1)I agree recruiting is very important. Luckily this isn't in V1 or the foreseeable future, so I don't have to worry about that just yet!
2)Starting with V1, I'm already re-designed all the DBs and way the data is stored etc compared to OOTP.
On the plus side you'll have better performance and with BTS it will be far easier to do more with the data (cross-referencing etc), on the negative side (as discussed before in other posts) this means that just because OOTP had customization for something doesn't
automatically mean BTS will have it.
I know some people may be upset at that, but I think the pros outweigh the cons
In regards to the numbers:
Let's say c500 teams (NFL+College), and then for HS we don't need to a model all HS fully, aside from the name we can do some clever stuff (basically cheating
), so say another 500. That's 1000 teams in total. Let's double that just to be safe.
That's only 2k teams, I have no real worry there (FM is near 50k for example).
The amount of players is a concern however. Say we have an average of 50 players per team. That's 100k. That's not too bad if we again are clever.
The problem however is that if we store all retired players this number will continue to rise, I'll have to decide what to do (for example) with players who never make it out of HS etc.
3)This is not just a worry for the college game, but a worry for historic NFL games as well.
If we ever go back to NFL in the 50s then all those plays/formations etc will have to be different too
Again, luckily I don't have time to worry about that right now.
Thanks,
Francis