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In real life a $150M payroll is not considered high, but within the economics of 4040 Baseball it is. And its practical and psychological effects amount to a curse worth avoiding.
More on how a $150M payroll can work against your team’s success
Fixes:
- Trades With SIM Teams: In some cases a SIM team would incorrectly decline a proposal with the message "This offer would leave us with too few [X]". SIM Teams now properly calculate the effects of a trade on their roster.
Refinements:
- Scouting Director's Report (SDR): Added a section to the SDR labeled "Active Over-development". This displays all the players in your system who are currently over-developing (exceeding projections). Prior to this there was no way to know if your own players were actively over-developing.
Fixes:
- Free Agent Signing Dates: An issue occurred where free agents were not being assigned signing dates, allowing them to be acquired by SIM teams before they should have been. This has been fixed and free agents who were wrongly signed have been returned to the market.
- Player Extension Demands: Players over the age of 30 were sometimes requesting extensions that took them to ages of 40+, with minimum acceptable lengths taking them into their late 30s. Affected players are now demanding shorter contracts with a lower acceptable minimum length.
- Out-sized Payroll and Extensions: Teams with out-sized payrolls for the first non-sequential year were being penalized on extension demands during the pre-season. For teams in pre-season, who are not coming off an out-sized payroll season, they are no longer penalized on extensions during pre-season. They will still be penalized on the free-agent market. And once the season begins they will be penalized on extensions if still carrying an out-sized payroll.
Rewritten:
- Scouting Director's Report (SDR): The SDR previously only identified candidates for Player Over-Development, making it yet another place to find opportunities to develop your farm system. The new SDR consolidates all opportunities into a single report, while also adding a new opportunity.
- Upgrading Players: Any players in your minor leagues who are eligible for purchased upgrades are now listed in the report.
- Adding Player Positions: Any players in your minor leagues who are eligible to add playable positions are now listed in the report.
- Improving Veteran/Journeyman Players: Any players in your minors who qualify for improvements are now listed in the report.
- !!NEW FEATURE!! International Free Agents: Ever wonder what happens after a player lingers in free-agency and eventually retires? Well, many of them join international teams where their mediocre careers take a turn into the stuff of legend. Your scouting team has been hard at work identifying some players whose inexpensive contracts are available for purchase. You may or may not find studs, but they give you options.
- !!UPDATED!! Over-developing Players: The original implementation created an ethical stumbling block--if you know a player on another team is going to over-develop, is it fair to trade for that player without the other team knowing? Now the players on your report will only over-develop if YOU acquire them. Otherwise, they stay as-is. The number of players in this category has also been halved (from 20 to 10) to cut down on the number of potential misses.
Feature:
- Scouting Director's Report (SDR): It was virtually impossible to spot candidates for Player Over-Development, and many potentially exceptional players went unidentified and eventually retired. This report helps each team identify some of those players. More on the Scouting Director's Report
Fixes:
- Free Agent Signings: Running a cycle of free agenct signings resulted in individual free agents drifting between teams with no regard for winning bids. Players would sign with team A, then minutes later sign with team B, and so forth. In most cases the players were also being awarded to the wrong teams after losing the bidding war. The cause was a bug in the code that was losing track of which players had already been signed, and with whom. This has been fixed.
Rewritten:
- Player Contract and Extension Requests: These were previously calculated on the fly, meaning the processing was slow and the results could fluctuate hour-to-hour based on market changes. In turn that could cause confusion as to what a player is requesting for a contract or extension. This has been rewritten for improved performance, stability, and predictability.
- SIM Team Roster Management: SIM team rosters have suffered from a number of issues, including player imbalances at positions, poorly constructed lineups and rotations, reckless releasing of players with high-dollar buyouts, etc. The SIM roster planning has been completely rewritten from the ground up. This should make SIM teams more reliable and more stable when it comes to roster management.
- SIM Team Free-Agent Contracts: SIM teams had been doubling up on FA signings and often drastically overpaying for players who wound up on their benches or in the minors. This functionality has been fully rewritten from the ground up.
Refinements:
- Added Payroll Tier for Free Agency: Free Agent bids were grouped into two tiers: “Right-sized” payrolls (those payrolls within $135M), and “Out-sized” payrolls (those above $135M). Bids from teams with Right-Sized payrolls would get priority consideration from free agents. A third tier has been added: “Below Lux-tax” payrolls. The Below Lux-tax group now gets top priority, followed by Right-sized, followed by Out-sized. More on payroll tiers and free agents.
- Performance and Player Value: SIM teams now factor a player's career performance into their overall value of the player. This will impact extensions, free-agent strategies, and trades.
- Trade Completion during Game Cycles: It was possible for a trade to be completed in the middle of game cycles, potentially leaving a team short-handed for games. Trades are now blocked from being completed during game cycles.
- Pitch Counts: Pitch count limitations placed on pitchers are now cleared at the end of each season.
- Player Upgrades, Improvements, and Over-Development: Further increased the likelihood for Upgrades, Improvements, and Over-Development of hitters.
- Injuries: Injuries over the past couple of seasons seemed to be unrealistically heavy for players with higher injury risk. The algorithm has been refined to include a player's injury history when calculating the chance of a new injury. Some players still remain more injury prone than others, but injuries are now averaged over multiple seasons, rather than season-by-season.
Fixes:
- Pitch Counts: If a team set a pitch count limitation for a pitcher, that setting would stick with the pitcher after being traded or released. The proper behavior is that it should be cleared. Fixed.
- SIM Teams and Lengthy Contracts: SIM teams had been signing / extending players well beyond age 35. Fixed.
New:
- Diagnostics: Added new diagnostics to help identify causes and fixes for slow running code.
Refinements:
- Player Upgrades, Improvements, and Over-Development: Increased the likelihood for Upgrades, Improvements, and Over-Development of hitters.
- Player Upgrades: So-called “Lottery Tickets” may now improve after being traded to SIM teams.
- Offensive Prospects: Mid-tier offensive prospects have been generating at a low level. We’ve been seeing very few solid offensive prospects and mostly weak prospects. Increased the likelihood of more mid-tier offensive prospects--meaning more prospects with a higher floor.
Fixes:
- Player Improvements: Player Improvements were showing an inaccurate date for completion after being purchased. Fixed.
- Player Improvements: A bug was causing off-season Player Improvements to fail. Fixed.
- Player Injuries: A bug was causing very few injuries to occur after the first half of the season. Fixed.
- Releasing Players: At the end of the season it was possible to release players who were unprotected from the End-of-Year (EOY) draft, which would have prevented them from being drafted. It is now impossible to release players who were left unprotected until after the EOY draft is complete.
Features:
- 6-man Rotation: It is now possible to use a six man rotation. This may come in handy when you need to re-arrange your rotation, or when you want to give starters extra rest.
- Upgrades for Experienced Players: It is now possible to unlock additional performance in younger, unproven or journeyman players. Learn more: https://4040-docs.com/player-improvements
- Player Over-Development: In some cases players will continue to develop beyond their potential ratings. Learn more about player over-development.
Refinements:
- Player Upgrades: Player upgrades were using the same range of points no matter the rating. The number of rating points for a player upgrade now differs based on which rating is selected. (ex: CH might be 3-6, while PH might be 7-18).
- Human-Trades and Players Preferring Free-Agency: Players who prefer to go to free-agency rather than sign an extension could be traded between human teams. In those cases there was a 50% chance the player would forego free-agency to extend with the new team. That chance has been increased to 60%.
Fixes:
- Adding New Positions to Left-handed Throwing Prospects: It was possible for left-handed throwing prospects to add positions normally reserved for right-handed throwers (C, 2B, 3B, SS). This has been corrected, and any LH throwers who had one of those positions added to them has been changed to a RH thrower.
Features:
- Add New Positions to Prospects: It is now possible to add new positions to minor league prospects during their development period. Their quality at new positions is determined by their primary position and its rating. So not every player can play every position well. You can find the feature implemented in the player profile page. It costs $5M in cash for each added position.
Refinements:
- Pitcher Overuse & Injuries: Overused pitchers were suffering excessive, severe injuries. Dialed the severity back so that overused pitchers, while still highly prone to injuries, won’t suffer season-ending injuries as frequently.
- Injuries Applied to Ratings: Rather than every aspect of a player’s game being negatively affected by every injury, each injury now targets one or more specific ratings. Examples: A Viral Illness will affect all ratings, while a Strained forearm will affect only Arm Strength, and Pitch Ratings.
- All existing injuries have been removed from players to start the new season.
Fixes:
- Compounding Injuries: Because we run five days of games each cycle, some players were getting injured on day one, then being played on day two, while still injured from day one. Playing injured only increases the risk of injury, and some of these players were suffering compounding injuries, leading to an unrealistic 2 to 3 injuries per cycle of games, and leaving them severely injured. This has been adjusted to prevent compounding injuries within a cycle of games.
- SIM Trades & Backup Players: SIM GMs were increasingly rejecting trades because the quality of a player was found to be unacceptable. This targeted backup-quality players, oftentimes ones a SIM team was in need of. Refactored this a bit to (hopefully) make those players more acceptable to SIM GMs.