I'm not sure bifurcating the recruiting cycles will improve the situation for new coaches or new job applicants. Let me understand this:
- Scouting now includes "discovering" players. So, like Hardball Dynasty, your recruiting budget determines whether you even "see" a player at all.
- A good portion of your budget will be spent "discovering" players and then choosing how much "potential" information (or the quality thereof) you need.
- Then you recruit in Cycle 1 and he either signs or doesn't (and then sits after that "signing day" until at least the start of the 2nd signings cycle (after the championship game & jobs). Then, if you have not spent all of your budget already and had no x'fers or EEs, you will be able to spend more money to get him to sign.
- New coaches will enter prior to that 2nd cycle.
At the point of entry, my question is: how much damage will SimAI or the prior coach have done to your recruiting budget? I suppose that either or both will have gotten some recruits considering and may even have had them sign a commitment. I would think that new head coaches ought to be able to "clear the slate" and revoke offers made to signed players by the previous staff. If you can recover a portion of the budget spent for each "opening" at that point, then that would help.
On a side note, again comparing with Hardball's IFA market, the idea of high quality recruits not being "seen" is awful. When the ideal IFA pitcher signs with another team, but never even showed up on my list, I feel cheated. The way HD works, I could imagine only "seeing" a blank player card that needs to be filled in later by scouting (and there being several tiers of more or less accurate scouting), but I despise the idea of not even knowing that a player exists.