I like the idea of knowing the list ahead of time. I have an idea in my head that could build off this - I just need to flesh it out. 

Introduction

Recruiting is not a spontaneous thing that happens week-to-week like auctions in MWSL-United. Rather, recruiting is long-term process of finding out information about potential recruits, learning their abilities, and showing the recruit that you value their potential addition to your team. It’s a process that should unfold over time, but yet retain some potential for surprises along the way. 

The following proposal has the above spirit entrenched within. 

The incoming class of recruits is generally known at the beginning of the season. Names and star-rating of the players will be public knowledge, posted in the Recruiting section of the website. What isn’t known, are the position and attribute ratings. Managers must spend Recruiting Points (RP) in order to uncover information regarding each recruit. A cumulative RP expenditure must be met in order to sign a recruit. 

Standard Recruitment

Each star-level recruit has RP thresholds to find information and sign as follows:

For example, when recruiting a 3-star player (⭐⭐⭐), it will cost an initial 30 RP to find out the Position of the player. It will cost an additional 60 RP per attribute to find the value. Finally, there is an additional 60 RP cost to formally recruit the player, for a total RP expenditure of 450 RP.

The attributes learned during the recruitment process will be the highest rated attribute first. Using the following player as an example:

A manager would learn attributes in the following order:

1. Blk

2. Def

3. Rcv

4. Atk

5. Srv

6. Set

Recruiting is a race - a lengthy race, but a race nonetheless. Managers may be trying to recruit the same player simultaneously. Players who are being actively recruited will have a symbol denoting this next to their name on the Recruiting page, showing how many teams have expressed interest in the player. The first week a team spends RP on a recruit, a (❔) will appear next to the player’s name. If a team spends RP on a player in any further weeks, knowledge will become public, and the team’s logo (or abbreviation) will appear next to the player’s name. 

For example, the following player appears on the Recruiting page:

After the first week, 2 teams spend RP in order to gain information on the player. At the start of the 2nd week, the player would look like the following:

During the 2nd week, one team spends additional RP on the recruit, one has not spent any more RP, and a 3rd team has joined the fray and spent RP on the player. At the start of the 3rd week, the player would look like the following:

The idea is to promote interest in the recruiting process, and let managers know the level of interest in a particular player, encouraging competition and intrigue in the process. 

Teams may spend any amount of RP on a player in a given week, gaining requisite knowledge that comes with the amount of RP they have spent. In the above example, if AA spends 200 RP in Week 1 on John Smith, they will learn the following attributes:

• Pos (OH)

• Blk (14)

• Def (13)

If a manager learns all 6 attributes about a recruit, they are then eligible to sign that player for a final RP expenditure as listed in the above table. This must be done the following week after the 6th and final attribute is learned. Continuing the John Smith example, if AA spends another 320 RP on the recruit over Weeks 2-4, they will be eligible, in Week 5 to spend a final 80 RP to sign the recruit. If they are the first team to reach this mark, they will successfully sign the player. The total RP expenditure here for AA would be 600 RP.

Expedited Recruitment

Because the recruitment process is a race among managers to secure the signature of the recruit, a manager may choose to pay a premium in order to sign the player without having learned all of the attributes of the player. The following table shows the Expedited Recruitment Penalty to be paid above the standard recruitment cost.

For each attribute (including the position) that a manager learns about, the Expedited Recruitment Penalty is reduced, according to the below table:

To put the above two tables into perspective, the following table can be used to illustrate the RP cost to a manager to expedite the signing of a recruit, based on the amount of information already known (position + number of attributes):

Using the John Smith example from earlier. If AA decided to expedite the signing of John Smith in Week 2, they would need to pay an additional 550 RP to immediately sign the recruit. This would make their total expenditure on the player, 750 RP. This represents a 150 RP premium paid compared to if they learned all 6 attributes before signing the player. 

Ties

Because there is a fixed fee to sign players (albeit variable based on the number of attributes known), and a variable based on how much information a team learns about at once, the possibility certainly exists whereby 2 or more teams attempt to make the final signature of a recruit during the same week. In keeping with MSWL tradition, all ties will go to the lower/lowest ranked team.

Expenditures are Final

Once RP is spent on a recruit, they cannot be reclaimed. If a team loses out on signing a recruit, or decides the player is not worth pursuing any further, those RP spent cannot be recouped. Thus, teams are encouraged to pursue players, but they need to do so judiciously. 

Seeing my attempts to recruit some of the lesser players continually get thwarted, was wondering if we could start having this discussion so we can have some good time to put something in place for next season. 

Sounds good.  I will try to provide feedback this week.  

I like your ideas Rob. They are a bit difficult to understand and how to use. But it could work.

The league have several NMRs every week so it can not be too hard to get a grip on the rules.

I have one question about your idea: Do I need to keep track myself of my progress with the different recruits? I mean if I have found oposition on four players and attributes on two of them, will that show fo rme somewhere? Perhaps something like the "orders" can be arranged.

Oh and speaking of recruits, will it be walk-ons now to fill our 4 spots?

Yes, we will find a way to show progress with recruits on the site.  It will be adjusted a little from the original proposal but it will be there.  More to come. 

Yes, walk ons to fill remaining slots. 

Per my other posts please send in any additional ideas you have Christer.  Thanks!

Okay, Version 2.0 of my Recruitment idea, following feedback from Al. 

Introduction

Recruiting is not a spontaneous thing that happens week-to-week like auctions in MWSL-United. Rather, recruiting is longer-term process of finding out information about potential recruits, learning their abilities, and showing the recruit that you value their potential addition to your team. It’s a process that should unfold over time, but yet retain some potential for surprises along the way. In TMVL, this process can be encapsulated in a multi-week process where teams express interest in a player, and then bid for his recruitment.

The following proposal has the above spirit entrenched within. 

The incoming class of recruits is generally known at the beginning of the season. Names, star-rating, and position of the players will be public knowledge, posted in the Recruiting section of the website. What isn’t known, are the attribute ratings, or when the player will be available for recruiting. 

The recruitment process will work in the following manner:

• Players revealed at beginning of the season

• Each week, a subset of players released for recruitment

• 3-week recruitment phase for players

Player Reveal

At the beginning of the season, a bank of players (max players = max number of teams * 4, but tbd), ranging from 1 star (⭐) to 5-star (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) will be posted to the Recruiting section. The Names, Position, and Star-rating

Each week, Olmec will release a % of the players for teams to begin the recruit process equal to the number of players / 8 (so, if there are 64 players in the Recruiting page, then 8 will be released in each of the first 8 weeks). Teams may not make any actions on players until they have been released by Olmec.

Players will not be released in any specific order. The releasing of players will be randomly selected by Olmec. 

Recruitment Phase

Week A

During the first week that a player becomes available as a recruit, teams may express interest in the player. Teams pay a nominal fee to declare their interest (5RP * Star-Level for example). Any team declaring interest in a player will be displayed on the Recruiting page the following week.

Week B

During the 2nd week that a player is available as a recruit, any team that expressed interest in the first week may pay an additional fee (5RP * Star-Level) to move to the final phase of Recruiting. 

Any team that did not express interest in the first week, may declare their interest in the second week. However, they must pay a premium to do so. Teams declaring interest for the first time in the second week of a player’s recruitment must pay 4(5RP * Star-Level). This provides a means for players to wait and see who expresses interest before jumping in. Or perhaps a team is in the final stage of bidding on an OH in Week 4 when another OH is released the same week. The team might choose to wait and see how their current bidding process ends up before spending additional funds on another player in the same position. But, it provides a general financial incentive for teams to declare their interest in the first week of eligibility.

Week C

During the third week is where the bidding actually happens. Any team that has declared interest through the first two weeks (or has paid the premium in the second week) is eligible to bid for the player, using traditional Olmec auction processes. 

Expenditures are Final

Once RP is spent on a recruit, they cannot be reclaimed. If a team loses out on signing a recruit, or decides the player is not worth pursuing any further, those RP spent cannot be recouped. Thus, teams are encouraged to pursue players, but they need to do so judiciously. 

Recruited Players

Once a player has been recruited by a team, he will display on the team’s homepage, along with the position and star-rating. The skill attributes will not be known until the following season, however.

New Items to Support Feature

Implementing a system like this will take new features, both on the front-end, and the back-end. 

• New database table of recruits tracking Player Name, Position, Star-Rating, Week released, team winning bid, actual winning bid.

  • Optionally, it might be a good idea to track the total amount of RP spent on each player for future stats-driven metrics.

• New database table for player recruitment tracking TeamID, PlayerID (from previous table), week expressed interest, amount paid

• Conversion of the Auction table for the Bidding Results (may not be any changes needed here)

• New Recruitment webpage showing all players at the start of the season, their position, and star rating

  • As players become released by Olmec, the page will update with the Session they were released in initially, what current week the player is in (1,2,3), and what teams have declared interest.

  • As players are recruited, the page will be updated with the winning team, and the winning bid

    • A subpage, linked to the winning bid can be developed to show all bids on the player, and provide the comment fields that are common on the auction pages.

    • A subpage, linked to the player’s name that allows teams to declare their interest in a player that is presently eligible. 

I've just made the following recommendation to Al and Max in order to keep recruiting simple, but to create more of a market for recruits:

1) Limit the number of auctioned players to around 16 or 24. All of these players will be 4 or 5 star players (possible addition: 3½ or 4½ star players with some bumps in secondary skills?)

2) Once all players have been auctioned off, recruiting becomes like adding schoolboys in MSWL-United, except you get to choose between a 1, 2, or 3 star recruit. 2 and 3 star recruits will cost a certain number of recruiting points. 1 star recruits will be walk-ons and not come at any cost.

3) You cannot add a 1, 2, or 3 star player until after the auctions have concluded.

4) You should be able to turn recruiting points into coaching points and vice versa, but not at a great rate (so for instance with completely arbitrary numbers 5 RP is worth 1 CP and 5 CP is worth 1 RP).

Thanks for the ideas here John.  The revamped Recruiting prototype is getting emailed shortly with some screenshots.  I think having the normal recruiting be the "competitive" recruiting and potentially using some of your ideas could work.

It would help us avoid a "walk on draft" as you can just sign the players who expressed interestin YOUR TEAM ONLY (i.e. the 1, 2, 3 star ones listed).