Negative Winnings rule .... revised

[Dark Lord (retired)]

I think the BBRC shoudl be honor bound to accept those wide spread house rules as official. (Much the same way they did with the old house rules.)

The BBB rules make me nervous. It's almost as if they heard nothing that we said and for some reason think that the rules need a major fixin. Some line of communication was broken and somebody has dropped the ball if they think the BBB rules are what we want.

[GalakStarscraper]

Or that crazy one turner. If you administer your team, winnings, rerolls, etc. correctly, once you get one of those indestructable, league dominating players, What is to stop it?

Asperon Thorn

To me BB is all about developing those crazy players, and I fully reject the idea that a single player is indestructable or league dominating. The MBBL has an ST 5 Lion Warrior at one point ... he lasted one season before a Dwarf team caught his number.

Woody's ST 8 Bloodthrister died this round of the MBBL2.

If you want to cut back here and there in your team to have a superstar ... more power to you.

Galak

[NightDragon]

Totally agree Galak. I've known numerous killers over the years and in my experience as soon as a player stands out he is targeted and does not last long, whatever his position. Also if you want to unbalance a team by developing a superstar fine. This is why I like our TR cap. Some coaches have cut them, some have kept them. Some are now trying to develop new players because they want a different skill combination. It has made coaches think again.

[lawquoter]

I really, really like this proposed negative winnings/debt system. It places fiscal responsibility on your shoulders. Go ahead and hold on to that cup winning side as long as you can....but you will pay the piper. I don't mind ageing at all, but since most people can't stand it, I think this is a really good alternative and probably is more tailored to what is desired (team management and turnover) whereas ageing got to team management and turnover via an indirect route (individual player development). Well done, and I can't wait to try it out in MBBL2.

[neoliminal]

Galak:

I've thought this through a bit more and some of your arguements are valid. What about this scenario:

I never, ever pay.

Now you've got a team that's pretty damn good (otherwise it would never have gotten to the negative winnings) and the coach doesn't care if the team lasts or not. He just wants to play a really tough team. So he never pays. He just keeps playing his team.

How many games could you go like that? A whole season? Two seasons? If you just ignore it, and eventually retire the team, how many games in uber status would you have?

[Ithilkir]

I suppose you could start say a Dark Elf team with lots of positional players, low re-rolls and low fan factor. Rely on your opponents fan factor to get some cash in the early games for an apoth then just burn the team into oblivion.

Only after 10-15 games would they be showing any ill effects due to lack of cash most likely.

[DoubleSkulls]

I think the answer to that is how long before you need to buy new players?

Okay Orcs & Dwarves don't tend to suffer that many casualties, but eventually it will catch up with them. Without money to replace players you aren't going to want to retire anyone - and if you do, the objective of reducing TR is achieved. If you don't retire players handicap results will become more of a problem as you can't survive virus or losing your best players.

Fundamentally isn't one of the major points of the change that it doesn't force the coaches hand? As a result the downside of refusing to manage your money needs to be harsh enough that no sane coach will want to do it.

There is one issue which is the huge amounts of money for winning a trophy. If you win your league every season and get a cash injection of 100k+ it may be worth running a deficit in the expectation of victory. Then you'd see the teams that fail running the sort of fire-sale common in football clubs that get relegated.

[neoliminal]

I think the answer to that is how long before you need to buy new players?

Okay Orcs & Dwarves don't tend to suffer that many casualties, but eventually it will catch up with them. Without money to replace players you aren't going to want to retire anyone - and if you do, the objective of reducing TR is achieved. If you don't retire players handicap results will become more of a problem as you can't survive virus or losing your best players.

Virus is a null point, as most people assume it's going to be revamped in the next version of handicap.

I've seen an Orc team that lost only one player over the course of over 20 games. He never bought more than 13 players either. The team was tough and the coach was good. The TR was low and I can assume he wouldn't have cared much about having negative cash.

Fundamentally isn't one of the major points of the change that it doesn't force the coaches hand? As a result the downside of refusing to manage your money needs to be harsh enough that no sane coach will want to do it.

There is one issue which is the huge amounts of money for winning a trophy. If you win your league every season and get a cash injection of 100k+ it may be worth running a deficit in the expectation of victory. Then you'd see the teams that fail running the sort of fire-sale common in football clubs that get relegated.

Or just retiring their teams because they couldn't make the money work anymore.

The only real difference between this and the current negative cash idea is that you can bank a negative rather than pay a price for it immediately. This just seems to be moving the bar higher. If you assume that eventually you have to pay, then either system works and only needs to be tweaked for the level it starts hurting at.

So I'm not really opposed to the idea of negative cash in the treasury, it just seems to be more book-keeping. (And honestly, there's nothing new under the sun... the BBRC talked about this last year when we first discussed negative cash effects)

[GalakStarscraper]

Galak:

I've thought this through a bit more and some of your arguements are valid. What about this scenario:

I never, ever pay.

Now you've got a team that's pretty damn good (otherwise it would never have gotten to the negative winnings) and the coach doesn't care if the team lasts or not. He just wants to play a really tough team. So he never pays. He just keeps playing his team.

How many games could you go like that? A whole season? Two seasons? If you just ignore it, and eventually retire the team, how many games in uber status would you have?

A good question Neo. Every other question so far I've been able to fire off an immediate answer ... here I needed to ponder a bit. I've got a response, but I'm not sure it will address your question directly hope it will, and its a multipart answer.

After pouring over the records of teams with TR of 300+ in the FUMBBL league, my answer is I'm not sure. I think your question here gets at a fundamental point of trying to manage TR.

I think upper TR management is a package deal.

Currently we have this package for team management:
1 ) Aging
2 ) a very very weak handicap table
3 ) -1 to FF roll for every 10 worth of FF

FUMBBL data clearly shows that Aging with the FF mod by itself doesn't work to cap TR completely. Niggles are too easy to ignore. Without the threat of the Virus handicap ... FUMBBL teams have grown despite aging.

In the MBBL2, where I plan to test the Negative Winnings rule, the TR managment package will be:
1 ) A strong more focused handicap table
2 ) -1 to FF roll for every 10 worth of FF
3 ) The negative winnings rule
4 ) Niggle rolls are made before every half if a player is in Reserves

Okay why did I present this. Okay I think the heart of your question is can I allow my team to just continously have debt without worry. I really believe the answer to that is no. Eventually players get killed and you'll need to replace them to keep that "golden" team we are wondering if could be maintained.

Okay let's grab the serious beasts of FUMBBL and check them out:
Terrifying Anarchists of Naggaroth ... currently TR 605:
29 of their last 83 matches show 0 earnings which could easily have been negative. (83 games is the # of games they've played TR 250+)
They've purchased 6 players in those 83 matches
10 players have Niggling Injuries (for a total of 21 Niggles)
Their last 25 games have been played 100 TR points higher than their opponent.

Let's grab a different team from FUMBBL:
Skavenblight Squeakers, TR 306
5 of their 12 games after TR 250 have had 0 earnings
They purchase 2 players in those 12 games
6 players have Niggles

This is one of the reasons I don't like the No Injury Mod rule anymore by the way is it cuts even further down on CAS for teams. I've run the Bugman numbers over multiple scenarios ... it results in less CAS no matter how you slice it.

Okay what I'm trying to show with those 2 teams and I could pull out more is this. Players die or need replaced even with high TR teams. If you had ignored your debt load, you would have no ability to replace the players when they die or get SI'd beyond recognition.

So the reason I'm having trouble answering your question Neo is this. By itself I don't think this winnings rule is the answer.

I think the answer lies in a multi-part solution where every part matters:

1 ) The game either needs Aging with the threat of Virus handicap OR dropping aging with Niggle rolls every half or drive. (ie Niggles have to matter)
2 ) The game needs a handicap table that actually effects high TR teams. While I like the MBBL table for its simplicity. I LOVE Milo's CHUBB table for actually doing what a handicap table should do.
3 ) The games needs to manage FF growth. The -1 per 10 rule does this nicely already.
4 ) The game needs to allow on-field attrition. IE keep the current rules over no Injury mods (unless you can make it so the no injury mods produce the same CAS results)
5 ) The game needs to have this negative winnings mod to bundle the package all up.

Its the mixed package that I think will work and give JJ and the BBRC exactly what they are looking for. The advantage of the 5 items above ... its all simple stuff. Taking the current LRB rules you could put them in place with minor changes:

To change the LRB to work:
Add negative winnings rule and move to Milo's CHUBB handicap table

I honestly think its that easy.
Now for the MBBL2, since my coach's despise aging, I'm taking this route which again is a minor change from the LRB:
Drop aging, add negative winnings rule, use MBBL2 impactful handicap table, Niggles rolled before each half

Okay that's a lot of post. Let me summarize what all this was getting at:

With the negative winnings rule a team will only be able to ignore the rule if: Attrition is lower, handicaps don't matter, niggles don't have threat or punch

I honestly believe Neo that this negative winnings rule mixed with Milo's CHUBB handicap table ( http://www.chubbleague.com/chubb/handicap.html ) would make BB work. Whether aging needs dropped or not ... don't know. I don't think its needed with these 2 fixes, but all the polls show a 50/50 split on dropping aging from BB, so at this point, I don't care if its in the game or not. The FUMBBL league drives home to me that its impact really is neglible in my opinion (ie its not driving team management at all), so having it in is really just coloring in the icing. Its not the cake and its not even the icing.

Galak

[Ithilkir]

I think the question comes up in this case: "How long until the team would start 'earning' negative cash?", would it be noticable in many leagues if the answer would be 10-15 games?

[GalakStarscraper]

The only real difference between this and the current negative cash idea is that you can bank a negative rather than pay a price for it immediately.

No offense intended here Neo ... but that the different between forced and choice. In my world, those concepts are on two different sides of the world.

Also if you run a team into debt and then retire them after you lose a player or two ... in my opinion the rule did its job there also.

Personally I think this argument is flawed against the suggestion. The goal was to create a system where a team can player forever if desired with TR fluxing between 200 to 300 as I approached it.

Introducing a scenario where a team is run up to TR 310, incurs 200k in debt, and is then retired, is actually not data meant for the equation in the first place. So saying it suggests is whole is an invalid proposition.

Also as to your comment about the guy you know that never lost a player. FUMBBL has an 166 SPP Wardander that's never aged. Does this prove that aging has a problem. The goal to BB rules has never been the exceptions but the standard.

Sorry Neo, I'm just not sure that your counter arguments are the correct ones for this debate.

Galak

[GalakStarscraper]

I think the question comes up in this case: "How long until the team would start 'earning' negative cash?", would it be noticable in many leagues if the answer would be 10-15 games?

I think that question is invalid ... for this man reason. A negative winnings rule is not about teams that are only played 10 to 15 games. Its about teams that play 20 to 30+ games. Team management rules if they are working properly should never really effect leagues that continuous reset (another reason I really don't like aging).

However to answer your question sort of ... when does negative cash kick in.

Using the 11 FUMBBL teams with TRs over 300, I get this:

First TR point of zero cash game (ie could have been negative cash):
253, 248, 209, 228, 203, 228, 235, 226, 293, 282, 255

First TR point of back to back zero cash games (ie now they are really finding the wall)
299, 247, 309, 275, 262, 279, 272, N/A, N/A, 270, 287

Throw in a Milo's CHUBB table and I can live pretty easily with those numbers.

Galak

[Ithilkir]

So if it's aimed towards teams that have played 20-30 games, what limitations would there be for teams who haven't played it? None? If there's no sign of a team 'aging' until the 225+ mark then it's plain sailing for teams to get that far. By that time leagues may start again, players drop out etc, so teams will naturally drop and there's a very good chance you'd never see the negative winnings results rolled up, it is fairly easy to grab a huge cash stockpile by the 250 mark (that's by 250, not from 250 onwards)

Take this TABLE and look at the winnings. Now there may be negative winnings, but there are lots of teams with over 300k in the bank, a couple of negative winning games won't affect the treasury that much...

[Grumbledook]

I would also point out that a longer a team does go on ignoring the negative winnings the worse it will get and the higher their tr will go

This in turn means more and more handicap rolls given out to opponents and also when players die they are gonna be stuffed cause they can't afford to replace them.

if you want the effect to be worse on higher teams then you can just whack an extra couple of bands over tr 300 on the winnings table (though the donw side to this is players will use that to say teams are supposed to get that high)

The other option to make it worse is to have some real negative effects on the handicap table. I truely think that a proper handicap table is the single most thing that needs sorting out in the coming rules review. When that gets done and if this negative winnings rules gets made experimental, then after ski has implemented the table, there can be a whole years worth of testing to evaluate next year.

Galak will have his no aging stuff to show, then open division at fumbbl will have aging and the handicap table, while division x on fumbbl can also throw in negative winnings with the handicap and aging.

As galak already mentioned mostly the large teams on fumbbl have lots of niggling players and assuming there is something like virus still on the handicap table (one of the best things on the current one) then those teams are going to pretty much lose every game.

[Grumbledook]

ithilkir don't forget that they also didn't have to pay any negative winnings and aren't dealing with a handicap table