PowerPlay Magazine

Greetings everyone. There has been a lot of excitement after the announcement of the draft, and with it, a lot of questions. I thought I would write a brief article to address the key concepts of the draft and hopefully act as supplementary material to the guide in addition to relieving the forums of the barrage of questions. So, in the interest of poignancy, I'll get started:


Draft structure and timing:

1. The draft will occur on the 4th, 8th, 12th and 16th Saturday of the season.
2. Players will be populated 1 week before the draft. This means Saturday of weeks 3, 7, 11 and 15 you can preview the draft pool.
3. Weeks 4 and 12 teams with the highest effective sports academy level (facilities + staff) will pick first.
   1. In the case of ties (maxed facility and youth training efficiency for example), the order will be determined at random.
4. Weeks 8 and 16 teams at the bottom of the standings will pick first.
   1. On week 16 the players picked will arrive on week 1 of the next season without aging or experiencing C/L drops.
5. Each week that holds a draft, the sports academy will not produce players for that week.
6. There will be a lottery in each draft. Teams cannot move up or down more than 3 spots from the original draft order. Final draft order will be posted one week before the draft, once players are generated.
7. The draft is a snaking draft. Teams that pick first in one round will pick last in the following. This means a last pick in round 1 is followed by a first pick in round 2.
8. Inactive and noname teams will pick last in the first round of each draft (and then first in round 2 etc.). This is to ensure that new arrivals to the game can participate in the draft even if they arrive during the week prior to the draft after players and ranking is determined.
9. The number of picks you have in the draft depends on your academy level. If you pull 5 players every week you will have 5 picks.
10. The number of rounds in a draft is equal to the maximum number of picks a team has in the league.
11. The number of players in a draft is equal to the total number of picks plus 20%. Thus, the maximum number of players in a draft is 1.2*(20*5) = 120.
12. Not all teams will draft in the later rounds. If you only have 3 picks in a 5 round draft, you will not pick in rounds 4 or 5.
13. Players are assigned a random order in the draft. Players pre-ranked at the top of the list are as likely to be good players as those in the middle of the list for example.
14. In advance of the draft ProPack owners can pre-rank their players (scouted or otherwise).
15. If you cannot attend the draft, ProPack teams will have players picked by their pre-rankings followed by the default ranking. Teams without ProPack whose owners are not at the live draft will pick players based on the default rankings.
16. There will be a live chat window at the bottom of each live draft.
17. Each team has 60s to make a pick. Teams that are not online or active will pick after 10s.
18. Draft time varies by region. For Canada and the United States it will be at 8pm EDT (5pm PDT) based on feedback from the community.
19. Draft is built in HTML and should work on mobile devices.

Scouting:

1. One week before the draft, once players are generated, each team can scout players in the draft. This scouting is different than traditional scouting within PPM. It will not tell you their qualities or anything but rather take them from a status full of unknowns to something like you would see when previewing players from your sports academy.
2. For each pick you have in the draft you can scout that many players per day (free of charge). You can scout for 7 days in advance of each draft. You can do the math here!
3. ProPack owners can set their draft scouting queue in advance for the entire week. Non-ProPack owners must do it each day of the week. If a day is missed (ProPack or not), there is always option 5 below.
4. For 1/7th your general sponsor income you can scout an extra person per day. This fee is per day you choose to use it.
5. If you forgot to set players to scout on a day that had passed, you can retroactively scout those players for a small fee in credits. Their scouting reports are generated instantaneously. You can also pre-emptively scout players, up to your 7-day maximum all in one day using this same "instant scouting" feature.
6. Draft scouting is completely independent of regular scouting and will not impede scouting of players or staff already in the game.
7. Scouting reports will give you the potential of the player (A to D) as well as career longevity, name, position (G, D, W, C) and preferred side. 
   1. The accuracy of the scouting report depends on your level of HR and the scouting efficiency of your managers.

Players

1. The quality of a player is what you draft. The overall rating and skills of a player is determined by your level of sports academy and the youth efficiency of your staff when he arrives.
2. Players will arrive 1-2 days after the conclusion of the draft. These players will arrive in a similar fashion to clicking "view players from the academy" with your regular pulls. You can then decide whether to add them to your team or fire them.
3. All players will be from your country. All players, for the time being, will be 15 years old.

If you have any more questions that aren't answered here please post in the comments and I'll be sure to add them to the list.

Thanks,
-Scott