Setting up a 2 Tier Salary Cap League - Struggling!

[Rumplebeanskin]

Hi,

I am new to OOTP, but I am trying to set myself up a fictional league with a salary cap. I have the 2 tier promotion/relegation structure sorted, I can do that manually, but I am having trouble with the salary cap.

If I detail what I have done, with the use of some screen shots to show my settings as requested, would someone be able to help? I've tried looking at explanations at what others have done with similar leagues, and consulted the manual, but I don't seem to be able to get it to work. When I began the league (2013), for the first few years, nobody was even near the cap. It's now 2018, 3 teams are over the cap, and most are still nowhere near the cap. There are 4 4.5 star overall players on the FA list, plus multiple 4 star players left unsigned. The cap is $50m, 10 of my 56 teams are below $15m in total player salary

I can provide plenty more details if required, I just wondered if any kind soul was able to help me before I did

Thanks!

[olivertheorem]

I would recommend posting screenshots of the financial settings page of the league with the problems (both leagues if both are having the problem).

[Rumplebeanskin]

I think this should be what you're after. There's a screenshot of the financial settings in the league set up, a couple of shots of the current player payroll levels for the teams across my 2 leagues, then another to show the standard of the FA pool, and their more than reasonable contact demands.

Any help welcome, thanks in advance

[olivertheorem]

I'm not an expert on these things, but I think I see the problem, consider the following from the Financial Setup Summary/Projections:

Average Team Revenue: $123,006,000
Average Team Expenses: $20,500,000
Average Player payroll: $14,342,000
Average Profit: $88,164,000

Your players aren't demanding enough money given league revenue. Most teams are far from the cap because they don't have to be. Your salary cap is at $50 million, but a team could field almost 50 "good" tier players for that given the salaries entered. An entire 25-man roster of "superstar" tier players could be paid under the cap.

I would recommend either lowering the cap and/or revenue sources (ticket price, attendance, media contract, etc.) or increasing player salary expectations. You'll want the average payroll to be probably in the $35-$40 million range for a $50 million cap (I think) so that teams have some wiggle room but not a lot.

I also noticed that you have all the teams set up in the same league, I assume in separate subleagues. You may want to split them into separate leagues (i.e., 1 subleague per league), so that you can have separate financials suited to the separate tiers.

[Rumplebeanskin]

Excellent feedback. In terms of the salary cap, I will turn the cap down to $40mil and also increase the average asking price for each player category. That way players want more and teams have less cash.

Do you think these changes will also stop the problem with too many good FA staying without teams?

As for league set up, I do have the two leagues set up as sub divisions, but I plan on having a more attractive (premier) league, and the lower division (conference). It makes sense to have the conference smaller, with less appeal. Can't do that with sub leagues, as they have the same league wide settings. Can with separate leagues though, so thanks for the advice!!

I will give these a run through and see what happens. Any idea how I can make the cap totally hard, I had teams running over it in terms of player salary and I don't want that to happen at all. It's a hard cap for a reason, don't want any of that luxury tax nonsense like NBA

[Rumplebeanskin]

Yeah, I'm at a total loss now.

I set the league up so that the salary cap was $43m, and the average team player payroll would be $39.3m (attached). That seems reasonable, as it gives some teams a bit of room to move before they hit the cap if they want to take an extra player on 2 on.

By 2017, every single team in the league is now above the cap, making having one pretty much pointless. There's also still plenty of quality on the FA list that teams don't want to sign, presumably because they have no room to do so. I've attached a finance shot of the team with the highest player payroll.

I'm really struggling to get what I want at the moment, and I'm starting to think it's not possible. I might just do away with it soon

[olivertheorem]

On the bright side, it does show that the Rioters have no room to sign new players, so there is that.

I'm not sure, but my best guess would be that possibly the game is letting arbitration take payrolls over the cap, which then results in teams not having the room to sign better (though possibly more expensive) players. You may want to try a league with no arbitration (not sure where that setting is) to see if it works that way.

Not sure how much of a football (American version) fan you are, but they use a hard cap and maybe it can provide some insight on how to make it work.

[Rumplebeanskin]

I'm a massive American Football fan as it turns out, and quite a cap geek as well lol

The irritating thing is that despite there being no available cash for further free agents, the cap has still been passed without penalty. The CPU should have been blocked from making any move that ended with them being over the cap, regardless of how far over it takes them. I do have arbitration off, and free agency set to 1 year (to try and mimic American Football, funnily enough).

I think the issue may come from the amount of money the league and teams have as a whole. The cap may be $43mil, but the club still has a budget of $123m. I'll have a play around and see what I can do, it could be that it all needs balancing up a bit. Thanks for your help.

Unfortunately for you, I'll probably be back soon with more failure

[olivertheorem]

I was thinking about this further, and I think a large part of the problem is that, up until the cap actually comes into play mathematically, the AI is incapable of "thinking ahead" in this regard like a human player can. For example, the AI may need 7 players, sign 5 to high contracts because the cap doesn't come into play for those 5 (meaning, they can sign all 5 and still be under), but then there are two spots remaining and all of $1 left in cap room. This is where the AI breaks down when using a hard cap, in my opinion.

[Rumplebeanskin]

I'm slowly but surely getting there. I have however hit a bit of a snag. Some teams are refusing to fill up their rosters, and apparently have no money to do so either!

The screen shot shows the lowest team in the league player salary wise.

The cap is $52m
Caracas are spending $6.5m on player salary.
They only have $400k available for free agents.

Why?

I've also attached a screen shot of the team with the number 1 player salary in the league, New Orleans.

I feel I'm getting REALLY close to sorting this out, and if teams will just fill their rosters properly, it will stop the issue of top players staying as free agents, and the league will be really balanced. More importantly, I can actually use said league to play some games!!

[olivertheorem]

Caracas may only have a 6.5 million payroll, but they also have $16 million plus in offered contracts. That's why they only have $400k left for free agency. If all those contracts are signed then that'll be $22.5 million, which isn't high but is better than 6.5 mill.

That said, if the league started at 1/1 and by 4/1 the teams can't field a team of players, something seems amiss.

[Rumplebeanskin]

None of those contracts panned out and they rolled with a sub $10m cap. They finished about .400 though, so they weren't abysmal. All I can think is:

A) Some teams are programmed to low ball it in certain situations. Real teams do it, look at the Marlins right now I suppose.

B) The variation in owner, team strategy and market size/fan support are to blame. Short of taking every team every team and re-aligning those stats, could be tricky to sort out.

Alternatively, I could just say that this 20% that don't want to get up to the cap are in fact a reality in my game world. The "league" shall we say, hasn't introduced a cap floor, and as such, teams are exploiting it. I'll have to placate the masses of fans by saying I have no way to enforce a salary floor

[Rumplebeanskin]

Just an update in case anyone is following/reading/cares

I found that the teams that were bottom of the league in spending could be made to raise their spending by artificially raising the fan and market data for each team. As teams did poorly, their support decreased, as did their market size, so less money was available, less was allocated to player budget, team did worse, downward spiral etc.

I made all teams the same for fan support, loyalty, market size, and the salary floor came up by about $20m to around $28m against a $60m cap.

There are still a number of things I cannot correct and I would appreciate if someone would try to shed some light on if they could before I roll with what I have and start playing:

1) If I give all my teams plenty of surplus cash, and very high fan support and market size data, why would some teams not spend up to a cap limit? Are some teams pre-programmed to deliberately play on a small budget to replicate real baseball in a non-cap real world? The money is there, I can't force them to spend it.

2) Based on the above point, do owner settings and personalities in patience and generosity play a part in the decision making of player salary budget? I have raised some owners generosity to 20 and they still wont spend on players.

3) Regardless of how high I raise the cap, there are still multiple 5 star players on the FA list, and a few pages of 4 star players. Some are only asking for $2m-$3m, despite me setting them to ask for around $9m a season. I get that they lower their demands if they don't get picked up, but why is nobody picking them up? My FA list every season is like an All Star team roster and I don't seem to be able to solve this. For information, most teams only have 1 or 2 5 star players, a couple of 4's, etc, and the rest of the rosters are made up of 1 star players.

4) Based on point 3, teams are not filling their AAA, AA and A rosters. I do not know why. I could use ghost players, but it doesn't make sense when teams could offer minor league contracts that wouldn't count against a cap, the FA pool is stacked, so many teams are under the cap and there are 200+ pages of the Free Agent list each season. I play without a 40 man roster, so anyone can be called up and used, or sent down. Doesn't make sense to me

I guess all 4 points are me trying to get the CPU to play "properly". Want to win, put together the best roster they can. Otherwise as soon as I start managing, I'm just going to be able to put together a much better roster and destroy all the CPU teams

[Rumplebeanskin]

As a final entry in case anyone is using the search function looking for tips on setting up something similar to what I outlined above, I ditched this idea as it simply wasn't working.

The CPU AI isn't sufficient to fill it's roster the best it can with a salary cap in place. A lot of teams won't push the cap, and have sub standard teams. The teams near the cap often still have weak teams. I can jump in at any point between 0-20/30 years into a league, and still win the WS just by picking from the free agents available that the CPU is ignoring. Minor league teams regularly went unfilled despite 200+ pages of free agents.

Perhaps I was doing something wrong, and what I wanted is possible. I couldn't get it to work to my satisfaction though. Gone with a straight up 4 division fictional league instead, see what happens.

Thanks for the help tho Oliver!