Free Agents - New league

[henry296]

I just started my first career in 1961 with real players and the option to have players import prior to their debuts. As I checked out the free agents, I noticed some top prospects and realized that they made their debut with Houston and New York which don't start playing until 1962. I'm not sure there is a solution, but I wanted to identify the potential issue. Perhaps for those teams don't import those players when the league is created.

[KG Erwin]

By having these particular players import early, it simply means they can be drafted or signed by any existing team.

[henry296]

However, do you think it is odd that no one has signed these players after spring training?  It doesn't feel right to me to sign them as I could stockpile a pretty good team. 

[henry296]

Just made it to the end of May and most of the high potential free agents were signed.  It seems teams wait about 6 weeks to evaluate their roster.  Sounds like a good idea, but perhaps an evaluation of spring training would also make sense.

[KG Erwin]

I believe that the early-entry feature is better for real-player draft associations rather than historical roster associations.

Everyone has their own personal preferences on optimal roster sizes/game options. For my 1939 career association, I settled on 40 players, so the vast majority of the free agent pool are scrubs or minimally-talented real players. Since I'm using finances ON, I also clicked player affinity ON. Early entry is OFF.

As for free-agent evaluations, yeah, the XML does specify a waiting period AFTER the beginning of the season. This does give a human player a bit of an advantage to grab up the best available FAs right away. The only solutions here would be to either tweak the XML settings or restrict yourself to signing FAs until the AI starts doing so.