BB2016 Edition - long term teams

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celticgriffon
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BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by celticgriffon »

Hey everyone,

I proposed to our group we endorse the new rule set. In a way hoping to attract new players to the game.

I am getting hammered with waves of dissent. The new rules as proposed in Death Zone Season I are very, very unfriendly to long term teams.

For example, here is the calculation to rebuy one of our human teams (entering its fourth year of play):

Base 1,000,000
Treasury 120,000
Games Played 140,000
TD’s 50,000
CAS 170,000
Rebuild Total 1,480,000

The SPP average on this team is 45 per player. The team is massively bloated (according to those who play at peak efficiency). The team value is 2.32 M. But these coaches are hot right now... mad at me, I mean.

I am loathe to harshly penalize someone who has been loyal to our league and put in the time. There is real attachment to his players similar to a well crafted role-playing game.

Is this a good thing for a club who runs a longer season year over year? We only play one season from January - beginning of May. Last year our top three place finishes were as follows: 1st - 2nd yr Slaan / vet coach, 2nd - 1st yr Underworld / vet coach, 3rd - 1st yr High Elf / vet coach.

I am very interested in your thoughts.

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Michael

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by GalakStarscraper »

Have a very realistic conversation with your league about what they see as a reasonable team cap for the league.

Adjust from there.

For example ... if 2,000,000 is felt to be a reasonable cap.

Then maybe adjust for now the amount per a game to 50,000 instead of 10,000.

Andy Hoare would be the first one to tell you to adjust the bonuses for re-drafting to fit what you league wants.

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by celticgriffon »

Thanks Galak.

Part of the problem with an easy conversion is that players in our league can play as little or as often as they wish. We have disparity in the number of games / team.

As long as a team has played at least x games in the early season and x in the late season they have a chance at playoffs. We take top teams with league points and also win percentage.

I play a different team each year. I like the variety in that. Others like to run the same for two or three and a few have run the same team back to back to back for all five years.

I am really struggling at the correct answer.

Michael

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by GalakStarscraper »

Okay ... doing this a different way.

If the league feels the cap is good around 2M. Adjust the base amount from 1 Million to 1.7Million and leave the other bonuses the same as the rulebook.

Then the bigger deal is that everyone gets the same elevated starting re-drafting point and the games played help get you a bit more but not as much as the base for rolling over.

I was talking to Andy and he said ... he really did mean for leagues to adjust the Re-drafting amounts to match what feels right for their leagues. The ones in the rulebook are what they thought offered good starting points as most players said BB is most fun between 1.5M and 2.0M when we surveyed this a lot back in 2007 so the league rules aim to start a team around 1.5M at the start of each re-drafted season.

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by celticgriffon »

I wonder if we simply gave a bonus of 100K / season played if that would put the numbers closer to where we want them? Maybe the solution is easier than I believe.

I may end up splitting players this year. New teams and coaches and veteran players and teams...

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by celticgriffon »

It seems the math is all over the place no matter how i do it.

One of our teams which would be entering its second year would gain 1.8M in rebuild using the rulebook formula. The current TV is 1.64M.

Another team entering its fifth year would get 1.45 M and the current TV is 2.23 M...

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by Darkson »

If your players don't like the redraft rules don't use them - stick with the CRP or whatever rules you were using before.
There's no point in gaining one or two new players (who may or may not stick around anyway) if you're going to lose 3 or 4 "veterans".

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by Regash »

First of all, Darkson is right.
If active players don't want the rules changed, don't change 'em! You'll only lose players. And, to be honest, I'm about to make my first and only house rule: Stick with CRP!
I don't care for most of the changes either.

As for the problem:
I think those new redraft rules are not meant to be implemented in an existing league that has been run for a while.
This is more something for a new or restarted league with all new 1M GP teams.

I don't see it as a problem with coaches being able to play as much or less as they want in your league.
A team that hasn't played many games hasn't scraped together many SPP either making the players cheaper to rebuy.
In that way the formula seems to work as intended and it keeps teams from bloating up.
The problem that I see is with bashers VS agility. I don't think that the TD/CAS ratio in the game is even enough to make up for the difference between teams, favoring agility teams.

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by celticgriffon »

This is my most recent proposal to my teams after waves of discussion:

1) Screw the new proposal altogether. Let teams continue exactly as they are today.
a. This is the least friendly option on the surface for encouraging new recruits to join the campaign
b. There is a huge disparity in TV with this option.
i. Although I don’t feel the TV disparity is a problem at all (I have played new teams every season so far) other players who are less knowledgeable about the game feel the difference can be overwhelming, especially in the first few games of league play.

2) Fully adopt the new rules as written and do a full league reset so everyone is on the same playing field.
a. This is by far the most friendly option to new recruits but it punishes long standing teams which have carefully built up their team over the past few seasons.

3) Fully adopt the new proposal as it is written. New teams build at 1M and existing teams let the chips fall where they may.
a. The disparity between TV’s will be somewhat mitigated.
b. Long standing teams will be forced to make very tough choices
c. New recruits will feel more welcome as opposed to option 2.

4) Adopt the new rules as written but modify things slightly
a. Instead of keeping the base salary at 1M boost it to 1.1 or 1.2 M
b. Both new and established teams will have a larger operating budget.
c. There will continue to be a noticeable gap between TV.

5) Adopt the new rules as written but modify things slightly
a. Allow an allowance of 50K or 100K / season for any established team in addition to other funding.
b. Established teams will have an easier time keeping a portion of their roster.

6) Allow retired players to be re-purchased during the league season
a. The cost will be their current value + an incentive fee of 20K / season played.

7) Allow some combination of 4, 5 and 6.

8) Say f&^% it and dump the game altogether.

9) Create two divisions
a. Division A with experienced teams AND/OR coaches
b. Division B for new teams and new coaches

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Michael aka Da Big Green 'Un (commissioner Regina Flatland BB League - RFBBL)
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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by dode74 »

6) Allow retired players to be re-purchased during the league season
Think carefully about this one. We used a Free Agent system in OFL and found such players to be VERY powerful, particularly at the start of a season. We added a Free Agent tax of 30k but that was found to be inequitable: a CW gets a 30% tax while a beastman gets a 50% tax. In the end we went for a system based on the value of skills added to the player:
Skill Value: 20-30k = 10k Premium
Skill Value: 40-60k = 20k Premium
Skill Value: 70-90k = 30k Premium
Skill Value: 100-120k = 40k Premium
Skill Value: 130-150k = 50k Premium

Unfortunately for personal reasons we didn't get much chance to play with this, but it was considered a step forwards.

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by poundfist »

This is a big issue being currently discussed among the Rules Committee for the Thunderbowl League in BC, Canada.

We have played now 21 seasons of scheduled games. That is 10 games per season plus up to 4 rounds of playoffs (depending on numbers). We have divided the league up into 2 Divisions, a rookie division for new teams, and a veteran division for teams that have played at least one season.

The "oldest" player on any of our teams has seasons. with WTR, that coach needs an additional 220K to keep him playing (240K since it would be after his 12th season).

So, looking at the league rules in DZ, a number of things come up:

The bad:

1. The rules are designed to bring teams back in with about 1.3-1.5M. The coach needs to repurchase the entire team, apart from Fan Factor, the bulk of which will probably remain. But he needs to buy back all the players, rerolls, apothecary, amnd any coaches and cheerleaders. He is given 1.3-1.5M to do this. Looking at the current rookie league teams, who have no threat of WTR, some of the teams in our league will need to drop players or team goods just to come back for a second season.

2. There is no way with the published numbers to retain any meaningful equivalent for any of the older teams. At best they would retain 1 or 2 stars and then fill the roster with rookies.

3. Adopting the system would be to do away with the divisions. This is good if the goal is to have any team play any other team, which I think is why they made the redrafting cash so low. It is not necessary or attractive for a league with teams between 1.9M and 2.5M.

4. Every effort to change the rules comes from some theretical need. I suppose the theoretical need is that high TV teams are making it tough for new teams to join. We felt we had done work to mitigate the effect of that by creating the division, and this has worked for us for 21 seasons over the last 10 and a half years. Every change creates a new problem. I think the problem this change will create is that Dwarf teams will become the new moster teams. They do very well at low TV, and with perpetual reset and targeted MVPs it is not too hard to have a line of 6 Guard and a couple MB at all times.

The Good:

5. Our veteran division is often accused of being a meat grinder. While TV is not the sole measure of a team's ability to kill players, it is *a* measure.

6. The system is meant to be tinkered with. We could use this system and yet keep our divisions just by changing the numbers. With a fixed seaso of 10 games, the numbers are easy to modify (ie 50K per game, 10K per TD/Cas would yield about 1.7-2.0M, enough to rebuild most teams, even with a few WTR) This should go in the Bad column too of course: now the things making leages different will increase.

7. There is some legitimate fun to be had from forcing coaches to rely on team tactics rather than on that one Legend that just won't die. This solution to that "problem," of course, feels like a bit of a sledgehammer.

The Bad again:

8. To add to the above concern, we have played as I say 21 seasons without any version of this rule, and with MVPs completely random. The sorts of teams that can be built with this system (esp with the targeted MVP rule) are not the sorts of teams we have now. Essentially, this is a system of league play that happens to be just perfect at upsetting any long-time coach in our league, since there is no way to bring back older teams in any meaningful form. The most distressing part of the conversations we are having now is that the rules don't seem to be designed to solve any real problem that we were facing, and yet at the same time they will have the effect of erasing most of the legacy teams in the league (unless those teams just sensibly decide never to play again).


I am curious to know what other long-term leagues are planning to do, and if there are any solutions that anyone could suggest that are better than just tweaking with the numbers and seeing what happens (which is what we are considering).

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Post by Shteve0 »

Locally we're looking at using a modified system of the rules that we were looking at bringing in anyway.

Essentially:
Each team will get a performance bonus at season's end, between 1.5 and 2 million GPs, depending on final position in the division and number of rounds played in the finals. Deducted from that will be the value of any players retained in the seasons end contract reviews (ie not retired) and 10k for each clear ten gamed each retained player has under their belt. All other goods can be kept free.

Teams will be split into rookie (new teams, chosen mvp) and pro for the division stages, but combine for playoffs.

A simpler version, hopefully it takes.

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by Moraiwe »

poundfist wrote:I am curious to know what other long-term leagues are planning to do, and if there are any solutions that anyone could suggest that are better than just tweaking with the numbers and seeing what happens (which is what we are considering).
To explain my thoughts, I'll give some background of the league I'm in (website: MBBL)

Each Season we have between 24 and 34 teams spread across 3 Divisions.
- Bottom Division: for teams that are new(played no more than 6 games) usually in one group of up to 8 teams.
- Top Division: one group of 8 teams.
- Middle Division: the rest, usually spread across two groups of 6-8 teams.

At the end of each season, we swap 4 teams from Top Div with Middle Div, same with Bottom & Middle Divs, and coaches wanting to start a new team drop down to Bottom Division. Gaps in the Upper Divisions are filled based on finishing positions from the previous season (eg. if someone drops out of Top Division, a 5th team gets promoted from Middle). In this system rookie teams never face the high TV teams, which means the redrafting process isn't as necessary for league balance.

Our seasons are only 7 games long and have no play-offs, finals etc. Since each team plays the same number of games, there really is no benefit for having a variable adding cash to your kitty based on the number of games played. Leagues that have a fixed number of games might as well just do away with that variable, and increase the base amount.

We also do not allow friendlies between games. If your league doesn't allow friendlies, you may want to consider watering down the Expensive Mistakes table. Without the opportunity to play friendlies, teams no longer have a safety net for them to earn some cash back after a big loss of treasury.

So far, only a few teams have ever played more than 50 games (about 7 seasons). Most of our coaches start new teams after they've had a dominant period. But we don't have a rule in place to stop someone continuing on with a super-team indefinitely. So what we do hope the redrafting rules would do is prevent an 'arms-race', where everybody feels that in order to compete they have to play their team continuously in order to match the best.

Our solution - we're still working on it. Since we still want to adopt the new rules (we can see some value in them and we don't want potential new members being turned off by an impression of us being grognards) we're probably going to adjust the formulae so that teams receive a different base amount of gold depending upon which Division they are in. Since we have such short seasons, we will definitely change the values in Wants to Retire (and perhaps leave that out completely). What we are yet to decide is what level of TV we are trying to get teams to redraft at. Without testing, we think numbers of 1.25m, 1.5m, and 1.75m are close to what we may use as the base number in the formula, using the additional bonuses for TDs and Casualties.

In short
- Season length makes a big difference to how you apply the formula to your own league. Short seasons will really have to fiddle with the numbers to get any sort of adequate redraft cash level, and also adjust the Wants To Retire numbers.
- The structure of league may even make redrafting unnecessary (ie. new teams may not even get to play established teams, you might have a hard TV-cap, etc).
- Expensive Mistakes in a league which doesn't allow the safety-net of friendlies can create much harsher penalties than you might want.
- Getting the redrafting balance right for your particular league may take time. I suspect a few season of alterations may be needed before you find a perfect balance.

The rules, while good, are so specific to a particular type of league that I doubt we'll ever see them used across the majority (or even near-majority) of leagues out there. Not unless everybody decides to structure their league in the precise same way.

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by poundfist »

Exactly on the number of games issue. My biggest criticism of the WTR rule is that it's based on how many seasons a player has played, and seasons don't have a fixed value or definition. Number of games would be more accurate, but of course all of this is adding so much more paperwork.

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Re: BB2016 Edition - long term teams

Post by celticgriffon »

I wonder if a solution may be found in allowing money to be moved after each match to a "non-expensive mistake" bank account.

It would give coaches another team management variable which would have important end of year consequences. This extra cash, which perhaps is not redeemable back to treasury, is your safety net to maintain your team value.

But again this does not address the disparity between a new team and a 15 yr legendary team as in the Thunderbowl League. A newer team would only have to bank a little. Instead their funds would be going to buy more players and growing infrastructure. Senior teams would instead be concentrating on maintenance of their skilled up premiums.

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