Suggestion/Question : Designated Prospect

[ScottPoseSnag]

I am finding it slightly annoying to have to constantly check my minor leagues to see if my "Top Prospects" are properly inserted into lineups or are getting sufficient playing time. This can be time consuming when there are 5 levels of minors, and some levels with two different teams.

Even in low A ball, draft picks are often benched in favor of slightly more developed scrubs with no chance of making the Majors. In real life, the kid the GM is high on will be getting all the playing time he wants, the GM would just call up the minor team manager and make sure the manager knew that specific kids were important to the future of the organization blah blah blah and needed priority over all other players for playing time..... and yes, youre right, I COULD just adjust my minor league team lineups and pitching staffs everytime i promote or demote a guy, but wouldn't it be nice if.......


There were a right click option to make a player a "Prospect". It would work like the current shortlist, with the added addition that the AI is notified that you want this guy to have lineup priority when it is making lineups or deciding who gets to play that day...

that way, when you want to move that first round pick up to AA to see if he can hack it, you dont have to micro-manage the teams that lost the player and the team that is getting the player to make sure the playing time is spread out properly. or am I just being lazy about this whole thing?

[Who Killed Kenny?]

Agreed. I'll go one step further. Sometimes I want a guy to play a certain position to gain experience. But the AI minor league manager will move him back to another position. I don't want to manage all the minor league players but for some of my major prospects I would like them to play the position that I'd want them to play in the majors.

[Hador]

Originally Posted by Who Killed Kenny?

Agreed. I'll go one step further. Sometimes I want a guy to play a certain position to gain experience. But the AI minor league manager will move him back to another position. I don't want to manage all the minor league players but for some of my major prospects I would like them to play the position that I'd want them to play in the majors.

That is a great point. I would love to see some way to lock a prospects position and also minor league level so that I can use the AI to organize my minor league system for the less talented players while keeping a manual setting in place for a couple of more important prospects.

Right now you can either micro-manage your whole minor league system or you can use the AI. However when you use the AI you will then have to look up ALL important prospects again and again to undo any possibly stupid changes the AI made.

Is there any chance to maybe include something like this in one of the patches? Or will we have to wait for OOTP10 for something like this? Actually I think it shouldn't be too difficult to implement since it doesn't mess around with the game logic or anything. Could you comment on this Markus?

[Rastafreaky]

This is a must have, IMO.

[Riverdome]

Good ideas!

One way to develope your draft picks w/o micro-managing the minors is to use ghost players. Yes it makes the lineup screens less realistic but sometimes it's nice to know every player in my system was choosen by me in the draft or a trade.

[ScottPoseSnag]

Originally Posted by Hador

Right now you can either micro-manage your whole minor league system or you can use the AI. However when you use the AI you will then have to look up ALL important prospects again and again to undo any possibly stupid changes the AI made.

Exactly. I don't have the time to make sure that EVERY prospect is at the right level or in the right position, so I like to use the option to "AI Organize Minor Leagues" or whatever the option is. but then i have to go back and check on the 10 or so guys that seem to have a shot at making it to make sure they haven't been benched or stuck in the wrong position. Worse is when the AI promotes a top prospect and I'm not sure he is ready....when i move him back down, I have to redo four sets (RHP, LHP) of lineups to make sure all is correct.

[BrianN]

You guys are on to something - would be a nice feature to have in historicals so your 20-year-old "insert HOF name" isn't on the bench as well. Great ideas!

[dankrzyz]

Getting ahead of ourselves, I will say that this could be done with a "short-list" type feature, as was suggested. It could be similar to the trade block listing (available/untouchable/on-the-block) with settings like "key prospect", "prospect", and "team player" (regular), each getting some type of weight assigned to the player in AI line-up suggestions.