Salary-System Rework, Real NFL Guides & Weekly-Sim Safety Net
The big cap re-balance has landed: player salaries are now hard-capped at 25M for veterans and 7.5M for the #1 rookie pick. Base salaries by difficulty were recalibrated (2.0 / 2.2 / 2.4M), and the weekly sim now carries a cap-fallback safety net for user teams in auto mode as well. In parallel, the two SEO guides salary-cap-guide.php and draft-guide.php were rewritten end to end — with real NFL content instead of game-specific numbers.
💰 Hard Salary Caps
- New global constants
FF_MAX_PLAYER_SALARY= 25,000,000$ andFF_MAX_ROOKIE_PICK1_SALARY= 7,500,000$ infunctions.php(available on every entry path) - Cap is applied in: game start, CPU contract renewal, user renewal, quick re-sign, rookie-draft salaries, reset script and every UI preview
- Goal: at salary cap 200M and roster 53, even superstar contracts can no longer blow up the budget — and the CPU reliably extends its stars instead of dumping them into free agency
⚖️ Base Salary Rebalance
- Easy: 2.0M (was 2.2)
- Medium: 2.2M (was 2.4)
- Hard: 2.4M (was 2.6)
- Applied in
header_connect.php(game start),saisonwechsel.php(backfill defaults) and the difficulty overlay onindex.php
🛡️ Weekly-Sim Cap Fallback for the User
- At the week transition (3 → 4 and every subsequent one), the full safety net now also runs for the user team when
depthchart_mode != manual: PS optimizer → depth-chart recompute → cap enforcement → lineup refresh - The enforcer receives the user team as
no_release: demotions to PS are allowed, releases remain strictly user-only - After the enforcer,
update_lineupuserteam_bymode()runs again so any demotions land in the lineup and cap space shows cleanly > 0
📚 Real NFL Guides (GEO/SEO)
salary-cap-guide.phprewritten: signing-bonus proration, dead cap, June 1 designation, franchise & transition tags, rookie wage scale, 5th-year option, cap carryover, restructures and void years — with cap history 2020–2025 and the real 279.2 M USD figure for 2025draft-guide.phprewritten: pick order with slots 1–30, compensatory-pick formula, 5th-year option, Jimmy Johnson and Chase Stuart trade value charts, scouting-combine drills and the underclassman-declaration deadline- Both guides now ship FAQ schema and Article schema with correct
datePublished/dateModifiedand cross-link each other
🧹 Smaller Polishing
- Header:
grafiken/beta.pngicon removed (both next to the user team name and next to the conference logo) - Footer version bumped to
v1.0-20260424 team.php: transaction history table no longer shows "Practice Squad" type rows — they're already in the "Roster Moves" table one section above
With hard salary caps, a steadier base-salary rebalance and the new weekly-sim safety net, the cap economy is now robust enough for long franchise runs — and the two new NFL guides deliver real football content on the SEO side so Google & co. find genuine editorial value.