Originally Posted by IndiansGuy57

Hi TheGrackle,

Thanks for your note. I can only speak to my experience playing OOTP 8, but here are some thoughts.

Do the other teams in your league only have $1 million-$5 million for free-agent signings or is that their amount of cash?OOTP 8 won't let you see the amount other teams have to spend on free agents -- just their cash total, their current expensives and their total budget. But you can calculate how much each team has to spend on their free agents using those figures.

In OOTP 8, $$ to spend on player and staff signings is calculated each year soon after the off-season starts (total budget minus player and staff salaries, plus cash). If the same formula is used in later versions, contract extensions in future years shouldn't affect the money you have available for signings at the start of any given year.

Also, do you have a league cap on total revenue? I set mine at $10 million per season, but if you've set a cap that's especially low, it might explain why other teams also shouldn't have much money to spend on free agents.

In historical leagues, there should be a wide range across the league of $$ available for free agents -- big-market teams with fat media contracts should start the off-season with plenty to spend, while small-market teams often start the off-season in the red. The way you describe your league, it's unusual to have so many teams without money for free agents unless you're playing in a fictional league with all teams having similar market sizes.

That's about all I can figure, based on what you said. If OOTP 12 and 13 use the same system as OOTP 8, the projected free-agent budget should always be the annual budget minus current salaries and staff expenses, plus any cash on hand.