Competitive balance with fictional leagues

spleen1015 · 03-28-2018, 07:47 PM

Looking for thought and opinions on using a salary cap with fictional leagues.

I am kind of torn on how I want my fictional leagues to go. I ran a 200 year sim with 24 teams and I had 4 teams that made the playoffs less than 4 times each. Looking at their history, their payrolls were typically about 15-20% of the most successful teams.

So, I would like to introduce some competitive balance and was thinking about doing that with a salary cap. Maybe even make it so that the national media contract is equal to the salary cap.

Does anyone have any thoughts or opinions on that? I plan on doing some testing, but I know there is a lot of experience on these boards. Looking for some wisdom.

tklem321 · 03-28-2018, 10:25 PM

I tested this last fall, although with only about 20 seasons instead of 200. I set the media market so every team got the same amount of money, set max ticket prices to $1.00, etc. -- basically did everything I could to make all teams have the same amount of money. There was still some variance due to owner/GM personality, etc. but not a great deal. My results were pretty good. Some teams made the playoffs 12-14 times, a few only made it 3 or 4 times. But no teams seemed to dominate for more than 3 or 4 years in a row before falling back to the middle of the pack.

I then tried the same 20 seasons with money completely turned off and, surprisingly, got about the same results. I'm going to start my own fictional league at some point and have been mulling over whether to have a salary cap or just turn money off completely and not bother with it. Playing without salaries was good enough in the old days with Microleague and Front Page Sports games. I'm not sure, for my purposes, that salaries add much to the game.

krownroyal83 · 03-29-2018, 02:18 AM

What about changing the market size/budget for the some of the smaller teams wouldn't that make for more competitive balance?

spleen1015 · 03-29-2018, 07:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by krownroyal83

What about changing the market size/budget for the some of the smaller teams wouldn't that make for more competitive balance?

Yeah, I'm sure it could. I am looking for a solution where I don't have to monitor these things.

Thanks for the idea.

NoOne · 03-29-2018, 07:34 AM

i use a cap that's above what the largest market can afford - by a small amount ~10M, which is also my max cash on hand limit.

i could be wrong, but i think a hard cap causes teams to spend a max % of the hard cap on 1 player. it seemed to keep salaries a bit lower than they would normally be.. just the "extreme" few players at the top were different, the average was still similar. it could have been the setup too, i can't guarantee this effect.

i use a pretty similar setup each time. set markets and such on my own blah blah -- the max contracts were never higher than ~32m. i would normally see a bit higher as a max after a long enough period of time even reaching ~40m.

as far as evening things out, you can easily predict this stuff using baselines - even gate revenue to some extent.

you can make it 100% stock by zeroing things out or possibly 100% gate revenue sharing would work? or zero that out too. leave attendance baseline if oyu want ot see spectators

the national media contract can be set to the same per team - this value can make it 100% stock by zeroing out other revenue streams that vary due to various factors like success. or anywhere in between.. you can reduce it and still have some deviations from baseline for various teams.

if you do edit market sizes, i think they "move" toward a more normal distribution curve if you leave them to their own accord over time -- a long period of time if they are all 5's, 6's or something. i could also be wrong about htis, but i noticed a heck of alot more shifting when i didn't use a distinctly bell-curve distribution.

either way, they can change over time, and it could have just been luck too. if you make revenues stock, it won't matter either way.

*oh, if you change this stuff after leage creation, you may have some old local contracts giving money.. not sure if it updates it or not... so double check that.. maybe zero them out per team, if needed (team settings with commissioner mode on)

krownroyal83 · 03-29-2018, 07:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spleen1015

Yeah, I'm sure it could. I am looking for a solution where I don't have to monitor these things.

Thanks for the idea.

If you change them to bigger market sizes and change their budget as long as the owner isn't the type that doesn't like to spend money you don't need to monitor, it should be a one time thing.

03-28-2018, 07:47 PM	#1
spleen1015 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 6,008	Competitive balance with fictional leagues Looking for thought and opinions on using a salary cap with fictional leagues. I am kind of torn on how I want my fictional leagues to go. I ran a 200 year sim with 24 teams and I had 4 teams that made the playoffs less than 4 times each. Looking at their history, their payrolls were typically about 15-20% of the most successful teams. So, I would like to introduce some competitive balance and was thinking about doing that with a salary cap. Maybe even make it so that the national media contract is equal to the salary cap. Does anyone have any thoughts or opinions on that? I plan on doing some testing, but I know there is a lot of experience on these boards. Looking for some wisdom.

03-28-2018, 10:25 PM	#2
tklem321 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Apr 2017 Posts: 246	I tested this last fall, although with only about 20 seasons instead of 200. I set the media market so every team got the same amount of money, set max ticket prices to $1.00, etc. -- basically did everything I could to make all teams have the same amount of money. There was still some variance due to owner/GM personality, etc. but not a great deal. My results were pretty good. Some teams made the playoffs 12-14 times, a few only made it 3 or 4 times. But no teams seemed to dominate for more than 3 or 4 years in a row before falling back to the middle of the pack. I then tried the same 20 seasons with money completely turned off and, surprisingly, got about the same results. I'm going to start my own fictional league at some point and have been mulling over whether to have a salary cap or just turn money off completely and not bother with it. Playing without salaries was good enough in the old days with Microleague and Front Page Sports games. I'm not sure, for my purposes, that salaries add much to the game. Last edited by tklem321; 03-28-2018 at 10:27 PM.

03-29-2018, 07:34 AM	#5
NoOne Banned Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,273 Infractions: 0/1 (3)	i use a cap that's above what the largest market can afford - by a small amount ~10M, which is also my max cash on hand limit. i could be wrong, but i think a hard cap causes teams to spend a max % of the hard cap on 1 player. it seemed to keep salaries a bit lower than they would normally be.. just the "extreme" few players at the top were different, the average was still similar. it could have been the setup too, i can't guarantee this effect. i use a pretty similar setup each time. set markets and such on my own blah blah -- the max contracts were never higher than ~32m. i would normally see a bit higher as a max after a long enough period of time even reaching ~40m. as far as evening things out, you can easily predict this stuff using baselines - even gate revenue to some extent. you can make it 100% stock by zeroing things out or possibly 100% gate revenue sharing would work? or zero that out too. leave attendance baseline if oyu want ot see spectators the national media contract can be set to the same per team - this value can make it 100% stock by zeroing out other revenue streams that vary due to various factors like success. or anywhere in between.. you can reduce it and still have some deviations from baseline for various teams. if you do edit market sizes, i think they "move" toward a more normal distribution curve if you leave them to their own accord over time -- a long period of time if they are all 5's, 6's or something. i could also be wrong about htis, but i noticed a heck of alot more shifting when i didn't use a distinctly bell-curve distribution. either way, they can change over time, and it could have just been luck too. if you make revenues stock, it won't matter either way. oh, if you change this stuff after leage creation, you may have some old local contracts giving money.. not sure if it updates it or not... so double check that.. maybe zero them out per team, if needed (team settings with commissioner mode on) Last edited by NoOne; 03-29-2018 at 07:36 AM.*

03-29-2018, 02:18 AM	#3
krownroyal83 All Star Reserve Join Date: Feb 2015 Posts: 996	What about changing the market size/budget for the some of the smaller teams wouldn't that make for more competitive balance?