The new update for Franchise Hockey Manager 3, version 3.2.89, 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. Saves with the April crash issue some users had with version 3.1.84 will, however, be fixed retroactively when the game is loaded after the updates and can be continued normally.

There's an early Christmas gift from us in this update, just in time for the upcoming world juniors: Junior tournaments have been added to international play - all of the Under-20 and Under-18 tournaments are included, down to the Division III level. A few notes on how they work:

-all Under-20 and Under-18 world tournaments are now in the game, from the world championship level down to Division III, including promotion and relegation
-GM/Coach jobs for the junior national teams may be offered to users just like the regular national teams
-NHL players will not participate in the tournaments (dealing with the issue of giving individual permission to participate players on an NHL roster is a little too complicated for the AI to handle at this point, we could've made it work eventually but it would've held up the update too long)
-WHL/OHL/QMJHL players will participate in the Under-20 tournaments, but will only play in the Under-18's if their team's season is finished (the U18's are in the spring at the same time as the major junior playoffs, basically the same situation as the NHL and the World Championships)
-junior teams will tend to have the same tactical preferences as the senior national teams (but the tactical choices will always be primarily driven by theier GM/Coach's tendencies)
-note that not all countries participate in one or both of the junior tournaments - there are a few, mainly at the lowest levels, that participate internationally only at the senior level, or in only one of the junior levels
-players on the rosters (or at least predicted roster) for teams in the 2017 U20tournament that starts next week had a data update to try to get the AI's player choices in the first year fairly close to real life, but bear in mind there tend to be a lot more surprise choices and omissions at this level than there are for senior tournaments, particularly for the countries with really deep talent pools
-you may notice that the Division I-A through III tournaments do not name an MVP, this is intentional as the real tournaments only name best forward, defenceman, and goalie, with no overall MVP
-performance in the junior tournaments does not affect the national rankings

Next time out: the next update will likely be out sometime in January (although we will do a hotfix if any gamebreaking issues with this update become evident.) It will probably focus on interface changes and improvements, particularly making the new tactical system a little more intuitive and user-friendly, as well as some development changes once we've had time to do a thorough evaluation of the effects of this version's development-related changes.

Change List:

Crashing/Freezing:
-potential crash in April (of any season) fixed; includes a retroactive repair to existing saves with the problem
-historical game freeze during June 30 - July 1 changeover in 2015 fixed
-possible crash in historical games during the NHL draft lottery fixed

Graphical/Text/UI:
-"View" option added to international tournament schedules (as was done with the leagues in the last update - i.e. you can now watch international games you're not coaching in)
-minor typo and tooltip corrections
-large number of nameless retired players no longer shown in league Front Office view in modern games

Gameplay Issues:
-bug that allowed the user to sign too many players (then get stuck because the game was unable to advance due to the roster size) fixed
-players on INT (international play) status are now correctly counted against the cap floor, so you can't fall under it if you have a lot of guys playing internationally
-national player generation quality levels adjusted significantly (down in almost all cases) to tone down the excessive growth in the NHL-caliber player pool in later years, particularly for certain nationalities; long-term testing with these changes is showing good results in a game running to 2049-50; now that this is done, we'll look at refining specific areas of ratings development
-nonplayable transactions in North America adjusted to fix potential traps in lower-level junior leagues that could keep good players stuck in Junior C/D; still some issues with it happening in Junior B, but we'll be revisiting that
-nonplayable transactions for some European teams/leagues will now be more likely to send young players to American junior leagues (and occasionally high schools); seems to be a growing trend in real-life, particularly in some countries, the numbers should be similar to the real totals (but highly variable since they're still a relatively small group of players)
-player junior preferences (i.e. the choice between college, major junior, and European junior) adjusted, a larger number of players of all nationalities will choose college
-missing data for NHL entry-level contract maximum values added in the period 1995-2004, should improve contract handling, particularly rookies, in this period

Miscellaneous:
-added more generated players at the start to make sure there's enough to fill the national team rosters
-reputation/quality data adjusted in the top two French leagues (had been a little too low, making outside players look too good relative to domestic ones), players in the Ligue Magnus should now be about 0.5 stars higher when viewed by a user playing there
-issue with nationality selection for generated players in custom sandbox games fixed (had been limiting players to a very small list of countries and creating far too many from some)
-various data updates and changes