Fictional League Help

[Sunny D]

long time lurker, first time poster...

Been a fan of OOTP since v6, and an fan of all SI games since CM1 and on into the FM (WWSM) and NHL EHM days. So totally looking forward to the release later today , but in anticipation of the release I am looking for some guidance.

Usually I play OOTP by downloading one of the excellent MLB based .lg files and playing out the current season (and I will still be doing this as soon as they are available for the new game). However I decided the wealth of features in the new version would justify me exploring some of the other areas of the game.

So basically I decided to plan a fictional league, based on the English Football league structure. So the premiership would become the major league, and the championship would be AAA etc... and basically trying to create the affiliation based as closely as possible on geographical location (so Sheff Wed would be the AAA team of Sheff Utd - sure that would please / irk people equally ).

1) Minors / Affliliation - does every team at minor league level have to be affiliated to a major league club ? THere are more teams at the lower levels in the English League structure, so could there theoreticaly be unaffiliated teams at AAA, or could a major League team have more than 1 AAA affiliate. Also do I need to go any lower than A ball for my Minor Leagues structure (as that would fit nicely with the 4 major divisions in the Football League structure.

2) Scheduling - I have got the Premiership split in 2 sub leagues each containing 2 x 5 team divisions, but i was trying to wonder how best to make the schedule work - obviously a 162 game schedule for a 10 team league may become a bit arduous, so has anyone got any ideas for a bettter fit ?

3) Also looking for any other pointers / guidance on setting up a fictional league. Logos should be fairly easy to add in from my stockpile of FM ones, and my ultimate plan is to eventually produce rosters for each team containing accurate players, however that may be ambitious to do initially, so i would settle for using fictional players to start with.

who knows one day I may even venture into Historical Simming....

[battists]

Well, #1 is possible, for starters. The whole idea seems more or less feasible, as long as you're willing to fudge some stuff.

Honestly, I would suggest you get the game and play around with a simple fictional league first, before tackling that complex project.

Sorry, no time for more right now! Busy day!

[Sunny D]

Cool - thanks for the tip - I will start to play around with it over the next few days and if i get stuck will continue to post on here.

and I appreciate the reply - I understand its going to be a bit manic for all the people involved in getting OOTP 2006 out of the door for the next few days / weeks

[brookslag]

I had almost the same question. I'd like to setup a relegation-style league, where the bottom X get demoted & the top X from the lower level replace them.

So, I'd also appreciate any answers to this question.

Thanks!