FHM6 Bonus Update, Version 6.9.86, Now Available

Franchise Hockey Manager 6

Franchise Hockey Manager returns for the 2019-20 season with plenty of additions to the deepest, most authentic hockey strategy gaming experience you can find. Choose one of 32 leagues around the globe and select a team to guide to glory, including a chance at the ultimate prize, the Stanley Cup®.

A bonus update for FHM6, version 6.9.86, has just been released. Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game, but some of the update's fixes may not retroactively correct certain problems in existing saves. With the 2019-20 NHL season now resuming, we have a surprise bonus update for FHM6. Normally, we wouldn't be releasing an update this late in the year, but this season has been far from normal. And with the next season starting much later this year, we're going to be releasing FHM7 later than we typically do, so this should help tide everyone over until that time comes. Development of FHM7 is progressing nicely; we just hit a major development milestone this morning. However, among other things, the entire match engine is being rebuilt from the ground up, so a little extra development and testing time is a useful thing for us to have right now. There will be more FHM7 information coming soon, once we have things in a state where we can show screenshots. Later today, we'll also be re-releasing the 2019-20 season continuation save file we created earlier, with updated rosters and the 24-team playoff, so you can simulate the rest of this season with the real data and format (although the playoffs won't be in August.) There are three new additions in the update: the 24-team 2020 NHL playoff system has been added as a selectable option in the league edit and custom setup screens, the new Seattle Kraken jerseys and logo are included, and we've added an option to let the AI handle uniform number assignment without user intervention. We've also included a variety of bug fixes. We had to very careful about what changes we made, since dealing with unforeseen complications isn't something we have much time for right now, but did manage to address a number of problems. Changes: -the NHL's 2020 24-team playoff system has been added to the playoff options in League Edit and Custom Setups (it's listed as "NHL 2020 (12 team per Conf)", at the bottom of the list) -official logo and uniform graphics for the Seattle Kraken have been added (thanks to Hockey13Playa for letting us use his uniform and helmet files) - you will still need to expand the league normally, but if you choose Seattle Kraken as a name, you'll get the real graphics for them -added an option (in Manager options, "Manager Jersey Numbers") to let the AI handle jersey number assignment for your team. If you activate this after the start of the game, you may see one or two final manual number assignment requests if you have some pending. Additionally, you may need to deal with off-season number change requests from your current players on your own. -fixed a crash when using AI Setup Organization on teams other than the user's that are close enough to the cap to trigger the "AI may trade players" warning message -added a failsafe to prevent sharp declines in team staff budgets over time. If this is already happening in your game, you should see a significant jump in your staff budget when you reach the next July 1 in the game -fixed a bug where scouting levels on players weren't regressing past a certain point -lowered starting potentials of junior leagues in custom games -fixed scouting reports using the wrong criteria for potential comparisons -modified the AI's trading behaviour when it's over the cap to focus on dumping larger salaries -fixed bug that occasionally reduced the maximum amount you could offer to ELC-required players to $1 under the actual limit -fixed error in the NHL Draft Order that was placing non-divisional-winning playoff teams too low in the draft if they won via upset in the first round and were eliminated in the second -fixed some minor text and formatting issues The database has not been updated, the current one will remain on the trading deadline rosters.