Salary cup system (AI) broken again?

Odisio · 10-07-2017, 09:14 AM

The next version, and once again I am not able to play, but I'd wanted to. The basis in games like "manage something" is for me - realism in the financial aspects. The salary cap system in this game is just as bad as in previous versions, simulating several seasons ahead and most teams do not use the free space in salary.

What is AI that does not fight? In real life, almost half of NHL clubs are 90% of the available salary caps. In the game more than half have a dozen or so free million and do nothing to strengthen their teams. Sad thing, because the rest of the game seems to be OK!

I do not want to give a negative review on steam, so I'm writing this here. I appreciate the work of the creators, but such things are irritating. In three years did not accomplish such a basic thing? Or is it just me and I'm wrong? Someone has a different opinion?

JeffR · 10-07-2017, 09:32 AM

The AI is deliberately conservative about using cap space. If most of a league is aggressively spending to the cap, the lack of free cap space around the league limits the ability of teams to dump salary, they tend to get in progressively more and more financial trouble, and the cap space shrinks even more. Eventually, it snowballs into a situation where teams are making extreme roster moves like buyouts and sending good players to the minors to stay under the cap. That was a serious problem in early versions of FHM, and it took a lot of time to work out exactly what was going on. Once we had teams maintain a little more distance from the cap, the problem disappeared. Keeping the teams spending slightly less is a reasonable price to pay to avoid watching them send players earning $3 million to the minors to save a million in cap hit.

Additionally, some teams - as they do in real life - have an internal cap which limits what they spend. Arizona and Carolina were $14-15 million below the cap on opening night. Now that we know the starting cap situations of the teams, I'm going to go through the team budgets and adjust them as necessary, but there will probably be somewhere between 5 and 10 teams whose ownership won't spend the full $75 million under any circumstances.

fashett_7 · 10-09-2017, 03:46 PM

Is there a reasonable way to scale the cap itself over time? Because it is stagnant, the natural progression of players tends to cause teams to lose high end players continuously because they cannot afford them. Within 3-4 years, a large majority of teams are operating extremely close to the cap. The only way to counter this as of now is to go into commissioner mode, and manually increase the salary cap. It would be interesting to see it grow naturally...

JeffR · 10-09-2017, 06:16 PM

We tried that a few years ago, but it didn't work out well - after a decade or two of cap increases, salaries (whose baseline grew along with the cap) were also a lot higher and we started getting a lot of questions about players apparently being overpaid. There's a small safety valve built in that allows teams a cap-free buyout of one contract every few years (simulating the compliance buyouts that happen after a new CBA), which tends to eliminate the worst of the worst contracts.

We also made some changes to player development that should avoid the talent pool inflation that was causing the kind of issue you're mentioning in FHM3. There shouldn't be a large number of NHL-quality free agents sitting around unsigned after several years, which was a big factor in pushing teams too close to the cap.

10-07-2017, 09:14 AM	#1
Odisio Bat Boy Join Date: Sep 2015 Posts: 2	Salary cap system (AI) broken again? The next version, and once again I am not able to play, but I'd wanted to. The basis in games like "manage something" is for me - realism in the financial aspects. The salary cap system in this game is just as bad as in previous versions, simulating several seasons ahead and most teams do not use the free space in salary. What is AI that does not fight? In real life, almost half of NHL clubs are 90% of the available salary caps. In the game more than half have a dozen or so free million and do nothing to strengthen their teams. Sad thing, because the rest of the game seems to be OK! I do not want to give a negative review on steam, so I'm writing this here. I appreciate the work of the creators, but such things are irritating. In three years did not accomplish such a basic thing? Or is it just me and I'm wrong? Someone has a different opinion? Last edited by Odisio; 10-07-2017 at 10:12 AM.

10-07-2017, 09:32 AM	#2
JeffR FHM Producer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Kelowna, BC Posts: 16,948	The AI is deliberately conservative about using cap space. If most of a league is aggressively spending to the cap, the lack of free cap space around the league limits the ability of teams to dump salary, they tend to get in progressively more and more financial trouble, and the cap space shrinks even more. Eventually, it snowballs into a situation where teams are making extreme roster moves like buyouts and sending good players to the minors to stay under the cap. That was a serious problem in early versions of FHM, and it took a lot of time to work out exactly what was going on. Once we had teams maintain a little more distance from the cap, the problem disappeared. Keeping the teams spending slightly less is a reasonable price to pay to avoid watching them send players earning $3 million to the minors to save a million in cap hit. Additionally, some teams - as they do in real life - have an internal cap which limits what they spend. Arizona and Carolina were $14-15 million below the cap on opening night. Now that we know the starting cap situations of the teams, I'm going to go through the team budgets and adjust them as necessary, but there will probably be somewhere between 5 and 10 teams whose ownership won't spend the full $75 million under any circumstances.

10-09-2017, 03:46 PM	#3
fashett_7 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Apr 2016 Posts: 23	Is there a reasonable way to scale the cap itself over time? Because it is stagnant, the natural progression of players tends to cause teams to lose high end players continuously because they cannot afford them. Within 3-4 years, a large majority of teams are operating extremely close to the cap. The only way to counter this as of now is to go into commissioner mode, and manually increase the salary cap. It would be interesting to see it grow naturally...

10-09-2017, 06:16 PM	#4
JeffR FHM Producer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Kelowna, BC Posts: 16,948	We tried that a few years ago, but it didn't work out well - after a decade or two of cap increases, salaries (whose baseline grew along with the cap) were also a lot higher and we started getting a lot of questions about players apparently being overpaid. There's a small safety valve built in that allows teams a cap-free buyout of one contract every few years (simulating the compliance buyouts that happen after a new CBA), which tends to eliminate the worst of the worst contracts. We also made some changes to player development that should avoid the talent pool inflation that was causing the kind of issue you're mentioning in FHM3. There shouldn't be a large number of NHL-quality free agents sitting around unsigned after several years, which was a big factor in pushing teams too close to the cap.