[JAttractive]

I don't like the idea of using "random" events to balance things much. Now keep in mind this is coming from a person who is in the fictionist camp as well and would love to see "random events" in the game that could affect everything from the player's themselves to yes, finances. However if they are put in merely as a balancing issue then it sort of destroys the whole "randomness" of them and simply makes them a semi-predictable game feature. If added they should be put in to make things more interesting and "life-like" and not as an easy solution to a balance issue.

So what is the solution?:

Really I think we need to step back a bit and try to look at how we as players overcome this very problem on our own teams. Many of us purposefully start ourselves out with seemingly impossible odds against: lowest payroll, no fan interest or market etc. and still come out on top eventually. So if we can get the computer AI to model the decisions and tactics we use you should see teams fluctuate up and down much more frequently. Using this as the basis for my suggestion I would do the following:

Small market or perennial losing teams have an AI switch. These teams will look to trade for prospects, dump salary, get younger etc. Eventually their prospects will flood the team and provide a cheap powerhouse that has a few years to bring them up to respectability before they become free agents.

Reasoning: The current AI seems to try to win *now* no matter what team it is or what the team situation is. This is a major reason you see this problem. The small market teams are essentially trying to slug it out with the large market teams using the same tactics and predictably get killed for it.

Problems: First off for realism sake this should not be overdone. Only a few teams actually engage in anything close to this actively (ie. the Expos) and it is a great way to alienate fans. Secondly if it is overdone it could create dynasty-type situations fairly regularly and may have teams fluctuate up and down more often than desired. I think this would only require a slight tweaking and perhaps should be tied in with an AI tweak for contending teams where they are more willing to overspend on veterans and trade prospects in order to win now at the expense of the future.

Personally I would rather see something like this done than a "not-really-random" event used. I REALLY want to see random events put in but not if this is the reason.