First time post here. I too am a former Hattrick'er, who got fed up with the lack of reality and lack of tactical choices.
I thought I would add my few cents to the debate here. There *has* to be a way to relay some of this pertinent information while still making it very difficult to cheat. A draft is only useful if you are able to go after the players you feel your team needs. It is apparent this is the way our teams will get built for the foreseeable future, and thus the draft gains even more importance (the TL is really full of scrubs at this point). With as much realism that exists in the rest of this game, it seems such a shame that at the DRAFT, we don't know age, position played in college or height these players have, all of which are public domain information in real life.
Some of my ideas:
1) Instead of isolating a specific best position as a scoutable attribute, simplify it down to either "backcourt or frontcourt".
2) Instead of giving a specific height, simplify it down to tall, average or short. Each identifier could have a wide range (behind the scenes of course), tall equals 6'8 and up, medium equals 6'0 to 6'8, short equals under 6'0.
3) Instead of age, give a generic identifier such as "underclassmen" or "senior". This will give you a clue as to the players age without actually giving it away.
4) Provide a system where you can focus on a certain type of player. It could be an easy add to what is already there. All you have to do is say I want type of player and let the system do the rest. You set the order of players to draft as it is now then when it’s your turn to draft the system picks the top rated 7-footer or PF, etc from your order.
5) Add randomness to the equation. Right now, scouts are equally talented, it's just a matter of quantity. They all tell us that player X has "respectable rebounding" for example. But if you had head scout as a hireable staff member, you will get varying levels of scouting talent between teams. Maybe a lesser talented scouting program would identify someone as having a respectable skill, when in reality they are merely adequate. This randomness will make comparisons nearly impossible.
6) To prevent easy transfer of any draft information, make the draft order list something that is impossible to cut and paste. There a plenty of ways to do this via the internet, such as converting the list to flash or making it an image, etc. I guarantee that alone would eliminate 90% of any cheating you think may be attempted. People are impatient and lazy, especially people trying to take shortcuts
Lastly, I haven't seen any debate on why its preferable to make the draft system completely impervious to cheating (at the expense of much realism and ability to tailor your team), instead of make cheating a no-win proposition. For starters, if I was in the same series as any of my friends, my competitive nature would mandate I hoard all my info to myself! lol Screw them. I want to beat them, not tell them which guy is an A+, 5 star, respectable Jump Shooter. If the concern is that multiple teams owned by the same person will combine their info, then the problem isn't that the info is combinable, it's that there are multiple teams owned by the same person.
In summary, I see this as the lone remaining obstacle between BB and greatness. Make the draft such that teams can actually target their needs instead of just taking the best player available, and BB would be perfect. It just doesn't make sense that I can tell my team to run a Princeton style offense with a 1-3-1 zone on D and tailor my substitutions exactly as I want them.......but when it comes to the draft, I have no prior information on how tall any of the prospects are.
Keep up the great work and I hope these points spark some discussion.
Scott