. The R-columns are the main culprit, but the P-columns contribute as well. The reason the 3rd down conversions fall short in my opinion is there are not enough 3rd and manageable opportunities in the game.
My attempted fix was to re-card the R-columns to more accurately reflect the runner’s actual distribution of yards gained. I also re-carded the P-columns to do the same thing for the QBs. I was very pleased with the results. Below I compare my 1981 replay which used the APBA cards as is and my 2021 replay using my cards. Granted these replays are from different eras but I think the numbers still tell a story.
1981 Replay Replay Actual
3rd Down % 35.4 39.1
Punts/Game 5.32 5.05
FGA/Game 2.26 1.77
Punts+FGA/Game 7.58 6.82 11% increase
2021 Replay
3rd Down % 42.6 40.4
Punts/Game 3.74 3.80
FGA/Game 1.93 1.89
Punts+FGA/Game 5.67 5.69 less than 1% decrease
I’m going to call that a success even though the 3rd down percentage in my 2021 replay was a little too high overall. I found that the increase was mainly due to being too successful on 3rd and long attempts. That’s something I can easily fix by adjusting my 3rd down play calls.
The other significant change I made to the cards was when carding QBs, I didn’t try to force TD percentage. I tried to get the yards per completion correct before worrying about the TD%. APBA seems to do the opposite. My thoughts are that TD% will take care of itself if the other stats are accurate. QBs prns 1 and 2 would be better utilized like they are used for RBs, give them out based on long gains. Also, TD% is probably the easiest stat to manipulate with play calling in the red zone. My QB TD% still came in a little bit high at 4.7 vs an actual of 4.5. I’ll call that a success though too.
I’ve collected a lot more data that I’ll be happy to share with anyone that might be interested.
I’m still a huge fan of APBA Football and I will do more replays. As you can see, I’m very finicky about some aspects of the game though.
Dan
