I enjoy this game very much, and one thing I was interested in was the points at which an inactive roster could be traded for a second or first round pick. I bought second round picks, kept track of their stars, and checked to see when the trade offer changed. Because I was only buying second round picks I never had 1 star players so I don't know how much they contribute. Here is what I found:
To get a second round pick, you need 16 points where points are defined as follows:
1.5 star player is worth 1 point
2+ star player is worth 4 points
To get a first round pick, you need 80 points defined as follows:
1.5 star player = 1 point
2 star player = 4 points
2.5+ star player = 16 points
This suggests a pattern for a #1 pick of 480 points (16 * 5 * 6, 3+ star players worth 64 points), which along with the second round pick distribution I've measured so far suggests we'd only need to buy on average 46 second rounders to trade for a #1 pick (vs. 12 for a first and 6 for a second). Obviously it's going to take a long time for me to test that, though.
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1.5 star & 2 star = 1 point
2.5 star = 4 points
3 star = 16 points
3.5 star = 64 points
4 star = 96 points
...then I get that a #1 pick requires exactly 390 points. It's tricky because in this methodology (buying 2nd round picks) the 3+ star player is quite rare. On that topic, I think I have also gotten pretty close to the 2nd round star distribution:
35% 1.5 star
30% 2 star
25% 2.5 star
3.3% 3 star
3.3% 3.5 star
3.3% 4 star
Thus the $ price of a #1 pick is $286k. The underlying mechanics are still pretty vague, but I'm confident a ~$300k price point is correct.
I didn't save the order of picks before now but I have had #1 pick trades occur after a 2.5* and 3* player was drafted, so I'm reasonably sure those players are worth something in the formula. The only thing different is that in addition to the formula there's a binary requirement, which shouldn't change the average expected dollars at all but will increase the length of the tail of the maximum.