A hotfix for FHM11, version 11.4.51, has just been released.

This update fixes a few NHL data errors, primarily with young players on entry-level contracts. Additionally, it corrects a bug that was causing some display errors with award winners. It also adds a few contracts that will take effect on July 1, 2025, mainly college and junior players signing with NHL teams as well as some similar moves in European leagues. The actual rosters still remain as they were on the trading deadline, though.

Changes:

-fixed a number of errors in the contract lengths and other data for players on NHL entry-level contract
-corrected the rights on a couple of NHL players whose rights weren't switched after trades earlier in the season
-fixed bug that was causing the player with ID#0 (Luke Adam) to be incorrectly displayed as the winner of some awards (the update will fix this in existing saves)

FHM11's final content update is here! Rosters have been updated as of the NHL trading deadline (as well as some later signings), we've made some major changes to the way penalties work in 2D mode so leagues and years have their own individual settings, and the International Hockey League completes our set of playable minor leagues in historical mode. We've also added a new set of historical challenges, and spent a lot of time fixing vaious issues with the game. While this will be the last major content addition to the game, it's possible that we may do further hotfixes if the need becomes apparent. But otherwise, we'll now be moving on to the development of FHM12.

Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game. Some fixes, however, are data-dependent and may require starting a new game before you see them.

Additions:

-league and era-specific penalties have been added to 2D mode:

• -every league now has its own set of penalty data instead of one universal one being used everywhere, and the historical league penalties now change on a year-to-year basis (note that the league-specific rules don't work for tournaments for now - we'll be changing that next year, but to get this system working in FHM11 we had to use some temporary workarounds to get around the need to make major structural changes to the database - but those won't work for the tournaments, which will still use the default penalty system)
  
• the most noticeable differences will be fights resulting in immediate ejections in all leagues where that rule exists, the addition of a number of new penalties that didn't exist in the default penalty set, and some penalty-expiry rules changing in the historical leagues over time (e.g. prior to 56-57 and the "Canadiens" rule, NHL power plays won't end on a goal)
  
• there's probably a lot of detail that can and will be added to the individual league data in the future, particularly if I can find league-specific penalty frequency data, but for now the basics should be there
  
• these are penalty changes only, not rule changes, so some things weren't possible to implement yet, e.g. no pre-"Oilers rule" where coincidental minors meant 4-on-4 play before 1985, no restrictions on passing direction as in the early NHL seasons (although there are existing player logic features in those years that affect passing tendencies in some directions and zones), no oddball penalty shot rules from the 1940s, etc.
  
• classic engine penalties still work normally (would've been too complex to change right now), but that'll be changing in the future

-the International Hockey League is now playable in historical mode:

• it covers the 1984-85 to 2000-2001 seasons, the period in which IHL teams were primary NHL affiliates; while the IHL began play in 1945, for the vast majority of its existence it was at best a second-tier minor league, and there's no easy way to have a league's quality of play and economic situation change radically over time, so the early part of the IHL's history isn't included and the league appears as a "new league" in 1984
  
• teams that entered the league from the CHL or joined the AHL when the IHL folded will move to/from those leagues
  
• everyone who played at least 1 IHL game from 1984 on and wasn't in the database yet has been added; staff have also been added, but the records we had to work with were somewhat limited, so they aren't complete

-added 12 new historical challenges, all for the four new playable minor leagues added this year, with achievements (both in-game and in Steam)
-rosters updated to post-trading deadline status; for most leagues they're up-to-date as of the NHL trading deadline; the NHL player moves are covered up to March 21, including contract extensions
-historical minor league teams now have their proper colours and arenas; there's still some room for improvement here for colour changes that occurred without the team moving and arena name changes over the years, but the generic arenas and black/white colours are all gone; also added some logos for the newer historical leagues so they don't get the generic ones

Other changes and fixes:

-fixed crash with edited historical leagues when new minor leagues become active
-added check to prevent scheduler failure in historical minor leagues when historical editing is turned on
-fixed issue limiting the amount of trading on deadline day, you should see many more trades on that day now
-multiplayer trade shopping attempts will no longer occasionally result in some teams offering the same player twice
-the AI will now distribute its yearly financial points more evenly between categories, instead of neglecting Game Promotions
-chance of a championship team replacing its GM in the offseason drastically reduced
-acquiring a first-round draft pick now has an equivalent fan happiness bonus to the penalty for trading one away
-the group stage will no longer fail to display properly for some international tournaments
-at the start of a new standard game, Utah's unsigned players screen will no longer show some of their (i.e. Arizona's) draft picks having no signing deadline
-adjusted the way player contracts are set up at the start of a game so fewer younger players begin as free agents when they should be NHL-contracted
-the medals in the 1980 and 1984 Olympics should now be awarded in the correct order (had been including the opening round results)
-using the "AI set lineups" feature on a farm team will no longer result in in a lineup screen that includes players on the parent team
-restricted the number of assistant coaches that AI teams can hire
-players in sponsored junior leagues in historical should no longer occasionally get stuck in the league and not depart when their age limit is reached
-changed tooltip on the intervene button to clarify its use
-long team names are no longer cut off in the championship popup
-fixed potential July 1 crash in historical games
-fog of war will now hide player ratings properly (this still needs an overhaul, but it'll have that basic functionality now)
-world database updated to reduce the number of high-potential US players created and increase the number of Canadians and Russians
-players moved off the roster of a human-run farm team by an AI parent will now have their dressed status cleared properly
-adjusted AI tactical tendencies choices to use the higher tempo and shooting options more often
-fixed issue causing the data, trading, and editing screens to hide some draft picks if the user changes the number of draft rounds
-fixed a few issues that were leading to excessive ticket price increases (and corresponding attendance declines)
-fixed issue that was causing 2D game engine crashes during games with low roster sizes, particularly when the rover rule is active
-custom multiplayer games will now clear INT status properly for all players who participated in international tournaments
-custom tournaments that include a defending champion will no longer cause a crash if no one won the tournament in the previous season
-fixed issue with new Abuse of Official penalty that was resulting in 0 PIM being credited to the penalized player
-the Acquire Chemistry owner goal will now only occur if at least two players on the target player's chemistry list are available to be acquired, instead of only one being needed
-increased the frequency of penalties and altercations in 2D mode
-the "Going Up" achievement should now be awarded properly when promoted to the top German league
-if the user reloads a custom game with international tournaments on after returning to the start screen, that will no longer cause the next version of some tournaments to be skipped
-redshirt status will now get cleared properly when a college player is signed by a non-college team
-players contracted to a parent teams will now be untradeable by minor league team in historical mode, as they are in standard games
-fixed some potential instances where play may become frozen in place in 2D mode
-morale penalty for being sent to a minor league team will now clear properly when player is returned to major league roster because the parent has changed farm teams
-fixed problem preventing players from being ejected from the game in 2D mode
-fixed naming error with Cleveland Barons (NHL) jersey files
-added some generic league logos for historical minor leagues and WHA
-player bios of pre-2024 NCAA best goalie award winners will no longer show the award multiple times
-the two prospect owner goals (give playing time/do not rush) will no longer trigger for players not on the team's active roster
-added check to prevent trading/offering of picks from previous draft
-all conflicts and cliques will no longer temporarily disappear when one is cleared
-redshirt status will now clear properly when player signs with a non-college team
-players under contract to another team (i.e. the parent club) will no longer be tradeable in historical minor leagues (as they already are in the standard game)
-fixed data error causing Seattle and Vegas to appear with the wrong team names in historical mode
-other small text and typo fixes

A hotfix for FHM11, version 11.3.42, has just been released.

A couple of potential game-breaking issues have become apparent, as well as a few things we'd rather not wait to fix, so we've decided to release a hotfix to correct them rather than wait until next month's full update. The biggest problems was an unavoidable crash in smaller custom game setups that had players being generated in a large number of nationalities. In addition to the more critical fixes, we're also including a few other things that had already been completed and are safe to include at this point. Their inclusion here doesn't necessarily indicate that they were a higher priority than any other fix or change, just that their relatively simple nature allowed them to be included early. The next content update will still be coming out in mid-March after the trading deadline.

Changes:

-fixed crash in custom games on July 1 when number of national teams exceeds the number of regular teams
-fixed potential error in format of international tournaments in custom games
-custom game creation with the CHL leagues included will no longer crash partway through the setup
-historical farm team affiliations are now working properly again for all leagues
-AI teams will no longer have multiple players using the same uniform number
-major junior teams will no longer release recently-drafted high-potential players in early August
-major junior players with $0 contracts (aside from players loaned from NHL teams) will no longer start to appear after a few seasons
-historical challenge popup has been rearranged a bit to classify the challenges by year (no new challenges added yet, but there will be 12 minor league ones coming in the full update)
-fixed ties not counting as GP on international tournament histories in custom games

The second content update for FHM11 is here! In addition to fully updated rosters in all leagues (as of February 4), we've also added the old Western Hockey League (1948-74) as the third playable minor league in historical mode, made a number of changes to improve 2D mode's realism, as well as the usual bug fixes and other adjustments. Historical and league-specific penalties for 2D mode, which we'd hoped to include in this update, have run into a few complications so we've pushed those back to the next (post-trading deadline) update. That one is likely to be a fair bit larger than this one, as the hotfix two weeks ago included a number of the fixes that would've gone into this update. It will also include the last of the new playable historical minor leagues, which will cover the later years (1984-2001) of the International Hockey League. That update will be released sometime in mid-March, after the NHL trading deadline.

Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game. Some fixes, however, are data-dependent and may require starting a new game before you see them.

Additions, changes, and fixes:

-current database updated, rosters current as of February 4 (the Pettersson extension with Vancouver is the earliest NHL thing that's not in)
-Western Hockey League (1948-74 version, not the junior league) is now playable in historical mode; everyone who played a WHL game in this period has been added to the database; note that some teams in this league will continue into the CHL when the WHL folds in 1974
-large number adjustments to 2D mechanics; in particular, scoring should now be lowered to a realistic level, the shot totals for defencemen substantially reduced, shots blocked increased, and forwards should be shooting from long range more often
-the schedule screen will now show the correct number of points for teams in leagues that allow ties (had not been counting the tie points)
-the scorers list on the schedule screen will no longer be cut off in high-scoring games
-newly-acquired players in multiplayer games will now get a number other than 0 assigned
-KHL teams can now have their VHL farm team relationships edited (in commissioner mode on July 1)
-when using the "end of season" setup in historical, players with both minor league and NHL history in that season will no longer be assigned to the minor league team
-the AI should now select captains for expansion teams properly
-fixed loophole allowing the AI to ignore contract limits in some situations
-farm teams will no longer be added automatically (when an NHL team is created) to playable minor leagues in historical mode (had been breaking the schedules in the minor leagues)
-when an expansion team is added to a league, its founded date will now be set to the current year
-corrected GA tooltip on player stats screen (it's giveaways but was showing up as "goals against")
-shooter/blocker names are no longer reversed on the 2D game's shots display
-made it more difficult for players to develop their defensive skills to elite levels when not playing in a top-level league
-NHL player ratings reviewed and adjusted for 24-25 performance
-2025 IIHF tournaments now have their correct participants
-fixed missing history for Latvian league
-updated some missing logos from new national teams that started playing this year
-updated presets file for the "current" start to correct some injury lengths, add a few missed injuries, and update NHL captains
-fixed issue preventing some 2023 and 2024 drafted players from appearing in historical games
-adjusted default percentage of talent from stats in new historical games down to 20% (modern/custom games unaffected, still at 40%.) The higher percentage was putting the AI at too much of a disadvantage relative to human players, who have (or can easily look up) better information on the player's actual ability/potential. In standard and custom games, the user doesn't know any more about the future of the players, so they're equally misled by the influence of the stats and the higher percentage doesn't create an imbalance.
-updated recent team history for Champions Hockey League and Memorial Cup
-recent NCAA commitments updated
-new Chinese league updated with the 24-25 teams and rosters (non-playable)
-added new player cards for 1960-1969, 1970-1979, and 2000-2009 periods
-the new player card info.txt options for alternate formatting of team and player names that were added in FHM8 should now be working properly again
-conflicts with a parent team's players will now be cleared properly when a player is traded by that team while on their farm team's roster
-fixed players getting the same nationality listed twice in historical mode

We've decided to release a hotfix in advance of the upcoming content update to correct a serious issue with multiplayer games. There was a bug in the file importing procedure used by the commissioner that was damaging some of the team data. In a few cases, this would become apparent fairly quickly for a team as there would be obvious broken data like incorrect player names, but for others the damage was smaller and less obvious, and might only become evident after repeated runs through the export/import process. But since every human-controlled team in the save would have been affected by this problem, after applying this update multiplayer leagues that were started in FHM11 would probably best be restarted or reverted back before the first team imports were done, and those imported from FHM10 should go back before the first post-conversion import.

Note that this does not apply to multiplayer saves where there is only one person playing the game but using the multiplayer feature to control multiple teams. In those cases, the import/export process would presumably never be used, so the save will be fine.

In addition to that fix, we're also including a few other small fixes that would've normally gone into the next content update, but were complete and safe to include at this point. Their inclusion here doesn't necessarily indicate that they were a higher priority than any other fix or change, just that their relatively simple nature allowed them to be included early. The next content update will still be coming out in early/mid-February as planned.

Changes:

-fixed serious bug with the multiplayer import procedure that was damaging the team data
-players will no longer retain NTC/NMC status from their previous contract when re-signing with the same team to a non-NTC/NMC deal
-the goalie leaderboards will no longer count games played in a different league towards the qualifying GP amount for the leaderboard
-fixed issue that was causing an incorrect team to be sent to the U-Sports final tournament
-fixed potential 4 Nations Cup crash in later seasons
-the conflict intervention warning added in the last update will no longer trigger if it's not possible for the captain to intervene (i.e. because he's a part of all available conflicts/cliques)
-in the team popup, ties will now be displayed correctly for the current season (in the OTL column) for leagues that allow ties
-fixed issue causing older players to be generated with heights that are too low (primarily evident in custom games, but also possible in a few other circumstances where players get generated at ages past 15)
-the Free Agents centre will now display the correct number of players the team currently has under contract
-fixed issue preventing the Liiga, Mestis, and HockeyAllsvenskan championship achievements from being completed

The first content update for FHM11 is here! In addition to updated rosters (as of December 11, so no Cam Fowler trade), we've added some new things to the game: in historical mode, the Central Hockey League (1963-1984) joins the American Hockey League as a playable minor league; the recent US college rule change allowing players from the Canadian major junior leagues to be recruited has been implemented; multiplayer games can now be created from quickstart files; your contract renewal is now optional again; and we've enabled editing on a bunch of fields at the team and league level that were previously locked. In addition to those, we've made the usual fixes and adjustments in other areas.

Barring the need for a hotfix to repair any game-breaking issues that are discovered in this update, the next update will be the second content update, to be released in early February.

Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game. Some fixes, however, are data-dependent and may require starting a new game before you see them.

New additions:

-The NCAA's decision to allow former major junior players to be recruited has been implemented. Obviously, no one's quite sure at this point how this will play out, so this is just a best guess on our part, and we can adapt it if needed. The first in-game change is a new check on 19- and 20-year-old major junior players near the start of the season (i.e., prior to the verbal commitments) that can change their junior preference to the college option. Players with a higher intelligence rating will be more likely to make this choice, but only if their potential isn't too high - it seems unlikely to us that good NHL-caliber prospects will take this option (although others seem to disagree, so we'll see.) Then, those players will be eligible for the verbal commitments and national signing day "drafts", just like any other player with the college preference. If they join a team on national signing day, their college "contract" will take effect the next July 1 - which, for players going into their 20-year-old season, may mean that the player foregoes their overage year in junior, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to anticipate that we'll see some players do that rather than spend another year riding buses to Moose Jaw. Additionally, the changes made in the last update will tend to pull more Canadian and US players towards playing major junior first, but we did go fairly conservative with those changes until we see what really happens. In general, there'll be a noticeable number of guys moving from the CHL to NCAA each year, often guys who can immediately be college-level stars, but it won't be an overwhelming flood of players.
-the Central Hockey League is now playable in historical mode. This is the 1963-84 Central League (formerly the Central Professional Hockey League in its first seasons in the sixties), not the later low-minors league of the same name that ended in 2014.) It will work pretty much exactly as the playable AHL does, with NHL affiliations switching at the appropriate times. As with the AHL, anyone who played at least one CHL game is now in the database (if they weren't there already), and the playoff seasons and schedules have been simplified a bit in some years (although the CHL's format was never particularly complex, so it's not as noticeable as with the AHL) The process of adding the CHL went smoothly enough that we're optimistic that we can add the remaining two leagues that had a large number of primary NHL affiliations, the old 1940s-1970s Western League and the post-1984 portion of International League, in the remaining FHM11 content updates. One note, though: it'll save a bunch of time if I can wait until later to add the arena histories for all leagues at once, so I'm going to hold off until we're adding the last one instead of doing the AHL's arenas earlier.
-It's now possible to create multiplayer games from quickstart files (there's now a Multiplayer checkbox on the "Load a Quickstart" popup, selecting it makes the gmae multiplayer)
-Added back the option (on the manager option screen) for the users to disable automatic renewal of their GM contract - you'll still get the contract offer if the team wants to renew it, but you can now turn it down and become unemployed
-Added a number of new editing options, specifically:

• enabled editing of team cap hit penalty and team Local TV Deal value
  
• enabled assists per goal editing on July 1 (League Info tab, just below Fights/Game - this controls the frequency with which the league awards assists; very low values will restrict, but not totally eliminate, first as well as second assists in 2D mode, but the classic engine will only reduce the frequency of second assists, it can't reduce the number of first assists)
  
• enabled editing of Number of Overaged Players on July 1 (Rules tab, just blow Max Foreign) (only for use in leagues with an upper age limit, this will limit the number of players allowed per team of the league's maximum age)
  
• enabled editing of Maximum Veterans, Veteran GP Limit, and Veteran League Rep on July 1 (these can be used to enforce limits on the number of veteran players in the league, with veterans being defined as players with > career games played above the specified limit in leagues above the specified reputation limit.)
  
• enabled editing of league National TV Deal value on July 1

The database is updated as of December 11 for the playable leagues (although there have been some moves in other leagues as well.) The issue we had with a small number of players being assigned to generic Under-20/-18/etc. teams should be completely fixed now.

Other changes and fixes:

-relocated goalie selection on the pregame lineup screen to the 5-on-5 tab
-added reminder popup near the end of the month when a captain's invervention is available on the team morale screen (and a morale problem exists)
-in the csv exports, we've added to player_master.csv a "Rookie" column, that's set to 1 if the player meets the "rookie" qualifications for the league he's currently in (as defined in the rookie option for the search filter) or 0 otherwise (or if he doesn't have a league)
-On the Team-Upcoming Free Agents screen, the "Est. demand" amount will no longer occasionally be shown as "Leading offer" rather than the estimated demand
-owners will no longer give the "better goalie" goal when the team has a contracted goalie with potential >3.5 stars
-reduced frequency of "hire a local scout" owner goal
-prospect playing time owner goal will now complete in midyear if conditions are met
-"do not re-sign" owner goal will no longer target first-line(ish) level players, and if the targeted player is traded or released the goal will auto-complete
-right-clicking on the postgame screen no longer generates a page history error
-lowered frequency of blockbuster-type trades
-at lower resolutions, the parent and farm teams sections of the team data screen are no longer so short that they can't display any data
-added link to boxscore in all-star game news stories
-agreeing with the media is now much more likely to improve the GM-media relationship
-owner changes will no longer drop GM's job security number to a dangerously low level (although it may still decrease)
-lowered frequency of offseason GM firings
-players will no longer request the "fringe player" supplementary role in a contract (and then proceed to refuse it)
-head scout draft evaluations will now ignore Iron Curtain players in years where the Iron Curtain rule is active
-reworked creation of generic owners for teams that were missing them
-Colorado/Columbus 23-24 thing fixed for good now, hopefully

The first non-hotfix update for FHM11 begins to move beyond correcting bugs and making realism adjustments, although those things remain the main focus. Most importantly, it adds the current database start option with updated rosters. The next update will be out before Christmas and will have larger content additions, including implementation of the recent NCAA division to allow the recruitment of former major junior players.

Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game, and some saves that previously had crashes, particularly around the time of the Olympics or when inter-league tournaments have been added) should now work after the update. Some issues, however, are data-dependent (e.g. incorrect historical records) and may require a new game before you see them.

Changes:

-added "current" roster start option for new modern games; rosters are as of approximately November 10 for most leagues and November 17 for the NHL (Staff in some leagues still needs updating, will be doing that in the next version)
-fixed potential crash during the Olympics in modern games
-"Finish ahead of rival" owner goal now checks the comparative standings of the two teams correctly
-owner request to acquire players with chemistry with one of team's current players will only be issued if that player has good or better chemistry with someone on another team
-player screen will now show all player chemistry for the player, instead of only chemistry above a particular ("good") level
-staff in major junior leagues will no longer start with extremely high salaries if their reputations are above a particular level
-adjusted salary generation for assistant coaches and scouts in junior and college leagues, they should now be in line with GM/Head Coach salaries
-fixed text color on some headers in the awards section of the league data screen to make it more readable
-AI will now ignore internal restrictions on sending players to the minors if they were acquired recently if their team has so many recent arrivals that its options would be limited to a very small number of players
-the "Commitments" tab on the draft screen during college signing day in the first few years will now also show players with a real-life verbal commitment to the team, instead of only game-generated commitments
-players will now always ask for No-Movement Clauses for very high-value contracts
-the player and staff search screens now default to having the Retired Players and Retired Personnel filters set to Active-only (so you'll need to switch those options to show retired players/staff)
-if the NHL is imported into a custom game with international play, the NHL players will now be available for selection for the World Championships teams
-corrected various errors in league/tournament winner histories
-Champions Hockey League now has the correct teams for 24-25
-the NHL contract bonus system will no longer be used by AHL teams in historical mode
-the Liiga-Mestis promotion/relegation series should now work properly
-the Mestis and Liiga bronze medal games are now back to a 1-game series (were accidentally changed to best-of-7)
-players who clear waivers in the NHL will now be exempt from further waivers for the next 30 days from the date they were waived
-on the team finances screen, the middle column now shows the correct tooltips
-the World Junior Championship in historical now records gold-silver-bronze history correctly for simulated tournaments in its history
-fixed standings column errors in some international tournament histories in historical mode
-fixed potential crash with some inter-league tournament configurations (this will also fix the problem in existing saves)
-AI will no longer force trades for some players the user attempts to send to the minors
-Champions Hockey League games involving the user's team now show up properly in the calendar at the top-right corner
-in a 6-team league, the same team will no longer occasionally appear on both the best and worst draft lists in the post-draft report
-added the teams' regular season records to the playoff preview message
-fixed column width error on the League-Edit-Expansion Drafts screeen
-AI trading should now occur at normal frequencies in custom leagues again
-adjusted Junior Preference generation for newly-created players to reflect recent trends (e.g. more Europeans to US colleges) and the probably impact of the NCAA decision to allow former major junior players (which will be implemented in the next update)
-made a large number of changes to the Job Security calculation, which will now be affected by many more factors; particularly, it will be easier to recover from low security if the team starts winning
-if historical editing is turned on, teams will no longer change their colours on July 1 if "Update Team Names" is unchecked
-the "(other team) can't afford to add this much salary to the payroll" message will no longer appear in the trade interface when the team actually has enough payroll (and budget) room
-the "Signable" filter in player search now properly filters for league age restrictions when playing in a major junior league
-fixed QMJHL and Tipos Extraliga schedule lengths in post-2024-25 seasons
-added "Overage: X/Y" counter at the bottom of the team roster screen in leagues with an overage player limit
-the team popup now properly adds +1 to Team GA for shootout losses
-the "Tallest Team" order in the Demographics Report now sorts correctly
-in historical mode, the player search screen will no longer allow you to right-click and attempt to make a contract offer to a retired player
-players with long-term injuries will no longer agree to mutual contract termination
-the "signable" filter for the search screen will no longer include some players who are under the league's age limit
-when playing as an AHL team in historical, the free agent centre will no longer show players under the league's minimum age
-changed leadership award criteria to weight captains/assistant captains more heavily
-when setting up a custom game, the "Play International Tournaments" option is now on by default and will need to be turned off if international play is not desired
-during setup of a custom junior league, the "Edit league playoffs and rules" popup no longer has some overlapping sections
-added the "Minimum GP" filter to League-Historical-Player Index screen
-the team logos for international teams in historical should now change properly with the season, e.g. no Red Ensign for Canada after 1964 in games started before that year
-the "can't add this my salary to the payroll" response will no longer occasionally appear in the trade interface when trying to make a trade in the WHL/OHL/QMJHL
-AHL affiliations will now be set properly in historical challenges
-fixed potential schedule error in World Junior Championships
-players from outside Russia/Belarus/Kazakhstan will now be counted as foreigners in the VHL and Belarusian leagues (instead of considering everyone from the former USSR as a non-foreigner)
-Belarusian league teams will no longer exceed the BXL's allowed foreigner limit
-made several adjustments to lower starting weights for newly-created players and make the weight ranges more specific to the exact age of the generated player
-height creation for generated players now adjusts for exact age of player (rather than just having two generic "junior" and "non-junior" groups)
-previous fix to initial player major role selection should now work properly (e.g. the two-way defenceman role will now be selected when appropriate, instead of only happening a very small percentage of the time)
-Liiga 23-24 player histories should now appear
-if an AHL team sends a player contracted to its NHL parent to its own farm team, the player's contract is now properly counted against the NHL team's contract limit
-adjusted goalie starts to reduce the excessive number of starts for the team's best goalie
-fixed various small text and formatting errors, and various data issues

A hotfix for FHM11, version 11.1.24, has just been released.

The fourth post-release update, this is a little bit more than a hotfix but not quite a full update, so we'll stick with calling it a hotfix. The changes are mainly changes that took a little longer to implement and test properly, but there are also a few smaller things that were reported recently and made it in. The next update, barring the discovery of any urgent game-breaking problems, will be the first proper "Update", probably in mid-late November, when we'll also add the current database start option with updated rosters.

Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game, but some issues that are data-dependent may require a new game before you see them; also, see the note below regarding a crash during the 4-Nations Cup that may require some additional help if you're already getting the crash in your save.

Changes:

-made a number of adjustments to AI trading mechanics and frequencies: should be a lot more transfers in Europe now, a few trade types that hadn't been working properly have been fixed, and a handful of the newer playable leagues are now using transfers properly when they weren't previously
-added 2023-24 playoff/promotion/relegation changes to Finnish Liiga, Mestis, and Suomi-Sarja
-fixed jobs for a large number of staff in the modern database that had changed from "Assistant Coach" to "Player", which effectively removed them from the game
-fixed repetitive invalid playoff format error for the AHL in historical mode; this will fix the problem in saves that were created prior to the update
-if any teams in the league have an empty roster (e.g. pre-draft expansion teams), clicking on the Demographics Report will no longer crash the game
-players are no longer missing their AHL stats on their career stats screen at the start of a new historical game
-the new check that forces teams to try trading good players before putting them on waivers now looks at player's potential, rather than their current ability
-the Busts screen for the WHL's Draft Surprises report no longer uses the CHL Import Draft rather than the WHL Bantam draft
-removing teams from the WHL at the start of a new game will no longer cause a crash a few weeks later
-the "Re-sign star player" owner goal will no longer be targeted at players who have already signed extensions
-the "Re-sign star player" owner goal will now complete properly when the player is re-signed
-the "Acquire some chemistry" owner goal will no longer be used if all the potential chemistry targets are ineligible to play in the league
-the major role determination for defencemen at the start of a new game will now select the Two-Way Defenceman role when appropriate instead of only using offensive/defensive templates
-new expansion teams in a standard game no longer get assigned newly-generated GM's and Head Coaches with reputations of 0 (which was also leading to very quick firings of those guys); they'll hire a GM and Head Coach from the existing staff pool (this was already working properly for the other staff roles)
-corrected warning on the popup that appears when the user attempts to hire a head coach to reflect the changes to GM-only mode that now allow the user to retain control over lineups, etc.
-fixed data error in one of the hotfixes that broke all AHL affiliations in historical games that were started with the new version of the game
-historical AHL teams multiple affiliations now work correctly at the start of a new historical game, i.e. they'll have both parents instead of only one
-fixed potential crash during 4-Nations Cup; this fix will work on existing saves, but only if the 4-Nations tournament hasn't begun yet in the current season (if that's the case, we can still fix your save manually, please let us know and we'll make the fix for you)
-European teams will no longer make transfers for players in the North American college leagues
-fixed problem with 23-24 Arizona stats for players in historical database, which was leading to the team being empty in a 2023 start
-fixed issue causing responses to user-made contract offers to say that the user's own team had made a better offer to the player
-added NCAA to the "Rights" filter on the player search screen
-fixed a few more player data errors

And, finally: after all these years, we may have fixed the long-standing facegen bug that would, every few times the game was started, break the facegen images so only the bottom-left quarter of them was displayed, requiring a game restart to get them back to normal. The fix is as weird as the problem; basically, we're using a rendering mode that's intended for Macs, but on the Windows version of the game. Do we know why it works? Not really. But does it work? Apparently so; we've started many test games since making the change, and no one's seen the bug reappear yet. Either it's fixed, or much, much more rare now. And it doesn't seem to be causing any other problems, despite the odd implementation. Fingers crossed that this has corrected it for good.

Third post-release update, this one with some things that took a little longer to fix and test. Next update will probably not be until next week unless something game-breaking is discovered; that one will cover any other significant issues that can't wait until the first full update in mid-late November, when we'll also add the current database start option with updated rosters.

Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game, but several of the issues fixed this time (missing NHL renewals, Colorado history, CHL Import Draft, historical transfers, Wanderers challenge) will require a new game to be started.

Changes:

-added a bunch of missing NHL contract renewals and a few other contracts, as well as fixing a few smaller database issues
-"hire a scout" owner goal now gives a clearer location for the scout
-CHL Import Draft is working properly again
-23-24 stats for Colorado Avalanche players now have the correct team
-transfer relationships between leagues in historical should be correct now, there was a problem in our editor that was corrupting the changes I was making, which led to problems for NHL teams signing their draftees and AHL and WHA teams signing players away from (nonplayable) minor league teams
-fixed issue preventing some NHL-contracted players loaned to CHL teams from being returned to their NHL team on July 1, eventually leading to their contract expiring and them becoming UFA's
-fixed crash with Montreal Wanderers historical challenge
-if a player who is the target of an Owner Goal retires, the goal now immediately terminates, instead of staying active and pointing to a new player
-fixed issue preventing trades from teams attempting to trade for a pick, and made some smaller trading adjustments; we're continuing to work on the trading/transfer volumes (the fix has left them a little player-for-pick heavy); trading is getting to be around the right overall volume now, but the transfers in Europe need a lot of improvement, there are too few of them
-regenerated records/leaderboards to work with the database changes