Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Aug 20, 2016

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Aug 22, 2016

• I've officially scheduled the draft.
  
• I'm currently entering the draft order manually. MFL allows me to put teams in multiple times or not at all in a given draft round, which supports the ability to trade draft picks prior to the draft.
  
• I do not see any settings to allow or disallow draft pick trades during the draft. I suspect MFL doesn't directly support it. It may be possible for me to pause the draft midway and then reassign pick order at that point, but I'm not sure. If this doesn't work reasonably well, we may have to abandon the ability to trade picks during the draft.
  
• I have set the autodraft using a setting that says: when the timer expires, " Allow the system to automatically pick a player for the owner based on the highest-ranked available player on the owner's "My Draft List" player rankings, otherwise, skip the pick. The league commissioner may then use the For Commissioners > Setup > Draft Setup > Change Draft Pick option to pick the appropriate player at the appropriate time to compensate for the skipped pick, if league rules permit it." This means if you want to skip a pick, you need to have your My Draft List be empty! I don't know if the client includes a "skip my pick" button but I doubt it.
  
• I'm setting up the draft initially to have 12 rounds. I really don't think we'll need that many. We will need at most, a number of rounds equal to the maximum number of empty slots on any team, plus the number of players that team owner trades away during the draft, minus the number of extra picks they have during draft rounds. I'm guessing that number won't exceed 12. Actually I think 8 or so will be more than enough. If anyone thinks they'll need more than 12 rounds please let me know before the draft starts!
  
• I've set the draft timer to two minutes. A shorter timer makes the draft go faster... but I'd prefer a longer timer to allow players to attempt trades, plus to allow me to do any necessary bookkeeping.
  
• There's no way for me to set player salaries during the draft, as they get picked. I will prepare before the draft by making note of every team's salary and cap space. During the draft, either I'll have to do some quick bookkeeping, or in theory any owner might accidentally (or intentionally) bust their cap. The thing is, you can draft onto your IR, and it looks like we'll have taxi squads which don't affect your cap space, so... yeah, that needs to be OK. Consequently I think we'll need to have some sort of clearcut process to follow if, after the draft, any owner has bust their cap even after moving eligible players onto taxi squads and IR.
  
• If we go 12 rounds of 12 picks each at a full 2 minutes per pick, that's 288 minutes, or nearly five hours. For god's sake let's not do that. If anyone starts using up their whole 2 minutes for every pick, I may have to reduce the timer. Fortunately I can set any team to start autopicking if they are failing to make picks before the timer runs out... but I'd much rather not do that in case the owner didn't want to draft a player at that spot at all. Instead hopefully if you don't want to draft at a given spot you can announce that in chat and hopefully I can then advance the clock immediately. Not having commissioned a draft before on MFL, I really just have no idea.
  
• You can now set keepers. You must set any player you want to keep as a keeper, or I believe the system will dump them before the draft. I have set the system to allow from zero to 25 keepers, but I'll increase the number once I set up taxi squads. Please take special care to ensure that every player still on your roster after this Saturday is set as a keeper. I will post additional reminders.
  

1. Per MFL: there will be taxi squads for each team, consisting of 3 slots. You can put NFL rookies or non-rookies into any slot.
   
2. Per our own league-rule, you can only put a non-rookie onto your practice squad if that player has never been included as a starter by any league team/owner, this year or in any prior year.
   
3. Per MFL, players on your taxi squad do not cost any money towards your cap. Salary info for them is based on draft position or FAAB paid. Traded players retain their salaries as normal.
   
4. At any time you can promote players off your taxi squad and onto your bench. Doing so only affects your cap, which you have to stay under.
   
5. HOWEVER, once you "start" a player - that is, put them in a starting position that then becomes locked because the game that player's team has hit its scheduled start, that player has been "started" and is forever ineligible to be placed on a taxi squad. Note that this is the case even if in real life that player does not play in that game, and irrespective of that player's in-real-life status... e.g., a player on a real NFL practice squad that you "start" still counts as being started, because you are an idiot and deserve what happens to you if you do this.
   
6. At any time up to 72 hours (just a feels-right guess at a good amount of time) before a player's team is scheduled to play, you can attempt to steal that player from another owner's practice squad. For example, if the player is on the Tennesee Titans, and they have a Thursday night game this week, you can try to steal the player no later than Monday night, 72 hours before the TNG begins.
   
7. You attempt to steal a player by posting in this thread, as well as sending messages via the MFL interface to both the owner of the player, and all three commissioners.
   
8. The owner of the player then has up to 48 hours to block your steal attempt. The only way to block a steal attempt is to commit to starting that player in his next NFL game. That means you must promote the player - dropping players as necessary to make roster space and/or cap space - and then put that player into a starting spot and leave him there until his game locks.
   
9. Exception: if, after a steal attempt is initiated, the player being stolen is injured (reported as questionable, doubtful, out, placed on IR), suspended (placed on S), or dropped to waivers/free agency by their owning NFL team, either player may back out and restore the status quo. That means the stealing player can cancel their steal attempt - the player stays with the original owner. An owner who already initiated the blockage of a steal by rostering the player may back out of their block, permitting the other owner to steal the player (if they still want to). And, the player remains eligible to return to a practice squad (or, if applicable, IR), according to the owner's desire.
   
10. Once the player becomes locked into a game, none of this stuff applies... it's just like any other NFL man who fucks you over with his failure during a game. You can't put him back on a practice squad.
    
11. All of the above notwithstanding, players are added to practice squads in the normal way, by moving them from your bench (if eligible), trading for them, picking them up off of waivers via FAAB, or drafting them during the rookie/free agent draft. You are permitted to transit a player via your bench to your taxi squad and not bust your cap in the process, if the MFL software won't let you move the player directly to your squad from wherever you got him.
    

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Aug 24, 2016