I finally won a couple FA's & was scared to death to up the points for longer contracts since it would expose them that much longer.

Why not open your bid at the contract level you want? There's no rule that says you have to min bid to get your guy. If you want him on a 7, open your bid at 100. If you want him on a 3 open at a 40 or whatever.

edit: I don't understand why poor planning on the bidder's behalf necessitates a coding/rule change.

I do not like this idea. As in my last post, I think you should bid the contract you want and run with it.

this

How come when you release a guy or trade a guy, your salary doesn't change?

Because all our contracts are guaranteed. You pay the money once, and they get that money all up front immediately. You trade them, their contract goes with them already paid.


Trading two similar players in age/skill/and position tier here isn't just about those players now, it is about the contract too. If one of them is signed for 7 years and the other just 2, one team would get screwed big time to take that deal because the new team doesn't assume the contract, it is already paid for.

Well then can I get the guy I released back? I didn't know his contract still stays against me. That seems weird to.

damn it does say that, I always thought you could release someone to make room for other free agents. I didn't know that money was spent no matter what.

This is a good point.

I know you were talking about 'playability' and how you want to keep guys interested throughout the season.

Is there any way to sim halfs? In other words, we are spending hours of time researching the draft, FA, bids, etc... and all for 16 games that are little more than reading a screen. There's no halftime adjustment, let alone in-game adjustment.

Would it be feasible to sim to halftime, give teams a day or so to make adjustments and then sim the 2nd half? At that point you've doubled the amount of actual gameplay without actually increasing the weeks in the season. You've also given players that opportunity to tinker, see what's working vs. what isn't and adjust accordingly.

I just feel like the gameplay itself is perhaps not as rewarding as it could be.

It's certainly something we can look at. To be honest, it would be a ways down the road, but I can see it as a possibility.

1000% agreement here. I just can't see this taking off at all without a much much more visceral gameplay experience than what it is now.

I know you're all football guys, but this kind of thing would work brilliantly with baseball.

Baseball gives you day to day games, different pitching matchups and so much data. You can get heat zones for anyone, pitch type values, etc...

Baseball so easily fits a data driven model that it's perfect for simulations, etc...

I don't know if your present framework could ever be easily modified/adapted for baseball as well, but "fastballsimulations" would be pretty damn sweet and would likely be even more addicting due to the day to day matchups and machinations involved.

Just a completely random though...(one 'out of left field', you could even say)

There is already a pretty successful baseball sim called Out of the Park Baseball.

Next suggestion - sub packages.

You can kinda do it now, but not terribly well. For instance, in my nickle package I would probably want to move Parker inside to the under-tackle and slide Irvin over to LDE. The only way I can effectuate that right now is to make Parker my backup LDT, have him play 20% of the time and then set it to pass-bias.

Well that's still going go have him playing LDT in a fair number of base fronts and it'll get his ass kicked a bit.

Instead, I'd like to be able to simply set my nickel defense personnel as well as my dime personnel; not just in the secondary, but in the box as well. Those guys are just as critical to the success of your nickle as the secondary and with the rise of the spread offenses, it's going to be more important than ever that we're able to adjust them as needed.

I'm also curious, when looking at the 'pick to players to remove from your dime' setup, can I go into a 3-2-6 if I wanted to? It does look like I could remove my LDT from the field, but would my WLB drop into coverage at that point and actually treat it like a 3-2-6 or would he try to crash the line and !@#$ everything up?

Brass-tacks question, I guess, is essentially whether or not the present sub-packages work like they should...