Finally got Season 3 prepped

Play Ball!

Thanks for everyone's patience in waiting for Season 3.  In case you haven't heard I am a one man operation. I had hoped to have the site up and ready Monday March 21 in the AM, but ran into some technical problems with promotions, demotions. In the end I modified a lot of code, code I had worked on months earlier and thought I hit it right then. But I think the work accomplished will make the end of Season 3 easier to deal with.

Season 3 changes:
RFA's are designed to provide a lot of bidding excitement. However few managers actually used the RFA signing period (Free Agent Week) to build their teams. As a result I had the Sim resign RFA players to 1 year contracts at a higher per week salary than normal. Managers can release the players or trade them as needed, though like all RFA players after Week 7, they are stuck on your team until the end of the season.

I made this decision because had there been a wholesale release of 960 of 7141 players, roughly 1 of every 7,  I foresaw a major problem with team lineups/rotations/bullpens. This reality I had not considered when designing the RFA part of BBZ. Ultimately managers should run their teams as they see fit, not how I envision. So RFA's are just another tool to add to your team, or to make a play for a great player.

From Season 3 forth any player that does not receive a contract offer will re-sign with his current team. The salary is calculated at 1.2% of the players listed value for season, call it a Sim Union rule.

Example:
      Player value: $489,000
      Week salary: $5,868
      Contract: 1 Season

This contract is more expensive than if a manager signed the player but I feel long term this is a good route to go. If I had allowed the all those players onto the market many teams would not have a lineup come opening day Wednesday.

More RFA
I made a mistake coding the RFA contract offer end dates. That is the time the last offer from a team will be accepted by a player. I tried to make RFA's work like a trade or UFA, but really it was a mistake on my part. This caused players to be resigned and moved to new teams, out of lineups etc a real mess.

Starting in Season 3 RFA contract offers will last for the entire week of trade week, not 3 days.

Example:
Season 2 Free Agent Week March 14 - 20.
First Offer: March 14, player signs March 17

Season 3 Free Agent Week June 13 - 19
First Offer June 13, player signs March 19 at Midnight

League Structure Changes
To correct an error I made in setting up the league structure Division #16 A.IX was dissolved and recreated as #16 R.East. This lets me balence out the promtion structure, and avoid problems like I had for the last couple days. At some point this season the Rookie Leagues will expand to 16 divisions total, Feeding to 8 A Leagues, 4 AA, 2 AA and MLB.

Eventually the plan is to expand all League Divisions to 8 Teams, 56 games and shorter season. I don't think it will happen until season 5 at the earliest. Balancing the league structure also allows for greater expansion as divisions can be added for easier growth.

Training
Long a sore spot, I hope to address the Training page this season. The plan is to make it more dynamic, adding cumulative training stats so managers know how much a player has improved, and a better representation of the players training rate.

Facebook, Twtter, Blogspot, email
More and more of our correspondence will move to social media. Discussions will move to facebook this week and suggestions and comments can be made there or Blogspot.  I will relink suggestions to our public facebook page to encourage comments and feedback. User guides will be available there as well as on the site. A few weeks ago I mentioned facebook connect, that is still a plan but not this season.

Absent Managers
1/2/3/4 Rule for absentee managers.
1 week from sign-up to confirm the team, helps prevent robo sign-ups.
Login 1 time every 2 weeks to maintain the team.
After 2 weeks players stop training.
After 3 Weeks the Sim take over the team.
After 4 weeks Sim dismantles the team.
We will send emails to try and get managers back but we have to keep slots open.