Franchise mode: the GM loop, roster sizes per sport, how games are decided, trades, aging and the draft

Founding a club

Name the club, choose a creation plan (how many roster spots you fill with your own builds: 0, 1, 3, 5, 9 or all), choose a season length, and press 🏟️ Found the Franchise. Seats you do not fill yourself are signed by the front office with generated free agents (they start at age 23). Baseball, basketball and soccer offer 16, 32 or 48-game seasons (32 by default); football is fixed at 17 games, like the real thing.

Your own players arrive three ways: import a build from your personal Hall of Fame, sign a free agent, or build a new one on the sport's builder page (it sends you back to the club with a rookie ceremony). Builds you made keep their real OVR even past 99, up to the game's ceiling. Everyone the game generates for you or for the seven rival clubs is capped at 99.

Roster sizes and seats

The in-game founding screen still says "14-man roster" in all four sports. That number is only true for baseball; the table above is what the game actually builds.

How a game is decided

Each day your club plays one game against that day's rival (the eight-club league rotates), and the other six clubs play each other so the standings stay live. In baseball your rotation starter (rotation slot = day mod 5) gets innings, strikeouts, walks and earned runs rolled from his OVR with bell-curve noise, the bullpen covers the rest, and each of your nine hitters gets a real box line (at-bats, hits, home runs, RBI) rolled from his OVR against the opposing starter. More runs wins; a tie goes to a coin weighted toward the better offense. A "hero moment" line is written from the real box score: a walk-off, a shutout, a 12-strikeout night.

Basketball runs a score sim with overtime; soccer replaces draws with extra time; football plays 17 single games. In every sport the outcome is a function of your ratings versus theirs, so the only lever you have is the roster.

Determinism. Every game, trade call, draft spin and offseason pass is derived from a seed made of your club id, the season number and the game number. Reload the page and the same day produces the same result. ⏭ Sim to End declines every incoming call and plays the season out with results byte-identical to clicking Next Game yourself.

Playoffs

The top four of eight qualify. Seeds 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3, best-of-five semifinals and a best-of-five Final in baseball, basketball and soccer. Football is single elimination. Miss the top four and the season ends on the spot. The History tab records each season as CHAMPIONS, lost final, lost semis, or missed the playoffs.

Trades

All trades are one for one at the same position; rosters are fixed seat counts, so there are no two-for-ones. Two channels:

• The phone rings. A rival may call after a game with an offer valued at roughly 0.85 to 1.2 times your player. At most 3 incoming offers per season, always before the deadline. You have to answer the phone (accept or decline) before the next game.
• Trade Hub. Propose your own swap. The AI accepts only if your side wins the value comparison by about 20%, give or take a seeded mood swing. At most 3 accepted per season.

Player value is rating, plus about 45% of the gap to his potential, plus a youth bonus under 26, minus an age tax from 30. The trade deadline sits at the three-quarter mark of the season (game 24 of a 32-game year).

The offseason: aging, breakouts, retirements

Every player on all eight clubs ages one year and develops from a seeded roll:

Potential is rolled once when a player is created: 6 to 16 points of headroom at 22 or younger, 3 to 11 up to 25, 0 to 4 up to 28, none after. Retirement is forced at 38, has a 60% chance at 33+ after a 3-point drop, and is forced for anyone who falls to 52 OVR. Rivals retire and restock through their own drafts the same winter. There are no contracts, salaries or cap in Franchise; value is rating, potential and age.

The draft

You draft only into vacant seats. Each empty seat spins a reel of 26 seeded prospects: about 72% are common (62 to 72 OVR), 22% are 70 to 77, and 6% are elite (76 to 82). Where the leaderboard has a real build in that rating band, the prospect wears that build's name. Picks wait on a 🎓 bench until you seat them; unseated seats are filled by free agents on Opening Day.

Awards and the History tab

The History tab keeps a season-by-season log of record, playoff result, award winners and every trade. 🏁 End Franchise shows a Legacy Card (all-time record, titles, up to four MVP names) and then deletes the save; 🔄 Reset Franchise keeps the slot and returns to founding. Franchise does not post to any public leaderboard; it is your own save, synced to your account.

XP

Each win is worth 8 XP, counted for the first 15 wins per day, and a championship is worth 150 XP.

Strategy notes

• Fill the seats that touch every game. In baseball that is the nine hitters (they play daily) before the fifth starter; in basketball the five starters; in soccer the nine strikers and keeper #1; in football the QB and the FLEX seat, which takes either an RB or a WR and is the easiest to upgrade.
• Import 100+ builds. A Hall of Fame import keeps its true rating past 99 while every rival is capped at 99. That gap is the whole edge.
• Trade age for youth before 30. The value formula rewards potential and punishes 30+. A 27-year-old 88 with 6 points of headroom is worth more to the AI than a 31-year-old 90, and he will still be improving when the 90 is declining.
• Answer the phone in the first half. Offers stop at the deadline, and you only get three; decline junk early so the good ones can still arrive.
• Draft for the seat, not the name. A 62-OVR common at 21 has more headroom than a 77 at 25. With a 48-game season and three breakouts a year, the kid catches up.

Questions people ask

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