Subject: I.1

At the moment, I seem to be the only U.S. team with players on the U.S. senior national team. None of those players came from my sports academy. 2 of them are older players that might be supplanted in the coming seasons. 1 of them is a younger player that may or may remain good enough to stick around (though he has a solid CL of 4 at 24).

lol... that's sort of what happens when one of the u.s. managers who has several of the USA National Team players (basically 1/3rd of the team) lists all of them for sale lol.

You had an uncanny luck on good draws for a few years.... Feast or famine. It's like me in soccer which i do not care about at all. I pull 450 6/6 all the time

yeah. totally true. tbh, if you looked at my team all my best pulls were pretty much 21-25 years old.

Keenan @ 29 and Leo Patel @ 19 were the notable outliers. But all my other superstars were in their early to mid 20s.

so hopefully i can replicate some of that with my pulls going forward.

The nice thing is though... even if i just get decent guys in the high 70s of AQ, i can still make a pretty good team now because my facilities are all maxed / better than they were before. So at least i've got that going for me...

I'm astonished that i managed to tie Pballas today in an away game. seems... odd. maybe my team won't be as horrid next season as I thought they'd be.

I think fast breaks combined with a short roster is effective against stronger teams. The U20 team has lost twice to a much weaker U20 Netherlands team using a similar strategy.

huh. I mean i guess i used fast breaks in the 2nd half... this game just never ceases to surprise me with the match results lol.

After conserving energy all season and dumping a lot of money on players, it's very disappointing to lose in the first round despite going into the playoffs as the top team. Perhaps I should have expended some energy in the last two regular season games to ensure home advantage. The last 3-4 months of handball have been wasted, and there might not be a better chance for my roster.

Also, what happened with Clifton Vaughn?

there's definitely a fine balance with energy i've found. in past years, i would generally try to finish the regular season with about 80-78 energy remaining. that seems to be the sweet spot imo... you ensure home court advantage in the playoffs, but also get decent experience and chemistry developed.

But honestly sometimes weird stuff just happens. I'm still rather shocked i managed to beat tescosamoa in the the first round this season tbh. with my best offensive player (mujagic) at 61 energy, and my best defensive player (batori) at 65 energy, i'm absolutely on borrowed time.

also... this certainly is a testament to BradGilbert, but i absolutely HATE playing Cactus HC. particularly in the playoffs. some of my most memorable regular season "upsets" since joining I.1 have been against them. I can't ever really figure out what seems to work against that team...

try not to look at this season as a waste though... you won the national cup this season, so you'll be in international competition next year, which will help your OTR and your sponsorship offers. I think what we'll have is just a more competitive league again where anyone can win either the national cup or the playoffs on any given sunday. As the team with the highest team strength, that might not be desirable to you, but when I was in that position, i actually found it kept me much more engaged when there was more parity.

I threw a bunch of money at tescosamoa in order to get Vaughn so that I could develop him as a new franchise player and build my reworked team around him.

for countless reasons i could enumerate, I offered tesco 300m for him. after the sale went through, someone reported it as "questionable" for some reason (i guess they think i paid too much?). which i find stupid... because Vaughn's going to become one of the best players on the national team and one of the elite players in the world once he's old enough.

so I guess the admins agreed with whoever hit the "mark as suspicious" button and siphoned a bit of the money that tesco received for the sale.

Having sold a similar player for nearly 500m a few seasons ago (Barta, who was a universal offensive winger just as Vaughn is), I don't really understand their decision, and firmly believe Vaughn is worth what I paid. but it's the game we play i guess.

in other news, part of the reason i reacquired Derek Carney was to test to see if players maintain their "seasonal bonus discounts" that you pay them AFTER they leave your team.

I'm not sure if any of you have tested this out ever, in any PPM sport, but I can confirm that THEY DO GET RETAINED.

so basically, if you reacquire a player you once gave bonus money to, they'll still get that benefit / discount when they become a free agent if / when they return to your team.

food for thought.

Sorry if I overreacted a bit. While it's frustrating, it's just an online game.

I do often tend to have particular difficulty against Cactus HC no matter what on paper advantage I appear to have.

True - I did win the National Cup for the first time. It was my second title in addition to a Basketball National Cup title. I started spending money after that (granted that I got a lot of bargains) though.

That's a good point about engagement.

My energy might have been a bit higher, though I did spend more energy than I should during the national cup (especially in the early rounds), so my advantage was somewhat artificial. On the other hand, all of my new players have a lot more chemistry to gain by the end of next season.

Good to know! Thanks for looking into that.