How do you test a new league setup?

[Riverdome]

I know it's common for users to create a new league and then sim ~30 years and then review the results. When you do this what exactly are you looking for?

[OldFatGuy]

I've done it several times to test out possible changes to the League Totals I've made. I've been trying (unsuccessfully so far) to get "default" offense down a little. My preference would be for default to be 1970 like, rather than modern day offense.

Others sim out 20 or even 50 years just to create history in the league. So, they can choose an organization to run that's never won it all. They can compare current players to those players already simmed. See who the Home Run king is and who's playing now that might have a shot. That sort of thing.

I've noticed I can't get offense where I want it, the way long time minor league players was handled wasn't what I suspected, and I could never seem to get the number of rounds of draft to be what I wanted to prevent "talent inflation."

Those are some of the things/reasons I sim out lots of years.

[SC_Dawg]

Originally Posted by Riverdome

I know it's common for users to create a new league and then sim ~30 years and then review the results. When you do this what exactly are you looking for?

Personally I look at the following things

1: League averages - do they fall in line with what I was looking for. Since I play fictional leagues exclusively I have an idea of what sort of statistical baseline I want to see.

2: Leaderboards - Along the same lines I have an idea of what the maximum number of most of the stats on the leader boards both individual year and career.

3: Financial health of the league overall - I realize the financial health of each team will fluctuate over time but overall I do not want to see move than 2-% of the league in the red after any season. Ideally I would like to see each team in the green but only by a maximum of 25 - 35% of the cash maximum.

4: How many top notch players are there sitting in the FA market. If there are more than 1 or 2 I get worried. I always want to see all of the to 25% of the free agents talent wise get signed. After that I can live with some mid range talent not getting signed but as long as it is a situation of when I look at their demands (by taking over a team temporarily) are.

After that I just go by my gut as to if the league is as I want it.