FARM TEAMS

ScottyBoneman · Post by **ScottyBoneman** » Tue Sep 23, 2003 3:17 pm

FARM TEAMS

This idea is designed to answer some leagues issues with different levels of participation, new versus old, power-gamers versus developers and just for interest. Divisions could have differing rules on Big Guys, Star Players, Allies, etc as the League saw fit.

League is divided into 2 divisions, ‘Elite’ and ‘Farm’. As the name suggests the Elite division should be significantly smaller and have rotating membership. Top x teams from the Farm Division replace the bottom x Elite.
Example: 20 team league, 8 team Elite.

Elite Teams have affiliations with Farm teams allowing them to drop players down and call them up, but Elite teams have to ‘buy’ players out of their Farm teams. Farm coaches have no control over the actions of their Elite counterpart in stripping out their roster, and can only change affiliations between seasons.

Players moved between club would have to miss at least one game before returning. Please suggest, respond, etc. to these:

Cost:
To the Elite team, is the cost of ‘calling up’ a player one of the team creation-style calculations where (BasePrice + StatChanges + Skills = Cost) or is it better to use SPPs to reduce the advantage of ‘calling up’ 5 SPP linemen, etc. The cash spent by the Elite club would go to the Farm team so they could replace their player.

When the Elite team drops a player – usually ‘retiring’ now, should the Farm team get the chance to get that player for free? (The player who has a niggling injury still thinks he has ‘gas in the tank’ and takes the opportunity to keep playing).

Advantages to being a Farm Team:
There can be one of two approaches to the Farm-Elite relationship. The 1st is make it mandatory and any teams not in a relationship at the end of pre-season are assigned to each other (randomly if required).

Second, is a reward system to off-set the fact that their best players can be taken. Perhaps FF bonus, cheaper player costs, players ‘sent down’ being added to the team for free (for what that is worth).

Farm Division Caps:
To make the Farm team realize its stated goal and to keep coaches from dominating the Farm system without jumping up to ‘the Bigs’ and in-season TR cap might be interesting. Effective until the Farm Division playoffs, a set maximum TR would be in place (as set by the league). The TR Cap could be a ‘Hard cap’, forcing teams to drop players or rerolls, etc to keep under the value or a ‘Soft cap’ where a penalty such as income reduction is levied against the team while over the limit. Elite teams grabbing up best players helps this as well.

Free Agents:
Players dropped from an Elite club and not picked up by the Farm club, or dropped from Farm Club for TR reasons without getting picked up by the Elite could become Freebooters. This could help the uneven Star distribution without upsetting balance.

duff · Post by **duff** » Wed Sep 24, 2003 3:44 am

Sound interesting. You would have to prohibit coaches having more than one team or from having their own "farm" team under their own "eleit" one to get the full effect of the call up. Could be realy bitchy negotiations take place. Great fun with the right crowd

Post by **Old Man Draco** » Wed Sep 24, 2003 10:58 am

I'm not to sure about the TR cap. If the team "promotes" to the Elite league he needs a good base to start there. A low TR would give him handicap advantages, but not being able to progress the team can have a bad effect on staying in the elite league as well!

You could try and work with the usual divisions. In those divisions it is known that clubs have satelite clubs in lower divisions where they stall newly bought players to make progress before they go up. Last two of division one go down, first two of div 2 go up etc. You could make as many divisions as needed. Just that all the games should be played during a season, so you'll get a fixed setting on who plays who and when.

The idea itself is good. I like it.

ScottyBoneman · Post by **ScottyBoneman** » Wed Sep 24, 2003 2:42 pm

Draco wrote:I'm not to sure about the TR cap. If the team "promotes" to the Elite league he needs a good base to start there. A low TR would give him handicap advantages, but not being able to progress the team can have a bad effect on staying in the elite league as well!

The idea itself is good. I like it.

Very good point.

I was thinking about that- how to keep the teams from getting too powerful in the lower division but be able to make the leap. That is why I proposed excluding the post-season from the cap. Hopefully the SPPs and winnings from the Farm division title would give them a boost.

I was also interested in the team management element. Trying to get your team as good as possible while under the cap, try and win the division while preparing to have players poached. It is the sort of challenge I know I would love.

Xtreme · Post by **Xtreme** » Thu Sep 25, 2003 4:32 am

I was also interested in the team management element. Trying to get your team as good as possible while under the cap, try and win the division while preparing to have players poached. It is the sort of challenge I know I would love.

Definatly a challenge I would like to try. Looks to be a good idea I think it may jsut need some more input and some tweaks, but good job I think this has serious potential.

NightDragon · Post by **NightDragon** » Sat Sep 27, 2003 8:14 am

You've obviously thought about it, but I don't like it. 2 reasons
1 BB was designed for 1 team to develop on its own at its own rate. This speeds up development and so is unnatural.
2 It will be used and abused by power gamers who I have no time for.