UHS Build 6766 – June 28 2014
This was another build I had planned to be a bit larger and released more around the end of July, however, the discovery of the coach scouting issue forced this release to be pushed up. We had already released a walk-through to setting your league up for it’s Inaugural Season but still needed to include it here for the sake of logging the changes we make. The bigger items you’ll see here reflect the addition of Contract Extensions and changes to how they are being offered. We have also modified the Buy Out values of players to reflect whatever level they are on since I’ve been seeing NHL teams move players down to the farm to clear waivers so they can buy them out for a cheaper price.

I was intending on adding in the Two-Way Contract, Salaries & Contract Switch (toggle), No-Trade Clause and the Signing Bonus developments, however, we had to cut things short and get this release out to address a bug. I like to bundle developments around a certain aspect of the program if possible to help keep things a little more simple for GMs that may not like tons and tons of change as it can be difficult to remember all the different things that may have been modified. It also helps me to focus on a certain area for testing instead of needing to do an extensive test on all of UHS. These developments are still pending and will eventually get addressed.

The coach scouting bug was an issue where a report of “Good” would be returned when a coach’s skill had a value of 9. It should have returned “Excellent”. I’ll be updating most leagues with a custom script to re-scout any coaches that were scouted in their league’s current season to record the proper scouting report.

Inaugural Season Walk-Through for COMs Guide
We released a walk-through for COMs for a league’s inaugural season.  This will take you step-by-step through all the items you need to set up and plan for during the season.

Free Agent Stats
There is a new report available for COMs in the Reports section and GMs under League > Free Agency > Free Agent Stats that will show you a list of all available Free Agents and their Regular Season statistics for their most recent season.

Contract Extensions & Changes
UHS is going to change how contract offers are handled to be more inline with what happens to a typical player in the NHL. If a player is still under contract but it at or under the Minimum Contract Re-Offer value (default to offer a new contract to players is 1 year), the GM will be presented with two options for when the contract will start:
– Takes effect at end of current contract
– Takes effect immediately (-20% penalty).

By default the first option is selected. With this option if the player accepts, the new contract will take effect during the Off-Season change and their current contract is at 0. If you choose to go with the second option (which until now was the only method UHS would handle), the contract will take effect immediately, resulting in the player losing the remainder of the current contract (hence the -20% penalty). This option is being made available in case GMs are running into Salary Cap problems and want to take a chance at signing a different deal with their player.

These options will not appear if the player is at 0 years (no current contract) as “Take effect immediately” is assumed, however, the -20% penalty is not applied to the signing factor.  The -20% penalty is applied before the Min / Max, so the Min is still 10% to sign and Max is still 90% to sign.

For buy-outs the GM will need to pay out the entire value of the contract extension on top of the player’s current contract. The contract extension value is also modified by the Buy Out Percentage that is set by the Commissioner.

Please note that the AutoGM will always use the Immediate Start option, however, they will not get the -20% penalty. It is cheating a bit, however, the AutoGM really wasn’t meant to act exactly like a live-flesh-and-blood GM.

Player Buy-Outs
Players being bought out will now have their buy-out prices subjected to the same salary modifier as whatever level they are on. By default Farm is 25% and Junior is 10%. So a player clearing waivers that is going ot be bought out will have their full Buy Out value reduced to whatever the percentage is for their level. Here’s an example:

BuyOutPercentage – 66% – this is set by the COM. By default it’s 100% but we’re changing it to 66% (TJHL) for the sake of the example.
Sal Farm Pct – 25% – also set by the COM.
James Young’s wage – $2 / 5 – $10 million value (I wish).

Young is sent down to the farm and clears waivers. The GM is going to buy him out. Previously the GM would have to pay $10m * 0.66 = $6.6m. With the change we’ve made, the GM will now be paying: $10m * 0.66 * 0.25 = $1.65 million.

This development was done to bring UHS more in line with NHL team practices.

Bug Fixes
– Fixed an issue where the Waivers link was not appearing during the Off-Season or Pre-Season despite GMs having the option to send their players through waivers.
– Fixed an issue where a coach with a rating of 9 would still show up as “Good” in their scouting report.
– Fixed an issue where coaches that were already scouted by any team in the league would not be included in the Coach Mass Scouting tool.
– Fixed an issue where All-Star teams were not displaying properly in Public Websites.
– Removed some pages from the Teams navigation in Public Websites for All-Star teams as they were not intended for those type of teams.
– Fixed an issue where the actionlist for players was appearing empty for COMs attempting to manage a team.

Hot Fixes
– Fixed an issue where GMs would see “No Action Available” for all players in the Personnel section. Released June 7 2014.
– Fixed an issue where the AutoGM would still look to free agency to poach players despite having full rosters. Released June 8 2014.
– Fixed an issue where the Team Career leaders on public sites were linking to an incorrect player profile. Released June 9 2014.
– Fixed an issue where new leagues were still seeing the old Record Book table being created. Released June 12 2014.
– Fixed an issue where changing the scouting adjustment for your team would change it for all teams in the league. Released June 12 2014.
– Leagues without anyone logging in for 30 days will now start to receive warnings. Previously this was set to 90 days. Released June 14 2014.
– Fixed an issue where COMs could not enter in a negative number in the Ledger tool (usually done to fix an incorrect entry). Released June 19 2014.
– Fixed an issue where large leagues could hang when changing from the playoffs to the off-season. Released June 19 2014.