+- International Simulation Football League (https://forums.sim-football.com)
+-- Forum: Community (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5)
+--- Forum: Media (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=37)
+---- Forum: Graded Articles (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=38)
+---- Thread: *Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun (/showthread.php?tid=33287)
*Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun - Swanty - 07-04-2021
Hi everyone! The rules summit is right around the corner and I wanted to present an idea for replacing the current contract minimum system and giving players more freedom in contract negotiations.
I wanted to share this more widely around the league to make sure we get opinions not just from GMs and department heads, but all users, as it's you that will benefit most from this.
Here are some negatives that we currently have to live with due to employing a contract minimum structure:
- 90% of users taking the minimum and having no real choice in how much they would like to be paid (whether more or less)
- Users needing to opt out at the end of every season during regression so that the team can tactically re-sign for the new minimum
- Salary cap probably being more harsh than it needs to, due to the loose relationship between total salary and total team strength
The proposal is to remove contract minimums and allow teams to pay their players how they like. There will still be a maximum total amount a team can pay out to their players, but in order to control super teams forming, there will be a loose TPE cap.
Because there is a much more direct correlation with TPE and team strength than there is between total salary and team strength, we can allow much more freedom to teambuilding than we have done, with a higher relative cap.
An individual player's cap hit would be determined by their applied TPE, taken from the tracker, after the final update of the preceding season with any upcoming regression applied, and be set in stone throughout the whole season. A couple of modifications would also be made. The maximum cap hit for any individual player would be 1,000. I would also suggest that kickers have a maximum cap hit of 600. Sent down players would not count towards this TPE cap in any way.
A team's total cap hit would be calculated any time their roster sees an adjustment, whether that is with a callup, a signing or a departure.
In order to determine what the upcoming season's TPE cap limit will be, we would use last year's rosters. Taking all S29 called up players (including OL bots) and applying regression, the average cap hit is 18,657 TPE, with the largest 3 being NYS (20,790), SAR (20,276) and BER (20,186). I would then suggest we apply a fixed modifier to the average to determine what the upcoming season's cap will be. Applying a 15% modifier to the average would set the S30 cap at 21,456.
As such, no team is really going to have to keep as close an eye on their cap space as they do right now, except perhaps the very top 1/2 teams if they are planning to sign a couple of big name FAs and not release/trade anyone else.
In this way, we can allow complete freedom for individual contracts. No need for minimums, or even minimum lengths.
- GMs want to play for $0?
- Want to pay your max earners a token sum but pay your rookies enough to make sure they can all buy T6?
- Are you a free agent who wants to demand the ISFL's first ever $50M contract?
- Are you a free agent mercenary who wants to break the total salary record by signing with whoever pays them the most each season?
- Do you want to sign a lifetime contract with your new team straight away?
The main three reasons I think this would be a good thing for the league:
1) Make contracts more fun and flexible, with no minimum salaries and no maximum lengths
2) Make it easier to prevent imbalanced teams forming
3) Remove the need to opt out of contracts just to re-sign for a lower amount
Some concerns about this idea I've seen brought up:
What's to stop teams telling players to permanently stop earning at X TPE in order to help the team?
- Nothing, but asking a player to play at a lower TPE and get worse stats is a tougher sell than asking to play at their full potential for a lower salary. With a max cap hit of 1,000 and a generous TPE cap, it's also probably not a good play for the team.
If a team is out of contention, what's to stop a player not claiming their TPE towards the end of the season so that it doesn't count towards next season's cap hit?
- Nothing, but with the cap being so high, saving 20-50 or so TPE is probably not going to make much of a difference. Their TPE cap hit will still be way more indicative of how good a player they are than their current minimum salary tier. They'd also be sacrificing the chance at personal stats by doing this which is a tough ask. However, if a team wants to do this for all their players in order to save like 500 TPE against next years cap, that's up to them. It's still going to be much more accurate than the salary cap.
What would be the penalty for going over the TPE cap?
- Because the team's total cap (not the players' cap hit) would be recalculated any time a change to the roster is made, that change will just be prevented from happening if it would take them over the cap. In the unlikely scenario that next year's cap is determined and a team is already over the cap, even after regression / retirements, options could be reducing their TPE cap for the following season, making GM players ineligible until they are under or reducing their total salary pot for the upcoming season.
What would the salary cap be?
- We would keep the total amount of money that can be spent on salaries the same. These would still be tracked by the budget team to make sure that no one spends over the total. Rules around staying under the salary cap would still apply, but perhaps we could allow salaries to be renegotiated if both the player and GM agree to make it easier to manage.
How do OL bots fit into this?
- OL bot rules would all stay the same. They'd count towards the TPE cap as well as taking up salary that could be paid to someone else.
Let me know your thoughts!
RE: Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun - Pat - 07-04-2021
I hate to do this, but could you possibly come up with some concrete numbers so we can get a feeling for how this all works?
I think the only concern I have with any salary cap changes is that there are the opportunities for super teams, and they can hurt player movement. However, to counter my own concern, players rarely leave teams anyways, so maybe it's not a big deal.
RE: Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun - Swanty - 07-04-2021
(07-04-2021, 09:37 AM)Punter715 Wrote: I hate to do this, but could you possibly come up with some concrete numbers so we can get a feeling for how this all works?
I think the only concern I have with any salary cap changes is that there are the opportunities for super teams, and they can hurt player movement. However, to counter my own concern, players rarely leave teams anyways, so maybe it's not a big deal.
I did propose a TPE cap for next season in the middle of that: 21,456. It might be reachable by a minority of teams if they make a few FA signings but probably nothing to worry about for most teams, as the majority are nowhere near super team status.
Salary cap could still stay at 85M.
RE: Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun - The_Kidd - 07-04-2021
- I think we should reflect pro sports and implement a rookie scale contract. They get paid a guaranteed salary for the lifetime of a DSFL tenure, if they are called up, they still locked into that rookie deal(so all rookie deals would be 3 seasons). If player is drafted in R1/R2 then they get 5 million annually, R3/R4 - 4 million annually, R5 and later(where it's mostly inactives) would be 3 million. In the expiring season, if an in-season extension isnt agreed upon, player will enter Restricted Free Agency meaning his parent team can choose to match any outside offers(or work a trade to send that player off)
- The IA minimum, to help offset #1, if a team has a player that has not updated for 3/4 of the season(12 games) or the last month prior to final update of the season --- that player's contract can be reworked to a 2 mil minimum(if base salary is less than that, they can be exchanged for a free bot player). Team would have to make a claim to Update Team and if Update Team approves then Budget Team will be notified of salary changes.
- Option can only be used ONCE during the lifetime of original contract AND must only be applied in first or last year of contract. No one really switches teams anyway though.
- Each option applied adds $100,000 to the players' cap hit
- The Larry Rule - if a team has cap space, they are allowed to sign one player per season to a contract that will exceed no more than 3x the available salary in the 1st season as their FINAL FA signing. In first year, team cap will read as 0,000,000 and the player's cap hit will be 100% applied the successive seasons
- Vet Min Salary Base Kicker - starting in player's 7th season, player's will be applied a uniform longevity bonus of 2.5% of the salary cap that will be tacked on to their base salary
RE: Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun - Gragg9 - 07-04-2021
With the cap being calculated from the applied total I am concerned about incentivizing non-maxed builds. I'm quiet confident that, at least at certain positions, you can shave off several 100 TPE and still play as well as a capped player. I can provide figures on this. I'm not sure if that problem needs to fixed with sim balance patches or perhaps having the cap calculate from total TPE instead. Or maybe it's not a big problem?
RE: Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun - Swanty - 07-04-2021
(07-04-2021, 12:23 PM)Gragg9 Wrote: With the cap being calculated from the applied total I am concerned about incentivizing non-maxed builds. I'm quiet confident that, at least at certain positions, you can shave off several 100 TPE and still play as well as a capped player. I can provide figures on this. I'm not sure if that problem needs to fixed with sim balance patches or perhaps having the cap calculate from total TPE instead. Or maybe it's not a big problem?
That's kind of why I proposed capping an individual player's cap hit at 1000 to reflect these diminishing returns, because sure, you could save 200 TPE against the cap by stopping at 800. Maybe that's more effective vs a 1000 TPE player. But is it worth saving 20% versus having an extra 300-600 more TPE? Probably not.
If there are certain positions that are close to 'max' effectiveness at much lower levels of TPE, we could always make that max cap hit lower for those positions as suggested for kicker.
RE: Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun - TakaMori152 - 07-04-2021
I was considering making a similar article to this when I had the time to put together all the numbers again.
RE: Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun - Pat - 07-04-2021
@The_Kidd
I was going to quote your post but it is easier to just tag you.
I've talked a few times in small circles specifically about Bird Years on our contracts. The biggest issue I think with any sort of contract changes like these are, and I hope I don't offend anyone here, is that they introduce too many complications to the system. I'm with you, I think a lot of what you suggest would be great. But, I think we are in the vast majority.
RE: Scrap minimum salaries and make contracts more fun - The_Kidd - 07-04-2021
(07-04-2021, 03:07 PM)Punter715 Wrote: @The_Kidd
I was going to quote your post but it is easier to just tag you.
I've talked a few times in small circles specifically about Bird Years on our contracts. The biggest issue I think with any sort of contract changes like these are, and I hope I don't offend anyone here, is that they introduce too many complications to the system. I'm with you, I think a lot of what you suggest would be great. But, I think we are in the vast majority.
I think the biggest issue is part of what you allude to: teams wont want to crunch figures like real pro teams do to make suave signings. I think adding these rules would allow us to create a "capologist" department under the budget team. Each team can elect one representative to oversee their budget and signings and assure they are all legal when audited by the main budget team.
More jobs for more of the community and hopefully slow down the DSFL exodus that some teams are struggling with recently