Glen signs

The Frecheville Blades called a hasty press conference this morning to confirm overnight rumours that they had indeed captured the signature of pacey young striker Gary Glen.

The Manager responded to queries from delighted Blades fans, commenting that he was delighted to have gotten such a promising young player so cheaply. Glen's agent looked less happy at the reputed wage of under £2k, while the Blades have confirmed that an acquisition fee of £110k was paid.

Glen said that he was eager to make a big impact at his first club, and out to prove that he merits a first team place.

Elsewhere, rumours are rife that Glen may soon form the focal point of a Blades U21 side. Not previously known for youth development, it is rumoured that this will now form a key part of the Frecheville Blades re-profiling strategy.

Miserable time for Blades

It's my monthly bad start to the season time again, not helped by the loss of two key players in a wage auction bug last season. My squad was always undergoing some hefty pruning, but being left with 14 players was not fair!

So with that in mind, I decided to try and tap the unproven youth market - those pesky 22 year olds that supposedly had a lot of potential, but who have been at clubs that have failed to play, or train, them well enough to allow them to progress. So I made a few bids...

...and won them all - eek! I now have a squad of 26 players, which includes a large number of 22 year olds that supposedly have a lot of potential, but whom I won't get round to playing most of!

I've got a lot of time online next week, so I may start up a reserve squad, get in some non-ranked competitions and test them out, see what they are made of...

I think I've taken 18 points from my first 14 DFA Premiership matches, and I've got a positive goal difference, so I guess things could be worse. Now for one or two of these gems to come through and lead the Blades on to their usual second-half-of-season revival!

Colin signs up

The top Fenerbahce and Turkey substitute right winger Colin Kazim-Richards, formerly of Sheffield United, will now be thinking he's Cristiano Ronaldo and doing crap stepovers for the Frecheville Blades following his £400k move yesterday. CKR becomes the 13th Blade at the Blades.

I'll post more next week, when I've had actually had time to play some FML and do some modding... Next Thursday is Mod Day 2, when all the mods descend on SI Towers to eat pizza, so I'll probably be blethering on about that excitedly...

Signings...

One topic that's come up for discussion a couple of times already today is that of signing players, be it at game launch (how will I compete if the early sign-ups hoard all the stars?) or via dodgy dealings (how will I compete if everyone else is cheating?). So let's have a chat about that.

The Transfer System in FML

First we need to understand the transfer system; I guess maybe not all that read this will be familiar with it.

FML's transfer system lies somewhere between eBay (or any other web auction site, of course), fantasy football and reality. Essentially, each player has two demands - one is for his daily wage, and one is his acquisition fee; the fee that a user must pay the bank to sign a free agent. Once a player is signed, he can be wheeled and dealed in the transfer market, sold to private bids etc. for however much someone is willing to pay...

The Initial Squad

Once a user gets into the game, if they want to sign a free agent, they will have to (a) start a 24-hour wage auction, which if they win they then (b) pay his acquisition fee to the bank. Simple. However, at startup, they can sign any free agent immediately for the acquisition fee. So, what stops early birds hoarding all the best players?

Initially, you're only given £500,000, and allowed to spend £100k maximum on wages. This is not a lot of money - last time, I got Tim Howard in goal, and a load of other players best described as 'promising'. Or terrible, one of the two. Anyway, the acquisition fee and wage demands of anyone half decent are pretty high, and make the initial squad quality pretty limited. Furthermore, with the recent addition of the skills system, users can no longer see all of the players in the gameworld. Finally, not all players are released into the world straight away; many are held back for new users who join later - every new user sees 25 players released into the gameworld.

All of this means that it doesn't matter when you join up - there will always be players to sign, and some of them will always be decent. Months of tests have also shown that it is perfectly possible to come into a world late and be successful.

Dodgy Dealings

So what about all them dodgy, scheming cheats then? One of the key roles of the beta test has been to hunt all the possible exploits in the game, and eliminate as many as possible. The result is a pretty rigid transfer system - the loan system in particular is mildly bizarre, to say the least, but it is satisfactorily functional, does its job, and is designed to limit exploitation.

There have been dodgy dealings, of course, but these invariably get rooted out. As a moderator, one of my jobs is to check transfer dealings - e.g. compare player acquisition fees to their transfer fee, and so on. We have tools at our disposal for this, and can request chat logs if needed. However, our biggest weapon is the user - practically all the players are shortlisted by someone somewhere, and they get a news item after any deal goes through on one of their listed targets. Users certainly when something stinks, and let the mods (and sadly, usually everyone else) know straight away. The mods then have the power to investigate and, if necessary, punish users. It's something SI seem to take incredibly seriously, and for my part, I'm pretty confident that cheats never prosper in FML.