Qualified for CL; Why is the Transfer Budget now Red?

[Heywood JaBlowme]

I have continued a long running save from '23. April 2062, and the Board just set the budget for next season. We've had well over $1B in transfer revenue for many years and now it's over $2 Billion. This is the first time I've ever seen the Transfer revenue amount in RED. The board has been upset with me for "Not spending the original transfer budget" for a long time but we've not needed to spend that much money, even in 2061, unless I spend like a drunken sailor. 

We have no bank loans. 

 

Why is the transfer revenue in now red and why is the next year's guaranteed minimum amount budget at 0?

And NO, I have not edited any finances. 

 

[FrazT]

The code for game finance has always been set at a max limit of 2 billion- after that it will default to negative figures

[JimmysTheBestCop]

5 hours ago, FrazT said:

The code for game finance has always been set at a max limit of 2 billion- after that it will default to negative figures

yup 2 billion breaks game. been a bug or short coming for as long as i can remember. guess it isnt high on the list of priorities for a >250 employee developer. go figure

 

[Dagenham_Dave]

3 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

yup 2 billion breaks game. been a bug or short coming for as long as i can remember. guess it isnt high on the list of priorities for a >250 employee developer. go figure

 

Probably won't be high on the priority list regardless. Can't imagine many people would ever have a transfer budget that high. 

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Just now, Dagenham_Dave said:

Probably won't be high on the priority list regardless. Can't imagine many people would ever have a transfer budget that high. 

I see this question asked in 1 fm community or another every single week. 

Doesn't matter where it's at on the list. It's what a decade old problem. SI is estimated to have 250-300 emply they are by a bmukgi billoion dollar company Sega. 

Bottom line it should have been fixed. Or work around preventing it from happening by now. 

No Si reason or excuse warrants a 10 year old bug from a a huge company. 

We are talking nearly same size as Larian or Bethesda. 

[Dagenham_Dave]

Makes no difference what size the company is, it's something that's going to affect about three people. I wouldn't bother about it either. More important stuff to be looking at. It's actually the first I've ever heard of this. 

Should it be in the game? No. Is it a high priority? Absolutely not. 

[JimmysTheBestCop]

22 minutes ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

Makes no difference what size the company is, it's something that's going to affect about three people. I wouldn't bother about it either. More important stuff to be looking at. It's actually the first I've ever heard of this. 

Should it be in the game? No. Is it a high priority? Absolutely not. 

You are defending hard that is why company size is important. 

It's been a decade. Squash the bug. It effects way more then 3 people. It's posted several times a week in reddit alone for at least the last 3 years. It's posted on other communities and talked on discord. 

I know it's not a major thing but it's a disgrace how long it has existed for. 

Why are you giving SI a pass? It's not a bug from 6 months ago. It's 120 months old at a minimum!

That is not called low priority that is called not caring about it at all. 

And sorry I don't think anyone should make excuses about not caring about a bug that is 10 plus years old .

No need to defend si. Gotta call a spade a spade man

[Dagenham_Dave]

I'm not defending anyone, just not doing what you do and look at every single aspect of the game as 'SI Baaaaaaaad'. 

Yes it should be fixed, but who's really missing out if it's not? People who exploit their clubs finances that's who. Nobody should have a transfer budget that high. In fact, if I was coding the game, I'd make the game crash altogether if that ever happened, and corrupt the whole save file. 

Because that would enrage exactly the right type of people. And that's always a good thing. 

[FrazT]

This is not specifically a bug, but a code limit, which has been set to be within believable limits.  If you consider that 2 billion pounds is 2,000 million, then it is hard to accept that this is a figure that would be attainable in the normal course of the game.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

21 minutes ago, FrazT said:

This is not specifically a bug, but a code limit, which has been set to be within believable limits.  If you consider that 2 billion pounds is 2,000 million, then it is hard to accept that this is a figure that would be attainable in the normal course of the game.

Irrelevant. It can completely break a players save by making them go 1 billion negative. 

Bug or limit or oversight. I don't really care what you categorize it as. It trashes peoples universes and save files and unless the in game editor have to start over. 

Sorry that is completely wrong and borderline immoral. 

The finance mechanics are so simple in fm if I really wanted to I could turn 2 billion profit every season. 

I honestly never go over 500 million and I haven't did a English save since fm22. But even as Hungary in fm23 i was buying and selling 500 million every season. 

This is what is needed to build a nation. 

The 2 billion doesn't effect me directly. But I answer this question all the time on Reddit. 

It should be fixed changed modified again whatever you want to call it. 

But someone needs to get the job done

[Dagenham_Dave]

1 hour ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Irrelevant. It can completely break a players save by making them go 1 billion negative. 

I would argue if you have a transfer budget of over 2 billion, you've already broken the game several times over. 

[FrazT]

1 hour ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Irrelevant. It can completely break a players save by making them go 1 billion negative. 

Bug or limit or oversight. I don't really care what you categorize it as. It trashes peoples universes and save files and unless the in game editor have to start over. 

Sorry that is completely wrong and borderline immoral. 

The finance mechanics are so simple in fm if I really wanted to I could turn 2 billion profit every season. 

I honestly never go over 500 million and I haven't did a English save since fm22. But even as Hungary in fm23 i was buying and selling 500 million every season. 

This is what is needed to build a nation. 

The 2 billion doesn't effect me directly. But I answer this question all the time on Reddit. 

It should be fixed changed modified again whatever you want to call it. 

But someone needs to get the job done

Since you feel that this code is "borderline immoral", you should suggest changing it in the appropriate Features Request forum.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Just now, FrazT said:

Since you feel that this code is "borderline immoral", you should suggest changing it in the appropriate Features Request forum.

Way to deflect and not just admit yeah something that breaks people's entire saves should be fixed. 

What's so hard about saying yeah it should have been fixed by now?

Why can't you admit that? What is preventing you from saying a known issue should be fixed to prevent the destruction of people's saves?

[JimmysTheBestCop]

17 minutes ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

I would argue if you have a transfer budget of over 2 billion, you've already broken the game several times over. 

Well you would be on the end of a losing argument. 

 

Why can't you admit a known issue for years that breaks save should be fixed?

You can't admit SI is at fault? You think SI shouldn't fix save breaking items?

You think it's the consumers fault?

[FrazT]

16 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Way to deflect and not just admit yeah something that breaks people's entire saves should be fixed. 

What's so hard about saying yeah it should have been fixed by now?

Why can't you admit that? What is preventing you from saying a known issue should be fixed to prevent the destruction of people's saves?

A bug is code that is not working as intended.  This code is working as intended and so does not need to be fixed. Since SI has said before that they do not consider it a bug then there may be an argument that it may need to be reviewed. If this is the case then posting such a request in the Features Request forum is the way to bring it to their attention.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

I'm not here to report a bug this is general discussion. SI is already aware. 

I'm commenting because forum members don't think a mechanic that destroys saves should be fixed or adjusted or use whatever pedantic word you wish to use. 

And you still deflected and didn't answer any of my questions. 

What do you think as a petson, as a consumer?

Shou something save breaking be allowed to remain version after version?

All you have to do is answer with a simple yes or no. 

[Dagenham_Dave]

4 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

I'm not here to report a bug

He never asked you to report a bug, he asked you to raise it in the features request section. Maybe try reading without floods of tears obscuring your view, you might get on better. 

5 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Shou something save breaking be allowed to remain version after version?

It's something that will affect around 1% of the user base, and that 1% has already effectively broken the game by being in that position in the first place. Should the code be reviewed to increase the figure to a higher amount? Possibly. Is it something that needs urgently looked at? Absolutely not. 

[JimmysTheBestCop]

There you go again with personal attacks. 

 

Urgently looked at LMAO

It's been 10 years nothing from this point about this issue will ever be urgent. 

Don't make up % you have no clue who it effects. And again you attack how players play the game. They bought it the game and they can play how they want. 

Love how you say possibly. You can't just say hey yeah it's messed up deserves to be fixed 

 

Lmao

Edited November 27, 2023 by JimmysTheBestCop

[priority76]

Just now, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Urgently looked at LMAO

It's been 10 years nothing from this point about this issue will ever be urgent. 

Don't make up % you have no clue who it effects. And again you attack how players play the game. They bought it the game and they can play how they want. 

Love how you say possibly. You can't just say hey yeah it's messed up deserves to be fixed 

 

Lmao

Give it a rest mate.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

5 minutes ago, priority76 said:

Give it a rest mate.

I'm sorry give what a rest? Dude straight up personally attacks me in numerous threads because I think Si should fix an issue in the game and he thinks well it's the players fault so who cares. 

And you tell me to give it a rest. Riiiight

I think you got it backwards dude

[Kickballz]

 Isn't the excess supposed to be go into the 'investment fund'? is that still a thing?

I can't help but feel the argument that this is a code limitation is not satisfactory. It is dismissive, pure and simple, because nobody has been bothered to rewrite the code to accept larger numbers. Personally, I have reached this limit on saves in previous versions and was fairly satisfied with the 'investment fund' hack (sorry I mean feature).

Anyway, it really shouldn't matter what percentage of players experience this. The same argument could be made to dismiss countless issues. I will add my vote to this being unacceptable.

 

[JimmysTheBestCop]

19 minutes ago, Kickballz said:

 Isn't the excess supposed to be go into the 'investment fund'? is that still a thing?

I can't help but feel the argument that this is a code limitation is not satisfactory. It is dismissive, pure and simple, because nobody has been bothered to rewrite the code to accept larger numbers. Personally, I have reached this limit on saves in previous versions and was fairly satisfied with the 'investment fund' hack (sorry I mean feature).

Anyway, it really shouldn't matter what percentage of players experience this. The same argument could be made to dismiss countless issues. I will add my vote to this being unacceptable.

 

My man pots n pans!!

 

Let's goooooooooooooooo

[AurioDK]

I played some long careers, can´t imagine how on earth I would ever get that much money, I usually just manage to maintain the balance even with lots of wonderkids to sell in some saves. Maybe a trick I don´t know about.

[Dagenham_Dave]

47 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

It's been 10 years nothing from this point about this issue will ever be urgent.

What does that tell you? 

49 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

You can't just say hey yeah it's messed up deserves to be fixed 

If you want the code to be amended to allow bigger transfer budgets, then that is what the feature request section of the forum is for.

But it's easier to shout into a vacuum, I guess. 

53 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

They bought it the game and they can play how they want. 

Absolutely. No-one has said any different. You can boot up the editor and give every player in the game 20 for every attribute if you want. However, the game isn't coded to handle that, so expect it not to work if you do. Same thing here. Game isn't coded to have a transfer budget over 2 billion. If you want that changed, ask for it. Maybe they change it, maybe they don't. But in the grand scheme of things, it's really not that important. 

21 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

My man pots n pans!!

 

Let's goooooooooooooooo

Are you 5 years old? 

[JimmysTheBestCop]

16 minutes ago, AurioDK said:

I played some long careers, can´t imagine how on earth I would ever get that much money, I usually just manage to maintain the balance even with lots of wonderkids to sell in some saves. Maybe a trick I don´t know about.

Technically its extremely easy in English Prem. Just sell 50 players for 10 million profit each on the average for 2 seasons that 1 billion is just sales but if you sell 50 you will make way more then 500 million. And these are 50 players you never planned on playing. So you can see how you rack up 2 billion quick. 

In my build a nation Hungarian save I was giving 6 teams in my league 50 million each. 300 million for them and 300 million for me. 

You have to sell more players the lower down in reputation you go. I've had 100 players out on loan at same time. But to make a billion in 1 season I would probably have had to sell all my loanees. 

So it's possible in lower tier 1 leagues but the effort goes up

[Kickballz]

18 minutes ago, AurioDK said:

I played some long careers, can´t imagine how on earth I would ever get that much money, I usually just manage to maintain the balance even with lots of wonderkids to sell in some saves. Maybe a trick I don´t know about.

No trick needed. If you in a position of domination in the EPL with a strategy of signing all the best youngsters, you don't need to splash any cash. You loan them out, keep the best and sell the rest for huge profit. Watch your balance go through the roof. I'm not saying it is realistic, but it is easy to do.

[Dagenham_Dave]

1 minute ago, Kickballz said:

No trick needed. If you in a position of domination in the EPL with a strategy of signing all the best youngsters, you don't need to splash any cash. You loan them out, keep the best and sell the rest for huge profit. Watch your balance go through the roof. I'm not saying it is realistic, but it is easy to do.

I would rather SI looked at tightening up that aspect of the game so it isn't easy to do. 

[Kickballz]

Agree

[Harper]

 

Isn't 2.1 billion in the range of the maximum value for a signed integer?

But realistically, if a club was accruing several hundred million and not re-investing it into player/staff wages, academy, community; you can bet owners/shareholders are taking profits. I thought the game handled this by “investing” a large amount to bring the number down. But maybe that was just the overall balance.

 

[Mike J]

I've never encountered this myself in over 20 years of playing FM, including managing some of the biggest clubs in the world, so I can see how it's likely not a priority for SI to fix. It may also be that the limit is intrinsic to a whole host of systems within the game so it's not as simple a fix as just increasing a number somewhere in the code. I agree with @Dagenham_Dave that the best solution here is probably to look at the mechanisms that allow clubs to generate such massive revenues in the first place as that seems like the biggest problem here.

[Zachary Whyte]

Hello @Heywood JaBlowme

This is something that we have been investigating but have struggled to reproduce internally.

Getting to 2+ Billion in profit is very hard and very rare. Our next game update will include some changes to make scenarios like this rarer but will would still like to get this properly logged.

If possible do you have a save game from before the shift in finances you could send us?

[XaW]

On 26/11/2023 at 02:19, Heywood JaBlowme said:

I have continued a long running save from '23. April 2062, and the Board just set the budget for next season. We've had well over $1B in transfer revenue for many years and now it's over $2 Billion. This is the first time I've ever seen the Transfer revenue amount in RED. The board has been upset with me for "Not spending the original transfer budget" for a long time but we've not needed to spend that much money, even in 2061, unless I spend like a drunken sailor. 

We have no bank loans. 

 

Why is the transfer revenue in now red and why is the next year's guaranteed minimum amount budget at 0?

And NO, I have not edited any finances. 

 

About 2.1 billion is the max value of a 32-bit number. So I can imagine that if you go past that you loop around to negative 2.1 billion. Since you use USD, I imagine the actual value is stored in GBP, and that would explain the technical side of it. Upping it to a 64-bit number would solve it, as assume, but that would also require more memory allocation, I think, so that's probably why it's not changed. I imagine this would be an extremely rare incident, and I would recommend report it to SI, so they can get examples, as Zach has asked already.

[Heywood JaBlowme]

1 hour ago, Zachary Whyte said:

Hello @Heywood JaBlowme

This is something that we have been investigating but have struggled to reproduce internally.

Getting to 2+ Billion in profit is very hard and very rare. Our next game update will include some changes to make scenarios like this rarer but will would still like to get this properly logged.

If possible do you have a save game from before the shift in finances you could send us?

[JimmysTheBestCop]

From a Developer Replying on Steam

Quote

76561199215372525  [developer] Nov 27 @ 3:00am  

There's a fairly simple explanation as to why this is still the case. It's not the best but its largely a technical limitation with the current set-up. While it's not my area of specialty, were the game to employ the next "range" of numbers up that can be supported it would dramatically increase the amount of data required to store financial values.

This is because it would then be limited to something like 18 numbers long. So:

-9,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 9,000,000,000,000,000,000. There's only ever 1 club in a game going to be remotely close to hitting that limit, the human players club.

There are alternative solutions that could potentially be employed, the game does actively make use of some measures that will work to prevent you hitting the number since we realise it can have a very negative impact on the game for people when it does flip to a negative 2 billion balance.

This dev seems to hint at it being a known problem to the developer staff and admits yeah it messes up peoples saves big time to paraphrase. 

[enigmatic]

On 27/11/2023 at 14:10, Harper said:

Isn't 2.1 billion in the range of the maximum value for a signed integer?

But realistically, if a club was accruing several hundred million and not re-investing it into player/staff wages, academy, community; you can bet owners/shareholders are taking profits. I thought the game handled this by “investing” a large amount to bring the number down. But maybe that was just the overall balance.

Yup. People familiar with other computer games will know that it's not unique to FM, and using a different datastructure isn't really necessary to prevent rare edge cases

 

The game already sucks dividends and tax out of profitable clubs but only once a year at less than 100% of annual profit (which would be very annoying to people playing normally) so if you play for long enough and target profit in the transfer market aggressively enough you'd get to £2bn in the bank in the end. Most people don't play until 2062 or do buy the best players their budget can buy though.

Simplest solution is probably to have the board "pay dividends" at any time the balance crosses, say £1.5 billion to reset the value down to £1.3bn, but I bet the most of the few people that play for long enough and aggressively enough in the transfer market to hit the magic flip balance to minus numbers threshold above £2bn will also be annoyed by that solution...

 

 

@Heywood JaBlowme I think you can get your balance to flip back to positive numbers by managing to get to the club to lose some more money. Then when you've got a transfer and wage budget again maybe be a bit more generous with wages  

 

[Dagenham_Dave]

There's a very simple solution to all of this. 

Don't go anywhere near £2billion in your game. I know, I know, radical, eh?

Two things.  

1. There is absolutely no need to have a balance/budget this high in FM - The AI would never be able to compete and besides, you'd dominate any game universe with half of this amount anyway. Utterly pointless having it this high. 

2. The game clearly can't support these numbers, so rather than getting SI to change the entire code just because you want unrealistic numbers in your game, just employ a bit of self restraint. 

Everyone's a winner. 

 

[Kickballz]

On 29/11/2023 at 11:25, Dagenham_Dave said:

There's a very simple solution to all of this. 

Don't go anywhere near £2billion in your game. I know, I know, radical, eh?

Two things.  

1. There is absolutely no need to have a balance/budget this high in FM - The AI would never be able to compete and besides, you'd dominate any game universe with half of this amount anyway. Utterly pointless having it this high. 

2. The game clearly can't support these numbers, so rather than getting SI to change the entire code just because you want unrealistic numbers in your game, just employ a bit of self restraint. 

Everyone's a winner. 

 

A better solution would be to update the game. As somebody mentioned, they are likely using a 32bit integer so the range is indeed up to about 2 billion. There is no reason for this limitation, other than nobody has bothered to change it to a 64bit integer, which has a range of -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807.

There is nothing difficult about this, and it is frustrating to see replies like yours where you seem to be actively encouraging SI to NOT improve the game.

[Kickballz]

On 28/11/2023 at 17:45, XaW said:

About 2.1 billion is the max value of a 32-bit number. So I can imagine that if you go past that you loop around to negative 2.1 billion. Since you use USD, I imagine the actual value is stored in GBP, and that would explain the technical side of it. Upping it to a 64-bit number would solve it, as assume, but that would also require more memory allocation, I think, so that's probably why it's not changed. I imagine this would be an extremely rare incident, and I would recommend report it to SI, so they can get examples, as Zach has asked already.

Memory allocation is not a problem with 64bit systems and correct procedure.

Edited December 6, 2023 by Kickballz

[XaW]

2 hours ago, Kickballz said:

Memory allocation is not a problem with 64bit systems and correct procedure.

Could be, but neither of us know how SI have set up the backend of the game, so it could entail more difficulties than just changing the declaration. But yes, I hope they change something here, even if having a transfer budget of over 2 billion seems like a corner case. Balance, yeah, I can see it happening, but transfer budget seems like it would very rare.

[Kickballz]

Of course, but when did Fm go 64 bit?. I think they have had plenty time to sort this out. It is a hangover from 32bit code and isn't acceptable for a premier product.

I have reached the 2 billion in previous versions - It does come into play, and I think people have been told enough times that they are playing the game wrong.

[Dagenham_Dave]

7 hours ago, Kickballz said:

There is no reason for this limitation

I would argue there is even less reason for ANYONE to have a transfer budget of £2billion. 

[Zachary Whyte]

Changes we made in our latest update should make this scenario even rarer, (possibly gone, I don't believe I've seen any fresh instances of this since our update) when we tested a users save we were unable to reproduce the issue with the latest update changes to Finances.

[Dagenham_Dave]

On 27/11/2023 at 01:14, Dagenham_Dave said:

I would rather SI looked at tightening up that aspect of the game so it isn't easy to do. 

 

4 hours ago, Zachary Whyte said:

Changes we made in our latest update should make this scenario even rarer,

Listen to DD. 

DD always knows best. 

[keithbeaky]

On 26/11/2023 at 23:48, Dagenham_Dave said:

He never asked you to report a bug, he asked you to raise it in the features request section. Maybe try reading without floods of tears obscuring your view, you might get on better. 

It's something that will affect around 1% of the user base, and that 1% has already effectively broken the game by being in that position in the first place. Should the code be reviewed to increase the figure to a higher amount? Possibly. Is it something that needs urgently looked at? Absolutely not. 

If you keep this up they might let you change the bag for the bin in miles office. 

[Dagenham_Dave]

30 minutes ago, keithbeaky said:

If you keep this up they might let you change the bag for the bin in miles office. 

Seething jealousy. 

[keithbeaky]

8 minutes ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

Seething jealousy. 

Please explain that? Of what exactly?

[Kickballz]

Don't bother. Dagenham_Dave has a certain dry wit.

He isn't being serious.

[forameuss]

At least this thread has taught me that I should immediately be going into work tomorrow and telling my employer that because they have near enough a quarter of a million employees, there should never be any problems in their code whatsoever.  Should probably tell all those people whose entire role it is to react to production incidents that they're no longer needed either.  No excuses.

[Kickballz]

22 minutes ago, forameuss said:

At least this thread has taught me that I should immediately be going into work tomorrow and telling my employer that because they have near enough a quarter of a million employees, there should never be any problems in their code whatsoever.  Should probably tell all those people whose entire role it is to react to production incidents that they're no longer needed either.  No excuses.

That is pretty funny actually, but not for the reasons you think.

You forgot to spell out that all software has bugs, just in case some people might have missed it.

[keithbeaky]

4 hours ago, forameuss said:

At least this thread has taught me that I should immediately be going into work tomorrow and telling my employer that because they have near enough a quarter of a million employees, there should never be any problems in their code whatsoever.  Should probably tell all those people whose entire role it is to react to production incidents that they're no longer needed either.  No excuses.

Probably not for ten years there shouldn't be.