Dynasty Mode Testing

I’m at a crossroads in my current dynasty with UNLV in NCAA Football 06.

I can either stay with UNLV and hope to get invited to a bigger conference, or I can move onto another program.

One interesting option is Mississippi State as they are 0-11 for the season.

Nothing is more fun and rewarding for me than turning around a program, especially one that is at the very bottom of a conference.

What worries me though is the lack of points I will get to use in my first offseason as those points are directly correlated with how many wins you have the previous season.

This situation has motivated me to run a few tests in Dynasty Mode by seeing what happens when you take over a zero-win program during a dynasty from a recruiting and school budget perspective.

Let’s find out.

Again, this is only a test as I’m still currently the head coach at UNLV.

The First Test

Here you can see my current team, UNLV, about to finish our third season that will more than likely begin the following season as a 5-star program.

And here is Mississippi State, 0-11, that badly needs a new coach to change their program for the better.

I decide to resign from UNLV and take over the reigns at Mississippi State.

Let’s put all of our points into Recruiting to get a better idea of how many points (if any) we will be working with.

With no points being spent on convincing players to stay, I should have 100% of my points in Recruiting.

Will you look at that, I have 184 points to spend!

This is not what I expected. I thought the game would give me zero points to spend but no, I can do some actual recruiting with those numbers.

This is good news for anyone who had doubts about taking over a winless team as you should have points to play with in the offseason.

I don’t know if some of these points came with me from UNLV.

I’m guessing not but either way, this information is very helpful.

The Second Test

I decided not to stop there. I also wanted to tinker with the school budget to see if there was anything odd with the points.

Let’s see what happens when I set Recruiting to 50% instead of 100%. Will I get to spend exactly half of what we saw above which was 184?

It looks like we don’t. With Recruiting set at 50%, I received 115 points to spend which is well above what I was expecting.

This means that school budgets are weighted in some way.

This situation reminded me of my first offseason at Yale. I finished the first season 1-10.

Here’s what happened in that offseason.

I set the Recruiting budget at 70%, hoping to use some points to recruit players.

It turned out that I only had 23 points to play with, much lower than I ever expected, especially when you compare it to the numbers above with Mississippi State.

And by the way, how awesome is the name “Stanford Stanford”? And from Beverly Hills no less.

The Third Test

The last test I wanted to run was if Coach Prestige had any effect on the amount of points you get to use in the offseason.

In the first test I resigned from UNLV before the season ended.

Anytime you quit a job your Coach Prestige goes down one star so since I was a 4-star coach, I became a 3-star coach at Mississippi State.

For this test I took the Mississippi State job after the season ended. I became a 5-star coach, quit the UNLV job which made me a 4-star coach.

Here is what happened when I put 100% of my points in recruiting as a 4-star in stead of a 3-star coach.

As you can see, I start out with 207 points. That is a 23-point jump from 184 when I was a 3-star coach.

This obviously means that Coach Prestige directly effects your school budget.

Also, both the first test and this one had Mississippi State demoted to a 2-star program.

Conclusion

So what does all of this mean? At least we know it’s possible to start out with a decent amount of points to play with if you ever decide to take over a winless team.

My biggest fear with taking over a team like this has now gone away.

More importantly, we also found out that Coach Prestige effects how many points you receive every season.

How much of a percentage that factors in remains to be seen.

I was a 1-star coach at Yale when I only had 23 points to play with so there is some correlation there.

I believe previous season wins and Coach Prestige factor in this equation in some way.

Also, it seems that school budgets are weighted.

You would think dropping the Recruiting budget in half will yield half the points but that’s obviously not the case.

I hope I was able to shed some light on things in Dynasty Mode that you may not have been aware of.

At least I can feel more comfortable taking over teams with such a bad record and that it helps to have a decent Coach Prestige to go with it.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.