How come some teams can sell a player before 72 turns?

Actually most teams (those without a human manager) can (and so) sell within a few turns, I believe. But I suppose you mean human managed teams?

Yup

Do you have some practical example? I suppose the only way a human-managed team would be able to sell a player before 72 turns from the hire date is if the player goes to critical status…

Thats horse-hockey. I just bought Danny Millet from Sportevo Luqueno as an example. I only bought him to show what is going on.

As you may know, Sportivo has been a top club for some time, and as the game rules operate differently for them its no wonder.
I was a long time SoccerSim player and was overjoyed when I found this game, but now I will be leaving.

Despite great performance in Spain and Intl cups, my team has suffered steady atrophy and it is impossible to grow given certain teams being able to spend so differently from what my team is allowed.
My reasons:
1. The salary limitations. Some small clubs and the perrenial giants have been consistantly outbidding me on salary when I offer max. Often others can triple the max salary I can offer and I carry 70 mil reserve. With an old keeper, I have tried to buy a replacement for four years. I have watched as teams with three and four better goalies than the target player sign him and I cant up my offer. BS. Many other positions I have had similar problems. Great players that would start on my club – which has been a hairs breath from winning in CL a couple times – go and sit on the bench at Malaga or Liqueno or a small number of others. Thats utter nonesense.
2. Inconsistant match play. Variability is good, but in the last two or three seasons its like rolling dice. Im losing to chump squads and my lineups become nearly useless after Ive used the same one three or four times.
3. Transfer rules. Onviously, like the example above, some of the top clubs are hacking or working around the rules that prevent player moning and it has resulted in high prices for decent players and no realism in transfer and squad growth.

I can handle variability, I dont like games that are too easy, but this game has devolved to a strategy-less mess where a few players who can bypass the rules somehow are greatly advantaged.

I applaud the work and concept behind the game, its very hard to develope a game like this with long timelines that remains balanced, unfortuneatly this one isnt working even as well as it did four game seasons ago….

Example:
http://rubysoccer.com/game/player_history?info_record=747303

@resirui: thanks for the example, I’ll definitely look into it and speak to Luqueño’s manager about the matter.

@Malaga: don’t give up on us just yet! You’ve raised some good points here, some of which we already plan to address.
1. The salary limitations: unfortunately this is a necessary evil to prevent wannabe cheaters from trying to destroy clubs by offering too high salaries on purpose. That said, the player’s decision on which club to join will definitely be reviewed. I admit the game logic is not smart enough to evaluate how good a player is when compared to others in the bidding clubs, and that may be affecting the result here.

2. Inconsistant match play: interesting to hear that. The match simulation is far from ideal, we all know that, but I think it’s something that people get used to and work their strategies into it in time. It has a randomness factor in it, but clearly there are some consistencies there, otherwise we wouldn’t have some managers that are consistent in winning titles as we have now. Hopefully I can point some that are not bending the rules as you mentioned and are still doing great.
3. Transfer rules: as I said above I’ll look into it and also try to improve CPU teams buying behavior. While it’s great to have them active in the market we don’t want managers to try and abuse their stupidity for huge gains.

I’ve already contacted Fabio from Luqueño and, as I suspected, the player could only be sold because he went into critical. I think we need to change this so that, even if the player is critical, the 72 turns period still applies.

Fixed the point above, the 72 turns rule applies even for Critical players now.

Too bad, I had just found out about this “breach” in the system :-)

As I have said before, I really like the match simulation in Ruby. The best team usually wins (see Olimpia recently…) but there is a decent amount of unpredictability

Niels, unfortunately 70m reserve is not that much anymore. I know of teams with hundreds of mils – and the natural consequence are higher salaries. I do agree, however, that what make a player choose team A or B could be reviewed. I personally get mad when I lose a bid for a promise (players with 18, 19 yo) to CPU, even bidding 2-3 times the salary paid by the winning bid…of course the player is more likely to play for the CPU in the short term, but those are youths for the future, they should not be so shortsighted.

Last, my comments on transfers is that some people abuse the “critical” rule and bid as a group for a player to make him critical and transfer listed. It is always the same people…and it’s not cool to those who do not play together with friends, family members, etc…