Recruiting House Rules
 

Does anyone have any challenging house rules for recruiting that are somewhat realistic? I want to start a dynasty with a 1* but I don't want to build them up too quickly.

I'd like to recruit based on a recruit's top 3 pitches, but can't seem to come up with a system that's consistent.

Re: Recruiting House Rules
 

You can find some here (the search function is your friend):
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...se-rules.html?
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...se-rules.html?
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...se-rules.html?
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...le-ideas.html?
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...cruiting.html?
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...scouting.html?

Re: Recruiting House Rules
 

I recently (fall 2014) tweaked some more rules to increase the difficulty, also setting coaching progression to very slow helps a ton as well. I have actually enjoyed this dynasty more than any other I have played as I am getting real joy seeing my team even get eligible for a bowl game and seeing as I am slowly building a contender.

RECRUITING RULES:
LIMITS
Leaving Seniors +2
I can only have two more players on my board at any time than I have leaving my program. If I have 15 seniors I can only have a 17 players on my board and I can only sign 17 that season as well. This will help to keep from stacking my roster to easily and flushing out the bad players. If the computer adds players to the class they will be deleted, only the players that I sign will be allowed on the team.
One Visit
I can only schedule one visit all year long. This will be a very tough decision on which recruit will be the only one who gets to visit my campus. This makes late season recruiting get very interesting when battling with a couple schools for a kid as they might jump +700 points in a single week and I do not have a good way to make up the difference.
No Scouting
I can not scout any of the prospects that are on my board. Recruiting is to easy for me because I can easily find the best of what I can get to sign with my program without any issue and get those guys on campus. To combat this I will not scout any prospects. Once a kid commits to my program I can then scout him to see what I've got, those Gems and Busts titles are now going to carry a lot more meaning and impact since I will be stuck with these kids. This does add a "kid at Christmas morning" feel to when I get the message that a kid has signed with my program because then I get to go and find out what I really just signed.

REGIONAL RESTRICTIONS
Pipelines
After playing 5 seasons I have noticed the new recruiting setup for NCAA 2014 gives you the ability to recruit Nationally very easy. In real life your pipelines and home state are very important to recruiting and few programs easily recruit nationally. To bring this game back better in line with real life I am implementing the following.
Note: Coastal/Border school defined as any school within 170 miles of the border or coast line.

Local (1*)
Can only recruit from our home state.

Close to Home (2*)
I can only recruit my home state, pipelines and states that are within a
65 mile radius of my campus. 110 miles if coastal\US border school.

Regional (3*)
I can only recruit my home state, pipelines and states that are within a
135 mile radius of my campus. 220 miles if coastal\US border school.

Regional (4*)
I can only recruit my home state, pipelines and states that are within a
265 mile radius of my campus. 440 miles if coastal\US border school.

National (5*)
I can only recruit my home state, pipelines and states that are within a
530 mile radius of my campus. 880 miles if coastal\US border school.

National (6*)
I can only recruit my home state, pipelines and states that are within a
630 mile radius of my campus. 1050 miles if coastal\US border school.

INTEREST RESTRICTIONS
In State
I can recruit any players in my schools home state.
Pipeline States
I can recruit any player from pipeline states. The player can't be higher than my team prestige unless we start out as their top school.
Regional & National States
I can only recruit players who I start off in there top 10. The player can't be higher than my team prestige unless we start out as their top school. I must be in the recruits starting Top 10 to be able to recruit them. I look at this as these are players that my coaching staff has been recruiting since their sophomore and junior year in high school. We have already identified these kids as who we want in our program and now we are just narrowing down who we are going to bring on campus.
Three Outsiders
I can only recruit players who I start off in there top 10. The player can't be higher than my team prestige unless we start out as their top school. This will allow me to try and build new pipelines but with it only being three players a year it will take multiple years to establish those pipelines.

Tools for figuring out distances
School List
Radius Tool

SLIDERS:
Heisman Offense
Human/Computer
10/60 Quarterback (drop to hum to 5 if to easy)
50/55 Pass Block
40/50 Catch
50/70 RB Ability (drop to hum to 40 if to easy)
20/80 Run Block

Heisman Defense
Human/Computer
50/95 Pass Coverage
30/30 Interception
50/100 Rush Defense
45/45 Tackling

Yearly AWR Adjustments
Another problem with this game is that human player progression is far quicker than the computer. It is not uncommon to see a human player progress +15 AWR points in the course of a season. This makes the game very easy if you do a sim/play setup like I do. To fix this I reset all returning players, who's AWR is greater than 78, back to 78 at the end of each season.

Coaching Contracts
I must complete a minimum of 50% of the length of any Head Coaching contract I sign.

Quick Cheat Sheet

Re: Recruiting House Rules
 

thanks for the input guys, but I think I just came up with some house rules that really work for me.

*Only recruit players initially interested from the start of the season
*Using 1* team prospects must have at least a "B" in "most" pitch category
* 2* team, prospect must have at least a "B" in 2 of 3 pitch categories
* 3* team, prospect must have at least a "B" in all 3 pitch categories
*Must recruit from pipelines unless a state bordering a pipeline state
*Only recruit seniors leaving + remaining roster space available

How do those look?

Re: Recruiting House Rules
 

Give them a try and see ;) It all depends on what you are looking to get out of the game. In its default state you should realistically be able to sim year to year and win National Championships 2 out of 5 years without much effort. Recruiting and human player progression is very easy in 2014 without house rules the game loses it challenge. With that said everyone is looking to get something different out of the game. Personally I want to feel ecstatic if I get to double digit wins, other people might not be happy unless they are battling for the National Title every year. Also don't be afraid to toughen them up if you see it is getting to easy.

Re: Recruiting House Rules
 

I definitely want a challenge. I'm like you. I want to struggle to be bowl eligible with bad 1* teams. I just want to create a set of rules that's easily trasferrable if I move from team to team in my dynasty.

I also want recruiting to be somewhat random for lack of a better term. I don't want to be able to pick and choose players that are the best of the best every year. I want my recruiting classes to vary from year to year.

Re: Recruiting House Rules
 

Not scouting will help this. If you scout and know that the 70 OVR HB you recruited is actually a 64 OVR, you will probably just drop him off your board and go looking for another player. Without scouting you create more variance in your classes since you will keep pumping points into "bad" recruits that you would otherwise cut loose on as soon as they are scouted.

Re: Recruiting House Rules
 

I think that the most important recruiting restriction specific to '14 (which means in addition to the others I've always used in NCAA) is to limit your recruiting tree.

For starters, I play with slowest progression (I'm only lvl 7 through 4+ seasons). Secondly, you'll REALLY want to limit the coaching tree as some of the abilities are REALLY overpowered. Here's what I do:
I only allow 2/3 points to be spent in these skills:

• opener
• closer
• royal treatment
• kitchen sink
• insta-commit

In order to get to 20 points to allow the purchase of insta-commit you need to spend 1 more point so I put it into opener or closer as they're the least OPed.

The 2 most important to limit are royal treatment and kitchen sink. If you max out kitchen sink you'll be able to pretty much sign every (not any, but every) recruit that you want.

With these limits @ 6* Michigan (in my last dynasty) there were plenty of recruits for whom I had to battle, winning and losing some. On top of this, there were even recruits that, after a couple of weeks, I knew I had no shot at and had to cut bait. If I had a maxed out tree, I'd never have to cut bait on anyone.

Ever.