Big bang: New transfer system on air today

Ironically enough, it is the first of april today, but this post isn't an april fools. The topic is too serious to be part of a silly joke and things hurry so much and I don't want to lose another day waiting for the second of april.

So, what is it about?
RM wants to be fair: There have been too many abuses in the game, and some players were accused of abuse when they didn't do anything wrong. With this change, it will still be possible to use the transfer market to get rich, but you'll have to play by the rules.

So, basically, each player has a market value (the maximum price he can be sold for), based on his 11 best technical skills (note: This is a change from what was previously announced). The 2 technical skills with lowest value aren't used.

You can sell a player for this price, or lower if you think the calculated price is too high and won't be reached. Then, the usual bidding round happens until we reach the maximum price. Then, in a case where many buyers are still interested, They bid on the extra salary they will offer on top of his "regular salary".
Ex: A player has a 3 000 dollars salary, you offer 2 000 dollars more as "extra salary" and you get the player. You'll have to pay a salary of 5 000 dollars each week, until his next birthday. Let's say the salary is  then updated to 4 000 dollars because he got trained. You'll have to pay 6 000 dollars a week after the update. If you sell him, his extra salary will disappear and will eventually be replaced by a new extra salary offered by his new owner.

Maybe you will get confused.. but you'll get used to it. It's not so complicated.

As a huge help, here is a page where you can predict the market value you'll get as your players get better or older. Use it as much as you want, try to find the best way to train your players to get more money, and what age is best to sell your specific player
Magic link: http://www.rugbymania.net/value_forecast.php

Season 24 small changes

The season 23 is now over, and the demotions/promotions will happen, as usual, around saturday.

Here is some information that you may find useful:
First,
- Real value: This value doesn't have any real and specific purpose. It just gives you a summary of the skills of your players with a single value. It's used to calculate the salary as well. So, the higher the real value is, the higher your salary will be when it gets updated.
- Market value: Will be the price you get for your player if you decide to sell him. You won't need to wonder "How much can I expect to get if I decide to sell my player?", as it will be explicitely displayed and you won't have the possibility to get more than this value.

- Refund for founders: Players from your academy will get a 3% refund on their salary as long as they play in your club. So, if you have 3 players from your academy that have a total wage of 10000 euros, you'll get 300 euros refunded each week. Note that this will occurs even if the player has been sold and bought again later.

[OUTDATED]
- Line up

• You'll get a warning if the hooker is higher than your highest prop.
• You'll get a warning if one prop is more than 10 cms higher than your other prop.
• You'll get a warning if one lock is more than 10 cms higher than your other lock.

These warnings won't have any effect at all for the season to come (season 24), but it will make your scrum less effective later on (season 25+). You'll get more information on this at the end of season 24, but you can already start thinking making your scrum "season 25+ ready".

[/OUTDATED]

Player's 'real value' and 'market value'

2 new values are going to be displayed on your player's page.
- Real value
- Market value

Real value will be directly related with training and the 7 trained skills. The higher a skill is and the higher the value will be. So, a player with 18 in speed and 0 in the 6 other trained skills wil have exactly the same real value as a player with 18 in strength and 0 in the 6 other trained skills. As you can understand, age, weight, size and experience aren't in use here. You'll be able to see this value within a week.

Market value will come later and will be more tricky to calculate. Age will be part of the formula on top of the 7 skills used for "Real value". Basically, the younger a player is, the higher this value will be. And a value of 18 in strength will give a higher market value than 18 in speed. You'll be able to see this value in mars.

Later on, when a player is sold, the seller will earn the "market value" for it. If many buyers want to buy the same player at his "market value" price, they'll have to bid on his weekly salary. The buyer with the highest salary proposal will get the player.

New national cup format

The cup will have a new format as from now.

The 130 best teams of each league (Top 1, Div 2 and Div 3 except the 2 teams qualified for Elite cup), will participate in the National cup. 128 teams, grouped in 16 groups of 8 teams (single legs). The winners of each group is qualified for the last 16 round and so on.

So, each team will play between 7 and 11 cup games

The remanining teams, limited to 1024, will join the Federation cup. 32 groups of 8 teams for all leagues except France and Italy (128 groups of 8 teams), with single legs.

Winners of each groups qualified for last 32, or last 128 (France and Italy).

So, each teams will play between 7 and 12 (14 in France and Italy) cup games

- The french non-eligible teams will get some money to make it up for lost income.

- Income for National Cup will be higher than for Federation cup

From 20 leagues down to 8

From the very start of RM the huge difference between number of teams per league has been a problem in the game. The now defunct North Europe league had, for many seasons, less than 40 active teams, while France had over 2000. In one case a team only needed 2 seasons or so to reach the Top 10 in their nation, while it was a goal that could take a dozen seasons or more to reach in the another country. Managers starting up a team in a nation like New Zealand would quickly be making much more cash each month compared to another team created the same day in France or Italy ....