Asunto: II.1

Good luck too

it probably won't take long to get back where you're at. I brought in about 6 young forwards during our first season here, and still managed to stick. A drop down to league 3 would be good though, build up OTR, then get the promotion bonus.

monk, you've really got me thinking about tanking now.... Seriously considering firing all my staff, and just soaking in whatever money I can this season

That's to an extent what I'm doing. You have to minimize costs in order to expand your facilities and rink. If you've saturated your income with expenses you cannot expect to progress. I've canned all my good staff and limited the training of current staff. I also removed a few levels of education center. Now that money is coming in I am investing in my rink for a few reasons...
1) Ticket sales are going to be a prime source of income
2) General sponsor offers will plateau and even drop due to OTR limits and thus
3) Media sponsor is directly related to rink size and with a large rink a media deal can easily match your general sponsor value

yah, I'm stuck in a bit of that funk right now. My ballooning costs are leaving me with a measly 2 million profit per week, which makes for a LONG road to the next multifunctional. I too have scaled back my education center, and dropped to two $1000 lecturers. I was thinking about canning everyone but my coaches/physio, and maybe a couple cheap janitors and medical staff until I can get enough to get some more seats going.

Up until recently, I've been using player sales to help cover some costs, but I'm running out of players to sell , hah.

You'll want maintenance staff to be around 30-40 each stat for maximum savings (probably, didn't run your numbers).
I recommend keeping some staff, but most of my staff have salaries under $10,000 now.

Bottom feeders in a league don't see much improvement in terms of OTR from year to year. This means their sponsor deals remain pretty much the same year after year. Their expenses however continue to increase. Last season for example I cleared about 5.5 million per week, this season I am a bit below 4 million. Staff costs more, players cost more and maintenance for upgraded facilities cost more. Next season I expect to clear around 2,5-3 million per week making it practically impossible to develop facilities further. Meanwhile teams at the top of II.1 get bigger payouts and can continue their development moving further ahead from us still and top teams in league III build up their OTR allowing them to move ahead from us.

By sticking in II.1 I get to lose games and see my OTR diminish progressively season after season making increasingly difficult to improve my team. I don't like losing games and I don't like seeing my funds shrivel up, going back down to league III is the best way for me to catch up to II.1 top teams.

Luckily I have plenty of young prospects I can rebuild with. There isn't any point in playing old guys who are on their way out if the team keeps losing, better to give that experience to the young guys who will stick around for a long time.

Got me thinking, since Charred mainly explained my thought also.

Would it help if the last pull from the academy would take into consideration the final position of the season? Just a bonus in quality so that teams finishing last have at least a young player in the 80-95 range automatically. Might still be a useless but teams will be able to sell him for a good amount of money.

That'd be like combining a draft (North America) with the academy (Europe). I likey!

It'd actually be cool to have a year end draft. Say the last month with playoffs there's no pulls. Then you have a pool of players, 4 rounds deep. You can scout them ahead of time of course.

Teams promoting into the league have first pick. Then lowest in standings through top of standings. Then last are teams relegating into the league.

I like the draft idea, it would give us an incentive to stay up.

An incentive NOT relegate is what they need. Incentives for promoting are good, but people can promote by relegating and re-promoting too.

shhhhhhhhhhhh

maybe you should only get the promotion bonus once

lucky win for the lumberjacks