Asunto: Free agents

Is there a reason why teams cannot sign free agent players?

Because there are no free agents in the game. A fired player has been stripped from his skills, in stead of placed as free agent on the TL

yes, but why?

Because it was never implemented...

then my question is if it is in the plans to do so

Only the devs know...

It would be a very good money sink and an excellent way to normalize inflation

That's actually a fantastic thought about money sink. Since free agent money doesn't get recirculated.

It would also solve the problem of good players trapped on bot teams, leading to more money sink.

hopefully bot teams wont matter once we have million people playing sokker:)

no idea how to solve bot team problem well using software. maybe automatically putting players on TL after they get called up to NT?

An inactive team, becoming a bot team should do 4 things in this order:

1) Place all players as free agents on TL for 1€
2) Send message into pressroom, announcing the sale of all players from team ''x'', because of inactivity, so we all know there are some players for sale who might get lost after the selling period.
3) Reset all things to start-up team mode (3100 places stadium, basic trainers, fan base reduced to 100)
4) Generate 22 players from the age of 16 to 21 and give them all pace training.

When the bot team becomes human again, place all these players for sale as free agents for the price of 1€
Replace these players with 22 players from the age of 16 to 21.

The increase of players on the market, as well as the fact that lots of players will be free agents, will lead to much more stability on the TL.

Sounds good. It'll also push bot teams towards the bottom, but like in America we'd barely have enough teams to field our 3 A-leagues. Right now there are numerous bot teams with decent players up there.

Honestly, I think that botteams with different levels could be a solution for smaller countries.
If you have different levels of botteams, that will make for higher sponsor income when playing in the higher leagues.
Also it pushes managers to always play for the best results in stead of letting them cruise across the league with trainees, playing for both the A-league title + the cup...

2) Send message into pressroom, announcing the sale of all players from team ''x'', because of inactivity, so we all know there are some players for sale who might get lost after the selling period.

Can't wait for 50 daily messages in pressroom about players from teams that registered 50 days ago and stopped playing immediately


3) Reset all things to start-up team mode (3100 places stadium, basic trainers, fan base reduced to 100)

Let's hurt (again) sponsorship / tickets in small countries again by resetting bots fan base to 200


4) Generate 22 players from the age of 16 to 21 and give them all pace training.

When the bot team becomes human again, place all these players for sale as free agents for the price of 1€
Replace these players with 22 players from the age of 16 to 21.

The increase of players on the market, as well as the fact that lots of players will be free agents, will lead to much more stability on the TL.

No, it will be exactly opposite of stability. There is a fixed amount of users that are interested in buying such players (and it's not a big number), and you want to increase the amount of players, which will dilute the interest in such players... And relatively small interest in such players causes the prices to be so wild, where sometimes nice youths go extremely cheap and sometimes similar ones go for much more.

Also it's not easy to write a good algorithm for generating young players, if you generate them too good then you can break youth transfer market, if you make them too weak then it doesn't really change anything, just a hoard of worthless players. And remember that every $ going into price of youth generated for bot / new team is a $ that won't go into youths generated normally from youth schools... possibly making youth schools completely unprofitable.

So you recon there is not too much money in the game and all goes well?
Also...have you looked for a player on TL recently? It's as dead as the Sahara! Nothing but sand...worthless players...
And players who are good enough go for trillions.

The increase of players on the market, as well as the fact that lots of players will be free agents, will lead to much more stability on the TL.

No, it will be exactly opposite of stability.

I don't believe this! People already complain about the little amount of youth players! This will all work out for the better, especially in small countries, as a multiplier of young available players for the U21 team!
I agree that there has to be a balance for bad vs good players. I don't say ALL those players needs to be awesome! But some might...hot prospects, potential players, decent players, average players, bad players, worthless players...

But you cannot deny there are too few youth players available now, do you?
Waiting for a decent player on TL can take ages these days.
And the majority of pulled youth players are sacked immediately.


Can't wait for 50 daily messages in pressroom about players from teams that registered 50 days ago and stopped playing immediately

It goes without saying this message doesn't need to be repeated 50 times a day... Most of those teams, turning bots, are done simultaniously, by admins...
Once their work is done, they can close off with a button, sending an auto-message into the sokker world within the pressroom.
1 time is enough.


Let's hurt (again) sponsorship / tickets in small countries again by resetting bots fan base to 200

Well, I suggested different levels of bot teams, to counter this, after I wrote this.
At least I'm trying to think about a solution for this...

I agree with Mikoos on #2 and #3. These things aren't really causing problems. The concept of free agency is decent but we don't need more changes than necessary.

#4 - I don't think there is a problem with new team player population now. The real problem for new players is their stadium is trash and they are in a league where income is trash. So yeah, there's too much money in sokker...but it's not in newer clubs like mine. It's in the old clubs. I would recommend improving the starting stadium for new players. Give them an extra 3000 seats on the south side by default.

I feel like this default stadium improvement, as well (separately) creating a network of users to be like a 'helper' team to help new players that ask for it would be beneficial to population growth in game.

Unlike other soccer managers, it IS generally possible to be successful to some extent pretty quickly in this game if you have some basic help.

So you recon there is not too much money in the game and all goes well?
Also...have you looked for a player on TL recently? It's as dead as the Sahara! Nothing but sand...worthless players...
And players who are good enough go for trillions.

I don't know how much money there is in the game, but I know how prices change. Average price on market went down in this and previous season, back to the levels from season ~61.
Here is a chart, Smooth line is the average of last 13 weeks:


I observe transfer market every week, of course not all players, I usually buy 16-18yo defs/mids. I bought a player for training in previous week and also in the week before that. I almost exclusively buy cheap youths that will be worth some millions after some training (only exception was the one I bought last week, that doubled my money spend on transfer market :P), maybe they are not "good enough" for you.

Number of youth players on market doesn't change that much, on the next chart you can see (from top):
- number of U21 players on market weekly
- number of fresh from YS U21 players weekly
- number of sold U21 players weekly
- number of sold fresh from YS U21 player weekly
Smooth lines are averages of the last 13 weeks.


Of course skills of youths at the same age dropped in last few seasons due to the shortened season, but it doesn't mean that more players are worthless, the level of what is a "worthless" player dropped as well.

I don't believe this! People already complain about the little amount of youth players!

There is enough youth players for everyone interested in buying them. The reality is that not many teams are interested in buying such players for training, there are nice players that are sold cheaply because there is not enough interest, and on top of that most users interested in players don't come to the end of the auction... often leaving the price at laughably low levels.

This will all work out for the better, especially in small countries, as a multiplier of young available players for the U21 team!

I can see that it could help small countries NTs, but I don't think it would be a big change... Small countries usually don't get that much new users registered anyway.

I agree that there has to be a balance for bad vs good players. I don't say ALL those players needs to be awesome! But some might...hot prospects, potential players, decent players, average players, bad players, worthless players...

If you propose an exact algorithm on how these players are going to be generated then we could talk about consequences of this algorithm for market, for existing teams and their youth school income, for new users and how fair / unfair it would be across them... but I think it's pointless because it won't get implemented anyway :P

But you cannot deny there are too few youth players available now, do you? - Yes I can :)
Waiting for a decent player on TL can take ages these days. - There are great players every week, just need to spend money on them. Or you can go for a bit worse players that are cheaper.

And the majority of pulled youth players are sacked immediately.

That's how it always was, that's how it is and that's how it will always be. ~40-50 youths come to youth school every season, but you only need avg ~1 youth / season to replace players going out of training. That's how the game is designed, all the proposed changes about youth school won't change it, it doesn't matter how many "+1" there will be in that other topic about YS. If you make more youths coming every week, if you make them better or always 16yo or whatever - it doesn't really matter, it would just raise the threshold at which they will be eventually sacked, because there is a limit on how many can be trained in adult teams.


It goes without saying this message doesn't need to be repeated 50 times a day... Most of those teams, turning bots, are done simultaniously, by admins...
Once their work is done, they can close off with a button, sending an auto-message into the sokker world within the pressroom.
1 time is enough.

That's a lot of programming effort for a little effect

Well, I suggested different levels of bot teams, to counter this, after I wrote this.
At least I'm trying to think about a solution for this...

Missed that.
Solution for what? Problems that you create with your ideas? :P