Big Change List for FHM11

[JeffR]

The (somewhat) complete list of changes, additions, and other related stuff in FHM11.

Apologies, this isn't formatted as neatly as it was last year, the way I handled build update documentation in our test forum this year left me without a lot of the source material I used to have to put together this list. So assembling it was more of a haphazard process this time around. And it's more likely that I've forgotten to include something, so don't consider this list to be 100% complete, I'm sure I've forgotten some things.

-the game's data files no longer install to the /documents folder on Windows systems; Microsoft's insistence on using one Drive to back up that folder (or replace it entirely) seems to have been the cause of a great deal of game corruption last year, so the change should make your saves a lot less prone to irrecoverable failure. The new default location is "\users\(your Windows username)\AppData\Local\Out of the Park Developments/Franchise Hockey Manager 11"; however, it's still possible to specify your own custom location via the Custom Data Path option on Start Screen-Settings-Misc
-international tournaments have been added to custom games; added via new option in game setup
-custom international has up to 3 tournaments (World Championships, Division I World Championships, Olympics); exact number and composition is flexible depending on makeup of custom game's player pool (the more nationalities that have 30+ players, the more tournaments there'll be, and the tournaments will be larger)
-AHL (1940-41 to 2023-24) is now a playable league in historical mode; NHL parent-farm affiliations should change on the correct dates; note that this means that at times they'll switch back and forth from playable (AHL) to the nonplayable generic teams (in years where a team's primary affiliate was in the CHL/IHL/whatever). There's some ambiguity, particularly in the early years, about which of an NHL team's multiple affilations was the primary one; I've tended to decide those situations in favour of the AHL team. I've also limited the affilations to one per NHL team per season, so no multiple farm teams for now. Shared affilations (one AHL team with multiple NHL parents) do exist in many seasons
-if historical editing is turned on, the AHL will be editable like any other league. Affiliations can be edited manually, but get reviewed and adjusted annually, so any departures from historical affiliations will need to be re-done every year
-a large number of new trade types have been added and some logic issues fixed with existing trades
-the method of determining which trade types an AI team tries to make has been massively reworked, so there should be a much more logical mix of trade types, and they should be more relative to the current point in the season (e.g. at the deadline there'll be more teams acquiring/shopping "loaner" type players on expiring contracts, more trading holdout players early in the season, trading picks just before the draft, etc.)
-trades will be much more frequent just before and on draft days
-AI teams in leagues with transfer systems had a lot of logic added to acquire players (e.g. when promotion is possible/relegation is in danger, going after players on the trading block, upgrading specific areas, etc.) and had the same type/date upgrade the trades got; there should be more transfer activity now
-toned down trading in European leagues (that had it enabled to begin with, which isn't all of them)
-teams should be more aggressive in moving players with very low morale and/or who are causing team harmony problems
-contenders in junior leagues should make more of an effort to acquire older players (typically 19-year-olds) that can help them contend in the playoffs
-teams should make more of an effort to get rid of high-quality goalies that they don't need
-teams in potential cap floor troubles can now deliberately try to acquire bad cap hits
-more emphasis in upgrading middle lines/lower defensive pairs
-more big trades during the offseason
-NHL's new 4-Nations Faceoff Tournament has been added to modern games; runs in break in February 2025, replacing all-star game, then every 4 years after that
-owner goals have been added, requests from your owner to do specific things
-active owner goals are displayed on job security screen, and you also get a message when a new one is set
-completing goals improvea your job security, not completing them in the specified timeframe should lower it
-Development tracking has been added for your players, so you can see how they're progressing
-coaches now have specific tactical preferences and will be more effective when employing their preferred tactic(s); all staff will get some preferences assigned, and should tend to use those tactical options more often (only applies to even-strength right now, special teams tactics will be getting some slightly different attention later); does not affect your user-controlled GM/Coaches's (unless you're playing using the option to control a real GM)
-Major adjustments made to the pool of younger players in the database at the start of the game, to fix the growing issue of there being too many NHL-caliber young players in the early years of the game; basically, there was an excess of NHL-qiality players in some birth years, particularly (but not exclusively) in the players aged 20 and under, with the 2007 and 2008 birth year groups being by far the worst; I've made some major changes to player potentials in those years to get the player pool numbers more uniform across each birth year; early drafts may look a little weaker than what they were like in FHM9/10, but over the long run they'll be much more consistent
-added some more internal tools to make large-scale updating and analysis of player data easier
-long-term, the bottom end of NHL rosters after a few seasons should be noticeably weaker than they were last year - a lot more guys at the 1.5/2.0-star level instead of sub-2.5 players being rare after a few seasons; that should carry down to lower levels as well
-long-term player generation has also been adjusted to improve the top-end quality of new prospects and fix some problems with specific nationalities
-2D engine's play-execution logic improved to build upon the play-calling improvements in the previous two versions, so teams tend to stick with their set play execution longer
-made a change to the 2D passing mechanics to allow for more use of indirect/area passing, i.e. not all passes will go tape-to-tape
-AI's roster management in the period between the playoffs and the start of a new year has been improved; most importantly, when you get close to July 1, teams will treat roster spots that are likely to be cleared at the start of the new season as already being open, so they will use that upcoming roster space accordingly
-added "radar" chart to player scouting reports
-scouting report pages restructured to fit that new chart
-Exceptional player status has been added to the major junior leagues; this will be determined prior to the start of each season, allowing a very small number of top prospects to play in the WHL/OHL/QMJHL a year early (Landon Dupont starts the game with this status, new ones will appear (if there are any players good enough) starting in 2025-26
-Goalie Starts stat is now permanently tracked (e.g. in career stats) starting from the first season
-Kings, Ducks, Utah have their new logos
-when playing in GM-only mode, it's now possible to set your team's lines, tactics and training yourself instead of having to rely on your coach's decisions (note: training option is accidentally disabled now, will fix that tomorrow)
-on the manager options screen, "Setting Tactics" and "Setting Lines" are now two separate AI-control options rather than being combined, so it's now possible to e.g. choose your own tactics but let the AI make decisions about line and lineup makeup, or vice-versa
-fixed bug that was blocking AI trading in the period between the end of the playoffs and July 1
-fixed some missing league logo graphics
-fixed problem with historical salary structure that was forcing PCHA/WCHL/WHL and WHA teams to offer contracts at the same level as NHL teams (NHA was OK, its settings mirror the NHL's)
-cleaned out a bunch of NHL rights that were still attached to players who should no longer have them
-reworked job security system so the job security tracker will now do a much better job of indicating when a GM or coach is in jeopardy or safe
-jon security is now affected by a large number of new factors
-mods for "award_champion.png" and "award_league_champion.png" will now work, naming can use a league, e.g. "national_hockey_league_award_champion.png"
-fixed a variety of very rare crashes
-23-24 history added for teams and players
-Utah created as new NHL franchise (they get Arizona's players, but not the Coyotes/Jets franchise history)
-lowered talent levels for most pre-70's/80's international players, they were a little too good; but improved the Soviets slightly, they weren't dominant enough
-did some large-scale syncing of ratings in the modern database for current players to their historical counterparts
-fixed a few settings in historical that were restricting signings between leagues
-made major adjustments to the talent pools for the early drafts in standard games
-fixed an issue with Under-14 team minimum ages were forcing age resets on the youngest players in the database
-fixed a few dozen players with missing birthdates
-fixed error that was causing some WHL Bantam Draft picks to appear as USHL draft picks
-23-24 international history added for players and teams
-presets file for 24-25 considerably larger than in the past (injury data pulled from Eliteprospects for leagues where we normally didn't have any)
-23-24 injuries/suspensions added to historical presets
-fixed quickstart setup error that was forcing birth year resets on players born after 2008
-NCAA and U-Sports standings view now defaults to showing all of team's games, not just the conference results
-fixed extra break being added to NHL schedule in some years
-fixed issue causing head coaches to get fired a few days into the first season
-adjusted criteria for some owner goal choices and completions to fix logic errors
-added Head Coach job security to a couple of screens (World -> Job Security in addition to GM job security, Personal Info page for GM's)
-made numerous revisions to the trading mechanics to fix some trade types that were giving the AI problems, also adjusted frequencies and timing of many trade types
-when looking at future games on the league schedule at the start of a new game, all the teams are no longer displayed with losing records as if they had lost every game played between now and the current date
-Russia and Belarus international ban extended to 26-27
-added every player who's ever played in the AHL (but wasn't in the database yet) to historical mode
-most NHL draftees who weren't available in historical mode yet have been added to the database
-added historical AHL staff (at least to the extent that was possible, Elitepospects' records aren't complete, particularly in earlier season, we'll continue to work on this)
-colours and arenas have been added to the AHL in historical, but it's only the franchise's most recent colours/arena for now
-to that end, added several thousand real 2009, 2010, and 2011-born players and gave them a similar spread of ratings as in recent drafts so there's no longer that big dropoff in draft talent in the period between the first couple of drafts and the generated players appearing in 2030
-retired about 17000 players who technically aren't marked "retired" by EP but haven't been on a roster anywhere in real life since at least 2021
-made a large number of upwards adjustments to the lower end of the NHL talent pool in historical; there should be more separation now betwen the guys who played in the NHL and those that didn't
-NHL-caliber player generation talent levels in standard games adjusted; generally downward, but more so for the top-level players from Canada and the US
-NHL 4-Nations tournament is now every 4 years, replacing the all-star game in those years (so with the Olympics also on a 4-year cycle, you'll only get 2 ASG's per 4 years)
-2026 Winter Olympics tournament in custom games should now work properly
-while unemployed, you should no longer receive multiple simultaneous job offers from the same team
-added Demographics Report to league reports
-added Draft Surprises Report to league reports
-the Goals Created and 1st-2nd-3rd star columns on the roster Stats: Advanced (2) view now display properly, had been showing all 0's
-fixed error that led to a team misnamed as a U14 team being promoted to German second league
-made changes to the team rivalry system to encourage more local rivalries
-when a player requests a uniform number that's honoured, the message no longer shows that player's name as "honoured for", rather than the actual retired player being honoured
-staff contract expiry/extention notifications should no longer overlap with a league's playoffs unless the playoffs end extremely late (i.e. very end of June)
-contracts for NHL-contracted players loaned to KHL teams are no longer counted against the KHL cap
-the all-star game news story no longer describes a tie as a win for one team
-when the Ottawa Senators return to the league (after being inactive for 1931-32) in 1932-33, the same procedure that's used to return players to the Quebec Bulldogs in 1919 is now used to give them their 30-31 players back (if they're still in the NHL)
-increased the starting number of free agent scouts in custom games
-the League-Transactions-Free Agents tab will no longer display players above the league's maximum age
-fixed problem with OGR/DGR/GR calculation where they weren't properly weighting scores by player role
-also increased scores for defensive defencemen and checking forwards, but then reverted that back because the above changed handled the issue of low GR for those players, and the extra change was overkill
-fixed frequent crash in custom games near the start of the first season
-fixed a few issues in player generation in custom games that was resulting in some players getting much higher starting mental and physical abilities than intended
-adjusted AI captain selection to avoid choosing players with very long-term injuries
-the prospects tournaments no longer stop after the first season
-the bottom of the Set Needs popup is no longer cut off
-fixed issue that resulted in a small number of major injuries getting permanently stalled recovery, leaving the players out forever
-in an online league, if a human GM sends a deferred injury player to injured reserve (i.e. ending the deferral), the injury counter will now activate properly
-injuries in the presets file should now always keep the player out (i.e. red cross instead of orange), regardless of the injury type (particularly needed because we use the "sore knee" minor injury type as a placeholder for undisclosed injuries)
-fixerd issue preventing some newly-generated staff from getting tactical preferences
-fixed issue in the German leagues that resulted in players being sent up and down multiple times a day over a long period of time
-players on loan from NHL to CHL (and probably European) teams should now transfer contracted team properly when their rights are traded in the NHL
-if the AI has to send a player to the minors that is good enough that he's likely to be claimed on waivers, it'll now attempt to trade him for a pick first
-U-Sports history screen for individual seasons should now properly show the OUA East tournament
-the bottom spot on the stats leaders screen is no longer partially cut off by the title of the category below it
-fixed issue causing some players to request less than the minimum salary when negotiating with NHL teams
-on the training screen, all categories are now sortable, not just Mental Training
-adjusted names on league schedule screen so there are fewer issues with long names getting cut off
-on the League Home screen, the order of the Transactions view is now reversed so the newest are shown first
-on the League Home screen, when a player re-signs with his team in a league with a cap hit, the salary rather than the cap hit will be displayed, so it e.g. won't be $0 if the player isn't on the active roster
-game will no longer crash when clicking on some staff names
-fixed issue that was resulting in some minor injuries incorrectly getting the Red (out) instead of Orange (injured, but can play) cross status
-goalies will now be praised/criticized by the media in the media interactions, bug had prevented this
-adjusted the team strength/weakness evaluation (i.e. from the trade screen, and used elsewhere) to be less likely to consider a team with only one signed goalie to have a weakness in goal (unless that goalie is himself weak)
-the League-Transactions-Trading block tab for the WHL/OHL/QMJHL will no longer show players who are no longer in the league (but formerly played in it)
-increased the maximum salary amount on the player editing screen to $50 million from $15 million
-set the KHL prospects tournaments to be off by default
-added some extra attempts at roster-filling for teams with empty rosters (e.g. expansion teams, or teams in leagues that use only 1-year contracts and can lose most of their roster to free agency in the offseason)
-2D mode will no longer occasionally stall at the start of the game
-fixed potential mid-season crash
-loading a saved line that includes a player on the IR will no longer put him in the lineup (eventually causing a crash)
-fixed formatting on league schedule screen at 1920x1080 that was making the game report inaccessible
onger appears again after the series ends
-removed the automatic arena change from Utah/Arizona) in 2026; we'll also be switching Utah to a different (new) franchise in the next database update
-added mid-season awards preview (for leagues with awards)
-added news previews for each playoff series
-adjusted stat-adjusted talent to minimize the effect of scoring on talent scores for defensive defencemen and enforcers, and reduce it for two-way defencemen
-team transaction logs for NHA teams are now visible for past seasons, in addition to the the current season
-star players in the NHL will now tend to request longer-term deals on big-money contracts once they're into their UFA years
-swapped the positions of "Weakness" and "Current Outlook" on the team popups to make them a little more readable
-fixed issue that could cause the NHL playoffs in historical to break beginning in 1943-44
-fixed occasional duplication of international tournaments in the (standard game) World menu after the first season
-added new versions of the NHL jerseys, thanks to Hockey13playa; he found and fixed the cause of the black marks that were appearing around the neck last year
-also replaced NHA jerseys which had the same problem
-enabled FHM10-FHM11 save importing
-added affiliations for a number of playable European teasm that were lacking them
-if a player is on the injured list and the user loads a saved line on the lines screen that includes him, he'll no longer be dressed despite still being on the IR (which will eventually cause a crash)
-removed the automatic arena change from (now-defunct) Arizona) in 2026-27
-Belarusian league should now determine foreigners correctly
-improved handling of retired staff, the amount of data being retained for them was becoming a performance problem

[Colorado]

Thanks for posting, really looking forward to this year's edition and will be buying it later today.

Jeff, has there been any tweaks to game processing speed? I have a pretty good desktop computer but if I run anything more than a few leagues, the game becomes considerably slower.

[boscoJJ]

Great

[Pallo55]

What about Finnish Liiga? Liiga expanded to 16 teams and opened relegation games between Liiga and Mestis and also made changes to the playoffs system. Are these imported in the game?

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by Pallo55

What about Finnish Liiga? Liiga expanded to 16 teams and opened relegation games between Liiga and Mestis and also made changes to the playoffs system. Are these imported in the game?

It's 16 teams now and the changes are made, although I think there was a late testing report that the playoffs weren't working as expected, we'll be taking a look at that.

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by Colorado

Jeff, has there been any tweaks to game processing speed? I have a pretty good desktop computer but if I run anything more than a few leagues, the game becomes considerably slower.

The staff and retired player cleanup should help a bit, but beyond that, no specific speed imrpovements.

[hurricanekevin]

Epic change list! Can't wait to fire this up!


Really appreciate everyone's hard work!

[landru22]

Your change list says " -international tournaments have been added to custom games; added via new option in game setup."

Does that mean I would be unable to add international Tournaments to an imported custom game from FHM 10?

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by landru22

Your change list says " -international tournaments have been added to custom games; added via new option in game setup."

Does that mean I would be unable to add international Tournaments to an imported custom game from FHM 10?

Right, it has to be a new game.

[mjcarr74]

Any new audio additions team untro stoppages ect..?

[landru22]

Originally Posted by JeffR

Right, it has to be a new game.

Bummer

[jldante56]

Any updates for being able to manually select either of these things? I have a 40 season custom game from FHM9 that still never selects people for the Hall of Fame…I’d like to be able to do this manually like in OOTP.

[treestreetgaming]

There definitely seems to be a decent improvement in sim speed, not sure if its just me but it seems faster in standard mode. So far I'm only a few months into my sim and I'm really enjoying FHM 11.

[HockeyEagle]

Really like, you added "Est. demand" as a new column in those transaction masks...

Even it shows players as "not interested" now...

This really fixes an old nuisance while trading players for me..

[tomkmb]

Originally Posted by HockeyEagle

Really like, you added "Est. demand" as a new column in those transaction masks...

Even it shows players as "not interested" now...

This really fixes an old nuisance while trading players for me..

I agree, this is something that vastly improves Free Agent/Contract negotiations!

[treestreetgaming]

Originally Posted by HockeyEagle

Really like, you added "Est. demand" as a new column in those transaction masks...

Even it shows players as "not interested" now...

This really fixes an old nuisance while trading players for me..

I also agree this was a nice addition to the game!

[GMO123]

Great additions.
Thanks.

Hopefully the number of 1st, 2nd, 3rd stars for each year will be added to the Career stats.

[Raindrops]

Are the Interleague Tournaments still only preseason events or can you do them post season now

[Lappaacco]

If custom game is already started. Can I add Relegation Leagues now or only regular, junior and farm leagues?

Or if I still want to make game with relegation leagues. Does I still need to do them before my game starts and can't start with 1 league and adapt later?

Can I edit Relegation teams if game is already started? Like if I expand my league then can I edit number of relegated teams?

[northjersey]

bummed that I won't have the 4-nation faceoff in the season save i've been using for a couple of years now, but excited that GM's controlling lineups/tactics is now enabled


game is bought/downloaded, thanks to Jeff and his team for the hard work