Salary Cap (rule suggestion)

One suggested house rule is to have a salary cap imposed between seasons.

The idea is to help prevent one team from dominating season after season just because the coach has played has lots more games than everyone else. Reducing Team Values between seasons could also help starting teams be more competitive depending on the level of the salary cap used.

So, there are two questions to answer:

1. Should we use a salary cap?
2. What level (Team Value) should we use?

I guess I shouldn't really ask the question without putting down my thoughts too.

I'm in favour of a salary cap for the reasons above. Given that we don't want to ever discourage coaches from playing games we'll need some way to rebalance teams that have played very different numbers of games in a season. If we don't do this then very quickly one or two teams will dominate because they'll have much more developed players.

As for what level the salary cap should be I'm less sure. I've not got much LRB5 experience so feel free to contradict anything that follows.

Based on old 3rd edition I most enjoyed around the 250-300 team rating mark. At this point most players had a skill or two and teams also had a couple with 3 or 4 skills. So this would be my starting point. Now I played mostly with elves so I'd expect their TR to be higher than average for this level of development due to player costs so maybe it needs to be lower than this. Also, in LRB5 team value only goes up when a skill is achieved, not just when SPPs are earned, which is another reason for me to think that it needs to be lower than 250-300.

Putting this together makes me think that a TV of around 2,000,000 gps is a good start point.

I'm also keen on the idea of not having a fixed salary cap for all teams, maybe introduce a little randomness so the best team can get nerfed and the worst can get lucky. I'm not thinking a big difference but maybe a range of 1,750,000 gps to 2,250,000 gps? The way I picture it the biggest source of income would be a random amount from sponsorship, then there would be prizes depending on where you finish in your division and finally if you have any spare cash in your treasury you can also use that.

I like the idea of a cap.

But we can and should use the "spiralling expenses" rules too.

It might be that the expenses keep the max down a bit as well. Depending on how we set it up.
Assuming we can.

But we should totally have a maximum cap.

There should also be a pool of free agents that is maintained. That way we get some history of players moving on after being cut.

I think a Salary Cap is key to keeping teams somewhat close in strength. And as Joe mentioned, spiralling expenses would also be a good addition. A salary Cap somewhere in the 205-225 would be more than enough for a team to develop a strong base of players. But an agressive spiralling expenses chart would also reduce team growth at higher levels, so as a team gets close to the max, his expenses get exponentially higher.

KForfar, I am not exactly sure how the varied TV will work, sorry, I don't have a PhD like some people.

Ok, so maybe the variable TV is a step too far. I thought it might be interesting if we didn't all start on the same value again each season. I also thought that giving some reward for each place in the standings would give every team something to play for (even an extra 10,000gps per place equates to keeping a 1 skill player rather than a rookie).

KForfar wrote:

Ok, so maybe the variable TV is a step too far. I thought it might be interesting if we didn't all start on the same value again each season. I also thought that giving some reward for each place in the standings would give every team something to play for (even an extra 10,000gps per place equates to keeping a 1 skill player rather than a rookie).

Oh wait, I see what you mean. So after each season the Salary Cap might change. So if there are alot of teams very close or equal to the salary cap, the maybe the cap can get increased. Also, if there are alot of low TV teams, then it could be lowered to create a more competitive environment. I like it. Could make for some interesting off seasons if the cap goes down and some teams have to dump players. 10k is only half the value for a standard skill. The increments should probably be a minimum of 20k, but 50k would be a nice number as well.

Will their be penalties for teams that do not meet the Salaray Cap rules, like they have to pay 20k to the bottom four teams or something like that.