trade problem?

[jbprice20]

i just started my eagles franchise last week with the vipergts (ps2) rosters. vipergts did a lot of (very good) work on his rosters and created up to approximately 40 players (i think). i added a few like deion and hollis thomas (dt for eagles). also, a lot of the cuts that were made up to when vipergts saved his rosters were included and therefore it seemed (though i didn't double check with default rosters) that there were a lot of fa's.

anyway, i'm through the fifth week of my first season and there hasn't been one trade in my franchise by ANY teams. zero. now, i have preseason games turned off but i do have weekly prep on. i've heard how having this combo should reduce the number of trades happening but that there would still be quite a few to occur if weekly prep was on. i haven't seen it.

so i'm thinking the 'trade problem' some see isn't from some magical combo of settings or injuries, i think it might be that there aren't enough fa's on the default rosters (especially enough reasonably priced ones) for the computer to fill holes with. therefore, it goes to trades to fill holes. maybe the programming logic is 1) identify problem (roster hole, cap problem) 2) look to fa list to remedy 3) if cannot fix problem through fa list, initiate trade. but since the 'trade ai' is weak (panthers trading delhomme or peppers for example which i saw when i played my 'practice' broncos 'chise with default rosters), it causes problem.

any thoughts on this? maybe a way to test this out is to load default rosters, create a bunch of players at all positions and place them in the fa pool and sim some weeks and see what happens.

[zmlbc]

Very interesting, jb...a while back I started a fantasy draft franchise just to see how that would affect the "trade problem" and sure enough, not one single trade in the first season. I attributed it to some fuzzy reason like "the computer picked all its players, so obvious it must be happy with them." The trades did start back up in the second season, but I still suspect that the "trade problem" is somehow the result of something to do with the rosters and not injuries or some magic combination of weekly prep/preseason.

Keep us posted if you get to the bottom of this.

[jbprice20]

Quote: Originally Posted by jbprice20

i just started my eagles franchise last week with the vipergts (ps2) rosters. vipergts did a lot of (very good) work on his rosters and created up to approximately 40 players (i think). i added a few like deion and hollis thomas (dt for eagles). also, a lot of the cuts that were made up to when vipergts saved his rosters were included and therefore it seemed (though i didn't double check with default rosters) that there were a lot of fa's. anyway, i'm through the fifth week of my first season and there hasn't been one trade in my franchise by ANY teams. zero. now, i have preseason games turned off but i do have weekly prep on. i've heard how having this combo should reduce the number of trades happening but that there would still be quite a few to occur if weekly prep was on. i haven't seen it. so i'm thinking the 'trade problem' some see isn't from some magical combo of settings or injuries, i think it might be that there aren't enough fa's on the default rosters (especially enough reasonably priced ones) for the computer to fill holes with. therefore, it goes to trades to fill holes. maybe the programming logic is 1) identify problem (roster hole, cap problem) 2) look to fa list to remedy 3) if cannot fix problem through fa list, initiate trade. but since the 'trade ai' is weak (panthers trading delhomme or peppers for example which i saw when i played my 'practice' broncos 'chise with default rosters), it causes problem. any thoughts on this? maybe a way to test this out is to load default rosters, create a bunch of players at all positions and place them in the fa pool and sim some weeks and see what happens.

update: i am through week 8 i believe and i have had two trades: strahan to the bills for moulds and mike anderson to the saints for a de.

the first trade does seem fishy but the giants had serious injuries to both starting wr and a season ending injury (collapsed lung) to shockey. not sure if the bills would part with moulds, especially for an aging de, but at least there was some logic behind the move.

the second trade seemed reasonalbe though a little odd.

there has been a couple dozen fa signings in my franchise.

i haven't had the time to run my 'experiment' yet of flooding the default roster fa list with created players at different positions and at different ratings but for all those having 'trade problems', you might want to try it. what do you have to lose? if it doesn't work, you just have a larger pool of fa's that'll just sit there. if it does work, well, that's good. lol.