Dark Cloud's Market Size Calculator and Feeder Settings

[darkcloud4579]

Today I'm unveiling a new version of my market size calculator for OOTP9. It's called MarketCalc. It originated with OOTP2007, when I was annoyed that I couldn't get OOTP to model finances like real life.

What I mean by "real life" is, I wanted to be able to play in New York and see the modern day, non-revenue sharing effects of that largess versus say, playing in Portland, Maine or Winnemucca, Nevada. OOTP doesn't do this naturally, you have to tweak it to make it work.

It's for use in Excel, but OpenOffice also opens .xls files.

Here's a screenshot of the new MarketCalc.



MarketCalc 9.2

You can download the MLB version of MarketCalc here.

If you run a fictional league and just want to be able to input your own tv market sizes and populations, then use MarketCalc Custom.

Documentation is on this thread here.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR MARKET CALC v.9

I've taken the liberty of inputting MLB teams for you. But you can put any team you want in the TEAM section of the tool.

In the CITY NAME section, use the drop-down menus to pick the city you're looking for. You'll have to scroll, but they're there. Or at least, the metropolitan or micropolitan place name of the place you're looking for. I took it straight from Census data. (If you're looking for Canadian MSAs, you'll need to scroll all the way to the bottom. I put those in last.)

Once you click on a city, it'll automatically populate the City Pop (in blue) area.

Do the same thing for DMA Name. DMA is the TV market for the area you've selected. You choose the DMA from the drop down and again, Canadian DMAs are at the bottom. It'll give you the DMA Size.

With that information and modifiers, it'll automatically generate a MARKET SIZE number, that you can input into the game. You should be good in-game for a decade or so, after which time if you want your market sizes to remain the same as the way they're in the sheet, then you'll want to input the information again.

The population are circa 2000-2006 and the DMA numbers are from 2008.

Last year, I released various version of a tool that's far more robust than this. But it's also a lot more labour intensive, you can see it here.

[Bluenoser]

Hopefully this is also posted in the MOD's Forum?

[ootp3to6]

Thanks, I am going to download it now.

[darkcloud4579]

While little light has been set on feeder leagues and the best practices for developing players in OOTP, I've been testing for weeks now to find the best model I can find for player development settings.

I call them SippyCup, because if done right, you can watch a player from the time he's in high school to the time he's a retiree. I could even see testing a level lower than "high school" to get kids who are say, 13-15 playing in your system..then you go from Little League to the Pros. That's been my OOTP dream for a long time, so I intend to accomplish it with this version.

I think I've found a model I like and that will produce a sustainable crop of talented players for the duration of your league. For my money, every feeder league you add will add 5 rounds to your draft. I prefer to err on the side of less vs. more, because the bottom line is, if you have TOO many feeders, it's going to slow down your game unless you're on a machine that's fast. So, I tend to let the computer do the feeder leagues + additional players option for draft feeding in my leagues.

Let me know if you try them. I'll come up with a template that I'll release later on with a basic structure, so you don't have to do all of the legwork, but for now, this ought to get you somewhere if you're an experimental type that's looking for a different sort of setup than what's out there.


Sabermetric Creation Modifiers
---------
ROOKIE
Batting average: .575
Extra-Base Hits: .315
Home Runs: .269
Walks: .300
Strikeouts: .400

SHORT-SEASON A
.632
.420
.322
.500
.550

SINGLE A
.690
.578
.484
.600
.600

DOUBLE A
.805
.630
.591
.700
.700

TRIPLE A
.862
.735
.699
.750
.800

HIGH SCHOOL
.402
.315
.215
.250
.300

COLLEGE
.517
.315
.269
.300
.350

MAJORS
Traditional OOTP Player Creation Modifiers
All set to 1.000 except
Control: 1.050
Fielding: 1.200

Sabermetric PC Modifers
1.150
1.050
1.075
1.000
1.000


League totals modeled after SkyDog's modifiers

Player Aging/Dev (updated September 2008)
Batter Aging: .500
Batter Dev: .500
Pitching aging: .500
Pitching Dev: .500
Talent Chg Randomess: 50

[jayharvill]

that is one SWEET mod

[jayharvill]

Originally Posted by darkcloud4579

FEEDER & PLAYER DEVELOPMENT SETTINGS

I've been using the following development/aging settings.


The premise behind my settings is are simple. I like to see players "go out" with style. I don't like that one morning, a guy magically loses his talent. I'm sure it happens in real life, but that's not really my concern. In my leagues, guys don't really start to "fall off the wagon" until their late 30s, early 40s. Some will play well into their 40s. With advances in modern medicine and just the stuff we've seen in recent years, I think that's more the norm than not.

The creation modifiers are such that it gives me a dilemma to decide "do I go with a young stud player or a steely veteran" as they often bump heads when one is ready and the other isn't quite ready to go. They work well for me.

FEEDER SETUP
I like to have feeder leagues feed my draft, rather than AI generated players who I haven't "seen" before. I setup several feeders, generally in different ways. But the basic setup for each sorta goes like this:

HS FEEDER CREATION MODIFIERS:




INTERNATIONAL FEEDER
In lieu of a college feeder, I create a "college feeder" and then change the classification to a Rookie League. I stock it with international players that'll be fed into my draft. I like it better this way.

The creation modifiers are:


I age the kids in this league 15 and let them league when they're 21. I do it on purpose, to torture myself. Since it's a draft and they'll come out too early otherwise, I never want them out before they're 18 or else, depending on your league and how many bubble up to the top, you'll have too many good players arriving at the same time.

Anyway, do what you will with these. Just sharing.

how many teams in your feeder leagues? (or how many for every team in your major league)

[scott1964]

How about some thing way back from turn of the century of 1900.

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by scott1964

How about some thing way back from turn of the century of 1900.

Use this version. It's more work, because you have to input a lot more information, but...you can use it to get you market size data from the past, more accurately than this one, which is intentionally meant to be a snapshot. In the future, I might make this one work more like the old one, but...not anytime soon.

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by jayharvill

how many teams in your feeder leagues? (or how many for every team in your major league)

3 feeders for every one major league team, usually. So I'll do two US/Canada High school leagues and one foreign league. Or a Latin American feeder, a US/Canada feeder and an international feeder with everyone else in it.

[jayharvill]

Originally Posted by darkcloud4579

3 feeders for every one major league team, usually. So I'll do two US/Canada High school leagues and one foreign league. Or a Latin American feeder, a US/Canada feeder and an international feeder with everyone else in it.

how many rounds is your amateur draft? I want 25 rounds, so I'm just making sure I will have enough players

thanks for your help

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by jayharvill

how many rounds is your amateur draft? I want 25 rounds, so I'm just making sure I will have enough players

thanks for your help

I usually go with 20.

[darkcloud4579]

bump

[bleachercreature]

I haven't gotten into feeder leagues yet, but I love market calc. Great utility.

[jayharvill]

dark cloud--one more question

do you use the default modifiers for the league itself when you create?

[ootpFox07]

DarkCloud, I downloaded but didn't use your older version because 1) I as lazy and 2) I was simming 1910-1990 and didn't care so much about the financials . When I get into the 2000's I'm going to use this for sure as the financials always get frustrating. Thanks for this tool. Now if only Markus can integrate something like this into OOTP 10.

[No Pepper]

Darkcloud, thank you for your update. If I was to start using this and say, my current Milwaukee team was a Huge market size (and a hefty payroll), how would the team adjust when your model reduces the market size? Would I see the team invoke a fire sale right away or would that be over several years? It would be difficult for me to wrap it around my head that suddenly league finances (and the resulting player transactions) changed to disrupt, yet put the league on the right course according to your model. Does that make sense?

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by jayharvill

dark cloud--one more question

do you use the default modifiers for the league itself when you create?

Which modifiers are you speaking of? The financial ones? The 1.000 the game ships with? No, I start with mine and start from there, essentially. I tweak as necessary, if I feel like things are going awry.

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by No Pepper

Darkcloud, thank you for your update. If I was to start using this and say, my current Milwaukee team was a Huge market size (and a hefty payroll), how would the team adjust when your model reduces the market size? Would I see the team invoke a fire sale right away or would that be over several years? It would be difficult for me to wrap it around my head that suddenly league finances (and the resulting player transactions) changed to disrupt, yet put the league on the right course according to your model. Does that make sense?

Umm...I don't think so. I think it'll just mean you'll be a smaller market team. Your fan interest and fan loyalty should stay high and they ought to keep coming to games. I'm not convinced that market size in OOTP actually has ANYTHING to do with finances unless you have media contracts set to "use market size" and then it'll dole out media money that way. So in short, I'm not sure you'd notice a huge effect overnight. I think so long as you kept winning, the game would likely grow your market size, because that's what it ties winning to. (Which is stupid...)

So sadly, this tool doesn't really reflect much because of deficiencies in the game. The only good thing about it, is that if you decide to set the market sizes for the entire league and then use this tool, you should be able to get each market operating with media money according to its market size.

With my older versions of the tool, it was far more comprehensive, because I felt the game needed me to give it ACTUAL numbers to use, since it wasn't smart enough to generate realistic ones.

I'm still of that opinion, but it's just too much work to ask people to do, so I dumbed the tool down this time.

[myasu]

darkcloud,

Thank a lot for the wonderful mod!
Amazing work!

[darkcloud4579]

I'm thinking of improving the next version of MarketCalc. What sort of things would you all want to see?