Warrior General Games

"The important thing is that if a team could play together in S1 then the same team with the same contracts ought to be able to play together in S2-9."

A couple of solutions (details of each to follow):

1) Keep the salary cap the same for every level, do not increase salary every season, make "younger" players cost a % less than normal salary, if a player can reach the next level during the season make the salary based on the % towards the next age.

2) Don't round up.

3) Don't round at all.

4) Automatically catch-up all players' XP. Don't allow teams to sign younger players at all. ^* (caveat/not a standalone solution)

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1) Keep the salary cap the same for every level.

This idea means that salary will not round up or ever increase. Since cash isn't used for anything it doesn't matter if you multiply it by 1, 10, or 10,000. The important thing is that if a team could play together in S1 then the same team with the same contracts ought to be able to play together in S2-9.

The team plays in rookie, it is still restricted to rookie players starting at 0 XP, same as always. Salary exactly as exists.
The same team plays in sophomore the next season. It is restricted to 0XP sophomore players and rookie player. Sophomore players would earn exactly what they earned the previous season, so no change in cap hit.
The same team could then stay together with the same cap and salary every season.

Assuming that somewhere along the way, the team decides that it wants to recruit some younger 0XP players. The player would be signed at a discount based on the amount of XP less than the maximum XP cap for the league. The important thing is that until that team reaches plateau, that player would always be at the same discount and would be able to play for that team at the same salary every season until he catches up at plateau. I believe that a single season should be the cap... you should not be able to play rookie players in a Seasoned league. So perhaps these 0XP players would make 20% less than their older teammates (or whatever number Bort is currently using).

Assuming that somewhere along the way, the team decides that it wants to recruit some younger players that are not at 0XP. These players would not be paid as though they were an entire season younger, just the portion of the time. So if the discount for a 0XP player was 20% (assuming), a player that was 4 stars into the younger season would be paid only 4% less. A player that was at 1 star would be paid 16% less.

The advantages to this system is that you never run into the season-to-season rounding errors that cause an otherwise compliant team to go over the cap.

It would be very difficult to game this system. Perhaps you might sign a bunch of players that are one game away from being at the age cap for the league in order to save the 4% (or whatever it would be). The whole team would be one game behind the whole season, which is really only a problem for the games following a star level up. People that are willing to do this would need to replace the entire team with unexperienced players in the second season (most likely) in order to do this, which would mean a huge chem hit for the season. You could also trickle the players in, but you would need to store them somewhere. When this team hits plateau, they would lose the discount and have to make significant cuts to keep everyone.

There is the whole "but I want my player to seem to be making more money" idea that I reject, but that some people might actually care about.

2) Don't round up.

This is a pretty simple idea. The only reason that a compliant team would go over right now is that they multiply all of the salaries and then round them off. If you didn't round them up, you wouldn't go over.

The advantage of this is that it is simple, compliant teams would never go over, and that it might make a bit more cap space as a % of the salary as the team progresses (which will allow teams who need to replace players a bit more leniency).

The disadvantage is that some teams might find a way to abuse the system slightly to increase their cap space a bit each season with the rounding.

3) Don't round at all.

This is pretty much the third idea, but where the numbers are never rounded. This might lead to some odd looking salaries, but other than that, will prevent the underlying issue.

4) Automatically catch-up all players' XP. Don't allow teams to sign younger players at all. ^*

As stated, this isn't a stand-alone solution, but it does address the plateau issue and the potential exploit of hiring a bunch of players that are just short of the cap in order to get a discount.

Disadvantages include people being pissed that they missed games because they were "caught-up", current Superstars not being able to play in the first season teams until plateau, and existing teams having to cut younger players.

Advantages include huge exploit reducing power, keeping teams together without plateau salary issues, and league parity of salaries and XP.

^* - It would be wise to hold off on implementation of this option for a few seasons to let the S2 S*s play through to plateau and to let the other teams have time to plan for the restriction. People will still bitch and say that they should have been given more notice, I call this the Jampy clause, so obviously Support and Admin will need to make a strong presence in the days before and following any such implementation.

Cowardly Salary Exploiter Count Post:

Currently there are 3 people who are running a salary exploit who would prefer that such loopholes not be fixed.

Problems:

1. Functionally your discounted young players and the current raising the salary cap every tier work out the same. And so it does nothing to change the fact that percentage-based increases to base salary based on traits means that as the base salary increases, the final salary grows faster than what the salary cap intended.

Personally, I think the assumption that a team should be able to stick together no matter how many high-cost traits they have is silly. Those high cost traits make your players better than the no or low cost traits. As such, you should have to pay more to have them, and there should be some way to limit just how much better one team can be than another which is really what the salary cap is about.

I also am very opposed to the idea of restricting players to tier only. Veteran teams are almost certainly going to be recruiting pro and journeyman players as their players retire since a specialist built journeyman is likely going to have the same primary stats. For example, Lost Lounge has a run-stopping DT with 89 in Break Run Block right now at the start of the journeyman season. There is no reason why such a player wouldn't fit in a veteran team. And, since the player isn't as well rounded as a veteran player would be, there should be discount for picking them up.

What the salary cap system needs is early warning for next season calculations so owners/GM's can plan how they're going to handle next season's salary cap issues. Then add in a penalty to teams that are over the cap, perhaps a team-wide temporary chemistry-type hit to skills. Say a team that is 5% over the cap gets 10% reduction in game-day skills. A team that is 10% over the cap gets a 20% reduction in skills team-wide.

With that early warning system, plus none of the instakills to chemistry or unexpected loss of players, I think owners could much better handle salary cap, and the salary cap would do it's primary job--keeping some level of parity amongst teams.

Originally posted by Xavori
Problems:

1. Functionally your discounted young players and the current raising the salary cap every tier work out the same. And so it does nothing to change the fact that percentage-based increases to base salary based on traits means that as the base salary increases, the final salary grows faster than what the salary cap intended.



1. Don't number your response and then only use one number.

B. Also, you are 100% incorrect. If the salary cap in rookie = the salary cap in journeyman, but only for players who are at the age-ceiling, you are just flat out wrong.

III. If you use the rookie salary (based on what you would pay that player in rookie) at every level, so long as the player is playing at his correct level, you DON'T HAVE the % increase from season to season which necessitates the increased cap and player by player rounding. So no, the change would not do nothing.

$. Again, if a player was on your team in S2 and he remains on your team in S3, the cap hit will be unchanged. Period.

Originally posted by Xavori
Personally, I think the assumption that a team should be able to stick together no matter how many high-cost traits they have is silly. Those high cost traits make your players better than the no or low cost traits. As such, you should have to pay more to have them, and there should be some way to limit just how much better one team can be than another which is really what the salary cap is about.

What are you talking about?

S1 you have a cap. Players on that team will have high cost traits and low cost traits and will take up a % of your team salary cap. If you can fit the team together with all of the high and low cost traits, that's how it works. A % of team cap space.

Currently, in S2, that same team would theoretically have the exact same % of salary cap usage. That's how multiplication works. If you have a team salary of $100 and a QB that takes up 10 of those dollars in S1 and the cap in S2 is $1,000, the QB will make $100 and take up the exact same % of your team salary. In both cases, the QB will continue to consume 10% of the cap space. Because math. The reason that players are currently going over isn't because of their traits, it is because of rounding 43 players up and down to the nearest $5,000 and then adding them together again.

If a team is under the salary cap in S1, that exact same team with the exact same traits ought to be under the cap in S2, unless the only reason you were under the cap was that you had players lower than level cap playing for you and you have now hit plateau and they are caught up.

If you are employing my first suggestion, the QB in S1 that cost $10 would still cost $10 in S2 and the cap would still be $100. However, if you were to recruit a rookie QB onto that S2 team, the rookie QB would get paid $8 instead of $10 assuming everything is equal. Low numbers used for clarity, not actual cap.

Originally posted by Xavori
I also am very opposed to the idea of restricting players to tier only. Veteran teams are almost certainly going to be recruiting pro and journeyman players as their players retire since a specialist built journeyman is likely going to have the same primary stats. For example, Lost Lounge has a run-stopping DT with 89 in Break Run Block right now at the start of the journeyman season. There is no reason why such a player wouldn't fit in a veteran team. And, since the player isn't as well rounded as a veteran player would be, there should be discount for picking them up.

Right, so my original suggestion allowed for players one age bracket down with a possible 4th suggestion add-on that would restrict that. A run-stopping DT with 89 in Break Run Block in Seasoned isn't going the be as good as an 89 Break Run Block DT in journeyman. The reason you like it is because Bort's current salary differences are huge. In my initial suggestion, I offered a 20% discount on taking a player a season younger, which I think is generous. Obviously the best case would be to have players be the same age and have the same SP allotment, but I'm not shutting down the option of going one age group down in order to make recruitment easier.

Originally posted by Xavori
What the salary cap system needs is early warning for next season calculations so owners/GM's can plan how they're going to handle next season's salary cap issues. Then add in a penalty to teams that are over the cap, perhaps a team-wide temporary chemistry-type hit to skills. Say a team that is 5% over the cap gets 10% reduction in game-day skills. A team that is 10% over the cap gets a 20% reduction in skills team-wide.

With that early warning system, plus none of the instakills to chemistry or unexpected loss of players, I think owners could much better handle salary cap, and the salary cap would do it's primary job--keeping some level of parity amongst teams.



What the salary cap system needs is an exploit-free and management free system. If you are under the cap in S1, you should be under the cap in S2, with the exception of plateau-era teams with younger players who are approaching and then become plateau players themselves.

I mean, how big of an exploit is it going to be that a Pro player in the playoffs will have 99% of the SP/AP allotment of a plateau player, but will be priced significantly cheaper?

I know you, Xav, you are a player who tries to exploit systems like these. I get that. I'm heading off the exploits before you get there instead of after you have already started using them.

No. If you are under the salary cap in season one, but using a bunch of traits that allow for better growth, and hence, have a bunch of salary growth increases attached to them, you should eventually run into problems as those players get better than the defaults.

Percentage increases attached to traits does that. 10% extra salary on a $200,000 rookie is just an extra $20k. No biggie. But by journeyman with a base salary of $2,000,000 that is now an extra $200k and definitely could matter. Pile a bunch of players with 30-40% salary bumps, you're going to have a better team than someone using players only 5-10%. Not a big deal rookie year where the trait advantages aren't that big yet, but by journeyman+ year, they really start to matter as having a skill only cost 500SP's to raise versus 800SP's is huge.

So you want to limit how many of those kind of guys teams can stick in and carry because otherwise, the difference in team dots gets to be the only real deciding factor.

So I like that part of the salary system. It keeps some semblance of parity for the total skills of the entire team while leaving owners the flexibility to figure out if they want a bunch of solid guys, or have a few guys be stars and just don't have as many backups, or maybe stick some lesser used players on low contracts or whatever. That parts good.

What's problematic is that it's a freakin' chore if you actually want to do any kind of long term salary management. That's why I suggested a warning system that goes through your lineup, does the math to figure out where your salary will be next season versus the salary cap, and gives you a warning if you're going to be too high. Then you have an entire season to decide how to handle it.

At the same time, there needs to be some kind of system that forces owners to actually stay under the cap, but that isn't as catastrophic as forced low contracts or forced cuts. That's why I suggest some type of skill penalty for teams based on how much they're over the cap. This doesn't wreck chemistry automatically or perhaps end up dumping a key player off the roster. Instead it gives owners the flexibility to decide if they want to take a hit to skills if they think their team is still better post hit, or perhaps they can pick a player to take the low contract or cut someone at a position where the remaining players all have excellent conditioning or whatever.

But again, the key point is that you shouldn't assume that a rookie roster will be able to stay together no matter what because players grow at different rates and there has to be some mechanism that promotes parity.

Btw, I don't exploit. Ever.

I play by the rules. Yes, I'll dig and work them to my advantage, but I won't break them. Lost Lounge (the only team I have roster control of) will not go over the salary cap regardless of what system is in place because to me, that's an unfair advantage and is breaking the rules.

Xav your argument about traits makes absolutely no sense, mathematically or logically. A +10% salary trait should not result in a bigger % of the overall salary cap as the player moves up tiers. There is no reason that a team that fits under the cap at one tier, and maintains the exact same roster and salary levels, shouldnt be able to fit under the cap as they move up tiers.

Yeah, Xav... math please.

A DE on Medium salary:

$160,000 salary in Season 1. Salary cap in S1 is $7,250,000. (0.022069% of cap)
$645,000 salary in Season 2. Salary cap in S2 is $29,500,000. (0.021864% of cap)

The only reason that the salary isn't exactly the same % of the cap is because Bort rounded the salary off, in this case rounded down.

$29,500,000 is ~4.068965 times greater than $7,250,000.
$645,000 is 4.03125 times greater than $160,000.

You will notice that it doesn't matter if you use traits or not, because, you know, math.

The only reason that the numbers aren't equal is because of Bort's rounding.

If you look at the first possible solution, the one where you don't increase the salary cap every season, you avoid the entire issue.

Trust me, it is math.

Originally posted by Xavori
Btw, I don't exploit. Ever.

I play by the rules. Yes, I'll dig and work them to my advantage, but I won't break them. Lost Lounge (the only team I have roster control of) will not go over the salary cap regardless of what system is in place because to me, that's an unfair advantage and is breaking the rules.

Except for that time that you posted about how you loved finding legal holes in games. I'm not accusing you of trying to cheat, I'm suggesting that there is a very clear salary exploit available to first season plateau teams.

Originally posted by Time Trial
The only reason that the salary isn't exactly the same % of the cap is because Bort rounded the salary off, in this case rounded down.

If that's what let teams like Queen City get over the cap, and that's the only thing because Bort set the increases in caps to perfectly match increase in player salaries, than you're correct that the solution would be to fix the rounding.

Originally posted by Time Trial
Except for that time that you posted about how you loved finding legal holes in games. I'm not accusing you of trying to cheat, I'm suggesting that there is a very clear salary exploit available to first season plateau teams.

There is a huge difference between reverse engineering a game's AI to take advantage of it and finding a bug and exploiting that.

For example, when the QB Rollout Strong controversy was raging, a few teams figured out how to get HB's into the QB slot. That's an exploit, and I never even considered using it, and even went so far as to PM'd Corndog how to do it so it could get fixed. On the other hand, calling out routes last season versus the broken backpedal turn was not an exploit because it was working exactly as designed even if that design was fairly flawed.

To be fair, most people assumed that you wanted the HB in at QB loophole shutdown because you were already using a rushing QB and it was a way to shutdown other people from using your QB spam.

I'm actually good with the adjustment Corndog made after looking at the issue.

Only "penalty" should be on teams more than 1% over. You can "drift" 1% over with the same roster - you can't drift 2-5% over "accidently" imho. The cap to me, as long as 1% over is ok if it happens due to changing tiers is fine. However, it was just goofy to come up with a draconian action on a completed roster.

The only change I would like to see would be to allow me to actually lower a salary if I'm over the cap. For example I'm over the cap and have a medium contract, I can't offer someone already on the roster a low contract for renegotiation purposes. (Even though this would make me less over the cap).

Originally posted by william78
I'm actually good with the adjustment Corndog made after looking at the issue.

Only "penalty" should be on teams more than 1% over. You can "drift" 1% over with the same roster - you can't drift 2-5% over "accidently" imho. The cap to me, as long as 1% over is ok if it happens due to changing tiers is fine. However, it was just goofy to come up with a draconian action on a completed roster.

The only change I would like to see would be to allow me to actually lower a salary if I'm over the cap. For example I'm over the cap and have a medium contract, I can't offer someone already on the roster a low contract for renegotiation purposes. (Even though this would make me less over the cap).



Yes, but because the rounding is done every season, you might find that a player is going to take up larger and larger %s of the cap space.

In addition, there is actually a "double rounding" issue under the current system. You've got the "low" contract as the base salary as part of the multiplier from season to season which is rounded, and then you round again when you offer the medium contract as a % of that rounded contract.

Again, the whole thing is avoidable by not increasing the salary cost or cap from season to season.

Originally posted by Time Trial
Yes, but because the rounding is done every season, you might find that a player is going to take up larger and larger %s of the cap space.

In addition, there is actually a "double rounding" issue under the current system. You've got the "low" contract as the base salary as part of the multiplier from season to season which is rounded, and then you round again when you offer the medium contract as a % of that rounded contract.

Again, the whole thing is avoidable by not increasing the salary cost or cap from season to season.

Well, this is all just wrong, there is no "double rounding" or whatever you're talking about.

As for your suggestions

Keep salary the same at every level - We discussed this, Bort wasn't sold on it
Don't round up - It already doesn't round up
Don't round at all - Salary values would look ugly and be more difficult to calculate on the fly
Automatic catch up - Forcing players to do something like this feels all kinds of wrong

Originally posted by Corndog
Well, this is all just wrong, there is no "double rounding" or whatever you're talking about.

As for your suggestions

Keep salary the same at every level - We discussed this, Bort wasn't sold on it
Don't round up - It already doesn't round up
Don't round at all - Salary values would look ugly and be more difficult to calculate on the fly
Automatic catch up - Forcing players to do something like this feels all kinds of wrong

The reason I would imagine there is double rounding is just because the bump from Rookie to Sophomore is supposed to be roughly equal, but it seems to be based on the Low or base salary number from what I can tell. I suppose there wouldn't always be rounding to go from low to medium, but I haven't actually investigated this.

How are players going up as a % of salary cap if they are never rounded up?

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Anyway, any idea what Bort's specific issues are with keeping the number the same from season to season? I mean other than optics, there is no reason to raise the salary, and it is only when the salary gets raised that the issues come about because players salary as a % of cap space seem to fluctuate. The fact that they can end up costing more as a % of salary cap seems to suggest that rounding up is occurring, but I'm way too zoned out to figure out if there is another reason.

I agree on the automatic catch-up, but I do see problems on the horizon with teams signing players that are a day younger than the cap playing at a discount. Just trying to head that off before it becomes an issue next season.

Like what if my team cuts my player the day before he reaches Vet. Is my salary determined based on the fact that I'm still in Pro, or is it determined based on the fact that 29 of the next 30 games I will be Vet?