How about;

Hardness level / 2 + 4%, maximum chance 9%,.  I think that might work better than a cap. 

On a personal note I have played hardness all season because I believe the extra 10 shots will get more goals than the 10% chance of conceding a penalty (1 per game).  The injuries to the opposition is not my intention, although one can see it as an added advantage, so perhaps a slight reduction in injury chance is required and get a better balance between those playing hard and the saints. 

Additionally perhaps we should reduce the chances of the longer term injuries.  A level 6 injury is very tough, how about,

25% No injury,  20% 1 Injury level,   20% 2 injury,    15% 3 injury,  10% 4 injury,  5% 5 Injury,  5% 6 Injury

The alternative is to break the link between injuries and hardness.  Just have a flat % (5?) chance of an injury

I'm not crazy about the injury being tied to hardness.  I don't have the time to search the data provided but I see the use of hardness being a huge advantage.  You can get 9 extra points to use, really increase the chance for your opponent to have injuries giving you an even bigger point bonus, at the risk of only PKs.  I don't see that as that a big penalty especially considering in one game I had 9 hardness played against me and I didn't even get a PK while I played NO hardness and my opponent scored a PK which was the only goal of the game.  Shoot I had a ton of YC/RC without every playing any hardness.  One game I had like 4 or 5 YC with NO hardness while my opponent with 9 hardness had NO YC.  Just seems a little odd to me. 

I know that what I've seen this season has me seriously considering a tactics change for next year to just being nasty in every game.

 Luckily Kevin Martin's excellent analysis of hardness usage is right on the front page, so we don't have to go far to get the numbers. The numbers don't lie, folks playing 0 hardness received FAR fewer cards and yielded FAR fewer PKs than those playing at hardness 8-10.

Hardness Tracker: Season 1 Final Totals

Hardness #	Matches	Yellow Cards	Red Cards	Injuries	PKs	Avg YC	Avg RC	Avg Inj	Avg PK
0	420	208	44	123	19	0.50	0.10	0.29	0.05
1	65	37	11	24	10	0.57	0.17	0.37	0.15
2	21	16	3	14	5	0.76	0.14	0.67	0.24
3	52	45	10	23	22	0.87	0.19	0.44	0.42
4	48	47	10	32	29	0.98	0.21	0.67	0.60
5	66	87	8	46	32	1.32	0.12	0.70	0.48
6	31	37	5	24	15	1.19	0.16	0.77	0.48
7	30	49	9	30	19	1.63	0.30	1.00	0.63
8	16	30	7	16	14	1.88	0.44	1.00	0.88
9	14	33	8	18	12	2.36	0.57	1.29	0.86
10	83	192	28	97	79	2.31	0.34	1.17	0.95

Using this chart, you can see that teams playing at 10 hardness had their fair share of negative impact - these are actual numbers, not speculation.

• Hardness 10 received, on average, 4.62 times more yellow cards PER GAME than Hardness 0.
• Hardness 10 received, on average, 3 times more red cards PER GAME than Hardness 0.
• Hardness 10 inflicted, on average, 4 times more injuries PER GAME than Hardness 0.
• Hardness 10 gave up, on average, 19 times more PKs PER GAME than Hardness 0.

Given that most of the teams who played Hardness 10 did so becuase they were not fielding as high SL players as their opponents, the above information all is important. Above, there are 3 negative columns, and 1 positive. Add to that the fact that the team playing Hardness 10 does get a couple extra points per area, and that makes 3 negative aspects and 2 positive aspects. One of those negative aspects meant that players were out of games due to suspension far more often that any other team. 

PKs... Playing 0 hardness, a team actually gave up an average of 0.05 PKs per game. That's not a "% chance" to give up a PK - that's an actual number - that's what happened in reality. In 420 matches where 0 hardness was played, only 19 PKs were awarded to opposition. There is no way someone can complain about that. That's not even 1 PK per team in the league. On the contrast, teams playing 10 Hardness gave up an average of 0.95 PKs per match. The total number of games played is 1/5th of the games played for Hardness 0, so the numbers still have some fluctuating that they can do next season. But, in 83 matches, 79 PKs were surrendered. Given that there were only about 3 or 4 teams that played Hardness 10, that's approximately 20 PKs surrended per team, versus less than 1 per team for Hardness 0. 

Yellow cards... teams that played Hardness 10 received almost 5 times more yellow cards than teams playing hardness 0. That's a fact. Yes, there are going to be games where the Hardness 10 team receives fewer YCs than the opposition, but that's the random factor coming into the game. There has to be some randomness, otherwise there'd be no reason to play the game as the outcome would be decided before it was even played. PLY ended up with a total of 40 games suspended throughout the season. Teams playing Hardness 0 didn't even come close. Most of the teams who played Hardness 0 didn't even break 5 suspensions for the season. If some teams received multiple cards in 1 game, they were fine overall as they most likely received 0 yellow cards in the vast majority of thier games. Looking at the above chart, you can clearly see that as you move up the chart in Hardness, you WILL receive more and more yellow cards per game and these yellow cards definitely add up over the course of a season.

Injuries Inflicted... I listed this as a positive for playing Hardness 10. This does NOT mean that I'm looking forward to injuring players from other teams. However, with all the negative to playing additional Hardness, there has to be SOME advantage. Inflicting injuries on the opposition is that advantage. Having a top player on the opposition have his SL halved for the match can mean the difference in giving up 5 shots to the FW instead of 10. It can also mean that my SBY/APP FW line gets 4 shots instead of 1.

The difference in injuries inflicted is similar to the difference in yellow cards recieved. With this information, if you are considering decreasing the injuries inflicted by Hardness, then to be fair, you MUST also decrease the yellow cards received from increased hardness. It's the only fair thing to do.

Based on some of the threads, it really seems like there's a witchhunt going on here. I know that's not Al's intent. I know Al is simply trying to make this game the fairest he can and the most enjoyable for all managers. However, the discussions going on in the various different topics all lean towards making it such that Hardness 0 or Hardness 1 are the only Hardness levels ever used. If the penalties are so far out of proportion to the advantages, then we're going to end up with an aspect of the game that no manager ever uses. And if that's the case, then why do we even have it?