capping the demand close to 20 million only benefits good teams. i dont understand why you would say 20 million is better then 30. if anything it needs to be closer to 35 so good teams cant compete with bad teams for top IFAs. Bottom line is that almost this entire thread is about tanking, not the IFA market. If you want to stop tanking you address tanking, not a byproduct of it.

less money = more demand tec. More contending teams will budget 20 million because they will have the best chance at IFA, since they have a crappy draft pick or none at all. Thus the World series champion who signs a Type A in the offseason, budgets zero on the drafts, and 20 in budget. He now is the leading candidate on IFA market since other teams need to sign their pick. The draft and IFA market are there to improve bad teams. Contending teams arent supposed to pull down the top dogs. Unless you want to be in a World like mine where there are 5 superteams and 20 noncontenders,

Quote: Originally Posted By e_mandat on 1/22/2010capping the demand close to 20 million only benefits good teams. i dont understand why you would say 20 million is better then 30. if anything it needs to be closer to 35 so good teams cant compete with bad teams for top IFAs. Bottom line is that almost this entire thread is about tanking, not the IFA market. If you want to stop tanking you address tanking, not a byproduct of it

That's exactly the point.

By reducing the incentive to field an absurdly low payrolled team, with the sole intention of transferring funds to the Prospect budget, one is with either wasting budget money, or paying someone (anyone) to play for your ML squad.

It removes the incentive to jettison any and all decent (but not outstanding) players as soon as they reach arbitration, and thereby likely improves some ML teams almost by default.

Quote: Originally Posted By e_mandat on 1/22/2010less money = more demand tec. More contending teams will budget 20 million because they will have the best chance at IFA, since they have a crappy draft pick or none at all. Thus the World series champion who signs a Type A in the offseason, budgets zero on the drafts, and 20 in budget. He now is the leading candidate on IFA market since other teams need to sign their pick. The draft and IFA market are there to improve bad teams. Contending teams arent supposed to pull down the top dogs.unless you want to be in a World like mine where there are 5 superteams and 20 noncontenders,

Re: BOLD ... why not? Crappy teams already get better draft picks.

Re: I&u ... that's a symptom of superteams built on questionable grounds, not anything to do with IFA signings. If a 120+ win team can actually afford to put $20M+ into their prospect budget, I'd be taking a long, hard look at how that team was built.

That sounds like self interest. It will only increase the gap between good and bad teams. And more importantly, tanking is still rewarded with a better pick. Therefore a team tanking for the best players will still tank for the best draft pick, even if the IFA is taken out of the equation. I see no reason a tanking team would spend its "over money" improving its ML team. It only costs them in the draft.

I guess it means you can identify and weed out the more blatant tankers.

$30M in unused payroll? 100+ losses? Yer outta there, and you don't get to reap the benefits of your high pick. Easy.

A good private world commish can fix things a LOT more easily with a couple of swift bootings.

I agree, but that only helps the few private worlds that are already in the best shape.

Quote: Originally Posted By e_mandat on 1/22/2010capping the demand close to 20 million only benefits good teams. i dont understand why you would say 20 million is better then 30. if anything it needs to be closer to 35 so good teams cant compete with bad teams for top IFAs. Bottom line is that almost this entire thread is about tanking, not the IFA market. If you want to stop tanking you address tanking, not a byproduct of it

Capping the prospect budget creates a more even IFA playing field. The smaller the cap, the more even the playing field is. The tankers don't get the benefits from transferring $60m from player to prospect anymore.

Less benefits = less incentive to tank.

I don't know how long you've been playing HBD, but in the early days we didn't have the ability to do budget transfers. So essentially, there was a hard cap of $20m for prospect budget. Overspending on IFA's wasn't really a problem back then. The IFA problem (and ensuing tanking and siphoning of huge amounts of money from player to prospect budget) really took hold once the budget transfer option became available. ADMIN is admitting that they had not foreseen what a problem this has turned out to be, which is why they're putting the $30m cap in wuith the next update.

Tankers tank. Booting them or refusing to let them in the world is the only way to handle it.

However, preventing teams from having 50m in prospect money is a good start until you pull the trigger on booting a tanker. There's no incentive to have 26m in payroll.

Of course, a tanker can still put 30m in prospect, 20m in everything else and run a 15m payroll.

Lastly, spending payroll money on crap is an easy way to keep on tanking while spending your payroll. "But I signed 4 FA!!!"

"Of course, a tanker can still put 30m in prospect, 20m in everything else and run a 15m payroll."

Exactly.

Edit : a minimum salary cap would be much more effective in my opinion than a hardcap on prospect.

Quote: Originally Posted By e_mandat on 1/22/2010That sounds like self interest. (1)It will only increase the gap between good and bad teams. And more importantly, tanking is still rewarded with a better pick. (2) Therefore a team tanking for the best players will still tank for the best draft pick, even if the IFA is taken out of the equation. I see no reason a tanking team would spend its "over money" improving its ML team. It only costs them in the draft

(1) Why are the bad teams so bad? Maybe because they're tanking?

(2) I agree. Tankers will still tank. But they will be reaping less benefits from tanking by taking IFA out of the equation. They're going to have to find another way to help build their team. They've already got the draft, that doesn't change. But they need to find something to replace what they're losing in a throttled IFA process. The only other options are trades and free agency.

I am warming up to like the idea of a $25 million cap on prospect budgets, with teams able to allocate all $25 million on budget distribution day. Keep the 50% penalty for those who mis-budget.

My biggest complaint is that tankers/re-builders can afford to sign a high draft pick and one or two studly IFAs. A $25-million cap would drive prices down and allow teams that spend money at the BL level to still compete in the IFA market. This would make the IFA market much less of a sure thing and it would force tankers/re-builders to make a choice. Someone could still slap down $25 million for one stud and completely ignore the draft, but they wouldn't be able to guarantee themselves both an IFA and also sign their draft picks; competition for IFAs would be more rigorous and, absent totally ignoring the draft, teams would not be able to dominate the IFA market for three or four years running.

I know it won't stop tanking, but it would address one of the more aggravating effects of it.

And I don't think that a cap would benefit the good teams too mcuh because when less competetive teams are unable to pump $40 million from their BL payroll into prospects it increases the odds that they will (a) hold onto expensive players and (b) spend money on free agents. This should make it more difficult for good teams to dominate because they will have less ready access to top free agents. It would help level the playing field by forcing bad teams to compete for the same talent as good teams. Also, having the ability to allocate $25 million doesn't mean that everyone will have the budget room to do so; and in a world where more teams are competing for top IFAs, having a maxed out prospect budget does not guarantee an ability to sign the top IFAs (unlike now when a few teams can dominate the IFA market for years).

Of course some will still run out crappy teams, and instead of using their money on free agents or better scouting/training will just let it sit there because they want to guarantee themselves a high pick (or maybe we will see an increase in people attempting to buy prospects).

I don't know how convinced I am of this, but it doesn't seem wholly without merit. Maybe it is.

Goodness this is long. Sorry.

Quote: Originally Posted By e_mandat on 1/22/2010"Of course, a tanker can still put 30m in prospect, 20m in everything else and run a 15m payroll."

Exactly.

Edit : a minimum salary cap would be much more effective in my opinion than a hardcap on prospect.

A minimum salary cap would be worthless. You'd see AAA guys signed to 4x$7m contracts just to get above the minimum. And then when the owner bails on the team, the next owner, who wants to compete now, is burneded with a crapload of bad contracts.

I agree with ted. I think budget transfers should be solely formistakes made on budget day -- Prospect budget should be capped at whatever dollar amount is the max allowed on budget day (20, 25, 30, etc - i dont care which)

Exactly.