Roster Management, Salary Cap & Balancing
The most comprehensive gameplay update so far is live: a full Roster Composition Optimizer automatically balances your lineup, CPU teams now strictly adhere to the salary cap, and Practice Squad player development has been made more realistic. Plus plenty of quality-of-life improvements.
🧩 Roster Composition Optimizer
- New system automatically balances players between active roster and Practice Squad — based on the optimal number per position
- Works for CPU teams (always by overall rating descending) and for the player (based on chosen depth chart mode: rating, potential, age or value)
- Injured players are automatically moved to Practice Squad, healthy replacements are promoted
- The optimizer now runs both before and after game calculation — new in-game injuries are handled immediately
💵 Salary Cap Enforcement
- CPU teams must stay under the salary cap from week 4 onwards — no longer just on cut day
- All roster moves (PS promotions, swaps, optimizer) now check the salary cap before executing
- New function
enforce_cpu_salary_cap()as a weekly safety net: releases players until the team is under the cap - Release fees are calculated based on difficulty setting when players are cut
📈 Practice Squad Development
- PS development is now capped at a maximum of +4 OVR per season
- Higher-rated players benefit less from PS time — an 80 OVR player gets at most +1 to +2, while a 67 OVR player can receive the full +4
- Fixes the issue where young PS players received disproportionately large upgrades
📊 Fanbase & Balancing
- Fanbase growth/decline per season capped at a maximum of ±10% (previously up to +25%/-12%)
- Prevents unrealistic fanbase explosions after consecutive winning seasons
- Free agent pool at game start increased by approximately 30% across all positions
⏩ Sim Button & UI
- The sim button now shows week-specific labels: e.g. "Sim Week 4 (RS #1 + Cut)", "Sim Week 21 (PO Wildc.)" or "Sim Week 24 (SuperBowl)"
- Preseason roster limit is now checked directly in the sim overlay — the confirm button is disabled when over the limit
With the Roster Optimizer and Salary Cap Enforcement, roster management now feels significantly more realistic. CPU teams act more economically and the automatic roster optimisation takes a lot of micromanagement off the player's hands in non-manual mode. Onwards!