Ladder Leagues as the Main League

I really want to get the Ladder in Beta sorted for the NFA I suspect that long term, future FA's will be sorted this way.

First of all I need to settle on a name for the phases / term / stages.... I think stage seems to do the job. So to recap instead of having 20 teams to a Division there will be a much lower number, e.g. 20 teams in a FA would result in four divisions of five teams. Teams play other twice, 8 games, after which promotion / relegation of the top 2 / bottom 2 and we go again.

So taking this example we'd then have Division 1, 2, 3 & 4, as we can't run a competition twice in FM Live in any one season we then call these Division 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, so 1.2 is Divsion One Stage 2.

Once the first stage is complete the competition is reset you go to members page and you have last seasons position shown. So in the case of a team finishing 5th in Divivion 1.1 transfer them to Division 2.2.

How many stages?
I think this depends on two things the type of FA and the number of teams in the FA. The minimum is 20 ish for a FA so taking that as a starting point Divisions of five gives you four Divisions. The non Xtreme FA's play two games a day (Divisions of 20 teams play each twice = 38 games in a 21 day season)

So in the Beta we currently have 30 Teams in the NFA and I'm expecting to have around £18m to put into the Ladder in total. Six Teams with stages running every five days is ten games then there is prize money, a spreadsheet was the only way....


The Prize Money in each league is a thin spread, bottom team gets something like 15% of the cash and the top team 16.5%, the basis for winning cash is staying the league.

Other Points
With Six in each Division generally two go up two go down however the ladder needs to be kept dynamic as possible. In Shearer we've not really been able to challenge to win the top tier at all but we're kind of safe so as long as I finish top 4 I'm rarely fighting relegation. If Three go down from Division One and Three Get promoted from the bottom tier then it keeps all leagues nice and fresh.

Last thing what to do with the Shearer sub..... I'm already paying £10 a month and it's a lot although I really enjoy the macro part of the game, e.g. stadiums and long term planning. I just can't make my mind up it is the team I'm most attached to yet with Alonso being such a pansy :) it's possibly the worst managed team.