Player Contracts

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Overview
The wages of your players are covered by the club board, and you don't have to worry about them. However, every now and again your club's better players will have their contracts come up for renewal and you do have to deal with those contract negotiations.

Your club has a nucleus of top talent requiring contracts, consisting of the top ten players in the club (10 players with the highest Player Level), plus any star players that fall outside the top ten. When the contracts of these players come up for renewal, they will be wanting fat signing-on bonuses and short contract durations. It is your job to negotiate to bring down this signing bonus and/or extend the contract length. You do this by playing contract cards into an on-going negotiation. When a contract negotiation is finished, the player will get paid their agreed signing-bonus and the new contract will run for the negotiated length. The signing-on bonus is the only money you have to pay out of your club cash, as the player's actual weekly wages are covered by the club board, and don't impact your finances – only the signing bonus comes out of your club cash.

A non-star player who enters the top ten won't start contract negotiations immediately, but waits until another player falls out of the top ten and their contract ends, or until a player in the top ten is sold.

Any non-star player that lies outside the top ten ‘best’ players and is not under contract will have an ‘Indefinite’ contract. This means you do not have to worry about their contracts as your club board is taking care of them. Once a non-star player enters your top ten 'best' players and a contract negotiations starts, the 'Indefinite' contract will end.

Starting Contract Negotiations
Contract negotiations will automatically start once a player’s current contract reaches its end, unless they are a non-star player and are no longer in the top ten ‘best’ players in your squad.

You may also start a contract negotiation early with a player while they are still under contract, so long as they do not have an 'Indefinite' contract. You may want to do this if you think their PL is going to rise by a fair bit by the time their current contracts reaches its end and think that getting them to sign a new contract now could be a better option. It is important to note that when you conclude a new deal like this it does not stack with the old deal i.e. the old contract is considered null and void and the new contract terms take over. This means that the two durations won't stack e.g. you have a player under a contract which has 20 days left on the contract. You start new contract negotiations with the player and sign a new contract with a duration of 28 days - the player will now be under contract for 28 days, not 48 days (the original 20 days of the old contract added to the new contract's 28 day duration do not add together).

You will be notified when a contract negotiation starts.

Conducting a Negotiation
When a contract negotiation begins the player will make two demands:
 * 1) The first is a signing-bonus that the player wants you to pay him when the contract is signed. The amount they will demand is equal to the player's minimum value, which is calculated as their (PL squared x100) x 1.5. If the player is a Star Player (see Star Players for more details), then the signing on bonus they want will be a further x1.5 of their minimum value. Any signing bonus is paid out of your available money when the contract is signed. if you don't have enough money to pay, then the contract will still be signed, and the money will be subtracted from your account, pushing it into the red (i.e. available money will be a minus amount). This has no ill effect apart from stopping you paying out any more money (apart from other signing-n bonuses) until your club regains a positive bank balance (which will happen automatically at the beginning of the next season if you haven't sorted it out before then, when the board hands out your seasonal budget for that season, reduced by the amount you were in the red at the end of the previous season).
 * 2) The second demand is for a contract duration. This will always be for 56 days.

When a contract negotiation begins the contract screen will have two areas where you can play Contract cards, one area for Contract cards that will reduce the signing-on bonus you will need to pay the player when the contract is signed, and the other area for Contract cards that will increase the duration of the contract. While a contract negotiation is ongoing you can play contract cards into either area.

A contract card played into the signing-bonus area will reduce the signing bonus amount the player will get paid when the contract negotiation finishes. The amount of the reduction is based upon the following formula: (PL/5) x 1000 x energy value of card. If the card has a focus match to the player's best posit9ion, then the total reduction is is multiplied by x1.5.

NOTE: When playing a contract card it does not have to have the same focus as the player's best position to work. If the focus of the card does match the player's best position then the card provides a bigger bonus, but a card without a focus still works

e.g. If the player's PL was 40, then a 1 energy card without a matching focus to the player's best position would take off $8,000 (40/5=8, 8x1000x1=8000). If the card was a 5 energy card then it would take off x5 of that amount (i.e.$40,000). If the 1 energy card had a focus match with the player's best position then the amount taken off would be $12,000 ($8,000 x 1.5). If the 5 energy card had a focus match it would take off $60,000 ($40,000 x 1.5).

A contract card played into the contract duration area will increase the duration of the contract by a number of days equal to 2x the energy value of the card (doubled if the card has a focus match with the player's best position). Then +5 is added to the total.

e.g. A 1 energy card without a matching focus would increase a contract duration by 7 days (1x2+5), or 9 days with a matching focus match (1x2x2+5). A 5 energy card without a matching focus would increase the duration by 15 days (5x2+5), or with a matching focus by 25 days (2x5x2+5).

In total you may only play seven contract cards on a contract negotiation. That is seven cards in total, not seven cards in each area of the contract negotiation.

If during a contract negotiation the player's PL the player falls out of the ten 'best' players of the club, the negotiation will still continue and will be signed at the end of the negotiations - once negotiations have started they must be completed. Once finished the player will sign the contract and the contract will count towards the maximum of ten contracts you can have active at any one time.

Ending a Negotiation
A contract negotiation will end after seven days or when seven negotiation cards have been played, whichever occurs soonest.

When a negotiation ends the contract will automatically be signed and any signing-on fee will be paid out of your money supply. If you do not have enough money to pay then your money will go into the red and you will be unable to make other payments until it goes back into the black (though other contract signing-on bonuses will still be paid, pushing the club further into the red). You can bring the balance back into the black by selling players. if you are still in the red at the end of the season then the board will subtract this amount from the money they give you the following season i.e. going into the red will not bankrupt your club, it will just stop it spending more money and will reduce next season's budget if not brought back into the black in the current season through selling players.

Contract Cards and Energy
Contract card supply is worked out slightly differently. Contract cards are supplied by the Office building and use Energy tech as do the other buildings. The Office will supply one contract card per negotiation you have ongoing. Energy tech levels one to five determine the maximum energy level that these cards can be — any daily contract card that is generated can have an energy value up to this maximum e.g. if your energy tech in the Office was 4, then any daily contract card generated would have an energy value of between 1 and 4. The amount of energy that is added to your general energy pool (see below for more detail) will be equal to the card-energy value of the the cards you receive e.g. you have two on-going negotiations and have energy tech level 3. You will receive two cards, each between 1 and 3 energy, and the combined energy of the two cards will be added to your energy pool.

If you have one or more ongoing negotiations you will also receive an additional bonus Contract card. However you will not receive any additional energy for this bonus card. In addition, if you raise the Office energy tech to 6 or higher, then you will have a chance of receiving even more bonus cards (a chance of one additional card per energy tech above level 5). These bonus contract cards will not supply energy to your general energy pool.

Card energy for newly opened negotiations is provided as soon as the negotiation starts (at any time of day). Each new negotiation would provide one new card and energy to go along with it. Card energy for each subsequent day during the negotiation is provided at the start of each new day.

e.g. suppose you have Office energy tech of 7 and have one contract negotiation ongoing. That means that you would receive a Contract card and its energy value would be added to your general energy pool. You would also receive a number of additional contract cards, that would not add their energy to your general energy pool. You would automatically receive at least one additional card, as that is automatically given. However, you would have a chance of receiving up to an additional two cards on top of this, as your energy tech level is 7. The Card-energy value of these additional cards will also be between one and five, just like the card you received from because you had one negotiation on-going.