Off-Season Budget Changes

[gnomez]

I was wondering exactly how budget changes work from season to season? To what degree are deficits held over? Does left-over cash get included in the next season's budget?

[SteveP]

The financial model in OOTP doesn't make for easy answers. Basically you have two dimensions to the model which work together in a way that's not very transparent to us gamers: 1) a cash-flow or cash balance system and 2) a budget system. The first just tracks cash coming into the team and cash going out, and keeps track of the resulting balance, which is carried forward each year up to the "cash maximum". The latter has no real world analog (unless it's the owner taking a cash draw from time to time), but it limits the amount of cash in the team's checkbook at the start of a year.

The budget is set by the team owner. It limits how much you can spend during the current year and, to some extent, commit for the next year, for everything except free agents who are willing to accept 1-year contracts. The methodology by which the game engine decides what the budgets should be, and how that methodology takes account of cash flow and cash balance, is frankly a mystery to me, but others may have a good guess to offer on that one.

Hope that helps.

[gnomez]

I'm mainly looking at releasing a 60 million dollar man I inherited but I don't want that action crippling me for years.

[ssstump]

Originally Posted by SteveP

The financial model in OOTP doesn't make for easy answers.

Wow!

You can say that again. I mean, I can muddle my way through some fairly complicated balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements, but I sooo don't understand the 'Front Office/Financials'

Keeps me on my toes though. hehe.

[SteveP]

Hmmm ... that sounds a lot like what happens to GMs IRL.

Unless you can trade him, you will end up paying the contract, one way or another. You can probably do some calculations to estimate what the effect will be on your available cash in future years, by studying the income/outgo #s on your financial page.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by gnomez

I'm mainly looking at releasing a 60 million dollar man I inherited but I don't want that action crippling me for years.

Basically it'll be a massive hit to your expenses this year (in real life you'd expense it over the life of the contract, but OOTP isn't that smart) which will kill your cash which will in turn hurt your $ for FAs. That said, it's something I often do when I take over a team that's bad. They're going to suck for a couple years anyway, so take the hit now and then slowly build the team up. You might want to find a better way of getting rid of him by like a trade or even waivers if you can, though, especially if you want that "$ for.." to compete right now.

Reading the finances part of the manual might help.

EDIT: It's an especially decent idea if you play with a cash max like 10M where going from that to like -10M isn't that bad. If you're used to a much higher cash max, though, then it might not seem like such a decent idea.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by ssstump

Wow!

You can say that again. I mean, I can muddle my way through some fairly complicated balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements, but I sooo don't understand the 'Front Office/Financials'

Keeps me on my toes though. hehe.

Yeah, it's an interesting challenge, especially for those of us who have experience with financial statements and expect to see something recognizable here. However, I think the financials in OOTP are reasonably intelligible if you look at them as I described: a cash balance statement grafted onto a budget (meaning really just the expense side of a budget) -- or vice versa. Except for the mystery about the derivation of allowable expense (the "budget"), and the way in which a budget affects a future year, of course.

[ssstump]

I believe I read somewhere that we can take over the budget process through some menu, and I may look into doing that.

Not to make things easier, but just to make it into more of a real business, if that makes any sense at all.

Stupidest thing is, I almost surely won't even still be playing by the time next year's budget rolls around. I'm way too much of a control freak and have to play all my games out as manager, and will almost certainly get bored before I even get through one season.

AND - That's not a knock against this wonderful game at all! Just my personality - dig into every little crack and cranny of the details and then move on to a new game and learn all the in's and out's of that one

I've been playing for a month now and haven't even finished Spring Training.

haha. i suk!

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by ssstump

I believe I read somewhere that we can take over the budget process through some menu, and I may look into doing that.

Not to make things easier, but just to make it into more of a real business, if that makes any sense at all.

Stupidest thing is, I almost surely won't even still be playing by the time next year's budget rolls around. I'm way too much of a control freak and have to play all my games out as manager, and will almost certainly get bored before I even get through one season.

AND - That's not a knock against this wonderful game at all! Just my personality - dig into every little crack and cranny of the details and then move on to a new game and learn all the in's and out's of that one

I've been playing for a month now and haven't even finished Spring Training.

haha. i suk!

I did a lot of micro-managing when I first started playing OOTP last summer -- which was useful in helping me better understand the dynamics of the game -- and gradually pulled back from that as I learned more about how to manage the AI, so the AI could manage my team. Also, I now tend to move faster toward the end of a season.

As far as controlling budget: the option is to not have the team owner control the budget, which means you get to control the budget, which means you get to control the expense allowances, which means it becomes essentially a cash budget -- your expenditures are limited only by how much you have in the team checking account. I'm not sure this works too well in OOTP10. For various reasons, the new financial parameters have increased the cash maximums significantly. So, depending on the type of league you are playing, the historical time frame and other considerations, a team's checking account can get to be pretty large. I'm just offering that up as a caution, so you know to be on the lookout for it.

[gnomez]

I was more specifically wondering how eating a 60 million dollar contract would affect my off-season free agent money and following year budget.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by gnomez

I was more specifically wondering how eating a 60 million dollar contract would affect my off-season free agent money and following year budget.

One way to find would be to save your game, make a backup copy, release the player, sim ahead long enough for the new budget, etc. to show up. Then restore your backup and play the backup copy going forward based on whatever you think you learned. That's in case someone doesn't show up on this thread with the answer.