ive been saying this for years:

Either transfers or steals have to be removed from the game for a better transfer system.

Why? I have the strong opinion that using steals is antisozial in the way it currently is implemented because transfers are superior for the 'old team' while it offers the same outcome for the new team. So by attempting steals im just harming other teams unnecessarily without any direct benefits for myself. Especially when i can just match that offer and sell the rider afterwards for a bit less than otherwise.

So i basically see two options:

1) eliminate steals. Go with a renewals -> transfers system similar to MG.
2) eliminate transfers:
2a) keep steals / renewals as it is and change FA slightly to make it more predictable (so that you dont get screwed by getting multiple riders in the same round etc) - e.g. by lowering the sacking cost significantly
2b) (much more radical idea)
Make every rider a restricted free agent that enters the FA pool but every team has the option to match the top offer for each of their former riders (minus a loyality discount). This removes renewals as we know it too but hopefully should help getting top riders and pot7 talents to fair market wages. It also gives teams that want to stick to their riders long-term the chance to do so while it still introduces a "dynamicity" (df_trek) to the game where nearly every rider could be available if your desire to get him is strong enough. Should also guarantee that there will never be a super weak FA class as we've seen in the mg this year and in ICL a couple years back iirc. I would definitively stretch out FAs so its not completely luck based whether you get a top FA round 1 of transfers though.

I think that's a fair statement that the "have" managers and the "havenot" managers are trying to work a system geared into opposite directions. It sounds almost like Marx lol.

If we want to have a realism approach: "steals" + "blocks" + "compensation" + "higher wage demands" from talents and top riders would be a more interesting combo, which we could try out for a pilot season.

Especially the compensation dimension might be very tricky to pull off, though. Between homegrown stars or expensive top riders might be quite a difference in investment from the initial team (maybe loyalty could be brought into play indeed here). More years of loyalty may lead to higher compensation, ceterius paribus.

Transfers are not happening in cycling anyway, whereas riders breaking contract is becoming more common (Carapaz, Dennis). It would also be a distinct mechanic uncomparable to the ManGame which is very transfer-heavy. I would also say that transfer period is usually a bit the part which is delaying the off-season action, at least for me. Third, many managers are renewign contracts in MG and ICL to make some transfer fee. ManGame has introduced (afair) a fee for that to overcome low value transfers. ICL could make a similar decision to forbid any transfer and let managers really think about who they want to renew and who they don't. If they renew someone, they are stuck with him (honestly, I like the idea of that).

Unfortunately if Free Agent round sucks for some teams they won't have additional options to make transfers. Perhaps there could a short transfer period to ensure that managers could still get a late leader in the late stage of off-season.

To avoid a matt/j7 scenario, however, every manager would have to be within his budget prior to this transfer season.

That said, transfers are arguably some of the most cooperative action in the game, and it might be good to keep it for social interaction.

Only in for 1 year and the offseason was a while ago so not an expert. But I remember liking steals (maybe as a new team). I think I agree on the "dynamicity" aspect.

While riders don't have identity I think having a system that asks what would the rider want is a good way to look at it?

I seem to remember that my steal got blocked and then the team sold the rider. That seemed bad to me as how do you make that fair for a rider? Oh, I stopped you changing teams to get paid more and now I am selling you to a random team.

So more of a philosophy than concrete idea - the process should have a story that could be explained to a rider acting in his self-interest. So I don't love blocks generally, I like some exclusive period better to give teams return on investment while still giving a rider a path to free agency.

In many way multi-year deals would help, it would give you a chance to recover training investments but also better reflect the kind of contract a rider might want. But maybe too messy to implement.

Love this, huge potential and what you already have done is great. Interested in what application you are using to generate/support this?

I'll just add my idea to slightly pressurise the teams to reshuffle their squads, an idea founding ICL members will hate: A "loyalty penalty" rather than a bonus, for riders of a certain age.

Riders hate to change teams every year. So there should be a nice bonus (lower wage demand) to extend the contract after the first year, and a bonus for the next extension, too. But after 3 seasons with a team they'd rather move on, become a free agent, want a new challenge, and their wage demand will increase year after year from then on.

If you spend a good chunk of money training a rider or bought a PoY, the "clock" should reset. I definitely would want to reward that. And it shouldn't apply to U23 riders, maybe the clock starts at the age of 25 or even later and thus only affects riders over a certain age.

So that could "replace" steals. It shouldn't affect big captains, who ask for a high wage anyway because they score so well. But super domestiques who as of now re-sign for their minimum wage start asking for more, so teams will consider replacing them.

We found a witch may we burn her?

I like it. There might be some domestique hoarding going on for riders in the mid-bracket who are neither talents nor stars, and it might be good to have a bit of a wage increase influence after a while to keep teams from shuffling their riders.

If there is no transfer season afterwards, it might add up additional spice to it. Do we want to increase the wage of Domestique A or do we hope to get someone better on free agent market? IMHO that could give some nice shuffle and expand the free agent market. Naturally we could always try to bid for the same rider again if he remains available and there is no suitable replacement.

I might well be being dramatic and selfish, but that would really put me off developing non-leaders - I know the clock starts at 25 in Ripley's scenario but still if by 28 all my mid-level home-grown riders I'm trying to bring through want to leave or get constant pay rises, after 6-8 years raising them to be part of the core I'd be a bit upset. I don't have a dev team I constantly use for the purposes of winning U23 races, it's to build a squad I feel like I know. I know I could just get other guys for much less effort (and now for less cost) but I don't plan on doing so with so many young future 73-75AVG guys coming through who I can get attached to and have be home-grown for nice rp reasons and I think that it will actively motivate me not to - I get the want to have people do some reshuffling but if I was going to have to go through drama like that I wouldn't put the years of waiting in, I'd just buy mercenaries every 2 years (like I had to do this year to a certain extent, though I would like to keep most) for min wage. Of course there's nothing wrong with not focusing on talents/being home grown, just obviously not what I want to do with my team.



One way to do your thing about riders potentially wanting more for themselves is some form of rider role system (i.e. leader, luxury domestique, domestique, talent etc.) with normal wage brackets, race day expectations etc. and/or rider personalities (such as maybe a base general loyalty stat, which can be modified by happy years on a team or being in a first-language squad) to expand on the loyalty thing, which can potentially be a known thing found in scouting like in FM where you have to balance a player's talent with the fact he's known to be an asshole Guess that sounds complicated and might not work, not even sure if I'd want it, but just a thought.

Whatever the turnout of this sacking/loyalty/dynamism discussion, can we do this? I really hate how the FA system can work sometimes when you get screwed by going overbudget when the odds of you actually winning all those riders was quite small so your strategy wasn't really wrong.

It was just a quick idea, I see how it could be upsetting. Maybe riders who came up through the dev team could be excluded entirely. And obviously phase it in, don't hit the old teams with high wage demands right away. Or sure, a new stat, "restlessness", to look out for, though I don't want to overcomplicate.

Anyway, just an idea to shake loose a few riders and give the grand old teams a bit more to do. I only started two years ago and it was very exciting starting from scratch and then again having to increase team size and quality with the promotion. But I could easily see myself doing very little from now on, I like my riders, I don't have big ambitions, I might end up not doing transfers at all soon, just replace old riders with dev team riders. Maybe it would be good to force me to do a bit more. Maybe as simple as one random rider per team (though not a captain, please) refusing to sign a new contract at any price.

As for jandal's other point... I don't know. It is a real problem and it does add spice to the game. I've been very careful so far to not enter any risks, to not overbid by one coin just in case. One reason I didn't get either of the Yates twins, because I was too scared of that scenario, even though it would have been unlikely. And ended up with Hardy and Duarte instead... Maybe that's a good thing, I really can't tell. Cause what, do you want to be able to withdraw bids? Then I will have to bid on everybody, no harm, no foul.

Maybe we can try doing something like actual contracts? Instead doing 1 year renewal/release part.

And it would be quite simple. If you want specific rider to stay for more than one year, just pay fe. % higher wage. Renewal part is going normally, but you have an option of offering longer contract. You get an information that your rider would agree to stay for 300 for example. But you want your rider to stay for 2 more years (set a limit for 2 years contract) so you pay like 25% more (375) but you have your rider for two seasons. Set a limit for like maximum of 3 riders per season for offer.

Yes, it is also about a good balance. The "restlessness" option could work similar to the "retiring" option at the moment; each year on board the likelihood of them becoming more restless may increase and if the option is activated, there would be a larger wage to be paid. But what would that mean for next season then?

Maybe star riders could be included when they had a shitty season. Ala Bardet who is switching to Sunweb after having hit a stale at AG2R. Obviously any team could still re-long with them, it would just be a bit more expensive than they anticipated after a shit season.

IMHO, the blocking system works already quite similar to that, where a manager says he wants to pay a higher percentage upfront of the rider demands to make sure he stays and is blocked from any steals.

What you suggest is a system used in North American pro-sports where the salary gradualy inceases depending on the length of the contract (usually by 5-8% for max contracts).

Some great ideas so far, keep them coming! I think this year is a good time to revamp the transfer system.

I think it is important that managers can retain a core of riders without fearing that they will leave them, especially since scouting and developing riders is an integral part of the game. But in my opinion the "dynamicity" argument is also important. To some extent the free will of riders should be simulated. Not to an extent that it will wreck entire teams, but sometimes there will have to be difficult decisions to be made. Still, in the end the most important thing is that all managers (even jandal) deem to be fair and are happy with.
I never really liked multiyear contracts, because it is difficult to judge how much a rider will improve longterm and so it is hard to decide what they should earn. However I think the solution could be bonuses linked to their achievements. If transfers between teams should remain a part of the system, multiyear contracts are probably important, as prolonging a rider just to sell him would probably be the worst outcome for him. So thinking about it now multiyear contracts could be a good idea.
Else I think abolishing transfers between teams could be a viable solution, so that the negotiating only happens directly with the riders. Maybe a fee to the outgoing team could be included in certain cases, so that teams at least get something if they developed a rider over years.

All in all, I think ICL is a great game as it is and major changes would have too much risk to make things worse. So I would keep it to minor changes.

I agree with Ollfardh on this one. I don't really think too much changes are needed and definitely not needed all at the same time.

Having said this, I've never been a fan of steals and have not tried to steal for the past couple of years iirc (definitely didn't try this past season). It can possibly put too much pressure on particular teams and managers and almost pushes them to resell that rider or a couple of others in transfers to meet the wage demands, whom they otherwise would not have. A manager should have complete control over the riders that he trains/develops and renews, without someone else trying to take them away and take advantage of.

What I was thinking of is a spin-off of the restricted FA idea proposed earlier (knockout I think) wherein managers make riders available that they are sure they do not want to keep for the coming season and have other managers bid a premium on them. The rider then moves teams to the highest bidder but retains his old wage, while the premium goes to the team losing the rider. This should be followed by new wage negotiations (along with other riders and considering the riders past season's performance, whatever wage demands that might lead to), as if the rider was already a part of his new team from before. If there are no bids for a rider put up for restricted FA, he continues with his old team.

EDIT: Also please don't remove transfers because that's a great part of the game and a good way to get know and talk to other managers.

I think that the current system works well as well although we had our drama and up and downs in respective seasons and the retention of managers has been disappointing overall, which is a shame - obviously I love ICL. So I see the opening for some reform positively.

Perhaps we could start with some first introductions this year ("compensation" for steals, refined bidding system -> scaled penalty to fire new riders, and shortened transfer window -> please keep it at least shortly for this season) and target new options like the restlessness etc for next season.

I assume that most riders will also ask for appropiate wages as has been the case in previous seasons and was reinforced in the past two seasons significantly. A refined wage system may be thought of for next year as well. Although loyalty discount should be good, it also shouldn't be too excessive, otherwise there is limited incentive to change riders.

I like the cooperation between transfers, however this is mainly a man game feature, which it does far better. I could see how the ICL could excel in its own system which is geared much more towards pace and a certain element of suprise.

Steal system will always have a bit of a negative touch towards it, simply because managers tend to lose riders they would like to keep and it is geared much more towards competition than cooperation (as is the case with transfers). At the end of the day if steals are balanced (max. bids versus a team for example) and a manager can block certain riders + is compensated, this could be also a fair system in the long run. At the moment, losing a rider in which you have invested a lot only hurts and there is no upside to letting him go, even if the wage is inflated (see k/o explanationn). Unfortunately, the steal system might be biased towards some managers and teams, perhaps there is also a possibility in the future to make it more equal, but this could be something to be thought of in the future.

I'm not quite sure how this works. I get a bonus for a rider I wanted to sack?


My first impression is, also from other posts, seems easier to get rid of steals entirely. Easy to implement, too. But what should be compensated and how/by whom? Just any investment costs (training, PoY) into the rider by the previous team? In full? I already profited from Tao's training last season. Or a "real" compensation for the quality lost? How would that work? And who should pay? The new team, which is already paying 800 in wages for that AVG 72 pot 7 guy?

Could be a compensation based on: avg. wage of 2-4 years + growth potential (e.g. Pot 7 +25%) + % of past investment costs, perhaps diluted and discounted over years.

Sounds overall tricky but I guess bikex excel magic could even pull it off