I like the late submission rule, and it meaning an automatic loss for the player, I however don't agree with the potential -4 points, that is the penalty points, I believe one should not lose more point than they can gain from a specific round, in that light I suggest that penalty points should be an independent entity on it's own, and not technically associated with a user accrued points in the league, for unforeseen circumstance beyond human decision anyone could miss a round, I mean even team Cro2 stands a chance of failing to have a question available for despite that never being the case due to their extreme professionalism.
Penalty points would be better off being independent like I aforementioned, just like the VAR, let's say the maximum number of penalty (warning) points every user can get per season is proportional in terms of %age to the number of fixture available to them for that season, perhaps a maximum of 2-3 penalty points before an automatic relegation consideration regardless of where the user finishes by the end of the season while the first person on the relegation table if consistent enough with their submission gets to stay another season in their current division.
My thought on penalties involving anything is if you don't line the penalty, don't do anything that will earn you a penalty. It's as simply as that. It may sound cruel but we have 48 hours to submit our answers. I think that all of us can find 5 minutes to just submit anything. No one is required to do the research if they don't have time.
Don't get me wrong, because I think you're and taking my post out of context, if there is anyone that missed any or get the least reminder, that would be me, but regardless I'm just pointing how I think things would be better going forward, and it's just a harmless opinion at that.
I'm not saying penalties shouldn't be handed out, and if you digest my post properly, I'm even suggesting a stiffer punishment (relegation) for it regardless of if the person finishes in a prized position, but if we are taking potential 4 points off a person on a penalty, we would be making the leaderboard highly fluctuating and doing the same thing we complained about for the majority of last season.
The idea behind penalty points is to filter all the people that aren't engaged or taking this competition seriously enough to lower leagues and allow true sport fanatics to be in first 2 divisions. We said on multiple occasions that we want to have perfect higher divisions where everything is done by the book while we can tolerate more lenient rules in our last Division.
That way we will be able to provide best possible experience and rewards to the people that deserve it most.