Help for fresh teams in a perpetual league?

[dines]

Hi our league is somewhat perpetual as you can choose to keep your old team or make a fresh one after each season. Now we are discussing if/how we should help fresh teams to get into the league. What are your opinions? The league is soon starting its 3rd season and there are some pretty developed teams (around 2000 TV). Currently we have discussed the following options, where using the death insurance would pay for a fresh player of same type. An argument against the insurance is, that it would allow you to focus your inducements on maiming the opponents rather than trying to keep your players safe with babes and wandering apo's.

[Pagan]

We had run into a similar situation, where we want to encourage older teams to continue seeing games while new teams get some sort of long term bonus. We considered ideas for extra SPP or money by converting Inducement cash into treasury in some form, but two things that I wanted to avoid. Flooding the market with SPP or gold to the point it became worthless.

So what we decided to give a try is a simple bonus to the winnings roll for the underdog. For every 300k in Inducements a team gets, they will get +1 to their winning roll, but not to send the die over 6. So it helps the team gain some money while preventing them from being able to earn more than they are actually elligible to win. Basically it reduces the chance a team gets obliterated AND only makes 10k in a match with a bad roll.

We went with 300k considering that it is a high enough number to show one team has an advantage, while keeping two teams that are all but equal and one team with a player missing the game from handing out extra cash. So far it seems to be working fairly nice. Just like any custom rule it could be abused to a point by running 11 snotlings to make 60K a game, but there is always auctioning off a team's player if they abuse rules too.

[JaM]

depending on the number of players you have you could run a rookie, and a vet league. New teams are the rookies and the vets are the old teams.

Mixing them up really might discourage new players to join, and NOT mixing them up encourages some coaches to try new teams. Win-win it seems.

[GreedySmurf]

This is a problem in our league as well BABBL.

However with a reasonable sized league (usually 20+ coaches) we simply structure the draw so that the new teams play each other for the first 6-7 rounds of a 12 round league. So there is 7 games of development for complete rookie teams, so that inducements can do their job.

We find that it works reasonably well.

[neverworking]

We are toying with a plan to run a 5 game rookie team only league that kicks off at the very end of the main league, and mostly runs during the playoffs. The thinking is that there are many coaches sitting around not getting to play during the playoff period anyway and this will give them something to do while they wait. There would be a slight overlap, so a coach wanting to restart would have to double up on matches for 1-2 weeks. Participating in this rookie league does not mandate you switch teams the following season, but someone could abuse that as an opportunity to farm for some lucky early skill ups.

Getting 5 matches in a semi-safe environment won't spare the team completely, but it should be enough to grab an apoth, a bench player or two and handful of skill ups before they end up in the fire that is the main league.

This is just the plan we are kicking around, we have not finalized it.

[mattgslater]

We play with a developmental league. You play up to 6 or 8 games in the D-league before you have to promote or disband your team, as many teams as you like so long as they're all of different races. D-league teams aren't eligible for the postseason, but you can promote your D-league team into the higher league (we call it the B-league) if you don't have a competitive team or if you put the one you do have on hiatus.

Veteran coaches usually run a primary team, then a bunch of D-league jobbies so they get to play multiple races. And if the primary team gets decapitated, they can promote a healthier (if younger) team. Newbies come in, and they get to swim around in the kiddie pool for a bit before jumping in where the big fish play.

[Oxynot]

Dines, what did you go with and how is it working out?

Our league is using accelerated startup for new teams (more money and a couple skills on random players), but what I like the most, is the optional MVP rule from the rulebook: MVP can not go to killed players, mercenaries or stars. Nudges even those concerned more about team development to pick stars as inducements, as MVP can't go to 'waste'

[Smurf]

We play a perpetual league. Coaches can take up to 3 teams, but usually they have their favourites and it gives us chance to play many of the teams.

[MeatLoafX]

Our team allows you to induce an extra MVP or extra d6 of winnings for 400K. A lot of newer teams take these inducements to help their development.

(We also do a nominate 3, select 1 of those three at random for MVP - and that's for everyone not just new players).

[mattgslater]

We kicked around something like that. We came up with two inducements:

0-2x Free Beer! (100k) Money can't buy you love, but league inducement cash can buy you beer, and beer can buy you love, so what's the difference? Add +1 to your FAME to the match, up to a total FAME 2. This FAME counts for all purposes, including winnings, but it does not affect opponent's FAME. Note that if you had FAME already, you cannot increase it above 2.

0-1x Inspiration (200k) Randomly select a player. That player is extra-motivated for this game. Award that player an MVP (this does not count until the post-match sequence), and give the player a skill for use in this match only from among those he could select on a normal improvement roll. This player may not earn the team's MVP; if he is selected, re-roll as if the d16 had indicated a player who did not participate in the match or a vacant spot on the roster. Inspiration is a difficult thing to come by; it happens all at once, but often it takes real motivation, support, and very hard work to bring about. No team may select the Inspiration inducement unless it also selects another 100k worth of inducements, though any inducement(s) of sufficient total value will do.

[Greyhound]

we do option 1 - we don't change anything, I think it works great.

[dines]

we do option 1 - we don't change anything, I think it works great.

Thats also what we decided to do.

[mattgslater]

If you don't limit coaches to one team, you solve a lot of the problem, especially if you encourage newer coaches to play one team all season and veterans to run a few extra teams.

[DoubleSkulls]

The problem we had wasn't as much about balance, it was that the new teams lose a lot to the older teams (as they should - inducements aren't meant to provide a level playing field). That meant the league and qualification was dominated by older teams - which meant the divisions weren't very competitive so everyone was a bit less interested. Making it so there were rookie divisions and experienced divisions made qualification a lot more competitive and hence more fun.

[Smurf]

The problem we had wasn't as much about balance, it was that the new teams lose a lot to the older teams (as they should - inducements aren't meant to provide a level playing field). That meant the league and qualification was dominated by older teams - which meant the divisions weren't very competitive so everyone was a bit less interested. Making it so there were rookie divisions and experienced divisions made qualification a lot more competitive and hence more fun.

My idea of a p. league and balance was to prevent the 'top' teams from racing off. So I made that you can only challenge those with equal or more wins than you. Goading was allowed, as long as the challenge came from those with less wins from the 'goader'.

I hope to keep this up until the dungeon bowl... and reverse if for the Chaos Cup.