*I am posting this on my son's account so as not to give away my hand in a current recruiting battle*

TL:DR - Prestige advantage, preference advantage, slight AP disadvantage, couldn't bump other school down

I am currently in a battle for a recruit that really has me scratching my head. My school has a high "A-" prestige, the other school just moved up to a "B" after having two players drafted. We have identical preferences, except for "Strong Conference" I have "Very Good" (one of the top ranked conferences in our world), and he is either neutral or below (he is the only coach in an all sim conference with a conference prestige of D+, and no team higher than 100 RPI). For "wants success" I would expect I have a slight lead, but both of us have been the in tourney the past few seasons. He has one more open scholarship than I do, (3 vs 2), but I have seen him putting attention into other recruits so I know he is not maxed out in that regard.

Except for one cycle, I am maxed out on AP. I offered 25 minutes before anything else to get the "wants to play" multiplier effect. After that, I offered a start and a CV, which put me at VH and bumped him to moderate. Then we played cat and mouse for a few cycles seeing what the other would do. Three cycles ago he went all in and Jumped to Very High and bumped me down to moderate. Seeing as I only got bumped to moderate, and knowing that he couldn't mathematically have more than a 130 AP lead on me, and considering I have a preference and prestige advantage, I waited two more cycles (hoping he might lower his AP allocation seeing I wasn't adding effort) then I went all in with my remaining 20 HV. I had kept 60 AP on the recruit this whole time.

I expected to bump him down to moderate with this move, but it didn't bump him at all. We are both now at Very High. This has me scratching me head. Either my 2/3 letter grade prestige advantage is worth less than 150 AP, HV are worth next to nothing, or AP is extremely more valuable than everything else and overcomes both a prestige and preference advantage. Am I crazy for thinking I was going to bump him down? Does anyone have any insight into how much prestige actually matters now? I'm just scratching my head here.

Edit: The team with A- prestige is a perennial top 25 DI, the team with B prestige is a mid-major

Scratch what I just wrote. You mentioned players drafted. Assuming that's D1, i'm not positive how prestige is handled at that level.

with one more scholly he could be putting more than you on every cycle

Posted by mullycj on 11/23/2018 12:44:00 PM (view original):
with one more scholly he could be putting more than you on every cycle

Based on his other activity on recruits the most he could have been putting in was 10-12 more per cycle, meaning at this point the biggest lead he could have is around 100-120 AP. Is 2/3 letter grade Prestige and a preference advantage really worth less than 100 AP????

Well Ill say what always gets said. You may be at low A- and he may be at high B, so it could be close to a 1/2 letter grade. You also don't know if you are close to putting him down to high. When the battle is over it would be good to ask for the AP totals and post the results for us to see.

You are likely still in the lead, but for you both to be at very high only means he has to be within X percent of total effort of you. I am not sure exactly what that cut off is, but even if your prestige boost is worth 20-33 percent more per action, that in and of itself may or may not be enough to knock him from very high to high, and he may be offsetting that in part by a 15 percent or so as advantage on AP.

Posted by mullycj on 11/23/2018 1:13:00 PM (view original):
Well Ill say what always gets said. You may be at low A- and he may be at high B, so it could be close to a 1/2 letter grade. You also don't know if you are close to putting him down to high. When the battle is over it would be good to ask for the AP totals and post the results for us to see.

Even assuming that, it would mean that 1/2 prestige grade + preference advantage is worth right around a 15% AP lead with all other effort equal. That seems like either AP is crazy overpowered or Prestige is crazy underpowered. Or home visits just really ain't worth much

Posted by gdog13cavs on 11/23/2018 1:28:00 PM (view original):
You are likely still in the lead, but for you both to be at very high only means he has to be within X percent of total effort of you. I am not sure exactly what that cut off is, but even if your prestige boost is worth 20-33 percent more per action, that in and of itself may or may not be enough to knock him from very high to high, and he may be offsetting that in part by a 15 percent or so as advantage on AP.

This is what I am scratching my head over. I believe if I know him below 60/40 he would go down to high. So there is definitely a range there but I believed that a prestige advantage and a preference advantage would easily overcome 10-15% AP disadvantage. The prestige and preferences scale with all actions while the AP don't. Does this mean AP is just worth an absolutely crazy amount relative to all other actions?

What I stated before, and deleted, isn't this a basic all in battle from two fairly equal parties? I can't decipher the percentage points of it all because I don't play D1. But what struck me as odd is that you said you expected him to drop to moderate. Which is completely out of signing range.

i'm not understanding why you feel that your all in is THAT much more powerful? If we were discussing A+ and B-, sure that's a pretty big difference. But what you're describing seems fairly equal to me.

2/3 of a prestige grade is not nearly enough to knock an opponent to moderate, unless you have a significant advantage in preference, promises, or AP. Both at very high does not surprise me at all.

Ha, the funny thing is I've actually figured out which coaches and which schools are involved, but did so because was curious about the prestige advantage.

The B team is definitely on the higher end of the B and the A- team is on the lower end.

From what I can see, defense is pretty close. I wasn't going to take the time to do PPP for each team, but judging by the game logs, it's fairly close, 1-2% advantage for one team or the other.

B team has slight advantage in offense+defense VG+ VG to VG+ G

Want success is a very slight edge to the A- team by one NT win over the past 4 years.....maybe unless you count last seasons success as the most.....then the B prestige team "could" have the edge.

Strong conference should go to the A- school but again how much weight does that actually carry?

If I were to put prestige into grades it would be A- team at 92 and B team at 86 judging by the list of prestige on the RPI page and then listing them in order.

So what's going on here is a problem that I have in this game. Both teams maxed out with 20 HV/1CV, start minutes, lots of APs, preferences that it almost has a balancing effect and gravitates both teams towards very high. The impact of prestige has never changed in 3.0 though you're about 6 tenths of a point ahead in that category. Also, since it has such a balancing effect, not enough time in recruiting has passed, assuming both teams put the same number of APs in until signings for the A- team to move the B team to high.

Now the problem is if you're both maxing out on APs and he has one more open scholarship than you do, there is no way to bump him down to high.

I'm guessing at this point, the A- team was probably on the verge of bumping the B team to high, but that will be a problem now with lack of APs.

well.....I did have him on the cusp of being bumped down to high. I had a 58 to 42 advantage, which I now know because my incredible run of losses while in the lead continues unabated...