Still looking for help with a couple of things please - I must have done ok in Free Agency (my drafting still needs work) as I got to the play offs (lost to Dallas in OT in the Wildcard game) with 11-5 record.
1) Is there any way of getting a scouted history of your players? I am starting to realise that keeping the best players and releasing the lesser ones is a short sited approach and need to consider if my 42 rated TE is improving quick enough to make releasing (or trading?) my 60 rated TE an option.
2) Is the 'future estimate' rating supposedly an idea of how good that player become at his peak? It seams that players often smash through that barrier. Do you guys use this as a guide at all? Or is it actually a guide of how good they can become this season?
3) I have not got my head around the cost of releasing players yet. Basically, does it mean that you save money (and have a bigger remaining cap) but you are still paying some amount of money for players you no longer have?
4) Why am I always near the bottom of the staff draft?
5) When should I look to trade rather than release? I guess trading means that their is no future cost for the player I am trading away (where as with releasing there could be?)
6) Does the Draft Review take into account the Free Agent additions as well as the Drafted additions?
7) Is a player classed as a Free Agent as soon as they get to the end of the season where they only had 1 year left? I have a few that have '--' in their remaining contract but can't offer them anything. Have I left it too late?
8) At what sort of age should you stop offering new contracts to players? Should I not be looking at offering anything long term to anyone 28+. Do different players start their decline at different times?
9) I occasionally see players are not classed as starters despite looking significantly better when viewing Roster Commands / View Rosters / Scout Overview. Should I intervene with my depth charts? Is the view of the scout reliable? Is this the view of my scout or the league scout?First off, F1 is your friend. FOF has context-sensitive help. You should press F1 on a screen when you have questions. Much of the stuff you've asked in this thread is answered there.
1.
Ratings History Screen
The Ratings History Screen shows a player's scouted ratings over the course of his career. You can view both his scouted current skill rating and the scouted estimate of future potential. This tracking is done both before training camp and after week two of the exhibition season, when every team has played one game.
This information is only tracked if it's enabled when you begin a new career.
The scouting is viewed through the eyes of a venerable staff member who is not currently employed by a team. This scout may change from time to time as staff members age just as players age.
2. Understanding ratings, unmasking, and whatnot is something that comes with an intermediate/advanced understanding of the game, usually over time. Look for the Unmasking 101 thread here for a little help, but this is rather nuanced.
3. When a contract is terminated early, because the player is released or traded, the cap figure must be adjusted. When you acquire a player via trade, you are not responsible for any of his bonus. But when a player leaves your team, you are still responsible for the entire remaining bonus.
In those cases, you take the remaining bonus and assign it to lost cap room for the next season. Any bonus left over for the current season becomes lost cap room for the current season.
4. The draft order is determined by the amount of profit each franchise made during the previous season.
5. In single player, you can almost never trade a player that you want to release. It's not worth your time to be bothered with it.
6.
<center> Post-Draft Analysis Screen
</center> The Post-Draft Analysis Screen shows a list of grades given by league analysts based on each team's performance during the amateur draft.
Teams are graded for how well the selections appear to have improved the team's roster.Most veteran players ignore the Draft Review. It's not very useful, and may well even be broken. I don't think anyone has tried to tease it out.
7. Yes. Once the Front Office Bowl stage has been run, free agents cannot be retained.
8.
How Should Retirement be Determined?
Without a doubt, the most controversial element of any career simulation is how retirement should be handled. One older game in the football genre simply takes the average experience of all professional players, about 4 1/2 years, and makes that the average length of a simulated career.
All of a sudden, your franchise quarterback retires after a six-year career. He's at the top of his game. Next season, he could have led you to the league championship. You're frustrated, to say the least.
I studied this question extensively when designing Front Office Football. I found that there are voluntary retirements and involuntary retirements. I found that there are a large number, between 100 and 200, free agents who are available each season outside of the amateur draft. These players fill holes in various rosters. These players have very short, uneven careers. They drastically alter the average career length.
In Front Office Football, it's up to you to "retire" these players. They'll hang around as long as someone's willing to pay them. I can guarantee you that the computer-run franchises won't. They'll fill their last roster positions with players willing to play for the minimum guaranteed salary.
Established players won't retire unless there's a career-ending injury, they're completely unwanted, or they're somewhere in the twilight of their careers. All careers follow some sort of performance path. The path rises quickly toward maturity, then has a gradual curve over the peak of the career before curving quickly toward ineffectiveness. That curve will differ for each player, and my research shows that it differs by position.
Here's a chart showing what I found when studying career length and performance by position:
<center> <table border="1"> <tbody> <tr> <th>Position</th> <th>Maturity Begin</th> <th>Peak End</th> <th>Average Years</th> <th>Average GS</th></tr> <tr> <td>QB</td> <td>5th Season</td> <td>13th Season</td> <td>5.5</td> <td>37 </td></tr><tr> <td>RB</td> <td>3rd Season</td> <td>9th Season</td> <td>4.1</td> <td>25 </td></tr><tr> <td>RCV</td> <td>2nd Season</td> <td>10th Season</td> <td>4.5</td> <td>31 </td></tr><tr> <td>OL</td> <td>2nd Season</td> <td>12th Season</td> <td>5.0</td> <td>46 </td></tr><tr> <td>P</td> <td>2nd Season</td> <td>14th Season</td> <td>7.3</td> <td>106 </td></tr><tr> <td>K</td> <td>1st Season</td> <td>16th Season</td> <td>6.5</td> <td>95 </td></tr><tr> <td>DL</td> <td>3rd Season</td> <td>10th Season</td> <td>4.8</td> <td>41 </td></tr><tr> <td>LB</td> <td>3rd Season</td> <td>10th Season</td> <td>4.5</td> <td>37 </td></tr><tr> <td>SEC</td> <td>4th Season</td> <td>11th Season</td> <td>4.6</td> <td>38 </td></tr></tbody></table></center> Needless to say, your franchise quarterback isn't going to retire just because he's in his 6th season and that's the average length of a quarterback's career. He'll know when it's time to go.
9. It's the view of your Scouts. At times you should intervene.