Saber Brief

If you’re looking for the general game overview,  click here.  The secret goals of Sabers in Draft Night 30XX will be posted on the private #saber-chat channel on the Discord.

Sabers utilize their access to supercomputing technology to estimate which athletes are the best and also serve a more flexible purpose as the franchise’s head number-cruncher. While Sabers are frequently the power behind the throne, they’ve been relegated to the basements of many franchise headquarters – close to their favorite servers. 

The Great Computer Race

Sometime after the Third Singularity but before the Great Radiating, enterprising statisticians began attuning their craft to the field of sports. They became so good at predicting winners that it created a computing arms race, with each franchise building their own multi-zillion dollar mainframes, which collectively grew to consume whole percentages of the world’s energy.

The advanced modelling also resulted in a gradual decline in popularity as the non-league mainframes would publish who would win ahead of time, and also which athletes would get injured in which inning, and which athletes would simply refuse to play that day knowing that if they did play, they’d get injured in that inning.  It was all very complicated, but overall, less fun to watch.

Eventually the League decided to collectively join their mainframes into a single League Supercomputer and ration each franchise’s access to the Supercomputer. They coupled this by cracking down on non-League computing and attempting to insert as much randomness into the game as possible – although as all Sabers know – true randomness is a farce.

This strict access to Supercomputing technology saved zillions in manhours, energy, precious raw materials, and  stopped the downward spiral in popularity. It also ended the Golden Age of Sabers.

Saber Capabilities

There are five draft rounds and Sabers can tap into the League’s Supercomputer twice per draft round: once to inquire about how an athlete stat relates to athlete performance (STAT query) and once to inquiry about something else in a more free-form manner (BONUS query). 

Summoning the super computer is as easy as typing in the computer command into your team command terminal (see Queries in Summary).

STAT Queries

STAT Queries provides information on how athlete stats relate to their performance on the field for the upcoming season. The answers to these queries are pre-generated. Sabers can pick which stats to learn more about as if choosing off a menu. 

Information on stats can be general or specific.  Franchises must have general knowledge of a stat before they can receive specific knowledge.

At the start of Draft Night, the League Supercomputer informs each team’s Saber a number of facts regarding each other athlete’s stats which detail how the stat results for each athlete relate to their overall performance[2]. Information on stats can be general:

Athlete Stat[3]General KnowledgeSpecific Knowledge
BB“Upper” BB stats are better than other results.

Athletes either have an “Upper”, “Upper-middle”, or “Middle” BB

  • “Upper” players have +0% performance.
  • “Upper-middle” players have -3% performance
  • “Middle” players have -6% performance
Tibia DiameterTibia Diameter is not significantly indicative of performance.Tibia Diameter of players naturally ranges from 0.5 to 5.5. The players with the smallest Tibia Diameter (0.5) corresponds to 1% better performance when compared to the players with largest Tibia Diameter (5.5).
ChakrasChakras higher on the body are better.

There are seven Chakras, ranging from “Root” to “Crown”. The Chakras associated with higher parts in the body correspond to better performance.

  • “Root”, “Sacral”, and “Solar” Chakras = +0% performance
  • “Heart” and “Throat” Chakras = +2% performance
  • “Third Eye” and “Crown” Chakras = +4% performance

(The table above is populated with examples and should not be trusted as accurate for game purposes)

[2] Performance is an abstract metric of how much the athlete can contribute to the team’s chance of winning games.  Don’t overthink it!  For those with math backgrounds, the performance of players is always linearly related to continuous variables. For those without math backgrounds, please ignore the previous sentence.

[3] Since we’re all knowledgeable League Insiders, I won’t waste anyone’s time footnoting what the BB stat or any other stat-related acronym stands for.

BONUS Queries

BONUS Inquiries are more freeform and can be used to fine-tune your statistical estimations or ask about other aspects of the sport. Some examples include:

  • Does athlete #48 or #24 have a higher total performance?
  • Is $10 zillion too much to invest in “Franchise Improvements”?
  • Is the Owner of Mixcoatl Mexico City thinking of backing out of our private agreement?
  • The Bonus Inquiry “which of the remaining players has the best performance?” and variants thereof will not be answered.

The League Supercomputer may reject queries which cannot be answered simply or if the answer provides one franchise too much of a competitive advantage.

At the end of Draft Night, each Franchise will receive a bonus $1 zillion for every bonus inquiry not utilized (conserves computing energy).

Note. Inquiries are not tradeable as an asset like draft picks, athletes, or money, but information can be traded freely. It’s recommended that Sabers keep the rest of their team in the loop as to who their sharing information with.

Many Sabers utilize a program called SaberSolver which can provide estimates as to an athlete’s performance given the Saber knows how stats relate to performance. SaberSolver provides Sabers the ability to plug-in information on stats into a spreadsheet for many (but not all) stats. Talk to a moderator if you are having trouble with the google spreadsheet program.

(Un)Intended Consequences

Once specific information on players’ stats is obtained, there will also be a note which elaborates on a potential rules change which will affect the relationship between the athlete stat and their performance (the Owners’ Cabal will be able to pass rules changes based on majority votes). For example:

  • Eliminating the “run aground” foul penalty will double the impact of the BB stat on performance (x2).
  • Adopting the newest helmet designs will halve the impact of Tibia Diameter on performance (x0.5)
  • Practical policies adopted to limit “running down the clock” would randomize the effect of Chakras on performance.

Note. (Un)Intended Consequences caused by the passing of policies by the Owners’ Cabal will change the results of the BONUS Queries mid-game.  For example: The answer to “does athlete X or Y have higher total performance?” may change mid-game due to the passage of Cabal Policies.

Queries in Summary

Below is a summary of the two types of queries available to Sabers, the Discord Commands used to spend the credits, and notes on the types of information the query types can tell you.

Recap: Sabers receive ONE STAT query credit and ONE BONUS query credit at the beginning of each draft round.

Query TypeNotesDiscord Command
STAT
  • Details relationship between athlete stats and their performance.
  • Pre-formatted answers.
  • Nuanced knowledge of an athlete stat is categorized as general or specific.
  • General knowledge must be established (i.e. a STAT credit must be spent querying general knowledge) before specific knowledge is queried.
  • Specific knowledge on a stat also details a potential (Un)Intended Consequence (see below)

!stat [name of stat]

Examples:

!stat name
!stat Height
!stat weight

BONUS
  • Freeform questions.
  • Some queries may take time for the supercomputer (moderators) to answer.
  • (Un)Intended Consequences (see below) may affect answers.

!Bonus [question]

Examples:

!Bonus What is the personality of athlete#43 Raptor?
!Bonus What, in your opinion, are the Toronto United’s goals for the upcoming Owners’ Cabal meeting?
!Bonus What is currently the highest bid for Coach Prince?

Other

The Draft

  • Each team will receive one draft slot (‘pick’) per draft round.
  • The first two draft rounds will have 5 minute draft round slots, the last three will have 4 minute draft slots.
  • If a team does not draft a player during their intended time slot, they can draft any athlete at any point following. In other words, draft slots represent the earliest possible time a franchise can draft an athlete.
  • Draft picks will be adjudicated in order of submission. 
  • Draft slots can be traded between teams (with GM’s permission).
  • Pro-tip: Due to the rationing of computing power, early draft slots are not as valuable as in other sports because Sabers need time to compute their fancy models and estimate player performance.

Errata

  • The franchise as a whole owns the equipment used to compute fancy models and calculate statistics.  The whole team will be shown the fruits of your work.
  • Franchise GMs also have some intuition on how good athletes will perform together based on the athletes personality and estimations of their team dynamics. The Saber community thinks the effect of personality on team success is marginal relative to the overall quality of the athlete in terms of raw performance.

Pre-game Checklist