All League Members Please Read (League File, Instructions, Initial Rules, Etc.)

[Ben E Lou]

WEB SITE

Welcome To The FOWL (Front Office Weekday League)

As has been mentioned, it's rather spartan. If anyone wants to help with prettying it up, just let me know. I'll be adding current-season leaders and records (single game, single season, and career) to the stats section over the next week or two.

LEAGUE FILES
They can be found at the web site link. The direct link will be posted in every "sim complete" thread as well. There are three files there right now.

1. fowl_initialfile.zip contains everything you need to get started. I'll try to update it every year with the stats file for new installations and/or new owners.

2. fowl_solevisionboxlogs.zip contains the Box Scores, Game Logs, and Solevision files pre-2020. I'm not sure anyone will want this file, but I thought I'd at least make it available. This file is *not* essential. You really only need it if you want to see box scores, game logs, or Solevision from the pre-human era.

3. FOFRosterFOWL2020.csv contains all data on current rookies, and can be used with Draft Analyzer.

Once we start simming, the current league file will be placed in that folder on gamedays, named with the date (fowl_mmddyy.zip). You'll just need to go into the folder and sort by date to grab the latest and greatest (or grab the file from the sim complete thread).

PASSWORDS
I will be PMing team and uploader passwords to people who have checked into the owner thread, starting in a bit.

HOW TO SET UP THE LEAGUE
1. Cut a hole in a box.
2. Put yo' junk in tha...

Oh, sorry.

1. Unzip fowl_initialfile.zip into your "Leagues" folder.
2. Start a new MP game as a Participant with your team.
3. VERY IMPORTANT: The file name is case-sensitive in the uploader, so you need to use this league name EXACTLY as it appears here (all lower case): 0000fowl
4. Open up 0000fowl as a Participant in FOF.
5. Enter the team password that I sent you.

From there, you can start working on your massive FA2:1 export.

NEXT WEEK'S SCHEDULE

We will start on this Monday, November 3rd at 12:30pm, with FA2:1. We'll sim one stage a day. I'm not setting a full schedule just yet, because it's a pretty big unknown exactly how long it will take for us to get our rosters filled out. I'm virtually certain we'll need at least four stages, but beyond that, let's play it by ear. I could see us needing to run as few as four FA2 stages. But I can also see us needing to run all five, plus sign guys in the TC stage, plus run one or two midweeks before preseason. Let's just be flexible here. I want to make sure we have 32 owners engaged and with full rosters before we start simming games. I think we'll have a good idea by late next week where things stand. At that point, I'll put a full season schedule together and post it.

REMINDER OF RULES FOR FA2:1, FA2:2, FA2:3

• The maximum bonus that you may offer to any player is $40,000,000.
• The maximum salary that you may offer to any player in any one year is $25,000,000.
• Players who are in year 1-3 must be offered a deal of at least three years.
• Note that the three rules above are only meant to apply for FA2:1, FA2:2, and FA2:3, but if for some bizarre reason good players slip through the cracks after that, the rules may be extended for the remainder of FA2.
• Please ask if you think you don't understand any of the three rules above, either what they're meant to say, or why they are in place. All three are the direct results of the ECFL initial FA experience, and I realize that only 8 people were a part of that, so the reasons for them probably aren't obvious to everyone.

PARTICIPATION
This league is running quite a bit faster than even the fastest going MP leagues right now, so know that you're not expected to turn in an export every single day. (Heck, I don't turn in exports every stage for IHOF, which only sims two games a week...) However, I do expect the following:

• If you don't export for the first stage, I'll probably just boot you right then and there. We already have two people on a waiting list. The first stage is just too critical to miss. There may never be another stage in FOF MP history as important as the FOWL's first free agency stage.
• If it looks like you're asleep at the wheel (letting multiple good players hit free agency without even offering them contracts, getting auto-picked multiple times in the draft, etc.), I'll try to contact you to see what's up, but if I sense that you're hurting the competitive balance, I'll have to find someone else to run your team, or put it on AI control.
  
• Overall, the premise of this league is "skip the boring stuff." So really, if you like FOF MP and have the time to pay attention, this should work very well. If you just lost in Week 14 to drop to 6-7 and are eliminated from the playoffs, you'll be drafting just a little over two weeks later, and into the next regular season a week after that.
  

[Ben E Lou]

Oh..and don't forget to take this into account when making your FA offers: there is *NO* Franchise Tag in this league, so anyone you sign to a one-year deal will be a FA next year.

[Coffee Warlord]

On monday, you mean the stage RUNS at 12:30, correct? And is that eastern, I'm assuming?

[Ben E Lou]

Yes and yes.

[direct.entropy]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

• Overall, the premise of this league is "skip the boring stuff." So really, if you like FOF MP and have the time to pay attention, this should work very well. If you just lost in Week 14 to drop to 6-7 and are eliminated from the playoffs, you'll be drafting just a little over two weeks later, and into the next regular season a week after that.
  

Right... AWESOME.

[Ben E Lou]

One more little note here. The PMs you are receiving contain three info bits: your user name and password for the uploader, and your in-game password. That's what these mean:

UPLOADUSER

UPLOADPASS

GAMEPASS

[PackerFanatic]

Question - my username and pass ran together - is my username just my FOFC name?

[Ben E Lou]

No. You have a 2-digit number after your username.

[PackerFanatic]

Perfect - thanks

[Tasan]

Its a shame we can't turn injuries off and play at FOOL speed ;- )

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Tasan

Its a shame we can't turn injuries off and play at FOOL speed ;- )

You haven't checked in, but I presume by your posting here that you're with us?

[Tasan]

Okay, I'm super-extra rusty on the oddball FOF way of doing mulitplayer. I've downloaded and unzipped fowl_initialfile.zip into the /leagues directory of the FOF directory. I started FOF and hit the multiplayer head thingy, and then selected the load icon. I clicked the participant button and it says there aren't any multiplayer games available. What am I doing wrong?

[Tasan]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

You haven't checked in, but I presume by your posting here that you're with us?

Yeah I did, see the other thread, its in there. Page two I believe.

*edit my checkin is on the first page, rather

"New Orleans in the hizzy

Or whatever"

[Tasan]

Originally Posted by Tasan

Okay, I'm super-extra rusty on the oddball FOF way of doing mulitplayer. I've downloaded and unzipped fowl_initialfile.zip into the /leagues directory of the FOF directory. I started FOF and hit the multiplayer head thingy, and then selected the load icon. I clicked the participant button and it says there aren't any multiplayer games available. What am I doing wrong?

Okay big nevermind. I figured it out finally.

Why oh why does this have to be so odd to do? Oh well, I still love this game.

[Cringer]

Someone have NFL city and nickname files?

[SegRat]

I think I need the same thing as Cringer .fcy and .fni files?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Tasan

Yeah I did, see the other thread, its in there. Page two I believe.

*edit my checkin is on the first page, rather

"New Orleans in the hizzy

Or whatever"

My fault. I had you and tarcone confused...

[Ben E Lou]

OK. I've added a zip with cities, logos, and in-game banners to the download folder. If you don't use batch files and want this to be your primary league, just unzip to the main game folder (C:\Program Files\Solecismic Software\Front Office Football 2007 in xp), and the banners will go into the "Pictures" folder, and the city files will go into "universe" automatically. If you use batch files, I trust you already know what to do with these anyway.

[direct.entropy]

• The maximum bonus that you may offer to any player is $46,990,000.

But I can only offer 46450000. This seems to be a problem. Did I earn less than TBY?

And my max salary is 27870000. Hmmmm

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by direct.entropy

• The maximum bonus that you may offer to any player is $46,990,000.

But I can only offer 46450000. This seems to be a problem. Did I earn less than TBY?

And my max salary is 27870000. Hmmmm

Very strange, and ugh.

No. TB earned $22.51M. KC earned $38.03M. The only thing I can think there is that somewhere in this patch change....

Minor recalculation of extra revenue due to luxury and suite sales.

...something also changed with max offers. Since you're *really* close in terms of offer amount, I'm goign to change it, but if anyone has already exported with a 46.99/27.87, let's just roll with it. It may mean you need to adjust a strtegy and play a little "small ball" (or hope someone doesn't go all-in on the guy you've targeted with an early export.) Is that ok? I'll change it now (after I also check Denver, the other team that is fairly close to TB in profit earned last season.)

[direct.entropy]

Shouldn't end up being a large difference... a player with two max offers would NEVER choose to come to Kansas City anyways.

But I guess it matters a little more in staff hiring, oh well... nothing I can change now. Except maybe win a lot more than the AI did.

EDIT in reply to the post below: does this mean we have to reexport stuff?

[Ben E Lou]

I've found another team that was also close to TB, but that can only offer like $4M less. I *HATE* to do this, but we really need to lower the maxbonus and maxsal to numbers that I'm reasonably certain everyone is allowed to offer. I'm going with round numbers:

$40M maxbonus
$25M maxsalary

I'm VERY sorry for the confusion.

[Ben E Lou]

(Working on the web stuff, but need to leave for a bit. Use IE on it for now, until I get it Firefox-ready again.)

[Ben E Lou]

...or just use this for now.

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