How do franchise budgets work this year?

[kiddlex]

Did I see this correctly in the game that you can increase your franchise weekly budget with a stubs micro transaction purchase? It appeared that way, however the servers being down don't allow me to go down that rabbit hole. I would never spend real money on this, but that would be an interesting direction and possible explanation for the change in how budgets are handled.

[ktd1976]

Quote: Originally Posted by SwedishTouch76

Thanks. Seems straightforward. This would be after one season is already played though? Or could I look at this before Game 1 Season 1 and figure this out.

Any time. Go to Free agents, and pick a player. at the bottom of the screen, you will see a max offer (weekly) multiply this by 26, and you will (roughly) have the amount you can spend for the year.

Quote: Originally Posted by BigOscar

Does make you question whether anyone actually play tested this mode if they didn't notice that it's a bit of an oversight to not let us know how much of our annual budget signing a player will take up. They had it last year and it wasn't exactly a complex thing, but by adding the weekly budget they for some reason decided to remove the annual budget, rather than just have us press a button to switch between the two. I guess we will have to get the calculators out for the rest of the year, unless they decide to actually fix it, but I'm not holding my breath

I think it is working exactly as it is meant. They didn't "remove" yearly budget, as much as the game no longer deals in that. This way, depending on your success and cash flow, your "yearly budget" can increase (or decrease) DURING the year, instead of being a static set amount. Think of it like this, a team is having success, and in a pennant race. The owner then allows you to spend a little more to get that player to put you over the top. As opposed to having a set budget that can't be crossed.

Quote: Originally Posted by JayD

but what does max offer mean?

Max offer is the maximum you can offer a player. Basically, it is your remaining budget.

[disk]

I like the idea of weekly budget as this will certainly help with mid season trades, I honestly think they just missed this in their testing of franchise mode. It would make sense to show total budget because that is how player salaries are still handled, so unless they switch player signings to weekly average I see a fix coming in a patch (hopefully). I noticed when simulating a RTTS player to get a handle on the new features that when signing a contract you see total budget similar to 15 franchise mode.

[BigOscar]

Quote: Originally Posted by ktd1976

I think it is working exactly as it is meant. They didn't "remove" yearly budget, as much as the game no longer deals in that. This way, depending on your success and cash flow, your "yearly budget" can increase (or decrease) DURING the year, instead of being a static set amount. Think of it like this, a team is having success, and in a pennant race. The owner then allows you to spend a little more to get that player to put you over the top. As opposed to having a set budget that can't be crossed. .

Yeah, that's fine mid way through as season and makes sense in that situation, but is ridiculous at the end of a season. You give people annual contracts, you don't deal in weekly budgets when signing people in the off season. No idea why we can't just flick between both, it would make a whole lot more sense.

[ktd1976]

Quote: Originally Posted by disk

I like the idea of weekly budget as this will certainly help with mid season trades, I honestly think they just missed this in their testing of franchise mode. It would make sense to show total budget because that is how player salaries are still handled, so unless they switch player signings to weekly average I see a fix coming in a patch (hopefully). I noticed when simulating a RTTS player to get a handle on the new features that when signing a contract you see total budget similar to 15 franchise mode.

When you sign a free agent, it shows BOTH the weekly average, and the total contract amount.

[sink4ever]

Ok, I did one sim for one year with 3 teams to see if I could figure out this budget stuff. I chose Dodgers (high payroll), Royals (mid payroll), and Padres (low payroll).

In the Franchise select screen it shows you the team budgets (all following numbers are in millions).

Dodgers: 174.5
Padres: 68.5
Royals: 113

After starting the franchise I looked at the salary expenses.

Dodgers: 142.4 Players + 12.96 Coaches + 8.79 Scouts = 164.15 total salaries
Padres: 43.8 Players + 7.5 Coaches + 6.95 Scouts = 58.5 total salaries
Royals: 89.4 Players + 6.24 Coaches + 6.93 Scouts = 102.57 total salaries

So each team starts with a budget roughly 10 million greater than total salary expenditures. However, that doesn't necessarily correspond to how much you can offer if you want to sign someone. This seems to be driven more by Cash Flow. Cash Flow of course is just anticipated revenue from all sources minus all expenditures. For the sake of simplicity I didn't use sponsorships for any teams.

At the beginning of Spring Training, the three teams showed the following:

Dodgers: -.1 Cash Flow and .181 Max Offer
Padres: .948 Cash Flow and 1.14 Max Offer
Royals: .599 Cash Flow and .791 Max Offer

For the most part, it looks like the difference between Cash Flow and Max Offer is the 5 million in the bank. It's probably worth noting that these numbers changed after ending Spring Training, I don't know if performance in Spring Training has some kind of impact on anticipated revenue.

Based on Cash Flow alone, here's the available funds for each team:

Dodgers: -2.6 million
Padres: 24.6 million
Royals: 15.6 million

So, the main takeaway here is that the funds available to sign people based on Cash Flow is very different than what you would expect based on the difference between total budget and current salaries. For the Dodgers, part of the reason they're in the negative is because of anticipated costs of $770K/wk for Revenue Sharing and $62K/wk for Competitive Balance Tax. Part of the reason the Padres are so much higher is probably because they project to receive $650K/wk in Revenue Sharing. The Royals only anticipate $40K/wk in Revenue Sharing so the 15 million based on cash flow is pretty much equal to the amount of unspent funds (10 million) plus what is in the bank (5 million).


I'll stop here for now and then pick up with the mid-season data. In the interest of full disclosure I am fairly sick and might not be thinking clearly, so please feel free to point out anything that doesn't look right. I think for the most part people (like ktd1976) have figured it out how it all works, but I just thought it would be an interesting exercise to walk through it all.

[sink4ever]

Mid-Season (7/1/17)

Okay, now let's pick up at mid-season. First, here are the records for our three teams:

Dodgers: 55-28
Padres: 29-52
Royals: 43-37

I haven't made any changes to the roster, coaching staff, or scouts, so the total salaries remain the same. The Dodgers are paying the same in Competitive Balance Tax but their Revenue Sharing has increased for some reason to 860K/wk. The Padres are getting more via Revenue Sharing, up to 712K/wk. The Royals are even closer to break-even, they're getting 10K/wk.

The Cash Flow is now positive for all three teams, the Dodgers probably helped by their strong start. I guess the Padres were predicted to be bad so their actual poor record hasn't had much of an effect on their revenue. Because there's been positive Cash Flow, the amounts in the Bank have increased:

Dodgers: 8.52 in Bank, .36 Cash Flow, .686 Max Offer
Padres: 17.23 in Bank, .973 Cash Flow, 1.63 Max Offer
Royals: 13.47 in Bank, .837 Cash Flow, 1.35 Max Offer

Again, the difference between the Cash Flow and Max Offer is roughly the same as the amount in the bank if you divide it out by 26 weeks. For example, the Dodgers Cash Flow for 26 weeks is 9.36 (.36*26) and the Max Offer is 17.836 (.686*26). The difference of 8.476 is very close to the amount in the bank.

All three teams now have significantly more to spend thanks to past Cash Flow (accumulated in Bank) and future expected Cash Flow.

I simmed to the very end of the season and noted Cash Flow and whatnot, but these numbers are somewhat meaningless at this point since you're not signing anyone in October. I will note that the Dodgers ended with 14.32 in the Bank, the Padres with 30.92, and the Royals with 25.01.



Off-Season

This is where it really starts to get tricky and I want to do some more sims to really dive into it.

For the sake of simplicity, I'm just going to walk through one team. The Royals begin the offseason with a total of 56.04 total salaries (players + coaches + scouts). The Bank is back down to 5, the Cash Flow is 3.07, and the Max Offer is 3.26. Again, the difference between the Cash Flow and Max Offer is the amount in the Bank.

Based on this info, I'd expect you could sign players to contracts worth a total of 80.1 (3.07*26) to zero out Cash Flow or a total of 85.1 (3.26*26) if you wanted to use up your Bank funds as well. I signed a few players to huge contracts and verified that this was correct.

So while the game doesn't show you the total budget, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure it out based on what is known. For the Royals, we know there's salary of 56.04 and there's room to spend another 80.1 (if we want to break even) so the budget to begin 2017 is 136.14. This is an increase of 23.14. Using the same process, I show that the Dodgers' budget increased 9.45 to 183.95 and the Padres budget increased by 30.05 to 98.55.

It's somewhat interesting that the budget increases are not all that different than what was in the bank at the end of the 2016 season. Coincidence? Quite possibly, there's a lot more testing to be done.

My next goal is to simulate several seasons. This is only one small sim so not much can be gleaned from it, but based on this one result I think it's worth investigating whether teams' salaries increase too quickly.

[fightingirish595]

Very frustrating system to this point. I'm being told I can't afford a player when my cash flow after the signing is 1.5 mil. Even with pending arbitration players that might not be included in the cash flow, I'm pretty sure I should be able to afford the player. I just don't understand. I'm the Yankees and it maxes my payroll out at about 160 after I won the World Series.