...incentive in place to train players simply as commodities to be moved to other teams...
Welcome to the club, although there's nothing new there. I've been pointing that out for quite some time now.
I haven't joined your club. I have said that the specific proposal would be a step in that direction, which would be bad. The current training setup doesn't allow training enough players to make them commodities as much; as it is, you can't train a homegrown team since once you train the guards, and then the big men, the guards are going to start losing skills. Adding twice as many players but still having it take 6-7 seasons to train the guards and then 6-7 to train the big men would just be rearranging the seating chart at your pity party.
A couple things:
1) 6-7 seasons to build a player is certainly reasonable in a management sim like this. I play in an American Football sim where it takes upwards of 7-8 seasons for players to reach full builds.
2) The problem with taking 6-7 seasons here is that only trains you a fraction of your overall roster at max training speed. This discourages owners from sticking around. In the Football sim example above I can train an entire roster of 50-60 players at max training speed. After 7-8 seasons an owner can have an entire starting lineup at full builds and be training the next generation of players.
3) I simply don't understand the benefit of having a player's training tied to the position they play instead of letting owners set a player's training individually. Let's use a 12-man roster for example. Right now you could train 3 or 6 or 9 players in one skill (let's say Passing) each week. Disconnect training from which position a player is used at and allow each player to be assigned to train at a different skill each week and in one week you could train:
Passing - 3 players
Rebounding - 3 players
Jump Shot - 3 players
Free Throws - 3 players
Then keep or rotate as needed over the rest of the season.
4) Players are considered commodities now exactly because you can only train so few at maximum effectiveness. Allow each player to be set to train a different skill each week and now teams will not only have an incentive to build around a team of player but all teams can train players and become competitive quicker.
5) As teams can build more players better and more effectively themselves, the market for expensive fully built players will dry up (or at least get somewhat cheaper). That said, a side effect of this might be that 18 and 19 year old players may get more expensive. However, those two might balance each other out.
6) With all that in place, the only thing an owner needs to worry about is getting a player 48 (or 36 or some other number) minutes each week regardless of which position it is in. No more using players out of position and sacrificing/tanking a game or season to train 1-2 players (which solves another perceived problem as well).
Last edited by lvess at 2/21/2016 9:40:45 PM