Posted by shoe3 on 9/12/2016 7:06:00 PM (view original):
A few different strategies, some of them can coexist.
1) Plan to leave at least one, maybe two scholarships open every season. That gives some cushion in case 2 of the 4 elite players you are hypothetically lucky enough to sign in this final old-style season ditch you before your dream season comes to fruition. Elite D1 teams can operate pretty well with 10 (or fewer) contributors, and that will still be true in 3.0.
2) Instead of targeting only elite players, target a role player and/or project, or two. Mix some certified 4-year players in to your classes.
3) Go for broke, and manage expectations; get used to having to rebuild if you are A) lucky enough to land 4-5 early entry caliber commodities in a season, and B) unlucky enough to lose them when you have no or few graduating seniors to help cover for them. High reward tactics should have high risk, and that's exactly what you'll be undertaking if you target only elite players with your extra scholarship war chest this season.
4) Starting next year, use your base attention points to target primarily late preference players early on. You can get to CVs without offering a scholarship. But obviously don't waste that on players who are going to make an early decision. Then when you do have early entries, you can use those extra scholarship resources as a weapon, as you've always been able to do.
My post basically agreed with this one. The point I was hoping to make was that the OP should do #3 while still in 2.0, followed up by #4.
Problem with #4 [That WIS may need to correct] - In Beta, it seems as though the SIM teams are sending CV. Issue: there's a 5 CV cap in place. I planned on battling for a relatively local recruit, but had to bail when I found that I was too late to offer a CV. There was 1 human at VH (schollie offered), 3
sims [edit: lower prestige teams...remembered that wrong] at moderate (schollies offered), and a pile of sims (none) and my team (yes) at very low. Somehow he had already accepted 5 CV! I decided that it was not going to be worthwhile to battle a human without being able to bring the kid on campus.
If SimAI teams are aggressive with CV, that will mean that EE victims are even further behind the 8 ball. The strategy, as noted by shoe, would need to be to send AP to a "Late" recruit during period #1 to unlock and send a CV ASAP, then wait for the scholarship and additional budget to be made available in period #2 to sign them. We'll see how that shakes out, but I cannot imagine a team playing that gambit successfully on more than 1 recruit each season.
Admin may have to look at the logic for when SimAI sends CV and whether a ranked recruit is accepting CV from lower division schools too early. Especially, there may need to be an adjustment on the 5 CV rule. A Top 100 [really...any overall-ranked] recruit should not be wasting his CV on D2 schools until period #2.
9/13/2016 10:38 AM (edited)