Minors/ Players Editing

[Tullius]

I will prepare my new universum (no finances, complete fictional) and have some questions about various things.

1. Are short season and rookie minor leagues work as they should (= like in RL) meaning as the first step for rookies or not so experienced players or has the AI a dissidenting opinion about it ?

2. Is there a easy way to edit players before the inaugural draft ?

3. What were your biggest problems creating a new universum ?

Thanks.

[1998 Yankees]

Tullius,

I will give some brief responses and then let other members fill in more details for you.

1. I have been satisfied with the way that the game handles my rookie and short season A leagues. The only bad things that I have seen are:

• AI moves players up and down all minor league levels too often.
• AI will sign too many bad players, especially pitchers, who get dumped in the rookie league and never get used.

As far as ranking, Short Season A is higher than Rookie if you use the leagues the way they came with the game. Some people have had problems when they add or delete minor leagues, and the game not understanding which league is higher than the other.

2. Yes, but you must be the commissioner to do this. Just before the draft, click your league button and then Inaugural Draft. Then click the Continue Draft tab near the top of the window (not the button on the bottom). You will see a list of the players to be drafted. Right-click on any name and select Open Player Profile. If you are the commissioner, an Editor tab will appear to the far right. Click that, and make any changes to the player that you care to make. Edit all the players that you want to change before proceeding with the draft.

3. There are many potential problems when creating a universe. I will tell you what I have found to be the biggest: bigness itself. That is, bigger is not necessarily better in the OOTPB universe. My first universe contained almost every league that comes with the game; I chose to have them all included for realism. The problems that I had with that universe:

• Too many players, too many teams meant too many transactions, messages, news articles. This slows the game down considerably and requires very large file space. I have cut back to the American Major Leagues and their minor leagues only.
• A very large universe has too much happening to pay attention to and enjoy. I found myself not knowing or caring what was going on in several of my leagues which was a waste of time, mine and my computer's.

Well, I intended to be brief, but failed. However, I hope this helps you and I call upon other OOTPB members to comment further in answering your questions.

[Tullius]

Thanks. The bigness should not be the problem. I love small leagues where i know "every" player. My universe has 2 x 6 teams in a major league and a complete set of minor league teams. I would hate hit when in a rookie league a career backup appears to end his career here. So i was not sure if this happens. On the other side i love micromanagement and have absolut no problem to manage a major league system with 125-150 players (roster of major team + all affilates).

[Curtis]

1) If you allow the AI to handle your minors, you shouldn't end up with journeymen at the lower levels. The one time I've played through as far as the end of the short season leagues (just before the amateur draft), every player I had on both short teams over the age of 27 was retired. That was when I was directing my own minor league system. The AI just doesn't want 'middle-aged ballplayers in the low minors.

3) My biggest problems were caused by my obsessive/compulsive disorder. I didn't like that the game creates NO symmetrical ballparks, that some of the minor affiliates' parks have greater seating capacity than their parent clubs' and that offensive numbers in the low minors are so low, and so high at the ML level. (There are other things, but they'll do for examples.)

So, what I did was go through and make lists of all the parks, their dimensions, their seating capacities and their offensive modifiers. I gave the smallest seating capacities and dimensions to the Rookie League teams, the largest to the ML clubs and spread the rest out inbetween. I gave the highest offensive modiers to the Rookie teams, the lowest to their parents and spread the rest out.

This took… a long time. A very long time. And it was just one several things I changed (team names, locations and affiliations, every aspect of the financials, the list goes on). If you don't suffer from the same compulsions, you shouldn't have these problems, but there are at least three other regular posters who admit to putting in multiple hundreds of hours to set up their universi 'just so'. I've never tried to edit players for a draft, which would seem to me to be a monumental undertaking, so you may be one of us. Beware! And good luck. The game isn't perfect, but it's good.

[Tullius]

but there are at least three other regular posters who admit to putting in multiple hundreds of hours to set up their universi 'just so'. I've never tried to edit players for a draft, which would seem to me to be a monumental undertaking, so you may be one of us. Beware! And good luck.

It is part of the fun. But it will be a horror when you see after some time that soemthing goes wrong and you have spend too many hours for nothing. I bought OOTP5 and here i had my league and edited all like i wanted. But after the end of the first season i had to realize that i have no playoffs in one league systems. Such surprises i want to avoid.

[1998 Yankees]

Curtis Cook's point about avoiding obsession over minute details is a good one.

Curtis, I had the same experience. I won't go into details (see, I've learned ), but suffice to say that at one point I was searching the Internet for data on Taiwan baseball stadiums as an example of going overboard, IMO. Realize that I was dealing with 368 teams and stadiums in my universe at the time.

Tullius, this would definitely be #2 on my list of potential problems, and you could still encounter it even with a smaller universe. This game allows for a massive amount of customization which may cross the boundary between fun and work if you let it.

[Tullius]

This game allows for a massive amount of customization which may cross the boundary between fun and work if you let it.

Yes, this is real danger. But in a ficitional universum you have much more freedom. You do not need to build the reality in detail. The hint reagarding the minor league stadiums was good. I will now look at some examples and will take them as guidelines.