[RESOLVED] Simple to understand, complex to code; help!

[Lenggries]

(I am New York Fanboys.)

I saw that one coming

So you have two problems: flex positions and flex players. I think you can take the same approach for both problems, which is to iterate through the permutations. That way, for each iteration, you never actually deal with either flex players or flex positions. The downside of this is that it is algorithmically inefficient, since it is an O(nm) algorithm, where n is product of the number of positions each of your players can play (so if everybody can only play 1 position, then n = 1) and m is the product of the number of positions that each starting slot can take (aka 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 2 * 2 = 4). However, since n is typically going to be 1 or 2, and m is also going to be fairly small, the inefficiency is rather trivial in this case.

So here's a general algorithm layout:

For each permutation of flex players
   For each permutation of flex positions
      Assign players according to best fit
      Measure point total
      Retain point total and lineup if this is the highest score so far

That's it. It sounds like you have the inner part of the loop already. All you need to do is put a nested loop around it and iterate over the flex players and positions and you'll get what you want.