Apologies for my unexpected absence from this thread - personal matters took me away for a bit, but it's all settled down now. I know folks are starting to put together next year's team and want some certainty on that front.
I've decided that next year's game will be at the traditional 7500 points. It's true that I don't need to delay any further to do a popularity poll to decide that; I've read the comments over the last month on the thread, and am confident that this is a good route to choose and ultimately although different people have expressed different preferences, it feels like positions aren't so entrenched that there would be any massive displeasure with whatever was decided. Thanks for that.
And thanks for the work to the people who number crunched various options, this is definitely a unique situation so I'm glad we explored various avenues. I definitely took into consideration that the original game founder and a number of long-time participants voiced support for 7500, so thank you to those who weighed out their thoughts and reasoning.
The more I think about it, the more excited I am for the possibilities of that budget. I think with scores generally depressed this year, it will provide some vary interesting options, and with 33 riders on a team there are a multitude of combinations of very good riders that teams can pick. I'm hoping for a lot of variety next year. And the pandemic-restricted season has another interesting knock-on effect in that it didn't give us as much of a look at developing young talents as usual, so that could lead to more variety in evaluating young talents. All in all, we could be in for some record scores.
Thanks to everyone for the kind words around the completion of the game! I am glad so many are still enjoying this game as much as I am.
The game thread for next year will go up at the same time it usually does, by mid-December. But the deadline for submitting teams won't be until just before there is a meaningful race in 2021. It looks like that might be the Vuelta San Juan, which is slated to go slightly before the Mallorca races and Aussie nationals. But a clear decision on a deadline will be posted when the thread goes up.