by Gary Gorski » Mon Jun 26, 2023 11:35 am
I purposely have made the AI careful in trading regarding draft picks because frankly you are smarter than it is and you have insights it does not. You are better able to understand that a pick value might change significantly especially down the line - you might trade what seems like it would be a good pick in the future but you know you're going to get a good player in that trade and have set yourself up for the ability to remake your team in free agency before that and all of a sudden that future pick turns out to be not so great. You know that could happen but its difficult the get the trade AI to think that way.
As for not getting an offer of a 1st for a star player - again the AI is only going to make what it would deem a reasonable offer and it has to follow salary matching rules which is quite frankly difficult at times. So while you might be willing to let the player go for just one first and then a bunch of garbage salary the AI would not think that and would not make the offer.
The trade AI is such a difficult thing to do because if its off it can greatly upset the balance in a league and I have always tried to error on the side of making it difficult vs easy because its not fun if you can just take advantage of the AI and build a super team with ease. Also in the NBA teams are trading picks further out into the future, there are pick swaps and pick protections, there are multiple deals that involve three or four teams and some teams are just giving away players like Washington did recently with Beal and Porzingis.
I consider adding some of these things but in all honesty its already complicated to try and make the AI work out deals the way it stands now and then adding things like pick protections or swaps or whatever just then further limits what deals can be made because then those things have to be taken into consideration so that the trade doesn't end up violating the Stepien Rule