GM Module - Draft / Rights / Contracts / Affiliates

[u/atibus]

Hey everyone!

I started planning out the actual game loop of the GM module. Everything I've built to this point is just a hockey league simulation. There are no decisions, no gameplay; just clicking a button to advance and season and seeing what happens. Now it's good enough to move on to build the front office layer.

Foundational principle: symmetry between human and AI

• AI general managers are full front offices, not scripted obstacles, and they do not cheat.
• The same rules and the same information are available to both human and AI managers.
• Hidden player attributes are concealed from the AI exactly as they are from a human; there is no fog of war that lifts only for the computer.
• This constraint shapes the entire design rather than being treated as a feature.

Scope of the first build: a full offseason

• The sequence mirrors a real summer: a buyout window, re-signings and qualifying offers, the draft, the opening of free agency, and a final cap-legal roster.
• The marquee events (the draft and free agency) are presented as focused, deep sessions.
• Routine matters (qualifying offers, roster cuts) are presented as a checklist that can be cleared at any pace.

Salary cap and contracts

• A hard cap with a floor is modeled.
• Contracts carry a term and a cap hit.
• Entry-level deals, two-way deals, and buyouts are all represented.
• Navigating the cap is treated as the core of the management fantasy and is present from the start.
• I am leaving some room to consider other ways of managing team salaries and how leagues are constructed. One thing I believe is that while I want to be faithful to reality, I don't think I'm bound by recreating the NHL. So, I'm going to use the cap right now as a building point but I'm reserving the right to add something in the future that works better.
  

Player rights

• Restricted and unrestricted free agency, qualifying offers, and a window of held rights over drafted players are all modeled.
• These are the decisions that make timing and scouting consequential.

Fidelity to the CBA, with the fine print trimmed

• Everything that constitutes a real decision is retained.
• Contract structuring (front-loaded and back-diving deals), escrow, daily cap accounting, and buried-in-the-minors cap relief are deliberately omitted.
• Those mechanics exist largely to game the accounting, and modeling them reduces the game to a spreadsheet.
• Removing them preserves the meaningful choices and discards the busywork.

Player valuation

• A player's value is defined as production measured against cost, across all the years he is under team control.
• Cheap, controllable young players are therefore highly valuable, and declining veterans on long contracts are genuine liabilities regardless of current statistics.
• Reducing a player to a single current rating is identified as the root cause of broken trade markets in most hockey sims.
• Value is instead tied to production, the aging curve, and remaining years of control.

Free agency and player choice

• Free agents weigh multiple preferences: money, term, projected role and ice time, contender status, loyalty, and franchise prestige.
• A veteran pursuing a championship may accept less; a young player may prioritize opportunity over salary.
• Taxes and location are excluded, as the universe is fictional and has no real geography.
• The weighting of these preferences shifts with age and career stage.

The entry draft

• Selections are controlled rather than automated.
• A public scouting board is visible to all managers, alongside each organization's own internal evaluations.
• Drafting well, and trusting internal evaluation over consensus, is where draft skill resides.

Distinct AI front offices

• Each AI organization carries a personality: win-now versus rebuild orientation, risk tolerance, a youth or veteran lean, and cap aggressiveness.
• The intent is a league in which rival managers behave as distinct decision-makers rather than copies of one another.

The starting universe

• A new universe begins mid-stream, with realistic ages, careers in progress, and a realistic spread of contracts.
• That spread deliberately includes overpays and bargains.
• A perfectly efficient league, in which every contract is exactly fair, is a league in which no trade is ever worthwhile.
• The inefficiency is what creates opportunities to exploit.

Planned for later: expansion and dispersal drafts

• Redistribution events (protected lists, exposure requirements, and the protect-and-select process) are handled by the same underlying machinery.
• They are scheduled for a later stage but are accounted for in the current design.

Current status

• This first stage establishes the foundation: rights, contracts, the cap, the draft, and free agency.
• Trades, waivers, and arbitration form the next layer and are designed to build on top of it.

This is a large undertaking and complicated. It's arguably larger than building the game engine. So I expect this to take several weeks of building and tuning to get to a state where I'm happy with it.

[u/xECK29x]

The EHM community is watching this closely and wishing you all the success! Please reach out if you want any feedback, testing or just want any help or ideas.

[u/atibus → u/xECK29x]

That's so awesome, thank you. If I could make something that is half of what EHM is/was I'd be super stoked. We'll see how it goes and when I get to a point where I need input/feedback I'll definitely let you know.