Now playing: 1986 Mock Drafts

[bernieh]

Here's your advance peek at the upcoming new flash-based Live Draft feature, in the form of our fun [b:feb7170510]Mock Drafts[/b:feb7170510] playground:

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/livedraft/mock_draft_home.html

Mock Drafts are a section of our site where we keep a number of demo drafts running over and over again, 24 hours a day, and let you jump into and out of them at your convenience, to whet your appetite, and so you can get familiar with the app before the day your real league starts its actual draft.

As a reminder, the new 1986 season game will debut next Wednesday, February 27... 1) it will be absolutely FREE to play for a limited time, and 2) you will have the option of conducting your league's draft using the new Live Draft, or the usual salary cap auto-draft method. Additionally, both the new 2007-season card set and [url=http://forums.sportingnews.com/viewtopic.php?t=351065]ATG III v2[/url] will launch very soon afterwards (maybe even at the end of that week), also with the Live Draft as a new option.

One important thing to note is that [b:feb7170510]there is no concept of salary in this app[/b:feb7170510] - it’s strictly “pick the player you need most”. Incorporating salary in this would’ve made it far too complicated for both us and the casual user - this new app was mostly designed to attract the roto baseball crowd. Those of your vets who still want to live draft with a salary cap can of course still use Major Deegan’s site, or wait to see if I can build a quickie replacement eventually.

Some brief instructions on how to use the Live Draft interface once you're in can be found here:
http://somonline.bluwiki.com/go/Live_Draft

Enjoy!
Bernie

[the splinter]

Bernie

Is there no way to turn off or slow down the clock? As is the engine runs too fast for me. My gerbil mind can't keep up with your Porsche draft site.

[Ninersphan]

I would agree, some way of setting the clock, instead of a fixed rate would be ideal.

It does move fast, but I'm used to that from Fantasy football leagues. Not sure a lot of the deep thinkers here will be thrilled with the fast pace.

Also, is there a vehicle for trading picks?

[Play By The Rules]

[quote:920d7308a9]Additionally, both the new 2007-season card set and ATG III v2 will launch very soon afterwards (maybe even at the end of that week)[/quote:920d7308a9]

This is very, VERY good news. Thanks, Bernie!!! :D :D :D :D :D

[The Biomechanical Man]

It seems that the mock draft is going [i:ba092f4c43]particularly[/i:ba092f4c43] fast, because the "bots" are making picks in 10 seconds (instead of up to 1.5 minutes).

[maligned]

Bernie,
You wouldn't have to build a salary cap into the draft engine itself--just allow the league to choose what salary cap it wants to stick to before the engine launches. The participants would be responsible to pay attention to what salary cap they're joining and draft accordingly. If someone is absent from the draft and goes way over the cap, when the league page launches with the given salary cap, have it built into the program that all players on a team's roster that were drafted after the given cap was hit become automatically dropped. That particular owner would be responsible to build his team through waivers and after waivers.

[yankeefan1222]

Bernie, The draft is very cool! I like the design of the drafting application. One thing was that I could not size the screen so I could easily see the chat bar, where you actually put in text. Also the scroll bar for players has a little problem where it just continues scrolling when you put your curser in the scroll bar area. Otherwise I liked it better then Yahoo's live draft App. :)

[thuggis]

Hey Bernie--can you please set up a link so we can see the mock draft results--both individual and aggregates would be great. Thanks!

[keyzick]

As some have stated...the ability to set the "per turn" clock for the draft is definitely needed. And the inability to size the screen is a little annoying....I had to switch the location of my windows toolbar just to stretch out the draft screen, and still couldn't see the entire chat section.

The only other critical component would be the ability to see the salaries of not only the players you drafted, but also where you stand for total team salary, dollars left in cap, etc...

Great start, but hopefully can work on some of the suggestions being tossed around in this forum.

[wavygravy2k]

[quote:ffaa8fc61e]It seems that the mock draft is going particularly fast, because the "bots" are making picks in 10 seconds (instead of up to 1.5 minutes).[/quote:ffaa8fc61e]

Agreed. If you have 12 managers in the draft, 1.5 minutes is plenty.

Actually, you won't always have 12 managers show up so maybe all auto drafts should also be 1.5 minutes.