Another fun fact: 117 out of 118 22 year olds did now receive a (stag) contract his year. Silas Koech is the only one who will stay home all season, you do have to feel a bit sorry for the German.
baseballlover312 wrote:
Not sure whether almost all talents receiving a stag contract is a sign of good deflation or just fewer talents being added, but cool in any case!
Personally, i think that is a sign that more talents should be added. Like adding another lvl1 peruvian that maxes at 73hi 71mo or so wouldnt hurt. if a team wants to build up their nations with those questionable options, they would have the chance to do so.
I'd love to have more Sammarinese added, even if they end up similar to Putti, Menicucci or Maccagli I'll find ways to make them work, actually thinking about it if they were added next season they'd max as those 3 start declining.
What i want: More talents added each year that would be maxing at low CT tier domestique levels. Have more than just one talent per nation added.
Why i think this would be good?
1. There are quite a few managers who want to build small nations up with their teams. Which is hard to do when there is only one talent added per year per nation.
2. When you want to add a stagiaire at the end of transfers e.g. to have an additional support guy for your Avenir leader, it would be nice to have someone from your focus country available. This is often not the case anymore with the only talent added being reasonably strong enough to have a contract already.
Note: I'm not suggesting adding additional well-rounded 75 main stat guys across the board. Im suggesting that these additional talents would be maxing at a fairly weak 73 main stat or balanced 71-74. I'm thinking Batmunkh, Sangulin, Tusveld level talents. Guys you would not expect to be picked up to be developed to that level but that would be reasonable to have as CT domestiques if someone spend their ressources on them. Adding those guys would in no way go against the deflation initiative we have righfully going on.
Some numbers to give context:
based on my updated 2025 season DB (excluding draft picks)
Age
in DB
Contracted
22
118
115
23
137
112
24
158
106
25
213
73
26
185
96
27
180
100
28
184
99
29
271
125
30
283
123
31
185
123
32
159
113
33
173
103
34
183
46
35
194
15
36
130
2
37
4
Total:
2757
1351
We average around 110 contracted riders per birth year so that number is about the minimum we need to add to make sure that everyone who wants to sign another rider (no matter the quality), can do that.
Spoiler
As a comparison: Here is the same table from the 2020 season DB.
Age
In DB
Contracted
22
115
85
23
176
107
24
274
116
25
325
109
26
316
120
27
353
124
28
351
129
29
372
152
30
349
135
31
314
121
32
365
154
33
277
92
34
178
42
35
32
10
36
6
3
37
4
Total
3807
1499
Looking at the numbers of riders that are entering their decline, it seems very likely that the next couple of years will see similar numbers of signed talents to replace them. So adding just ~120 talents seems too low to me.
DB size: If we are concerned about the size of the DB, id rather retire more riders who have started their decline and went contractless for a season. Of the 375 riders in the DB that are 33 years or older and were without a contract last year, only Mario Vogt got a contract this year. That whole bunch could be retired.
Or riders that cant get maxed anymore before they decline:
- There are 19 riders that are unmaxed at the age of 32. Emil Andersson got drafted, nobody else got a contract.
- There are 30 riders that are lvl 3 or less at the age of 31 and cant be maxed before decline hits. None of them got a team.
- There are 123 riders that are lvl 2 or less at the age of 30 and cant be maxed before decline hits. None of them got a team.
Those riders can all retire. These groups together are well over 500 riders that nobody would miss if they were gone. If we keep retiring declining riders who cant find a team anymore and those who cannot reach their maxed stats anymore, we can easily add 200+ talents per year without bloating the DB more. Then it is more up to us managers to decide whether a country deserves more domestiques and not to the DB stat maker team who basically had the sole decision vote this year when every 22yo but one got picked up.
Who can do the extra workload? I'd volunteer to help with a bunch of these low quality additions.
Example: To end this post, i wanted to put an example of what quality of rider I'm talking about:
Sony - Force India had a secondary focus in India for a while now. They have signed every single Indian rider in the DB except the 35year old Panwar who is 67TT with terrible backups. Even if they wanted to go full Indian, the DB doesnt allow that.
So my idea would be to give them talents like these over the next two years on top of what they are currently getting:
Nat.
Name
FL
MO
MM
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CB
SP
AC
FG
DH
PR
XP
Age
Pot
Harshveer Sekhon
67
51
53
55
66
62
66
63
62
70
73
67
57
71
3.0
27
4
Naman Kapil
66
64
65
66
55
69
66
65
52
66
66
69
66
58
2.75
25
5
Dinesh Kumar
68
52
55
57
62
69
68
57
68
65
68
64
66
63
2.50
25
3
Mula Ram
65
63
62
61
67
64
65
70
53
55
56
52
61
65
1.0
23
4
Manav Sarada
67
61
66
70
68
64
66
69
57
58
61
64
68
66
1.0
22
1
Maxed they would look sth like this:
Nat.
Name
FL
MO
MM
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CB
SP
AC
FG
DH
PR
Age
Pot
Harshveer Sekhon
71
51
54
56
67
63
69
65
62
74
77
67
58
75
27
4
Naman Kapil
67
71
72
73
56
72
69
71
52
66
72
76
67
59
25
5
Dinesh Kumar
72
52
55
58
62
73
72
58
74
69
68
64
66
63
25
3
Mula Ram
72
64
64
64
74
69
72
75
53
55
56
57
61
72
23
4
Manav Sarada
70
63
68
73
73
67
71
72
57
58
61
65
68
71
22
1
Now, i would not expect these to ever be developed but if someone wants to develop a country like we have seen with Greece, Curacao or the Carrebean, they could end up with multiple additional bottom tier domestique in CTs with riders like these. Possibly as final riders in the CT draft or a stagiaire for 1-2 years to give the team some additional nationalistic flair and/or support their Avenir leader. Otherwise, they can be removed once they cant reach their ceiling anymore. And these additions certainly wont hurt our deflation efforts as they are worse than whichever other riders would get a contract now.
I know this has been a popular point for some time now but I'm not sure I agree. I'm sure I'm missing some aspects, and I'm happy to be convinced, but just a few thoughts:
a) Purely on intuition, it feels right to me that if you have so many assets that you generate enough income where this becomes seriously relevant, then you should be taxed more than some CT team that is moving a fraction of the value, even if you both end up with a net income of 200k or something like that.
I understand that accumulating these assets is a skill and an achievement and I understand if it feels unjustified that that is "punished". But at the same time, my impression is that it is already hard enough for promoting teams to establish themselves, while relegating teams already start with a significant advantage over existing teams in the respective division. Changing the tax system will - at least the way I see it, I'm open to suggestions to the contrary - primarily benefit the already entrenched strong teams that have great assets by leaving them with even more money, while making it harder for others to catch up.
b) One of the arguments for taxing net income is that rider swaps are otherwise unfairly beneficial. I see that point, but another option to counteract this would be to tax rider swaps instead. Say you pay some % of the incoming rider(s)' wages, for instance. That would make more sense to me, personally.
c) My impression is that there is already easily enough money in circulation each year for training as is. Other than wild cards, taxes are the only non-training way that money gets removed from the game during the offseason, and changing the tax to net income will result in a significant increase in training money being available. This is obviously the point for most proponents of the net income tax, but both from the balance perspective I mentioned above and regarding the efforts to combat stat inflation, I'm not sure that's a good thing.
d) The change would also bring a significant element of volatility to transfer planning. I could definitely see people struggling when the amount of taxes you pay will go up and down and up and down again as you go through the transfer window and your net balance increases and decreases with every deal. Obviously you can just call it a skill issue and maybe I'd agree, but I think it's at least a minor point worthy of consideration.
Like I said, maybe there are other effects that I'm missing, or that I'm not interpreting correctly. But for the moment, I lean against the change.
Also, i agree with the sentiment from knockout. If all but 1 22 year old got signed this off season, it's not a good thing. It's kind of a bad thing. We need more talents.
Taxing net profits rather than turnover means that business will never be taxed into negative. If Big companies with Big movements were to be taxed on revenues, they would go bankrupt!
If I sell for 2mio and buy for 2mio it should be balanced with no taxes. Otherwise you are punishing activity, which I think is absolutely terrible. In this example the 2mio guy would lose money. That just doesn’t make any sense, when his movements are balanced.
I fully understand the initial idea of moving money out of the game, but now that we have deflated the DB, and will continue to do so, it makes training significantly more difficult, which from a RP perspective is a bad thing.
I liked the previous solution of riders being sold/swapped getting a pay raise as much more relevant. I think it was 5% at one time, which also gave people another tactical element. I’m sure most wouldn’t want that back, but it balanced the deals and FA’s better IMO.
But at the same time, my impression is that it is already hard enough for promoting teams to establish themselves, while relegating teams already start with a significant advantage over existing teams in the respective division. Changing the tax system will - at least the way I see it, I'm open to suggestions to the contrary - primarily benefit the already entrenched strong teams that have great assets by leaving them with even more money, while making it harder for others to catch up.
My main concern here is also not building the advantage of already strong teams but I think the impact is the reverse. What the tax system does is make a 400k talent worth more than 400k cash. And this favors teams with talents - which is the already strong teams. It encourages them to work swaps between themselves rather than selling to weaker teams who only have cash. (Although I would acknowledge the advantage this creates is less than it would have been because training requires cash.)
For example, new teams have no talent and promoted teams may well have invested in aging riders to achieve promotion. So the tax system hits them with a double whammy - they have no talents to trade and the money they do have is worth less than the equivalent talents the already established teams have.
I also think the tax system biases to a training strategy over a trading strategy which doesn't seem to have a basis.
I think the impact on money on the system may be mitigated by the fact so many deals are structured to avoid tax now. Although I agree with the fairness concern that a CT team with one deal being taxed the same as a PT team with a dozen trades that net to the same amount feels off.
How about this for an unpopular solution to these issues - we make the tax progressive - increasing it slightly for PT teams and decreasing it for CT teams at the same time we make it net.
Taxing net profits rather than turnover means that business will never be taxed into negative. If Big companies with Big movements were to be taxed on revenues, they would go bankrupt!
If I sell for 2mio and buy for 2mio it should be balanced with no taxes. Otherwise you are punishing activity, which I think is absolutely terrible. In this example the 2mio guy would lose money. That just doesn’t make any sense, when his movements are balanced.
We're not companies in the real life market, though. You can't go bankrupt. The only question is how expensive it is to gain more money to play around with compared to your initial budget. I don't see any inherent contradiction or senselessness in the idea that if you want to spend 1.75M on training and/or new riders, you have to sell assets worth 2M instead of 1.75M. It's just a balancing decision. And like I said, to me personally it feels like an appropriate one, if you have that many assets to begin with. And I think it's also alright to say that you don't have to pay extra if you try to raise just 300k.
And I get the point that in theory, it punishes activity. But then we still have people right now with the current system asking if it's okay to add more rows to the transfer sheets because they ran out of space with all the deals they're doing. I'm not sure we need the extra incentive.
I fully understand the initial idea of moving money out of the game, but now that we have deflated the DB, and will continue to do so, it makes training significantly more difficult, which from a RP perspective is a bad thing.
Maybe I'm missing something here. But doesn't the stat deflation actually make training easier? The money going around is still the same, so even if your riders get a bit worse overall, you still get the same amount for riders in the same comparative strength tier. Only with overall stats being a bit lower, training costs actually go down, right? We're not talking about additional taxes being raised, just not lowering the current ones.
As someone whose entire transfer season got fucked over by a minor correction it wording of the rules I'd like if those types of changes that impact teams not in the PT to be commed in better time so there'd been a chance to adjust goals etc.
Also reallow double loan cap breaks on a singular rider. Lower division teams have incredibly limited ways of raising money in the first place and the rules changes to 1-3s this off season screwed me over royally. The rules permit that a team is allowed to break their loan cap if it's only used by a singular rider, just allow both teams to pay 400k on a 800k talent if they wish to.
But at the same time, my impression is that it is already hard enough for promoting teams to establish themselves, while relegating teams already start with a significant advantage over existing teams in the respective division. Changing the tax system will - at least the way I see it, I'm open to suggestions to the contrary - primarily benefit the already entrenched strong teams that have great assets by leaving them with even more money, while making it harder for others to catch up.
My main concern here is also not building the advantage of already strong teams but I think the impact is the reverse. What the tax system does is make a 400k talent worth more than 400k cash. And this favors teams with talents - which is the already strong teams. It encourages them to work swaps between themselves rather than selling to weaker teams who only have cash. (Although I would acknowledge the advantage this creates is less than it would have been because training requires cash.)
For example, new teams have no talent and promoted teams may well have invested in aging riders to achieve promotion. So the tax system hits them with a double whammy - they have no talents to trade and the money they do have is worth less than the equivalent talents the already established teams have.
I agree that swaps are too beneficial compared to sales deals, and that should be addressed. But I think the solution should focus on the swaps, be it by tax on rider salaries, or salary increases like SotD mentioned, or some other regulation. If you just remove the taxes, then yes, a new team's money is now worth the same as the equivalent value of a rival's rider. But in a promotion scenario you described, they still "only" have their money, while the established teams have all their talent plus the money, too.
And obviously, it's fine for teams that have been at that level for a while, or teams that promote with a solid staple of talent after years of working on it, to have an advantage over teams that promote with an aging roster or so (or for relegating teams to have an advantage from their time in the higher division). But I think the tax can be a useful instrument to limit that advantage a bit, and I wouldn't remove it if there are other ways to address the core issue, at least that's my current thinking.
As someone who spent on assets this year but plans to spend on training next year, my views may have changed recently.
I don't feel super strongly on this issue, but just chiming in to say.
1) I do think, intuitively, I agree the solution needs to be one that doesn't incentvize swaps over sales. It's not just that it makes strong teams stronger, though that's a big part of it. It discourages sales generally and forces only managers to only deal with others who have mutually interest ij each others rider or else arrange multiple swaps. If you want a rider on another team, but they don't need a rider type you have, it's not easy to just sell the rider you do have elsewhere and just come back with the cash. It's disadvantageous both to you and the person you're propositioning since both transactions are taxed. That dramatically decreased the amount of large scale moves possible after the first few days of transfers, because if you don't have direct, mutual connections on riders, riders just stay put over being sold with huge tax and no replacement. I'm not against making swaps less attractive with wage increases, but whatever solution we have should address this.
2) On the other hand, I've never been super receptive to the argument that we should be taxed on net profits because that's just how it works from a business sense. Tax on gross income max plenty sense to me. I'm taxed on my full income as are some types of business organizations. I don't get to deduct every expense I make from my income before I pay my taxes. I wonder if making it net altogether would just cause people to stockpile assets that don't fit their tram well to avoid tax bills over training their national riders. Maybe not a realistic concern, but don't neecessarily think it's a better I outcome. At least in my experience, the idea of businesses purchasing assets for tax write-offs is common, and to the extent it's incentvized, is not necessarily heralded as a valuable act for society but more a loophole.
With the deflated DB, it’s more expensive (and in a shorter timespan because of the older talents added) to get f.e. A new top level rider, because they are not added with the starting point they used to. The first stats trained might be cheaper, but the overall cost if you want a rider to compete with Herklotz, Lecuisinier etc. have become more expensive.
Tax provides a valuable and much needed exit of cash from the system!
The first exit; Wildcards only apply as an exit for PCT teams, and compared to training, transfers, wages, and overall budgets are hella cheap. It's an exit of some cash, but not masses, and as said only applies to PCT teams.
The second exit; Training is the biggest way money leaves the system. That's correct. But comes with some issues, namely the majority of training is conducted by PT teams and higher-tier PCT teams. I've always said Training should never be considered in Inflation conversations, and I maintain that stance.
What you don't see is a lot of lower-tier PCT and CT teams training. For lower-tier PCT this is because most money goes towards trying to recruit better riders to move up, but this is not an exit of money from the system, it's just moving it around teams - usually in an upwards direction.
For CT teams, training is fundamentally too expensive, certainly at any significant scale.
The Third Exit; Taxing net income is really important as a way to get money out of the system that isn't Training. So important. Well... sort of.
What we need is a way to have more money exit the system from CT and lower-tier PCT teams. I'd advocate for a change to Training myself, to make it a more feasible and affordable way for CT teams to improve themselves, and to diversify the levels and stats training at all levels is spent on. But as that feels unlikely, or at least something that will take 2+ windows to really get right, Tax is really important.
Why Net instead of Gross? Simply, we need this exit to drain as much cash as possible. That drain restricts advantages of stacked teams, helping increase overall parity. It forces teams with saleable assets into tactical decisions of how best to use those assets - is it cash sales? rider swaps? holding and training? investment in high value talents & loan fees?
Net removes that cost-benefit analysis as selling vs swaps vs training are pretty much the same cost. As pointed out, balancing income vs spend would be the goal, and I easily forsee indirect collusion where deals are favored that match values, so money doesn't exit the system, it just circles and flows between teams, exiting only via training (or towards a couple of bigger teams doing the majority of buying, either way it's flowing and pooling where we don't want it to).
I can see a scenario where taxing Net is a good idea. But we'd need to see a re-working of Training so that more is done in the lower-tier PCT and CT, or adding in more ways to spend cash (or closing the Wage Cap & Budget gaps between divisions). For now Tax on Gross is definitely the most beneficial system for the Game as a whole. It's definitely not good for individual PT teams and higher-tier PCT teams, but the overall benefits to the game outweigh the harm to those teams.
I'd still advocate for more ways to use cash, and to re-work Training, regardless of any changes to the Tax system! More choices to make as a CT team, more ability to engage in Training & the related decisions, would be massive for keeping the division engaging beyond the "aim to get out of the CT".
Stagiaires in general feel like an outdated concept to me now, and not really in line with where modern cycling is going so to me especially if we go with the concept above of adding more riders who max at 73-75 in their main stats, changing the formula to development riders makes more sense to me.
I was thinking of a way of combining how Isreal Academy and Lotto have riders joining there main team throughout the season and came up with this
This would only be an available contract to U25 riders (Avenir-eligible riders basically):
- 25k wage minimum
- 4 youth rider cap, youth riders count towards your salary cap as normal
- expanding the 15 racedays to 25 racedays at any point in the season
- Riders on this contract receive 75xp for riding L'avenir as opposed to 20xp
- Removing these riders from your minimum team cap / but also removing them from the maximum team cap (i.e CT team cannot have 14 riders and 2 youth riders, but now can have 20 riders + 4 youth riders if in cap)
- Riders on this contract can hit a max XP of 2.0 or whatever the level above their current level would be (e.g. 3.0, 4.0)
- To continue, the rider must receive a 50k (or more) contract in the renewals
Reasoning:
1. Stagieres currently feels like a wasted season for riders receiving this type of contract.
We currently have 114 riders in the DB who received one, but because they didn't level up and are now no longer eligible for one, they are just stuck on 1.xx lvl.
2. The new way of them receiving XP makes them upgradeable for any level PT,PCT and CT, but still requires planning and signing them up for L'avenir, rewarding players who are around all season.
3. These riders typically weren't good enough to receive a 50k contract, so are unlikely to receive one when they are a year older in DB, giving them a 1 level up if planned correctly should make them more attractive then they were
4. Stops the (IMO) pointless rule of allowing stagieres to count against the minimum cap, while also opening up a chance for those with cheaper squads to take on more riders to develop, would be useful for regional teams, especially.
Have said this for years, but to echo what TMM said, we need more fun and strategic ways to spend money in the offseason that isn't just training or wildcards. The whole tax conversation hurts my brain, and still not sure if changing it is worth it.
Easy and desirable way to spend more money during offseason is having more impact on stat gains. Basically, spend money to redistribute a point, two, three etc.
I have often wished for development teams. It would also make it possible to add riders a bit younger, but with a slower progress. I know it is more work, but races could be simmed.
Teams could decide for themselves how much of their wage cap they wanted to use. From 150-500K f.e.
@Mre - As i often speak about, it's not just about adding more, it's about adding options for CT teams & lower-tier PCT teams. Training itself offers a range of options to managers with money (what do you train? how do you get funds? are those choices worth it against talent investment or ordinary transfers? is it worth the loss of RD to increase the OVL?), backed up by how much they talk about exactly these things. What you don't hear are lower-tier PCT managers or CT managers talking about these things (bar pretty rare fringe cases).
Rather than trying to design whole new systems, like Dev teams (again, if these came from budget then it's inaccessible to CT managers right off the bat, and probably not worth it to lower-tier PCT managers, so we end up in the exact same place where cash flows and pools upwards), an easier solution would be something like 3-tiers of training costs - one for each division. Something like 79-85 stays the same. Then it breaks out into different costs for PT, PCT and CT dropping 10% (i've done zero maths on this at this stage) for each division cut from 76-78, and 15% from 70-75, and up to like 20% under 69.
@quadsas - That's an interesting idea. Could come under Trainings on the Transfer sheet and borrow a lot of that systems cost structure to try and help keep it simple to introduce to the game.
Adding too many low level talents has no real benefit. 117/118 signed now, but of course also a lot of them as stags that will never get a real contract. Of course 'enough' need to be added. If we know of certain teams that really want to go all in on their nationality/region, enough useful talents are added (and implemented through restats as well). And if that is the big argument for adding more low leveled riders, I think there is no more argument.
To continue on this point a bit I think changing stag system could be something to look at, instead of only the 22/23 y/o's maybe other ages as well. Haven't read that in depth so far tbc.
I thought I was in favour of net taxing before, but to be fair I believe it's better how it is now. The bigger teams who are able to buy and sell a lot like that usually already have quite a nice advantage over other teams without the net taxing. Using the example of real life and how big businesses would go bankrupt doesn't apply at all to a system where the average income through sales will not go over 2-3m for most of the pack, also keeping in mind that you receiving 1-2m for free every off-season already.
Late to the party and probably not relevant to the game, but knockouts opening post is great analysis and should definitely be considered next season with the numbers the MG Admin & knockout presented on the younger age bracket.
Nemolito wrote:
If we know of certain teams that really want to go all in on their nationality/region, enough useful talents are added (and implemented through restats as well).
Can i translate this provocatively to "We want managers to shout even more and louder about the apparent lack of talents in their home countries because we are not all completely tired by the discussion whether greek, slovenian or swiss riders are the most underrepresented nations in the game"?
