More free agents?

[Leander]

The problem is that the number of free agents in dynasty mode is really low. In season mode all free agents are in the pool. In dynasty mode only player above 53 overall rating are there.

Is there a way to change this? Is it possible to have all free agents there?

[Andrew]

You can't prevent it entirely but there are a couple of things you can do to try and stop players from being pruned.

First, remove some players from the Free Agents. Anyone who is unlikely to return to the NBA can be placed on Team 32 (the Retired Pool), which will clear the Free Agent pool of a fair amount of players.

Second, make sure that anyone you want to keep has a high enough overall rating. I don't advocate changing individual ratings just to make the overall look better but if an overall rating seems to be higher or lower than it should, it's usually an indication that there are individual ratings which are inaccurate.

[Leander]

Is it just about overall ratings or the number of FA as well?

Are all fas with a rating with 53 kept or just some of them? How does the cpu decide?

Kevin Willis is still a free agent along with A. and D. Davis. I retired Houston, Wesley, Malone, Laettner and lots of others though.

[Andrew]

I believe it's the number of free agents, with the lowest rated players being pruned to achieve that number.

[Leander]

It's really the number. The pool is limited to 50 free agents, no matter how good they are.

[Andrew]

Good to know. With that in mind, we can trim down the Free Agent pool by making sure some of the higher rated veterans who are retired are no longer in the active rosters. Beyond that, it's a matter of making sure certain players are amongst the top 50 in the Free Agent pool.

[Leander]

NLSC roster with recalculated ratings: players have an overall rating of 54 or higher, two players have 53.

Then I loaded the default rosters...players in the FA pool have ratings down to 43 or something...I counted them...50.

Yeah, good to know. Unimportant players' ratings can be decreased till they do not appear in the FA pool any longer.

I still have some FAs such as Gary Payton, B. Russell, Antonio and Dale Davis, Penny Hardaway, Jalen Rose or Danny Fortson in there. As far as I know all can be still signed, can't they?

I retired Malone, Oakley, Laettner...Webber etc.

[Andrew]

They can, but it's questionable how likely they are to be re-signed. Jalen Rose has been appearing as an analyst on ESPN broadcasts so he's probably not coming back. I think the ship might have sailed on Gary Puaton and Byron Russell, I believe Antonio Davis has actually retired while Dale Davis is almost there, though there was some talk of the Pistons being interested in signing him before they got Ratliff.

The thing is, if you place them in the Retired Pool they're still in the database so you can bring them back to the active rosters easily enough when you're updating the rosters. Of course, they won't be available in a Dynasty game you've started since the players in the Retired Pool are wiped along with the various All-Star teams when you start a new Dynasty game.