Adding A New N. American Top Tier Pro League

[Primis]

This isn't a question about how to do something, so relax everyone.

I almost posted this in another general thread, but I instead opted to start a new thread here because the eventual info might be of use to others along the line. Mainly having to do with what effects trying things in the editor has long-term on gameplay. Hopefully this works as a place for this.

What I have done is to take the TBL 9.4 DB and create a whole new 10-team International Hockey League, using the SPHL as a template.

* IHL league rep is 18.
* IHL team reps are equivalent/in line with the lower-reputation NHL teams like the Arizona Coyotes.
* No league salary cap.
* IHL team budgets in the $25m-$40m range. This is perhaps excessive, and I may pare it down at some point. But erring on the high side for now.
* Put a number of teams in big markets with big venues. So Detroit, Seattle, Houston, Atlanta, etc... along with some smaller markets ( like Birmingham, Salt Lake, Indianapolis).
* 56-game schedule ripped off directly from the SPHL, and SPHL playoff format (BECAUSE I'M LAZY, OK?). 8 of the 10 teams will make the Turner Cup Playoffs.
* Team rosters are 20 dressed, 26 max on roster. 26 may be a little high, we'll see. 20 to dress may be too high also, and maybe 18 is more the way to go eventually. But for now, 20 it is

* Went through KHL, DEL, SHL, Swiss NLA, etc teams and released a bunch of Americans and some Canadians to free agency. I have 250-ish roster spots to fill after all.
* Also released a few select (maybe a dozen between the two?) AHL and ECHLers to free agency as well to help bolster the UFA pool a tiny bit.
* Also released maybe 7 or 8 Europeans total across al leagues to free agency, to see if they'd sign or not (in addition to the Europeans already as UFA's).
* Set IHL max salaries for the most part to just slightly beat the max KHL ones, if it comes down to it.

* Started game with Large DB.
* IHL Enhanced. NHL, AHL, ECHL, KHL, SHL, Liiga, Swiss NLA all on View Only.
* Added additional Junior Players hoping that maybe this will help the player pool down the road.
* Retained all players from Canada and USA, just in case.

* NHL-style rules.
* Re-created about 10 of the IHL awards in the game, just for fun and because I hadn't ever added in Awards yet.

Besides playing around in my new sandbox here, I have a number of questions here, and want to see if the game answers any of these:

1.) A few years down the road, will the game's player pool still support this league and its level of play, since it's something fairly new?
2.) With their finances the way they are, will teams be able to poach some NHL players every now and again?
3.) Will any Europeans eventually go along with this league, given its reputation and team reps are second only to the NHL, and that it seem there's decent money to be made? Or will the game remain incredibly segregated outside of the NHL?
4.) Will this 10-team league basically strip leagues like the KHL of their American and Canadian imports long-term?
5.) With no league-wide salary cap, can the Indy's, Salt Lakes, and Louisvilles compete with the Detroits, Seattles, and Houstons?
6.) What effect would the IHL have on say the AHL's ability to sign vets to AHL-only contracts.
7.) Will the NHL plunder the IHL for players at some point?
8.) With its 56-game schedule, does this work better for the older players that the IHL is going to inevitably skew towards (the 30 and over crowd)? Or does the game not even care?
9.) How high will IHL teams be willing to spend for guys?

In more general terms... what happens plopping this league into the game's top tier ecosystem, I guess?

[Primis]

I started the game on July 2nd to give the teams time to fill out their rosters and coaching staffs.

Right now it is Oct. 8th and the regular season has started. A few signings are still trickling in but for the most part IHL teams have signed their initial rosters.

Top 5 Team Payrolls
-----------------------
1. Detroit Vipers - $21.04m
2. Houston Aeros - $16.23m
3. Seattle Metropolitans - $14.61m
4. Atlanta Knights - $14.06m
5. Kansas City Blades - $13.70m

Top 5 Player Salaries
--------------------------
1. W Nathen Gerbe (Seattle) - $1.79m
2. C Eric O'Dell (Houston) - $1.7m
3. W Bobby Butler (Salt Lake) - $1.7m
4. C TJ Hensick (Kansas City) - $1.69m
5. W Chad Kolarik (Detroit) - $1.67m

This surprised me, that nobody cracked $2m. Nigel Dawes was probably in this range but the Toronto Maple Leaf swooped in and nabbed him instead (at $2.62m).

Only one (1) European signed in the IHL -- Jan Hejda with Detroit for $1.56m. Every other European signed with a team back in Europe. Thus surprised me a bit. I figured 2 or 3 others might. But nope. This was a little unexpected.

Top 10 IHL Player Reputations
-------------------------------------
1. Jordan Leopold (Atlanta)
2. Clay Wilson (Kansas City)
3. Bobby Butler (Salt Lake)
4. Mike Weber (Seattle)
5. Wojtek Wolski (Atlanta)
6. James Wisniewski (Atlanta)
7. Tim Stapleton (Houston)
8. Nathan Gerbe (Seattle)
9. TJ Hensick (Kansas City)
10. Matt Ellison (Houston)

Other notables to sign in the IHL are Max Talbot, Ben Scrivens, Erik Cole, Ben Eager, RJ Umberger, Cory Emmerton, and a host of others. This gives you an idea about the caliber of players going across the league. There's a lot of names you would recognize at every position. By and large the age range is 25-34 for most of the league. A few guys are 35 or older, but most are floating right around the age of 30. Louisville has Willie Mitchel on defense at age 39, oldest in the league. Indianapolis and Salt Lake have gone much younger though, signing a fair amount of guys younger than 25. I count no less than 12 guys across the league that are 21 years old. Dillon Fournier and Dalton Thrower are a couple of the younger guys whose names people might recognize. Birmingham's defense is also led/anchored by a 25 year-old Stefan Elliot.


This is some good base info to start working/comparing off I guess.

[BKarchitect]

That sounds freaking cool...let us know how it goes. I'd definitely be interested in playing it when you have it to your satisfaction.

And you have a KC team, gooood!

[Javs]

Do you have a draft too?

[Alessandro]

Did you edit the financial tables (finance info)?
I think that you'll get close to no europeans in the league. Look at the "normal" game, no europeans sign in leagues under NHL at all. Probably it's some hardcoded stuff or some coding that needs updating.

[Alessandro]

Do you have a draft too?

You can't add/edit drafts (yet?)

[Primis]

Did you edit the financial tables (finance info)?
I think that you'll get close to no europeans in the league. Look at the "normal" game, no europeans sign in leagues under NHL at all. Probably it's some hardcoded stuff or some coding that needs updating.

I did edit the finances area, if you mean the area where you set max. player and coach salaries, etc. Though I'm not entirely certain what some of the scaling-type of financial settings are. I just looked at the NHL, AHL, and KHL and how they were set for those, and tried to figure out what an IHL should be set to.

I didn't play around with this at all his weekend. Was too busy. Hopefully this week I can make some more progress and try to get a few more answers to my questions.

[Alessandro]

I did edit the finances area, if you mean the area where you set max. player and coach salaries, etc. Though I'm not entirely certain what some of the scaling-type of financial settings are. I just looked at the NHL, AHL, and KHL and how they were set for those, and tried to figure out what an IHL should be set to.

More or less, the values you have is (I think) the salary a player will get with max reputation. Foreign player wage boost is pretty self-explanatory I think. Player wage spread factor is the reputation multiplier most likely.