I was thinking it'd be cool to do all the scouting throughout the season and then during the offseason, you actually do the recruiting. But I'm not sure how you handle new coaches.

But as a pretty new player, I like most of the ideas. But I do have a complaint about SIM recruiting. Why do they not follow the 6 players per class rule? I have three teams in my conference who have 9 players in a class and when they're all FR or SO, they STINK! It'd be nice to prevent these guaranteed 300+ RPI teams from existing systematically. Only way to fix it now is for a human to take over and rebalance it.

How will EE's and players who transfer due to lack of playing time be accounted for both in terms of scouting budgets and recruiting? I mean if signings start shortly after mid-season and basically wrap up at season end how many recruits will still be availabile to replace these players?

I actually really like the idea of an overhaul in recruiting. I feel like I have done pretty well in the current system, but it's frustrating to only have one opening and feel like there is just nothing I can do but hope and pray somebody good slips through the cracks. It's also definitely unrealistic that scouting is so unrealistic, and D3 schools can recruit nationally and the higher you get on the totem pole, the more regional recruiting becomes. I am happy to add things that gives you more options in recruiting, makes it more realistic, less of an auction system. 

Initial thoughts on this stuff: 

*Level one scouting looks almost completely useless. How am I going to get a good handle on a PF/C's offense when 60% of his rating comes from guard skills? How am I going to get a read on a guard's defense when 67% of their rating comes from rebounding and shot blocking? The physical is the most useful category, but even then 25% of it comes from the most useless category in the game. 

*How do dropdowns/pulldowns work in this scenario? 

*I think camps are a great idea, but they should be at least heavily weighted towards players in your division. There's no reason for a two-star D1 recruit to show up at a camp at Maryville College. Same with player discovery. Your assistant should know to look for players at roughly your level. (how focused on your division will depend on the previous dropdown/pulldown question)

*I like the idea of your local camp giving you level 2 info and the regional camps only giving you level 1. 

*I like the idea of player discovery a lot, but rather than being limited to a max distance from one's own school, I think a better idea would be to send your assistant to some region and have him work within a certain radius from a point that you specify. I think this would alleviate some concerns about making recruiting too regional and crippling conferences like the SoCal. If you are a coach in California, you can send your assistant to Omaha and have him discover players within 200 miles of Omaha (as an example). I also think this makes it more realistic. It's crazy that your assistant coach can currently scout Connecticut, California, and China all in the same cycle. But your assistant coach is capable of flying a plane. Maybe charge an additional flat fee for going farther from home but then the same $50/recruit. For example, if you coach Cal Tech, it costs you $100 in gas + $50 per recruit to scout 100 guys in Southern California/Nevada/Arizona (total $5100). It costs you $1500 in airfare/hotels/rental cars + $50/recruit to scout 100 guys in Kansas/Nebraska/Missouri (total $6500). Maybe tweak the numbers, but you get the concept. That allows a little bit more freedom in recruiting areas but doesn't allow you to just indiscriminately recruit nationally. I think this could also go into the concept of building recruiting pipelines, like you see in real life (for instance, Gary Pinkel at Missouri recruits heavily in Texas; Charlie Strong at Texas recruits heavily in Florida). 

*Regarding individual scouting, I would like to see something like what I suggested for player discovery. Charge a flat fee for a scouting trip, but then allow a coach to scout multiple players in the area when he's there at a lower cost. So if you want to scout a guy in Texas and one in California, you have to make two trips. But if you have three guys in St. Louis that you want to scout, you can hit them all on one trip. So it may cost $700 to take the trip to St. Louis, but it only costs $50/player while you're there, so you can scout three guys there for $850. That kind of thing. 

I love the concept of an overhaul. Obviously, lots of testing will be necessary to hit the sweet spot. I do think the suggestions I made dovetail nicely with your overall plan and hopefully present some possible improvements. 

Two general questions:

1. I sometimes use the strategy of recruiting late (and nationally) at D2/D3, after signings have started. I'm able to do this because (among other reasons) doing FSS for dozens of states becomes a lot less expensive then. Is that strategy out the window with this new update?
2. Am I wrong in envisioning that geographically remote schools (e.g. a D2 school with no other D2 schools nearby) will have more of an advantage after this update?

1. You said that using the scouting service now would only show recruits in your teams division. How in this new scouting system would one go about trying to scout the higher division?
2. You said there would be regional camps. Do that mean if I'm on the east coast I can attend a west coast camp for the same price as the east coast but the cost of recruiting is where it would be different?
3. Also about EE and transfers I'm guessing recruiting would still be after the season but scouting during? Is this correct?
4. Will you be able to scout during the recruiting period? What if all the players you scout get signed and you still have recruiting money and spots to fill?

Posted by bhansalid00 on 9/10/2015 8:33:00 PM (view original):
Two general questions:

1. I sometimes use the strategy of recruiting late (and nationally) at D2/D3, after signings have started. I'm able to do this because (among other reasons) doing FSS for dozens of states becomes a lot less expensive then. Is that strategy out the window with this new update?
2. Am I wrong in envisioning that geographically remote schools (e.g. a D2 school with no other D2 schools nearby) will have more of an advantage after this update?

It looks as if with 2 seperate budgets for scouting and actual recruiting that the amount you scout or do not scout will not affect the amount of money you have left to actually recruit players

It looks like they will get an even bigger adv especially CO,FL at D3 since schools won't be able to recruit as nationally as before as well at having a big deteriment to semi isolated schools in a dense conference ala the S. Cal/Northwest imo

My first impression is that it will take too long to get to the meaningful information, and potentially too costly.  For example, with your proposal - level 1 and level 2 information will cost X amount - and essentially only reveal obscured CURRENT ratings (level 1&2).  The key of course to know POTENTIAL (level 3&4).  

Now, this isn't necessarily bad, but it seems like it will cost "a lot" (I realize the exact budgets are for debate) just to see part ratings of a player.  By the time you get to Level 3 an 4 you may have spent quite a bit only to find they are a highly skilled HS senior with NO POTENTIAL for improvement - making them completely useless.

FWIW, I really do like the paradigm shift of season long recruiting, camps, scouting, etc.  But my initial thought is the potential reveal is too stingy and seems like it would be costly - especially for D3 schools.  

In sum, it seems unlikely that any coach is going to recruit players blindly so most will spend as much as it takes to find the potential of their player pool.  Given that assumption, maybe it doesn't need to have 4 levels, but 3 or some more simplified version of the scouting you proposed --- since coaches will ultimately strive for level 4 information before committing to a player.  Or make level 1 info less expensive (in real life a coach can probably tell all the basic attributes of a player in one sitting, but more SV would reveal greater insight into potential).

Also, if this is only the SCOUTING budget we are talking about - it will all be spent if there is no carryover.  And, if there is no carry over and a base amount regardless of how many roster spots are open, now the scouting budget may provide more advantage the school with the LEAST open spots - after all they have 10k at D3 (for example) to find 1 player in some cases.  Again, that may be fine. I am just thinking out loud about how it may be a disadvantage to have too many spots open.

Also, I assume this would mean the end of Future Stars Scouting?

Finally, I haven't played Hardball dynasty, but this sounds like something that probably happens in their scouting/drafting cycle essentially?  Or when I played the soccer game, it had a similar situation where you were blinded to players unless you scouted them.  

Resources

-          Each school is assigned a base amount for their division, plus a little extra for each opening. 

·         DI - $50,000 + $5000 more per opening

·         DII - $30,000 + $3000 more per opening

·         DIII - $10,000 + $1000 more per opening

First paragraph so yes you get more if you have more openings.

Also, do you envision coaches being able to see what schools a player is considering?  That could open another can of worms - I could just watch all of tarvolon's recruits (which sometimes happens now anyway - hahahaha, JK tarvolon!!!) and start going after his players (blindly because I trust his judgement as a coach) and scout others… thereby doubling my "scouting" efforts.  I know this can happen now as well, although I doubt many coaches bother given the relative inexpensive amount that scouting costs.

Yeah, I realize you get more if you have more openings, but not a LOT more like now.  Especially at D3… where you could have 16K for 6 spots vs. 10K for 1 open spot.  Now the money is 18k vs. 3k (which is the probably we are trying to solve in part). 

I just think the numbers need some tweaking.  I realize the idea is to eliminate the great advantage of many roster spots being impossible to beat.  But I would argue not to swing too far the other way.

Again, the money is only for SCOUTING in this paradigm.  So maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.  AND probably starting to annoy folks with the ALL CAPS.

Posted by brianxavier on 9/10/2015 9:15:00 PM (view original):
Also, do you envision coaches being able to see what schools a player is considering?  That could open another can of worms - I could just watch all of tarvolon's recruits (which sometimes happens now anyway - hahahaha, JK tarvolon!!!) and start going after his players (blindly because I trust his judgement as a coach) and scout others… thereby doubling my "scouting" efforts.  I know this can happen now as well, although I doubt many coaches bother given the relative inexpensive amount that scouting costs.

+1
Although it will make recruiting a player a little tougher not knowing how many players a coach has considering him.

My main concern is that this not become a process that only people without jobs have time to do and that it not necessitate the huge time sink of normal recruiting being spread out over a much longer period.

Seeble, really seems that one really common concern to address is that this not become a huge time sink that people have trouble keeping up with.

Posted by a_in_the_b on 9/10/2015 10:18:00 PM (view original):
My main concern is that this not become a process that only people without jobs have time to do and that it not necessitate the huge time sink of normal recruiting being spread out over a much longer period.

you saying that i have too much time on my hands and that might make me better? :P

It's hard to believe such a calamity, he's got too much (clap clap) time on his hands ..