Quote:
Originally Posted by redsoxford
Suggestion
Teams to have more than one stadium. One for regular games and one for spring training for example.
Reason
It looks really odd in Spring Training to see teams playing in their home park one day and then playing the other side of the country the following.
Priority
Medium
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Let me expand upon this suggestion with the following:
Suggestion
Allow teams in a league to define up to three different stadiums for their home parks. One stadium would be used exclusively for spring training games; the other two stadiums would be used for the team's regular season home games.
Reason
A dedicated spring training home park is useful for the reasons redsoxford has given. It's a small addition, granted, but it's the kind of small detail which gives the game a better, more polished feel.
The reason for up to two separate home stadiums for regular season games is simple: there have been numerous times where a major league club has played its home games at two different parks in the same year.
For example, the Boston Red Sox, from 1929-31, played Sunday home games at Braves Field but played the rest of their home games at Fenway Park. The Cleveland Indians, from 1937-47, split their home games between Cleveland Stadium and League Park, with Sunday, holiday, and night games being played at the former and the remaining games at the latter. In 1970, the Pittsburgh Pirates played the first half of their season at Forbes Field and the second half at Three Rivers Stadium. In 1989, the Toronto Blue Jays played the first part of the year at Exhibition Place and the rest of the year at SkyDome. And so on.
With the ability to define up to two different home stadiums for an individual team, these sorts of situations can be recreated in OOTP. This can make historical leagues even more true-to-life and it allows fictional leagues more creativity and options.
So how would this second or alternate home park be assigned games?
By default, the first regular season stadium set up would be considered the team's primary home field, so the user doesn't have to do anything special for it to be used. For the second or alternate home field to be used for a game, I would suggest allowing the user to use the schedule editor to designate which games will be using the alternate home field.
I would also suggest allowing the alternate home field be designated directly in the schedule file for a league. Add a column to the schedule file for this purpose; by default, the column would have a 0 which indicates the primary stadium is being used by the home team. If the value is changed to a 1 for a game, that tells OOTP that the alternate park is used by the home team for that game. Some folks will find it easier to do such alternate home park designating directly in the schedule file rather than using the schedule editor, so that's why I suggest this (and it'd make it easy for me to add the alternate park indicator to the historical schedule files used for historical leagues).
Priority
Medium.