College Hockey Dynasty
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Program Economy

Facilities & Arena

Every program starts with one facility already in place — the Training Facility — and can invest in six additional tracks on top of it: Locker Room, Medicine Center, Recovery Suite, Video Lab, Academic Support, and Student Section. Every program — including a blue-blood — starts with all six of those unbuilt. Building one is a deliberate first investment, not something you're handed for free.

Your Training Facility

The one facility every program already owns levels up 1 through 5 and does one thing: it permanently raises how much stamina your whole roster recovers each week, a little more per level. It draws from the same shared one-upgrade-per-offseason budget as the six tracks below, and — like them — how far you can push it is gated by your program's overall tier, so a modest program can't simply buy its way to Level 5 in a couple of seasons.

Six Tracks, Six Trade-Offs

Every track has a cost, an effect, and a catch. None of them is a free stat boost, and none is correct for every program:

Some tracks are also gated by your program's overall tier — a few (Locker Room, Academic Support) are deliberately affordable to build up even at a lower-tier program, while Recovery Suite is priced and gated as a luxury out of reach until you're a strong or elite program.

Rink Dimensions Are a Style Choice

Beyond the six facility tracks, you can also renovate your home rink between three sheet sizes — standard, wide, or Olympic — and it's a playing-style decision, not just cosmetics:

Build your roster to match your ice, or your ice to match your roster — a grinding, physical lineup on an Olympic sheet is fighting its own home rink.

Unlike the six tracks above, a rink renovation is paid from your NIL Collective, not Revenue Share — widening your sheet is a felt sacrifice against the same money that funds recruiting, not a minor toggle. Narrowing it back down is cheaper, and whether it costs prestige depends on why you're doing it:

Either way, a renovation locks in for five full seasons before you can change it again, and the Rink Renovation screen tells you up front which case you're in before you confirm.

Across a long-running league, competitive programs generally trend toward wider ice as they grow — an Elite program commonly finishes a multi-decade dynasty on a full Olympic sheet, Strong and Middle programs typically settle somewhere in wide territory, and a program stuck at the bottom of the pecking order rarely renovates at all. That's the NIL Collective cost talking as much as strategy: widening your rink tends to follow your program's growth rather than lead it, so don't feel behind if your rink is still standard early in a rebuild. Wealth alone doesn't tell the whole story, though, for you or for rivals: how eagerly a program actually pursues the wider ice it can afford depends on whether its roster and coaching staff fit it — a program full of skaters and playmakers chases open ice readily; a program built around hitting and grinding drags its feet on the exact same budget, even at Elite prestige. Rink size still climbs with wealth, but reaching your ceiling reads as an organic choice about your program's identity, not an automatic purchase the moment you can afford it.

AI programs follow the exact same rules, in both directions. A rival's rink still climbs toward what its prestige can support, but how fast depends on the same fit check you feel on your own renovation screen — a skill-heavy rival upgrades quickly, a physical one takes its time even while flush. Shrinking stays the rarer move either way: a rival will occasionally narrow its own ice back down, either because its standing has genuinely fallen below what its current rink implies (free — the same honest-correction case above) or because its roster and coaching staff have become a clearly physical, defensive-minded group that's fighting its own home sheet despite still being able to justify the bigger rink (a deliberate retreat — the −3 still applies), and a program that's badly mismatched or badly over-built corrects sooner than one just barely past the line. A rival's rink size isn't a permanent, one-way signal of where its program is headed — it's a real, evolving read on both its wealth and its identity.

It All Feeds Recruiting, Too

Your built-up facilities factor into how appealing your program looks to a prospect — a modest fifth ingredient alongside your NIL offer, prestige, proximity, and the role you're promising. Only four of the six tracks actually feed that appeal — Locker Room, Academic Support, Video Lab, and Student Section — while Medicine Center and Recovery Suite matter for keeping your roster healthy but don't sway a prospect's decision. It's never the deciding factor on its own, but a well-invested program carries a real recruiting edge beyond just money. See Recruiting.

Your overall facilities quality — one blended read across every track — is also visible next to prestige and legacy on your own program summary and every rival's team profile.

Paying For It

Facility spending is paid from Revenue Share, the same wallet that funds your support staff, so a big facilities push and a strong staff compete for the same money. See Finances.

You can only take one build-or-upgrade action per offseason across the entire catalog — and that shared limit includes your original training facility, not just the six tracks above — so a facilities push means choosing which track matters most right now, not binging on all of them at once. Maintaining what you already own isn't limited that way — you can always pay to restore any facility you own back to full condition whenever you can afford it. A strong Facility Manager on staff slows how fast everything decays in the first place.

Repair cost scales with how worn the facility actually is — topping off a track that's barely slipped costs only a fraction of a full restore, while one you let crumble toward empty costs close to the max price shown on its card. There's always a minimum charge even for a light touch-up, so it's never free to repair, but you're never overpaying to fix something that's barely dinged.

That max price itself climbs as a facility moves up its ladder — a higher-level building or track generally costs more to keep pristine than the same one sat lower, on top of whatever the upgrade itself cost. It isn't automatic on every single step (a track's very first upgrade sometimes leaves the repair ceiling untouched), but the trend across the ladder is real: investing in a higher level is also signing up for a heavier repair bill for as long as you own it. The Facilities tab shows you the new ceiling before you confirm an upgrade — in-season or during the offseason — so you're weighing that ongoing cost alongside the one-time price, not discovering it the next time something needs work.

You'll hear about it when a facility needs attention: once any facility's condition drops far enough, you get an inbox message naming it, and the Program tab strip's "Facilities" label turns orange until it's repaired — you don't have to remember to go check the condition bar yourself.

Right-Sizing a Track

Outgrew a track, or just don't want the upkeep anymore? Any built track can be dropped a level during the offseason — Restore Condition and Upgrade sit next to a Downgrade option on that same track's card. It's not offered on a step that wouldn't actually save you anything (a couple of tracks charge the same upkeep at their first two levels, so dropping from Level 2 to Level 1 there is never shown as an option). It doesn't touch your once-per-offseason build/upgrade action, either — you can downgrade one track and still build or upgrade a different one in the same offseason.

Downgrading normally costs a real hit to prestige, the same price a discretionary rink downgrade charges — treat it like giving something up, not a routine chore. The one exception: if your program is genuinely in Financial Distress right now (see Finances), the downgrade is read as an honest correction instead of a retreat.

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