Marin,
Thanks for all the work you've put into the game, and the improved community outreach. I really think all the changes that have been made are for the better. However, this is one change that I cannot support as it's currently proposed.
The main issues revolve around NT players and prospects. Currently, the best way to help your NT is to train your own nation's players. Since there's a restriction on this for second teams (which I agree is needed), what is the best way to help your NT now? Since second teams can't make the B3, what is the incentive to have this second team win? And no offense to Bermuda, but I doubt the goal of winning a Bermuda league title is going to be so enticing to prevent some of the actions listed below. There are several countries in this game where you can sit comfortably in D1 or D2 and bank a lot of money. Here are some things these players are allowed to do:
1. Firing players - Last season, a Canadian team was created, bought one of our NT players
(12460055), and immediately fired him. Since no one was willing to play 1mil for this guy, he was retired. The Canadian team never logged in again. This is not a huge issue for the USA or other large country national teams, but smaller countries rely on players that won't sell for 1mil.
2. Buying prospects - Save up some money and buy another nations best prospects. Every season you could save up enough money to buy the best 18 year old of a country. I don't see a plausible restriction to prevent this.
3. Buy and sell opponents NT players to get a GS hit before important matches.
4. Draft - In a large country, just tank and scoop up the best prospects. I can't see a good restriction to differentiate between this being a competitive strategy to actually train another NT player, or a strategy to remove a prospect from the pool.
I wouldn't do any of this, but as we can see with the Canadian manager, there are people who would. Even if 99% of people play fair, it still could be a problem. A coordinated effort by 3-4 people sitting in micro nation D1 leagues around the world could pretty much ruin any nation's NT by just buying and firing/transferring current NT players, or ruining prospects. And since it's so close at the top levels, one person could have enough of an affect to change the outcome of the worlds tournament.
I feel creating a "BB nation" with it's own set of players, market, and teams would be the best course if action here, especially if you allow people to purchase the feature, without supporter, for a lower cost than supporter. Teams in micronations could join and get the competitiveness they're looking for without having their nation invaded by Americans (in BB - can't comment on our foreign policy). Even teams that are in large countries could welcome the extra challenge of getting to D1 in the "BB Nation." You could fill 5 leagues with 5456 teams, or about 17% of the current users. How many competitive D5 leagues are there currently? Wouldn't that be fun?
The "BB Nation" would, I think, hit all 4 of the pros you mentioned in the second post, and be much better for the "reduce cheating" one. It would solve the first and 3rd cons listed, and I don't think the second one is really a con.
Sorry for the length of this post, but I think this idea is better than the current proposal. Thanks again for all your hard work.