The AI follows two different flows of logic depending on why he's cutting the player:

1) If you are over the roster limit, it will give a weight to each player based on their rating and their position in your depth chart. The player(s) with the lowest weight will be released. (In version 0.3, it actually resets your depth chart and then cuts the worst player at the lowest point in the depth chart).

2) If you are over the salary cap, it will cut players starting at the player with the highest base salary until you are below the salary cap enough to then sign enough players at the minimum salary to get to 46.

So, only in #2 should the AI really be cutting quality players, unless your roster is stocked.

I personally don't see what this offers that the 'Transactions' tab doesn't already cover. If someone can't be bothered checking transactions, why would they scour the forum?

If this was implemented, I'd prefer something like a 'News Ticker' that provided some highlights from the last spin. So if any high overall rated players were cut, it might list that. If a team clinched a playoff spot. A notable player went down with a significant injury. A trade occurred. Etc, etc.


Does this take into account future guaranteed money? If not, you could inadvertently be tossing teams into an even more massive cap-space hole next season. Though I don't know what a particularly elegant solution for this would be.

It only considers the base salary, so yes, it could potentially make a troublesome cap the next season, so it's best to take care of those issues yourself :-) The high base salaries will generally be lower bonus salaries and of course cutting based on base salaries will get you under the cap with fewer cuts, but there is of course always the possibility that it could take a few seasons to work itself out. But, if you're in that place, you're probably stuck in a cap issue that is going to take several seasons to work out anyway.

Is the calculation made at cut time? It would be nice to have a warning a head of time (sorry, I'm a User Experience designer).

The calculation is made on the game stage before the games are simmed. If you go through a midweek stage and you're over the cap, you will receive a warning, and you will also be notified as you are making a contract offer if it will take you over the cap. The odd man out is if you make a trade that takes you over the cap - that would be unlikely, more likely the trade will mess up your cap next season - but that's something I do want to add feedback about as well.