HBD Update

Today's Update Details:

• Expanded the # of fielding coaches created in between seasons to prevent an occasional shortage.
• Loosened some rating threshold checks for coachs when determining their demands. There were a few too many coaches not meeting the appropriate rating checks for hitting, pitching and/or fielding coaches at the big league level and, as a result, were looking for other roles. For example, some worlds were seeing a glut of coaches looking for bullpen coach roles when some of them could have been looking for pitching coach jobs.
• Corrected a bug where a small group of coaches were not lowering their demands during the coach hiring phase when they should have been.
• Improved the coach hiring process by adding an additional check for evaluating coach offers for AAA and MLB coaches. Up until 12 hours before the end of the coach negotiation period, AAA and MLB coaches must have had the same franchise be the top offer for 2 periods in a row before they'll consider signing. This was put in place to prevent the scenario where a franchise is a coach's top offer for 5 periods in a row, but then another franchise sweeps him away with his first offer. Now, early in the negotiation process, the other franchise will have an attempt to make another offer. Again, this is only for AAA and MLB coaches.
• Improved the logic for filling empty coaching roles at the end of the coach negotiation process. The first attempt is to re-sign the coach from the previous season if he's still available. We continue to do this, but if it's obvious the coach is not a good fit for that role, he will not re-sign.
• Improved the logic for players evaluating the exact same non big league offers. Up until this point, if two franchises offered a player the exact same minor league, minor league with invite or invite contract, he would always sign with the franchise that made the first offer. The player now evaluates the depth of the franchises and goes with the franchise where he has the best chance to reach the big leagues.
• Corrected a bug involving International Prospects. Some players would occasionally react to a contract offer by saying they don't want to be booed out of the stadium or something similar. We have a check in place so players don't accept offers for way more than their quality level. We were inadvertantly comparing the offer with the prospect's current overall rating rather than his projected overall rating.
• Corrected a financial bug involving players who signed long term contracts, were released during season A of that contract and then signed as a free-agent by a different club the following season during the same contract. The original franchise was not having the prorated portion of the league minimum subtracted, and the new franchise was not being held responsible for the prorated amount of the league minimum. We have fixed all existing cases.
• Addded links to the official world blog or forum thread for each world to the World Center, Franchise Center and World Chat pages.
• Added Blog pages to both the Player Profile and Franchise Profile pages. There's a new menu item along the left of each profile page. The info in the copy-and-paste code is high level information and contains links to the profile pages. We didn't include current stats or record since these will change frequently and can always be accessed via the profile link.

There are some styling issues with some of the blog entries -- we'll be improving these tomorrow.

If your world has a blog and it's not been assigned, please let us know via customer support. 1 blog per world.

We hope you enjoy the improvements and additions.