08-27-2023, 01:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-30-2023, 01:53 PM by lemonoppy. Edited 2 times in total.)
I strongly intend to play a 13 season career with my current player and be the first ever Hall of Fame fullback* in ISFL history. With my player recently starting the long trek down the slope of regression, I was interested in learning more about how much effort it takes to make it the full distance and last all 13 seasons.
In this media, I will discuss a few different theoretical strategies that a recreate who creates at the trade deadline could use to earn enough TPE over their career to make it the full 13 seasons despite regression, mostly focusing on minimizing expended effort.
The Fundamentals
After your ISFL draft, you get 7 seasons before the regression team is summoned to come start stealing your TPE. Each offseason, you lose a specified amount of TPE based on your seasons played. Per the ISFL rulebook:
However, just because the regression scale extends all the way to a user's 15th season doesn't mean you can actually play for that long, because this rule also says:
As previously noted by at least @Raven in this media piece (as well as probably others), even a theoretical user who maxed out every single TPE available to them can only play 13 seasons in the ISFL before being auto-retired.
The goal is therefore to have enough TPE at the end of every single season in order to have at least 150 TPE after the upcoming regression. Back-calculating from the regression chart above:
After 7 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.8 = 187 TPE to make it to an 8th season.
After 8 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.75 = 200 TPE to make it to a 9th season.
After 9 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.7 = 214 TPE to make it to a 10th season.
After 10 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.6 = 250 TPE to make it to an 11th season.
After 11 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.5 = 300 TPE to make it to a 12th season.
After 12 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.4 = 375 TPE to make it to a 13th and final season.
So that sets the target TPE thresholds we need to meet each season. Now, what TPE opportunities are available to us? I've separated them into a few categories:
The Trivial Stuff
This doesn't require any effort aside from visiting the site, posting pretty mindlessly in a thread and/or Google Form, and claiming it.
* Activity Checks: 8x/season = 16 TPE/season
* Weekly Predictions: 16x/season @ 2.4 average TPE/submission (S31-S42 average) = 38 TPE/season
* Training Camp: 1x/season = varying TPE/season (10, 15, 10, 5, 5, 5, 3, 3, 3, ..., 3)
* Season Predictions: 1x/season @ 8.8 average TPE/submission (S38-S42 average, thanks @Yeenoghu) = 9 TPE/season
* Playoff Predictions: 1x/season @ 3.2 average TPE/submission (average of S37-S42 Mode TPE) = 3 TPE/season
* First Rounders: 1x/season @ 8.4 average TPE/submission (S42 average) = 8 TPE/season
* Host City Ballot: 1x/season = 1 TPE/season
* MOP Ballot: 1x/season = 1 TPE/season
This is a total of 79 TPE/season basically for free, plus some additional from Training Camp if your player is young.
The Stuff That Costs Money
This doesn't require any effort to get the TPE, but it does require you to have a solid enough bank account to be able to afford it and accumulating that bank account usually takes some effort in the past.
* $1M Weekly Training: 8x/season = 40 TPE/season for $8,000,000 ($200K/TPE)
* Alternative: $500K Weekly Training: 8x/season = 24 TPE/season for $4,000,000 ($167K/TPE)
* Equipment: 1x/season = up to 30 TPE/season for up to $13,500,000 ($450K/TPE)
This is up to 70 TPE/season if you're really rich, requiring $21.5M to be earned between your contract, league jobs, Discord pay, etc.
The Stuff That Takes Effort
This requires a significant amount more effort and thought than just posting mindlessly in a forum thread. You typically have to write or make some small graphic. It doesn't take a long time but a lot of people prefer to avoid spending this effort for the marginal TPE it provides.
* Point Tasks: 5x/season = 15 TPE/season for 750 words (50 words/TPE)
* Offseason Task: 1x/season = 10 TPE/season for 600 words (60 words/TPE)
* Wiki Creation Task: 1x/career = 10 TPE for 600 words (60 words/TPE)
* Wiki Update Task: 1x/season (can't be done in same season/offseason as Wiki Creation) = 5 TPE for 150 words (plus a stat table) (~30 words/TPE)
This is up to 30 TPE/season, plus an additional 5 in the season you create your wiki.
Altogether that comes up to just about 180 TPE/season for an average user. Going back to the regression TPE targets, this means that the first 5 regressions can be met solely by earning TPE since your previous regression, but the very last one requires having a bank of TPE from previous seasons to use as a buffer, as you will be unable to earn the 225 TPE needed to avoid regression in just your 12th season alone.
The Strategies
My use case, because I'm me, is a user recreating at the trade deadline (meaning rookie PT is unavailable to them, but they get an additional 3 weeks of earning in their "-1st" season). However, I'm assuming a "lazy" user who wants to minimize the active upkeep of their player as much as possible, which means:
* Minimal earning of league money
* No league job = no PT pass / OT pass
* Prefers to avoid all TPE earning opportunities outside of The Trivial Stuff, and The Stuff That Costs Money that they are able to afford.
Also, the goal of playing all 13 seasons usually has to do with playing those seasons in the ISFL, so I assumed that the player would be called up immediately in their 1st season in terms of contract earnings.
I come up with 4 different strategies:
1. The Max Earner - the baseline case, what everyone assumes when they think of making it all 13 seasons at first. Earning every single TPE possible, which takes a lot of effort to earn $21.5M each season and do all PTs/OTs/etc.
2. The Rich Recreate - a user who has paid their dues, previously done a ton of league work to be able to afford all the WTs and equipment they want, but has no ongoing active league job and therefore avoids ever doing a PT/OT unless they really really need to to outlast regression.
3. The Poor Recreate - the extreme case of a user who is creating a 2nd player at the trade deadline but has 0 league money to fall back on from their previous player. They are willing to do writing tasks, but will only buy the WTs they can afford through contract money to outlast regression.
4. The Sleeping Giant - doesn't earn any TPE until they approach regression, at which point they start doing every TPE opportunity available to them.
The Results
Here is the chart of the TPE earned by each strategy over the course of their career, all of which end up lasting 13 seasons:
And a bit of discussion about the practicalities of each strategy:
1. The Max Earner - does everything.
Total Earned TPE: 2,574
Max TPE: 1,550 (end of season 7)
TPE @ Start of Season 13: 234
TPE @ End of Season 13: 413
Total Career Earnings w/ Minimum Contracts: $44,000,000
Net Deficit at End of Career: $71,000,000 (this is the money that they needed to spend above and beyond their contract earnings to buy all needed WT/equipment - you can think of it as the money that you would need to start out with to afford this "lifestyle").
2. The Rich Recreate - Does all of The Trivial Stuff and none of the The Stuff That Takes Effort. Ends up never needing to buy equipment, and can afford to take 4 full seasons off of buying weekly training before they start regression, as long as they buy it during their post-TDL waiver create season. This is becaus TPE earned before regression has less impact on how much TPE you have for your 6th regression than TPE bought during regression - I haven't found any media discussing this explicitly but @Troen sort of touched on it in his Time value of TPE piece.
Total Earned TPE: 1,569
Max TPE: 905 (end of season 7)
TPE @ Start of Season 13: 150
TPE @ End of Season 13: 269
Total Career Earnings w/ Minimum Contracts: $31,500,000
Net Deficit at End of Career: $51,500,000
3. The Poor Recreate - Does all of The Trivial Stuff. Only needs to buy 21 $1M weekly trainings: 5 in season 10 along with 8 each in seasons 11 and 12, which can be easily afforded with contract money. Only needs to do PTs in seasons 10, 11, and 12, and only needs to do OTs in seasons 11 and 12. Never needs to create a wiki page. This one probably surprised me the most with how little effort it took in total and really goes to show how important TPE in the last final seasons is to reaching season 13. Comes at an obvious cost of being pretty mediocre TPE for most of your career, though, so someone gunning for Hall of Fame should obviously not do this (well, idk, maybe a kicker could get very lucky).
Total Earned TPE: 1,339
Max TPE: 730 (end of season 7)
TPE @ Start of Season 13: 150
TPE @ End of Season 13: 229
Total Career Earnings w/ Minimum Contracts: $23,000,000 (you spend 4 seasons on a $2M contract and otherwise are playing for $1M or less)
Net Deficit at End of Career: -$2,000,000 (a profit of $2M for playing 13 seasons!)
4. The Sleeping Giant - Lol, someone please do this. Earns 0 TPE until their 7th season and then max earning from that point out is enough to beat the regression demon with 17 TPE to spare. Note that unlike the rest of these I assumed that you were spending the max 3 seasons in the DSFL to bank as much money as possible.
Total Earned TPE: 1,286
Max TPE: 495 (end of season 10!!)
TPE @ Start of Season 13: 167
TPE @ End of Season 13: 345
Total Career Earnings w/ Minimum Contracts: $25,000,000
Net Deficit at End of Career: $31,000,000
Here is a Google Sheet with more details of the analysis, assumptions around earning, etc.
Lessons
The clearest lesson to me from this was that earning TPE in your 10th-12th seasons is by far what matters most in making it to a 13th season. TPE earned pre-regression depreciates super quickly, whereas TPE earned in those last seasons makes the most meaningful contribution towards building up a 150 TPE buffer for your 6th regression.
Also, I wouldn't take the two moderate-earning cases (Rich & Poor Recreate) super literally as exact courses of action if you were to try something like this. You will miss some deadlines or earn a different amount of TPE than average for some predictions. These were both engineered to be exactly 150 TPE at their final regression, but if you are just 1 TPE short you will get auto-retired and it would all be for naught. So, remember to leave a little room for Jesus regression team.
Also, if you do end up too low in TPE in either your post-ISFL draft rookie season or your final regression season, no team will pick you up and you won't be able to play all 13 seasons in the ISFL! That would be sad.
Hope this was an enjoyable read! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
In this media, I will discuss a few different theoretical strategies that a recreate who creates at the trade deadline could use to earn enough TPE over their career to make it the full 13 seasons despite regression, mostly focusing on minimizing expended effort.
The Fundamentals
After your ISFL draft, you get 7 seasons before the regression team is summoned to come start stealing your TPE. Each offseason, you lose a specified amount of TPE based on your seasons played. Per the ISFL rulebook:
Quote:ISFL Rulebook, Section IV.A.5
The regression scale is as follows:
7th season - 20% TPE loss
8th season - 25% TPE loss
9th season - 30% TPE loss
10th season - 40% TPE loss
11th season - 50% TPE loss
12th season - 60% TPE loss
13th season - 75% TPE loss
14th season - 75% TPE loss
15th season - 75% TPE loss (final season)
However, just because the regression scale extends all the way to a user's 15th season doesn't mean you can actually play for that long, because this rule also says:
Quote:ISFL Rulebook, Section IV.A.5
Players will be auto-retired if regression takes their total TPE below 150.
As previously noted by at least @Raven in this media piece (as well as probably others), even a theoretical user who maxed out every single TPE available to them can only play 13 seasons in the ISFL before being auto-retired.
The goal is therefore to have enough TPE at the end of every single season in order to have at least 150 TPE after the upcoming regression. Back-calculating from the regression chart above:
After 7 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.8 = 187 TPE to make it to an 8th season.
After 8 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.75 = 200 TPE to make it to a 9th season.
After 9 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.7 = 214 TPE to make it to a 10th season.
After 10 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.6 = 250 TPE to make it to an 11th season.
After 11 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.5 = 300 TPE to make it to a 12th season.
After 12 seasons, you need at least 150 / 0.4 = 375 TPE to make it to a 13th and final season.
So that sets the target TPE thresholds we need to meet each season. Now, what TPE opportunities are available to us? I've separated them into a few categories:
The Trivial Stuff
This doesn't require any effort aside from visiting the site, posting pretty mindlessly in a thread and/or Google Form, and claiming it.
* Activity Checks: 8x/season = 16 TPE/season
* Weekly Predictions: 16x/season @ 2.4 average TPE/submission (S31-S42 average) = 38 TPE/season
* Training Camp: 1x/season = varying TPE/season (10, 15, 10, 5, 5, 5, 3, 3, 3, ..., 3)
* Season Predictions: 1x/season @ 8.8 average TPE/submission (S38-S42 average, thanks @Yeenoghu) = 9 TPE/season
* Playoff Predictions: 1x/season @ 3.2 average TPE/submission (average of S37-S42 Mode TPE) = 3 TPE/season
* First Rounders: 1x/season @ 8.4 average TPE/submission (S42 average) = 8 TPE/season
* Host City Ballot: 1x/season = 1 TPE/season
* MOP Ballot: 1x/season = 1 TPE/season
This is a total of 79 TPE/season basically for free, plus some additional from Training Camp if your player is young.
The Stuff That Costs Money
This doesn't require any effort to get the TPE, but it does require you to have a solid enough bank account to be able to afford it and accumulating that bank account usually takes some effort in the past.
* $1M Weekly Training: 8x/season = 40 TPE/season for $8,000,000 ($200K/TPE)
* Alternative: $500K Weekly Training: 8x/season = 24 TPE/season for $4,000,000 ($167K/TPE)
* Equipment: 1x/season = up to 30 TPE/season for up to $13,500,000 ($450K/TPE)
This is up to 70 TPE/season if you're really rich, requiring $21.5M to be earned between your contract, league jobs, Discord pay, etc.
The Stuff That Takes Effort
This requires a significant amount more effort and thought than just posting mindlessly in a forum thread. You typically have to write or make some small graphic. It doesn't take a long time but a lot of people prefer to avoid spending this effort for the marginal TPE it provides.
* Point Tasks: 5x/season = 15 TPE/season for 750 words (50 words/TPE)
* Offseason Task: 1x/season = 10 TPE/season for 600 words (60 words/TPE)
* Wiki Creation Task: 1x/career = 10 TPE for 600 words (60 words/TPE)
* Wiki Update Task: 1x/season (can't be done in same season/offseason as Wiki Creation) = 5 TPE for 150 words (plus a stat table) (~30 words/TPE)
This is up to 30 TPE/season, plus an additional 5 in the season you create your wiki.
Altogether that comes up to just about 180 TPE/season for an average user. Going back to the regression TPE targets, this means that the first 5 regressions can be met solely by earning TPE since your previous regression, but the very last one requires having a bank of TPE from previous seasons to use as a buffer, as you will be unable to earn the 225 TPE needed to avoid regression in just your 12th season alone.
The Strategies
My use case, because I'm me, is a user recreating at the trade deadline (meaning rookie PT is unavailable to them, but they get an additional 3 weeks of earning in their "-1st" season). However, I'm assuming a "lazy" user who wants to minimize the active upkeep of their player as much as possible, which means:
* Minimal earning of league money
* No league job = no PT pass / OT pass
* Prefers to avoid all TPE earning opportunities outside of The Trivial Stuff, and The Stuff That Costs Money that they are able to afford.
Also, the goal of playing all 13 seasons usually has to do with playing those seasons in the ISFL, so I assumed that the player would be called up immediately in their 1st season in terms of contract earnings.
I come up with 4 different strategies:
1. The Max Earner - the baseline case, what everyone assumes when they think of making it all 13 seasons at first. Earning every single TPE possible, which takes a lot of effort to earn $21.5M each season and do all PTs/OTs/etc.
2. The Rich Recreate - a user who has paid their dues, previously done a ton of league work to be able to afford all the WTs and equipment they want, but has no ongoing active league job and therefore avoids ever doing a PT/OT unless they really really need to to outlast regression.
3. The Poor Recreate - the extreme case of a user who is creating a 2nd player at the trade deadline but has 0 league money to fall back on from their previous player. They are willing to do writing tasks, but will only buy the WTs they can afford through contract money to outlast regression.
4. The Sleeping Giant - doesn't earn any TPE until they approach regression, at which point they start doing every TPE opportunity available to them.
The Results
Here is the chart of the TPE earned by each strategy over the course of their career, all of which end up lasting 13 seasons:
And a bit of discussion about the practicalities of each strategy:
1. The Max Earner - does everything.
Total Earned TPE: 2,574
Max TPE: 1,550 (end of season 7)
TPE @ Start of Season 13: 234
TPE @ End of Season 13: 413
Total Career Earnings w/ Minimum Contracts: $44,000,000
Net Deficit at End of Career: $71,000,000 (this is the money that they needed to spend above and beyond their contract earnings to buy all needed WT/equipment - you can think of it as the money that you would need to start out with to afford this "lifestyle").
2. The Rich Recreate - Does all of The Trivial Stuff and none of the The Stuff That Takes Effort. Ends up never needing to buy equipment, and can afford to take 4 full seasons off of buying weekly training before they start regression, as long as they buy it during their post-TDL waiver create season. This is becaus TPE earned before regression has less impact on how much TPE you have for your 6th regression than TPE bought during regression - I haven't found any media discussing this explicitly but @Troen sort of touched on it in his Time value of TPE piece.
Total Earned TPE: 1,569
Max TPE: 905 (end of season 7)
TPE @ Start of Season 13: 150
TPE @ End of Season 13: 269
Total Career Earnings w/ Minimum Contracts: $31,500,000
Net Deficit at End of Career: $51,500,000
3. The Poor Recreate - Does all of The Trivial Stuff. Only needs to buy 21 $1M weekly trainings: 5 in season 10 along with 8 each in seasons 11 and 12, which can be easily afforded with contract money. Only needs to do PTs in seasons 10, 11, and 12, and only needs to do OTs in seasons 11 and 12. Never needs to create a wiki page. This one probably surprised me the most with how little effort it took in total and really goes to show how important TPE in the last final seasons is to reaching season 13. Comes at an obvious cost of being pretty mediocre TPE for most of your career, though, so someone gunning for Hall of Fame should obviously not do this (well, idk, maybe a kicker could get very lucky).
Total Earned TPE: 1,339
Max TPE: 730 (end of season 7)
TPE @ Start of Season 13: 150
TPE @ End of Season 13: 229
Total Career Earnings w/ Minimum Contracts: $23,000,000 (you spend 4 seasons on a $2M contract and otherwise are playing for $1M or less)
Net Deficit at End of Career: -$2,000,000 (a profit of $2M for playing 13 seasons!)
4. The Sleeping Giant - Lol, someone please do this. Earns 0 TPE until their 7th season and then max earning from that point out is enough to beat the regression demon with 17 TPE to spare. Note that unlike the rest of these I assumed that you were spending the max 3 seasons in the DSFL to bank as much money as possible.
Total Earned TPE: 1,286
Max TPE: 495 (end of season 10!!)
TPE @ Start of Season 13: 167
TPE @ End of Season 13: 345
Total Career Earnings w/ Minimum Contracts: $25,000,000
Net Deficit at End of Career: $31,000,000
Here is a Google Sheet with more details of the analysis, assumptions around earning, etc.
Lessons
The clearest lesson to me from this was that earning TPE in your 10th-12th seasons is by far what matters most in making it to a 13th season. TPE earned pre-regression depreciates super quickly, whereas TPE earned in those last seasons makes the most meaningful contribution towards building up a 150 TPE buffer for your 6th regression.
Also, I wouldn't take the two moderate-earning cases (Rich & Poor Recreate) super literally as exact courses of action if you were to try something like this. You will miss some deadlines or earn a different amount of TPE than average for some predictions. These were both engineered to be exactly 150 TPE at their final regression, but if you are just 1 TPE short you will get auto-retired and it would all be for naught. So, remember to leave a little room for Jesus regression team.
Also, if you do end up too low in TPE in either your post-ISFL draft rookie season or your final regression season, no team will pick you up and you won't be able to play all 13 seasons in the ISFL! That would be sad.
Hope this was an enjoyable read! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.