Titre: II.3

hello! nice win over me today haha. how did you get such good players to start out with?

Thanks, I don't know. Honestly I though all starting managers get similarly strong teams and players, but that's not true I guess. I am waiting for day 11 of my "carrier" so I ca start buying players that actually might win some games and give any chance against our top 4 teams.

You can get quality older (30+) players (relative to your competition) cheaply. It would be ideal to start with a really good goalie. Foreign players end up with higher salaries than U.S. players. Ideally you want to have a competitive division II team that sticks around at the top of a division II league's standings for a long time.

If you manage to promote, you'll likely be last place in I.1, which would hurt your OTR which affects your sponsor, however, for a new team, the 23,314,767 promotion bonus might offset having a bad sponsor in 2 seasons. If you promote, you'll also likely end up in II.1 against stronger competition in 2 seasons.

Upgrading the size of your arena and human resources and economic department is the best way to increase your income. The maintenance center is necessary to offset the costs of high level facilities. The training facility, regeneration facility, and sports academy aren't really worthwhile until you have more income. Unless you can maximize them, then you can find better players cheaply on the market. You also won't be able to sell players you develop until you have better facilities. Staff member salaries can get really expensive and they don't do much until you have facilities over level 10.

If you prefer, there have been teams that ignored facilities and arenas, saved money, and purchased a team capable of being playoff teams in I.1. Those teams tend to be unable to maintain their rosters for more than a few seasons though.

Handball is the least competitive of the 4 sports on PPM, so you have the best shot at building a competitive team in this sport.

Good luck to everyone! Feel free to send me a message with any questions.

Yeah, I'd echo pretty much everything capsaicin said. Definitely focus on just buying CHEAP players on the market. Don't spend more than a few hundred k on any single player!!! Trust me, it's not worth it for a new team. You can probably buff your team very nicely without even spending 100k on average per player.

Also, DO NOT try to get players with high AvQ. It's the biggest mistake new managers make. Sure it's sexy having that "high quality" player... but until you have the high(er) level training and regen facilities to train them well... it's just gonna cost you more money for no real purpose. Just look for good OR players (actually you might do better specifically targeting players with LOW AvQ and GOOD OR, as these players are notoriously undervalued as most teams prefer the sexier higher AvQ players). Until your training and regen facilities are at least level 10, AvQ should mean nothing to you.

Focus on plugging away at your arena and HR department first and foremost. I'd recommend upgrading your arena 2x only (per arena section). Save enough to upgrade to the 250 seat large stand ups until you have 8 of those... then focus on HR Dept until you have enough for Triple Deckers. Don't do anything in between! You get a little money back when you deconstruct and build the next tier, but mostly the economics don't make sense. Trust me on that.

And if you guys have any questions or need any perspectives or advice on anything else... just post here... the handball community on ppm in the u.s. is small(er) than the other sports, but we've got a great group of people who are more than willing to help!

Oh! And welcome! Have fun and enjoy! ^_^

And be very careful about the salary of players you intend to purchase. Because it could be a burden, especially in handball.

As an addendum to what lanky522 said about arena stands, upgrade your small stand-ups to 100 seats immediately. It's incredibly cheap and will pay for itself in 2 days, and since it only takes 1 day to complete, if you start the upgrade after you play a game but before the overnight calculations, you won't lose any ticket sales whatsoever.

I hear you on that... my salaries are becoming an absolute bear. It's something I never really had to pay attention to in the other ppm sports, but in handball it's definitely a thing to watch for. There are tons of players who sell for cheap on the market (less than 100k) which cost you well over 40 million per year in salary expenses...

Some of these players have contracts that can be several seasons long, so a new manager can absolutely break their team with the innocent purchase of even just one of them (because once you have a player on your team, you have to wait 50 days to re-sell him, and if you try to just cut him, you have to pay 50% of his remaining contract).

Can someone tell me how new teams get their players? I'm happy we are getting new members in handball, but...I am just starting to get VERY frustrated with how things are turning out. Lost my last two games against newly created teams, by a wide margin, turning what was gonna be two easy wins into two big losses and dropping me out of the playoffs so far. But what I dont understand is, out base teams are so different. My team is the same as when I started, and the other two teams just started so they couldnt make moves yet. But while my best player is at 259 OV, The two new teams WORST player is 272 and 278 OV. How did i get put at such a massive disadvantage as both new teams? Its just very frustrating, not sure how I will be able to build like this...

I'm not actually entirely sure how the team creation process works...? I wonder if there's something in the algorithm that "buffs" players of teams that are created mid-season (you created your team on the first day of season 16)?

Other than that... I'm not sure...

I would say that you can always just close down your current account and start a new one (new team) if it bothers you that much... but you have a huge advantage the other new teams don't have (yet)... you can access the market.

You can spend 100k and get 10 new players (each for 10k) and likely blow any of those new teams out of the water if you wanted, no?

There's 7+ pages of players available with the following filters set:
- above 300 OR
- 10,000 max price
- 20 years old or less

thanks for all the info, many years ago, when only hockey teams were available, I played few seasons, so I kind of understand the long time tactics with investing in infrastructure. Especially that they seem similar. I'm happy there is such active and helpful community here in US. I'll be definitely in contact with you guys and hopefully see you soon in I.1.

Just got an awesome 15 year old goalie from my sports academy, its all over now!

can't wait to test him

I see one A rated player in this draft. Please dont take him, one team before me!!! lol

Two 5 star sponsor offers on day one? Feels too good to be true!