Transfer searching

As I said.... buses.......

I have tweaked the transfer list and pool searches to enable an age selection and to include injured players or not. Possibly more search criteria can go in there yet but I'm on a roll and adding things from my suggestions list as a priority before I start getting too involved with it.

This will be the new transfer list search;

This will be the new transfer pool search;

Hopefully you are liking these additions to the site - I'm bracing myself to start implementing player contracts and hoping these little niceties keep everybody happy in the meantime.

Transfers by new managers

I notice recently that there has been a spate of sad people taking over teams, selling their best players and then quitting.

I've tried numerous things in the past to try and stop this happening but it's getting to the stage where I will have to make transfers occur by bid only, which would remove a lot of the freedom but also make it much much harder to cheat.

Before I do this though, I'd like to look for alternative suggestions.

One suggestion I have had put to me is to not let new managers make transfer for a certain period of time and I'd like to know what people's thoughts on this are. I know there is some debate on the message board at the moment but I only scan this and don't get involved. This blog post is therefore for a proper debate to be had, with me joining in. The more comments the merrier as I'd like to come up with a solution that suits as many people as possible.

Transfer & Loan Offers

I'm contemplating setting up a system that automatically rejects offers after a certain period of time if they haven't been actioned.

Is this something that you would want?

Should it perhaps be a setting for each manager to choose whether they want them automatically rejected or not after a certain period?

Any thoughts?

End of season loans

At the end of last season one team gained what I would consider an unfair advantage by loaning 20 rated players for a very important game. I presume that these players were loaned from teams that had nothing to play for although I haven't checked. The opposition manager rightly complained but it was too late for me to do anything by then. I'm now hoping to have something in place to stop it occurring this season if I can.

Anyway, I need a way of stopping this so am looking for ideas. The only one I have so far is to disable loans for the final 4 or 5 weeks of a season when the important games are. I don't particularly want to disable transfers but just disabling loans may not be a bad idea.

In the future when I have implemented the new ratings and player salaries then it may be something that managers don't want to do anyway but it can always be reviewed once they are in place.

Transfer list clearance

One or two managers have expressed a concen that players placed on the transfer list are remaining on there too long. I do agree that something needs to be done here.

The first thing I am going to do is make players on the list forcibly get taken off upon a manager leaving a team. I don't think this happens at the moment so this is going to be my next task.

After that, I think I shall add a removal option to the player information page as an option to do so from that page can only help.

Finally, I get the impression that most managers think there should be a limit where players are removed after a certain amount of time. It's the timescale I am currently debating. Also, should the timescale be different between loanable and transferrable players? I think not but your thoughts would be good.

Whatever timescale is used, a message will have to go to the manager stating the player has been taken off so they can re-list him if they so wish.

Any thoughts?

New scouting system

As you may be aware, I have completed the development of a new scouting system which will replace the current one which I feel is flawed in many ways (along with sponsorship, training etc etc - there's loads!)

I can't launch this yet because it only uses the new player skills as opposed to the single player rating but here a couple of screen shots for you to view.

This screen shot is as it will begin for all managers. No scouts hired and the options for each scout. You can see they all have a weekly cost associated to them and they can all do 1 report a week at this cost. Up to level 4 they will bring back a maximum of 30 players but levels 5 & 6 are 40 and 50 players respectively.

This next screen shot shows the situation after hiring a level 4 scout and selecting that you want him to do a level 4 report. Each scout can generate reports for every level up to the one they are being paid for. therefore you could hire a level 6 scout and he could perform level 4 reports every week should you wish.

Upon requesting the report the scout will instantly provide the information you have requested. If there are more than 30 (or 40/50) players found then it will be a random selection of those players matching the criteria specified.

Once the report has been generated, the scout can not be released or generate a new report until the next week. This is because you need to pay for the report and payment happens weekly.

I could make it so that reports happen instantly and they are paid for at the time. However, I feel that there needs to be some challenge as to what managers select for scouting and I don't want to give the teams with loads of money too much of an advantage.

There can be up to 5 scouts a week all at levels of the managers' choosing. Even if a scout does not run a report for a week, they will still need paying as in theory they are on your staff to use as you wish.