"House Arrest" Rules For FOF2K4

[Ben E Lou]

At any rate, after 20+ years in my initial 5.1b career with no real restrictions other than Empty Cupboard rules, I've reached a point of dominating the league, having gone to the NFC Championship Game 9 out of the last 10 seasons, totaling 12 wins or more for a dozen seasons in a row, and 4 championships in the last 6 seasons.

Time for a greater challenge.

Back in the day, QuikSand originated the "House Arrest" rules for FOF2K1, taking the Colorado Black Squirrels to glory. Later, I slightly modified the rules and used the Austin Plainsmen. I don't recall anyone else using these rules, but I may be mistaken. At any rate, looking over the House Arrest rules, several of the restrictions that we used were specifically related to particular quirks and exploits in FOF2K1. I'm going to play one or two more seasons of my original career, then begin a new career with very strict house rules. Here's what I'm thinking so far.

BEGINNING: Empty Cupboard fictional league. Sim through 2004, cut all players on my team, start Empty Cupboard in 2005.

TICKET PRICES: Price comparison may at no time exceed prices of Tennessee and Carolina.

STAFF: No hiring new staff until contracts run out on old staff.

RENEGOTIATIONS: Cap outs only. No extensions or other contract restructuring. If he's overpaid, I either have to suck it up, or cut him. If I want to keep a guy around, I have to sign him on the open market.

FRANCHISE TAG: A player may be given the franchise tag only once in his career. After that, I'd better hope he's still willing to sign with me on the open market.

DRAFTING: This is where I haven't defined a house rule yet, but I probably need to, specifically for drafting QB's. Some years, things are fine, but every few years there'll inevitably be a draft where multiple solid-looking QB's rated in the 50-60 range drop down into the 5th, 6th, and 7th rounds. I'd love to hear suggestions, but for now my thought is some sort of "cap" on how good of a QB I can draft in each round. In other words:

Round 1: If his future potential is 70 or better, I must trade up into the Top 5 picks to draft him if I want him.
Round 2: Future potential must be <55
Round 3: Future potential must be <50
Rounds 4 and beyond: Future potential must be <45

RESTRICTED FREE AGENCY: If I want to re-sign one of my RFA's, I must do it in the very first week of the 20-step process.

20-STEP PROCESS: With the relatively low number of good FA's, and the fact that the AI teams pursue the guys they need pretty well, I'm thinking nothing is needed here with 5.1b, especially considering the other rules in place. Thoughts?

8-STEP PROCESS: All offers to non-rookies in Late Free Agency must be made in the very first week of that stage.

TRADES: Pick(s) for picks or pick(s) for player(s) only. No trading away player(s) for pick(s). Trading only allowed during Amateur Draft stage.


That's all I can think of right now. I'll probably start this career in a day or two. Thoughts on rules I've mentioned, or ones that need to be tweaked/addeded/gotten rid of? Thanks in advance.

--Ben

[cody8200]

Wow, too harsh for me.

[Franklinnoble]

Harsh.

I couldn't handle not re-signing my own guys. That would just bug the crap outta me.

[Ben E Lou]

Having own players go to open market was a pretty common house rule with FOF2 and FOF2K1. Not a biggie.

[jbmagic]

skydog

what about not trading up or down your picks in the draft? it seems like there a big advantage over the AI when trading down or up in the draft.


the reason it so easy to look at AI teams and see what position they need and if you know its not the position you want, you can easily trade down. then you can keep trading down until you see an AI team needing a position you want in the draft. it so easy doing this to get a a lot of extra picks...

[Ben E Lou]

Actually, that goes without saying for me. I only trade down if the guy I want get taken before my pick. I don't just trade down to leapfrog teams who don't need the position. I'd rather address this by tempering myself than with a formal house rule

[Ryche]

The no renegotiating is a must for competitive balance I think. The only renegotiation I allow in mine is for franchise players. I just had to franchise my 6th year QB, best in the league and now my boss won't let me offer enough to renegotiate it. Leads to some much tougher decisions.

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

DRAFTING: This is where I haven't defined a house rule yet, but I probably need to, specifically for drafting QB's.

How about something simple like no drafting of QBs - ever.

[QuikSand]

If you are interested in a challenging but realistic career...

- Really good start

- I think the "cap outs only" is a good house rule to wipe out all the inherent advantages in renegotiations. You still get some flexibility, if you're willing to pay the price, and the rule is very clear and easy to explain and follow.

- I wonder about FA offers. The game is better than its predecessors in evaluating backloaded deals, but there are still chances to lock up a guy for a couple cheap years and then dump him before the contract gets fat (absorbing some cap hit as part of the cost of doing business) -- I think you might want some sort of rule about how rapidly the annual salaries can escalate in an offer you're making to a free agent player. We have both played with varying degrees of this in the past... set a maximum % increase, set a standard for the minimum bonus amount, there are several easy ways to do it. If I shared your goal, I'd adopt of of these, just to keep this from being the biggest remaining "legal cheat' (the inevitable result of nearly any tough set of house rules)



Good luck!

[QuikSand]

As an aside...

My original "House Arrest" team in Colorado Springs, incidentally, also included a freak rule where we had to always have a Colorado-school player at each position group. I don't recommend this as an addition for a more generic challenge setup (just mentioning it here for reminiscence as much as anything), but that caused a variety of challenges for me in that particular career. (Especially in FOF 2001, where veteran players routinely sought huge contracts even if they were total stiffs with no playing time)

[tategter]

What about 'no changing a player's position after drafting them'? There seems to be an exploit in the game where LB's and S's can get drafted in the later rounds and converted to DE's and CB's with little penalty. Usually the player will get drafted much later than if they were DE's and CB's to start with because the positions are rated so much higher.

[cuervo72]

Anyone have "Ron Artest" Rules For FOF2K4??

[tanglewood]

How about only allowinmg one player from any single college on the roster at any time. e.g. You couldn't have 3 players from USC on the roster, only one and if you wanted to sign an FA or draft a player from USC you'd have to cut the USC player already on your roster. A small penalty I know, but it could have some effect.

Or how about only rostering players from a specific State/Region. e.g. Take the "West-Coast Offense" to a new semantic level by only allowing offensive players from California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada. You could then counter this by only allowing defensive players from New England or something.

[Ben E Lou]

Bump. Any other thoughts? About to start today...

[Ryche]

I don't know how important this part of the game is for you, but I let the computer set my gameplan. There are certain areas where I think humans can tweak the gameplan to be more successful than what the AI can do.

[Ben E Lou]

FINAL RULES

BEGINNING: Empty Cupboard fictional league. Sim through 2004, cut all players on my team, start Empty Cupboard in 2005.

TICKET PRICES: Price comparison may at no time exceed prices of Tennessee and Carolina.

STAFF: No hiring new staff until contracts run out on old staff.

RENEGOTIATIONS: Cap outs only. No extensions or other contract restructuring. If he's overpaid, I either have to suck it up, or cut him. If I want to keep a guy around, I have to sign him on the open market.

FRANCHISE TAG: A player may be given the franchise tag only once in his career. After that, I'd better hope he's still willing to sign with me on the open market.

DRAFTING: A few restrictions on when QB's can be taken. It can be too easy to acquire a solid QB in the draft at times. I want to restrict that as follows:

Round 1: If his future potential is 70 or better, I must trade up into the Top 5 picks to draft him if I want him.
Round 2: Future potential must be <55
Round 3: Future potential must be <50
Rounds 4 and beyond: Future potential must be <45

RESTRICTED FREE AGENCY: If I want to re-sign one of my RFA's, I must do it in the very first week of the 20-step process.

20-STEP PROCESS: I'll start with a version of the FOFL's house rule for FA signings: Any contract offer totaling more than 4X the veteran minimum salary must include at least 20% of its total value in a signing bonus.

8-STEP PROCESS: All offers to non-rookies in Late Free Agency must be made in the very first week of that stage.

TRADES: Pick(s) for picks or pick(s) for player(s) only. No trading away player(s) for pick(s). Trading only allowed during Amateur Draft stage.

Time to give this a try.

[Ben E Lou]

Thanks again guys, I'm up to 2009 in this career, and having fun so far. Here's a link: http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/f...ad.php?t=33802

[jbmagic]

is injuries set to 200 for this challenge?

thanks

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

is injuries set to 200 for this challenge?

thanks

Always. There's no other way to play.

[Ben E Lou]

Could use a little more help here. After a little more than a decade with these rules, I'm very pleased overall, but there's one problem: because of the way contracts are backloaded (and then renegotiated later on normally), it is completely impossible to keep a marquee player on the team for the duration of his career. This is a negative for the fun factor. I'm thinking of having some sort of exception, something like if a guy is rated 75 or better and has played for no other team but mine, then I can renegotiate with him as often as I want...or maybe that I can designate one player at a time as a sort of "super-Franchise" player--meaning that there can be one guy on my roster who gets extensions, renegotations, etc. Thoughts?

[stevew]

What if you created a .csv file to begin the league, and then went through and deleted all the players on the team you were gonna be? And then imported That would be truly the "empty cupboard" and you wouldnt have to waste that year after cutting everyone.

[duckman]

Ben, you could give extensions to those players with 75 rating with a loyalty rating higher than 70. That would be a solid loophole, so you can keep your stars.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I like duckman's suggestion tying those extensions to loyalty ratings. It just kinda makes sense.

[Ben E Lou]

Agreed. If and when I pick this dynasty up again (or re-use these rules), I'll definitely tie it to loyalty. For now, I'm going Bear Bryant Challenge. However, if it becomes too difficult/tedious to build my team with all SEC players, I'll continue to export TCY guys, but use House Arrest rules in that dynasty. Thanks, duck!