I encountered some quite annoying problem with Silence-Lotto after or during the second season. My sponsors gave me wage bill of 700k which I was currently under a little bit. I renewed few contracts but not all. For example I didn't renew Cadel Evans's contract who was earning healthy 100k. However it seems that game didn't realize that because every time I tried to sign a new rider my sponsors claimed that my wage budget estimation would be 700k for next season and thus they refused any money for new signings ie. I couldn't offer anything. I though that okay maybe I did a mistake and offered too big wages for some of my existing riders. However when I finished the season my wage bill appeared for no more than 563k which is what I thought it should be. So basically I was almost 140k under my wage bill for the next season all the time but yet I wasn't able to sign new riders after July nor renew any existing contracts any more.
Several riders asked to negotiate new contract during the season. However when I clicked "negotiate" nothing happened. Game just continued normally. If I didn't click, I couldn't continue because they were red news. Perhaps this have something to do with the problem. However for example Cadel Evans made a contract with Caisse quite soon after the Tour and at that point it should have been clear to my sponsors that he wouldn't defend our colours any more but it wasn't. They kept on claiming that my wage bill wouldn't have any room so maybe the "negotiate" doesn't mean anything after all.
So I'm asking basically how to avoid this in future in this particular game or another one. This game just got bit boring as I wasn't able to sign anyone new except youngsters after the season as there were no quality riders without contract.
I'm using the PPDB 2009 DB V1f database although I doubt this is a database problem. I also have the latest patch installed.
Edited by janneff on 09-08-2009 11:42
I don't know about the 1st thing. I've had the problem too, but I don't know if there's anything to do.
About this: "However when I clicked "negotiate" nothing happened" - did you try entering the rider profile and click "negotiate"? Before your edit, it said something about you clicking the "Negotiate" button from the news menu, and you're right, this doesn't seem to work.
Yeah I was able to negotiate new contract via rider's menu though I couldn't offer anything. I just thought that maybe the reason that the "negotiate" button on the news menu doesn't work properly had something to do with the miscalculated wage budget.
Edited by janneff on 09-08-2009 19:23
I've solved it this way, don't know if there's a better way... since the maximum wage budget is 700k WHATEVER your current sponsor budget is, I've just reduced the salary of some riders through the editor (like removing a 0 to the most paid ones, but not the ones whose contract is ending... exemple: changed Schleck salary from 120k to 12k and so on with few ones)... so the maximum wage budget was pretty the same (when I reduced the salary of all my riders, it dropped from 700k to 200k, when I reduced the salary of everyone except the ones with their contract ending, it dropped from 700k to about 650k) but the estimated salary for the next year dropped to about 200k so I had 500k free to negotiate... obviously if you don't want to cheat but just correct the bug, do not offer for more than you would have had with the regular budget, and after completing transactions restore the original salary for everyone... I've noticed that (at least in my game) even if it tells that the salary budget is 900k, when it comes to paying everything is correct!
