So it's your contention that you can't make huge increases in medical, scouting and training because all the good doctors, scouts and trainers are already employed.   Yet you can increase your payroll by leaps and bounds because the good players are not employed.  Does that make sense?

I think budgeting is broken because it's not logical for a team to be able to quadruple(or more) their payroll/prospect budget and be limited to a 4m increase in other categories.   I fully understand limiting ADV as it effects what you see on other teams and an enterprising owner will simply save the data he acquires.  The same can't be said for medical, training or amateur scouting. 

I think you misunderstand. Increasing payroll does not automatically confer a more effective team. Increasing scouting budget does automatically confer more effective scouting. It is unrealistic to go from having the best medical staff in the league to the worst, and vice versa.

"Budget" does not mean the same thing for payroll as it does for scouting. Thus, there should be a different rule.

If scouting could be so easily flip-flopped, I would simply alternate between 20 and 0 and just draft unsignable players when I had 0. I don't think there is a similar abuse that can be made through player payroll. Although, in all honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing a limit (10M?) to how much player payroll can change from year to year, because you rarely see such a drastic change in a team's payroll as you can see in HBD. I think it could also add an element of strategy by forcing players to plan ahead. But I think prospect payroll should be allowed to change freely. Teams often go from being relative non-players in the amateur market (in years where they are spending more in FA) to being major factors, and vice versa. I know the Phillies did that recently.

Nothing is effective if you don't use it properly.   I can spend millions of dollars on bad FA.   I can draft crappy players despite my scouting.

Budget means budget.   Not sure what dictionary you use.

The "fix" is to make increases/decreases consistent throughout the entire budget.  Currently, the absolute max decrease is 20%.   Set prospect at 4m just like every other category and a 20% fluctuation in payroll.   Or allow bigger changes within all budget categories.

Jesus you are dense.

I could easily say the same for you.  But I was trying not to insult your lack of intelligence.  It is possible to disagree without insults.  That said, I wouldn't expect someone with a sub .500 record to fully understand very many aspects of HBD.

Here's why you're a moron:

I don't really care that we're restricted to 4m increments.   My argument, and only the really stupid haven't caught the subtlety of it, is that I find it rather objectionable that teams can change payroll and prospect so greatly from season to season.   Teams can go from 6m prospect to 40m with transfers while they can only got from 10m to 14m in training.  That's just stupid.

That's why I would like to see a hard-cap on prospect budget of $20m, including transfers.

Hard-cap prospect, put a +/- $4m restriction on coaches, keep the $4m restriction on everything else, and payroll is the only fluctuating budget. But there will be less fluctuation on payroll with the hard-cap on prospect, so it then becomes spend it or lose it.

And I know the argument about spending the money on bad contracts just to say "look, I'm spending money", but unfortunately I don't think that's avoidable.

I'd really have no problem with that.  

WIS, make it so.

Thanks.

I'd also be fine with the earlier suggestion that new owners set their own starting points. 

Of course, I realize that is Alias Heaven but it would only affect 'tard and public worlds.

Maybe the budget changes should be lifted, but the effects gradual.  For example, if I had $0 being spend on my MLB scouting department, and I threw $20 million at it, odds are that group would not be as effective as a group that's had a $20 million budget for 10 years.  Maybe it would take three years to be as effective, meaning you can't just pull the 0-20-0 thing to full effect.

Posted by asher413 on 7/19/2010 1:13:00 PM (view original):
Maybe the budget changes should be lifted, but the effects gradual.  For example, if I had $0 being spend on my MLB scouting department, and I threw $20 million at it, odds are that group would not be as effective as a group that's had a $20 million budget for 10 years.  Maybe it would take three years to be as effective, meaning you can't just pull the 0-20-0 thing to full effect.

Isn't that just the same as restricting how much you can adjust your budget from season to season?  if my $20m isn't going to give me the same value as your $20m because you've been there longer than I have, then why would I possibly want to go to $20m all at once?  I might as well go up in increments of, oh, let's say $4m at a time, and spend the "extra" money elsewhere.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/7/2010 3:44:00 PM (view original):
I'm curious to know why I could make a 100m change in payroll but not a 5m change in HS scouting.   Where's the logic?

I'm more curious what special code you have that allows you to make a 100m change in payroll budgeting from one season to the next...

Just because you have available funds doesn't mean you use them.   So, yeah, I could go from 10m to 110m in a season.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/20/2010 6:56:00 AM (view original):
Just because you have available funds doesn't mean you use them.   So, yeah, I could go from 10m to 110m in a season.

You could go from a $10M payroll budget to a $110M payroll budget in a single season?