A few suggestions,
1. If you aren't carrying say 22 players in each minor league level at the start of the minor league season, you can't participate in the draft until the start of the 4th round.
2. If you aren't carrying at least say, 22 players in each minor league level, you are blocked from participating in the IFA pool.
3. Set real min-maxes for all budget catagories, instead of just coaching...
4. Set a maximum ceiling limit for ML salary budget...
3. Have the developers, calculate what a minimum, minor league fill would cost on average say for 22 players each level and unless that budget is met the system automatically fills it at the expense of the players salary.

3 should happen .

AAA - 22 players x $54.5K = $1,199,000.
AA - 22 players x $37.5k = $ 825,000
High A - 22 players x $26.25k = $ 577,500
Low A - 22 players x $26.25k = $ 577,500

Total Minor league
Spending at start
of minor league season $3,179,000

Then after the daft this most be
added before rookie ball starts:

Rookie = 22 players x $7.65k = $ 168,300

Total minimum minor league
spending: $3,347,300

Two checkpoints: Start of minor league season and start of rookie ball,

Plenty of interesting ideas here. I agree with setting a hard minimum for minor league spending and a required minimum number of players, but think it should be 25-man roster and 25 x minimum salary at that level. There isn't a minor league team in the world keeping roster spots open.

Posted by jweatherman on 6/21/2021 1:55:00 PM (view original):
Plenty of interesting ideas here. I agree with setting a hard minimum for minor league spending and a required minimum number of players, but think it should be 25-man roster and 25 x minimum salary at that level. There isn't a minor league team in the world keeping roster spots open.

+1 -- while I suggested a starting point of 22, 25 makes better sense to me. I figured there'd be push back on 25 though. We'll see if there is below I guess.

Agree with above with N = 25-- but the checkpoint has to be very early, right at budgeting. The simplest way to do it would be to say that your major league payroll must AT ALL TIMES be at least $4M (rounded up from $3.8M) less than your total payroll budget.

Posted by tlowster on 6/18/2021 11:16:00 PM (view original):
Also, there already is a bump for minor league players making the playoffs. 1. the FAQ reads they get one extra bump to the makeup rating (assuming this is accurate, it must come during the rollover like it always does); 2. Any player playing the playoffs and actually getting game time has an opportunity for more development as long as the owner promotes the player to the next level before the World rolls over.

Are the suggestions above in reference to adding more than the what they already get? Like an immediate playoff bump or something?

That is a lot of small ifs for a playoff bump. I mean something tangible. On the players card I want to see under where it says regular season have it say ‘playoffs’ and see a bump there. Maybe 1 for getting in then every 2 rounds the equivalent to 1 regular season bump.

Easy Fixes:

Remove money transfer penalty. Bad idea from the start of HBD. No new coding. Change the one line of code that divides by 2.

Until every MinL level has 27 players (except Rookie), don''t let the final $4MM of salary budget be spent. (27*55000)+(27*38000)+(27*27000)+(27*27000) = $3,969,000. HBD has logic similar to prevent overspending future years budgets in trades. This doesn't stop all problems Someone could put 27 1Bs at a level. Rookie could still go bad. Could dial down from all at 27 to release all $4MM. It would force attention. And, when people mess up or quit it won't be as hard to fix the MinL because there will be money.

Extend that to include a minimum number of Ps and Pos players.

Add a red / yellow / green meter to every MinL level to let us know if, based on the total Dur / Stam of all of the pitchers, the level has enough Ps to make it through a season. If a level is Red, block all transactions. This would never be perfect. With just a little coding, it would be better than nothing.

Make more MinL players. I think I've seen times where there are none to sign.

The demotion penalty is, and always has been silly. MLB and MinL players move up and down all the time. They don't permanently lose skills.

What not to do:

Any future season transfer or penalty. Opens up too many other things.

Anything punitive. People who are going to quit are going to quit. Anyone with any interest in HBD will abandon this team and pick up a new one if Simmy makes the team worse.

Injuries are part of HBC. I wouldn't argue too much if you removed injuries or rating drops, but don't force changing MinL injuries into solution. Not the same topic.

It would be very complicated to reward MinL success without motivating us to stack one level with all of our prospects and best career MinL players. You'd have to add warnings that Player X is at the wrong level and their development will be impacted. I'd like this in HBD. A lot of coding and trade-offs. Many better uses of your time if you're going to touch this much code.

Anything done by Simmy. If you do the easy stuff above, there will be budget and players that will make it easy for a human to fix. Simmy cutting players seems drastic.

Block the draft. That just screws the person will be taking the team over.

Don't think this has been mentioned, but fixing the AAAA players who ask for millions of dollars only to go unsigned the entire season. There's a plethora of these every year, and in real life these guys would be in AAA competing for a promotion. But instead, they lie in free agency all year long because their asking price doesn't decrease after the season starts.

Theoretically if you could sign these guys easier, then your AAA fillers could drop to AA, AA to A+, etc. etc. The strength of the minor league system would be better as a whole

Posted by pray4pro on 6/22/2021 1:53:00 PM (view original):
Don't think this has been mentioned, but fixing the AAAA players who ask for millions of dollars only to go unsigned the entire season. There's a plethora of these every year, and in real life these guys would be in AAA competing for a promotion. But instead, they lie in free agency all year long because their asking price doesn't decrease after the season starts.

Theoretically if you could sign these guys easier, then your AAA fillers could drop to AA, AA to A+, etc. etc. The strength of the minor league system would be better as a whole

Agreed,
also someone mentioned this before but I'm doubling down how important this is: There needs to be more minor leaguers to sign. I'm really noticing this in one of my leagues right now. Especially long relievers or, more importantly, at key positions. Right now in Riley I badly need a handful of shortstops and catchers and I hear other owners saying the same thing. They can be plugs with no fielding ratings over 50 and batting ratings in the 10's but I need bodies. I imagine the same is pitchers with stamina (I always draft too many but I never have this problem). For some owners just having the resources will help prevent their minor league teams from being neglected.

Posted by pray4pro on 6/22/2021 1:53:00 PM (view original):
Don't think this has been mentioned, but fixing the AAAA players who ask for millions of dollars only to go unsigned the entire season. There's a plethora of these every year, and in real life these guys would be in AAA competing for a promotion. But instead, they lie in free agency all year long because their asking price doesn't decrease after the season starts.

Theoretically if you could sign these guys easier, then your AAA fillers could drop to AA, AA to A+, etc. etc. The strength of the minor league system would be better as a whole

+1. Good clean thinking here.

Don't forget your minor leagues are tapped out and you can't find bodies to sign because there are other owners who have even less bodies on hand; they just bulk sign minor leaguers and consider it a sunk cost, rather than signing their draft picks (who cost more money overall).

Definitely needs to be more players to help fill in for tired or fatigued players. The try out players are woeful but at least they help your MIL team get by , just need more of those players.
I do like a ratings bump for players in the minors for the MIL teams that make the playoffs

Whatever was just done to notify us of minor league lineups that are not setup is giving me a bunch of false postives. All ten of my lineups are setup in Dirt, but it reads that all levels have lineups that need to setup against left handed pitching.

Yeah looks to be fixed now

I can definitely appreciate tinkering. Glad they're doing it.

I don't mind these alerts in general (although I'm dubious this was the best use of time/resources), but it would be ideal if they didn't show up in the preseason. I have 10 incomplete lineup alerts that can't be fixed until Spring Training is over. When I'm managing multiple teams and checking in quickly I try to make sure and clear those red alerts when possible to stay efficient, clear up issues, etc--can't be done in this case.