To Feed or Not to Feed

phightin · 10-31-2009, 02:49 PM

Still debating on whether I want to add feeder leagues into my solo modern day mlb league. It would be interesting to hear others opinions and experiences on the matter as usual as there are people who love them or hate them etc. As of now I'm leaning not to add them just cause the cons seem to slightly outweigh the pros. Some of the positive of adding feeders I assume are:
1. Ability to follow and scout potential draft prospects, analyze their stats etc
2. Easier Drafting Process, especially for hitters, more 3,4,5 star players
3. Just a cool overall feature to have

Some of the cons:
1. Player Development getting messed up, feeder players developing too quickly etc. I don't want to change the settings as I like them for ottp 10 at their defaults.

2. Having to establish roster set-ups of freshman, sophmore, junior, seniors etc and then having them get screwed up. I say this because I have read on here countless times where the overall age balance gets messed up and thus drafts suffer from too many and not enough players.

3. Throwing off the balance of the ages throughout the minor league system. It seems the default player draft does a better job of spreading out the ages more evenly. Although IRL there are less 18 yearolds.

4. Making the draft too easy, I kind of like it more challenging with generated players.

5. Increasing the chance of the game crashing and tremendously slowing down the game. I've heard feeders do this.

Anyone, Anyone?

damientheomen3 · 10-31-2009, 03:02 PM

players in feeders develop incredibly slowly, so you dont have to worry about that

Sweed · 10-31-2009, 03:30 PM

I played with feeders since added to OOTP until my last season where I got the bright idea to go without. Absolutely hated the draft with "draft day, so to speak, generated players". I found the talent level to be subpar (of course limited sample with this being the only year) but more than that there was no personality or depth. As you said being able to analyze their stats and then cross reference that with the players personalities is cool. Being able to see a HS or College players stats over 4 years is something that adds tons of depth to the game while not causing a noticeable slowdown, at least on the three computers I've run OOTP on (a P4, an AMD 3600(? IIRC) with dual channel ram, and now an intel core duo).

I have since added feeders back into my game and can't wait for next years draft along with enjoying being able to check out college and HS league leaders and getting an idea of what strengths and weaknesses each class will be providing in the draft.

1. I use OOTP defaults for player creation and development and have no problems because of feeders. Keep in mind I play 'em all out so don't have 50-100 years of history as a sample.

2. I think the issue here is that once you set up your feeder and get the classes equaled out in numbers via the editor you then must set player creation min\max age to one year, eg. 15yrs min\ 15 year max for HS. That way every player coming into the league to replace the "graduates" will be 15. I think some forget this so get a incoming class covering all ages eg. 15, 16, 17, and 18 year olds.

3. I think this gets fixed by using the editor to even out the classes of your feeder league. It takes a little time but by using the filters you can sort players by age\batter\ or pitcher and change ages to even out the classes.
I think the only time the draft would become screwed up is if your feeder doesn't produce enough players to fill the draft and OOTP has to fill in with draft day created players. Though it would have to be a big shortcoming for that to have effect IMHO.

4. I don't think it makes it that much easier. I've had busts that had great feeder league stats and booms that were late round fillers that were mediocre in their feeder league.

5.Haven't seen either speed issues or crash issues using feeder leagues. When testing OOTP I've simmed entire seasons with full minors and 120 feeder league teams in ~7 minutes. Without feeders ~5-6 minutes.

For my money feeder leagues is the only way to go and I'll never playe without them again.

Cryomaniac · 10-31-2009, 03:34 PM

I like feeder leagues, but they're a bugger to set up if you want a reasonable size.

phightin · 11-01-2009, 12:02 AM

agreed on a lot of the points. I guess the age difference among prospects might be the one thing though that still irks me as a perfectionist. For instance, if I let the computer generate the draft it will generate players aged 17-23 the majority falling inbetween and the numberly of highly talented prospects spread evenly. I feel like if I did setup feeders I would have to look into the fraction of high school prospects compared to college prospects in each draft. I know IRL the its smaller but still i would rather have all the ages even out. I'm tempted but I've still heard the developmental stories from other people as well. I believe there were a few people on here who commented that dev modifiers have to be turned down with feeders. They and i could be wrong.

neojonas · 11-02-2009, 02:59 PM

I was going to respond to each of your points in your first post, but Sweed did a fantastic job. I had pretty much the same feedback as Sweed. I started using Feeders this year and love it. I'm curious where you heard about development issues. Do you have some threads I could read? From all the testing I did in beta and after beta, I'm pretty confident feeders don't have serious development issues. I ran dozens of long term sims to verify they worked similar to generated because I did not want to take a chance of finding years later that they are messing my up precious league. As long as you set them up correctly (as Sweed has noted), they work pretty well. And it doesn't take too long to set them up.

UWHabs · 11-02-2009, 03:49 PM

I just added them recently to my solo league, since I was tired of having like 2 rounds to pick players in the draft, and then after that, seeing them all as like 1 star potential. We'll see how it works.

RandyTiger · 11-02-2009, 11:57 PM

Is there a guide to setting up feeding leagues? I'd like to implement the idea of a HS feeder league, but I'm uncertain how to implement it with age levels (i.e. 15, 16, etc).

Hotwheelz · 11-03-2009, 02:16 AM

I would love to see some good settings for an MLB setup.

PSUColonel · 11-03-2009, 09:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hotwheelz

I would love to see some good settings for an MLB setup.

I would too. I tried setting them up, but ended up going back because I didn't get it right.

BBallfreaKman21 · 11-06-2009, 11:21 PM

Hey guys,

So I think I've created a pretty realistic feeder, but I have yet to play with a high school feeder until this season, just a college feeder. I'm playing an MLB solo league with full minors. What I did was created a college feeder of the top 15 NCAA division I conferences based on the number of players drafted from the conferences in last year's mlb draft.

For the start of the newest season, I just finished setting up a high school league with the top teams from a number of different regions(For instance Notre Dame Prep of Phoenix, AZ is in the Southwest Division). The high school teams are based on real teams and I used a site called maxpreps.com which provided rankings for the top high schools in various regions. I used ages 15-18 for high school and 19-22 for college. I even went so far as to check for each high school and college teams that they were located in the right city, had realistic(not actual I do have a life haha) stadium dimensions for the level of play and that the ballpark weather coincided with their actual location. I also threw in the mexican league which I set at the AAA level and affiliated as a feeder for MLB, but none of the teams have major league affiliates.

There are about 300 feeder league teams I've made, about half college and half high school and I'm hoping I can get a pretty sizable draft for next year of about 20-25 rounds which would be up from 10 rounds just using college feeders. I'm thinking about adding a few independent leagues to the mix in the future. I saved it as a template so let me know if you are interested in taking a look or want any more info about it.

Hotwheelz · 11-08-2009, 07:29 PM

I just set up 4 college feeders and 4 high school feeders in a 24 team fictional league. Looking at a lot of the talent immediately after creation it looks like there are a ton of 5 star talent in the pool. Did I create too many teams for my league? Should I use only feeders to fill the draft pool or set it to feeder leagues + additional players?

Afino · 11-08-2009, 07:47 PM

How many teams are in each league?

Hotwheelz · 11-08-2009, 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Afino

How many teams are in each league?

24. I just went with the default settings and changed the names of the leagues.

phillosopherp · 11-08-2009, 09:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hotwheelz

24. I just went with the default settings and changed the names of the leagues.

way to few. The basic math to feeders is like this...

(number of teams in league) * (number of rnds in first-year draft)= total players needed in pool

(number from above)/ 7 (round up)= minimum feeder teams.

My formula is a bit different then the one from the manual, for a couple of reasons. First I don't use a 5 year breakdown, I use a 4 year one. So that makes between 7-11 players per team available to the draft in my experience. As per the second post the rest of the set-up is given to you.

MAKE SURE that you set the min/max age back to the earliest age for you league in question after initial set up. It is a must. I also recommend going through and making sure that each team is fairly even on its age breakdown at set up. Some times you will get a team with a large number of a certain age. I feel it best to make them fairly even.

So just as an example of the above, let us say you have the modern day 30 teams in a league, and you are doing full minors, so you have a high number of rounds. I personally like to mimic RL so I run a 50 round draft, with full minors. So 30*50= 1500

1500/7=215. So 215 is the number of feeders you would need if you had the draft completely fed by feeder teams.

I then make it a breakdown where it looks like this 215/3= 71.666666666.. so I then go ahead and make it 72 teams per feeder league, and make highschool, Community college, and College.

I could go even further on some of the stuff I do, but I think you get the point.

Afino · 11-08-2009, 11:13 PM

Too few??

OOTP isn't set up to have a "real life" 50 round draft like that. Do you realize how big your FA list will get? Unless you like AI teams having 190 players in their Rookie league....

I always thought the number was 6, not 7 for the "feeder math".

24 times 4 feeder leagues is 96 total teams. 8 players per team per year gives you a 768 player pool (give or take, it might actually be closer to the 700 range). In a 24 team league, that's enough for a 32 round draft pool. How many rounds is your draft? You might want to take out one of your feeder leagues if your draft is only 15-20 rounds.

Hotwheelz · 11-09-2009, 12:45 AM

Ive got 4 college and 4 high school. I already filled the teams so how would I take them out without having a bunch of players floating around? Right now I have a 25 round draft. I could raise that to 30, which I have thought about. And I really am not interested in having a completely feeder league fed draft. Just enough to have a solid draft pool.

So with 4 college feeder leagues at 24 teams per league, along with 4 high school feeder leagues at 24 teams per league, is this too much? I figured since it had been stated that somebody had 300 teams for a fictional MLB setup, I would be fine with this number of teams. As I said I am not interested in a completely feeder league fed draft. I just don't want too much talent floating around.

Hotwheelz · 11-09-2009, 04:31 AM

So have I screwed this league up?

8 feeder leagues total (4 college, 4 high school) with 24 teams per league. I am afraid I am going to flood the league with talent now. Deleting leagues would throw all those players into the free agent pool.

Hotwheelz · 11-09-2009, 02:32 PM

Well if I have got too much talent I could always hold an expansion draft, adding 2 more teams each of the next 2 seasons. I could also add a second rookie league and raise the number of rounds to 40.

spleen1015 · 11-09-2009, 03:01 PM

Hotwheelz, using the math from above.

4 college and 4 HS leagues with 24 teams in each = 192 feeder teams.

192 feeder teams at 6 players per team for each draft = 1152 players in your draft pool.

1152 players across 25 rounds = enough players for 46 teams in your league.
1152 players across 30 rounds = enough players for 38 teams in your league.
1152 players across 40 rounds = enough players for 28 or 29 teams in your league.

10-31-2009, 02:49 PM	#1 (permalink)
phightin Major Leagues Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 448 Thanks: 5 Thanked 15x in 13 posts	To Feed or Not to Feed Still debating on whether I want to add feeder leagues into my solo modern day mlb league. It would be interesting to hear others opinions and experiences on the matter as usual as there are people who love them or hate them etc. As of now I'm leaning not to add them just cause the cons seem to slightly outweigh the pros. Some of the positive of adding feeders I assume are: 1. Ability to follow and scout potential draft prospects, analyze their stats etc 2. Easier Drafting Process, especially for hitters, more 3,4,5 star players 3. Just a cool overall feature to have Some of the cons: 1. Player Development getting messed up, feeder players developing too quickly etc. I don't want to change the settings as I like them for ottp 10 at their defaults. 2. Having to establish roster set-ups of freshman, sophmore, junior, seniors etc and then having them get screwed up. I say this because I have read on here countless times where the overall age balance gets messed up and thus drafts suffer from too many and not enough players. 3. Throwing off the balance of the ages throughout the minor league system. It seems the default player draft does a better job of spreading out the ages more evenly. Although IRL there are less 18 yearolds. 4. Making the draft too easy, I kind of like it more challenging with generated players. 5. Increasing the chance of the game crashing and tremendously slowing down the game. I've heard feeders do this. Anyone, Anyone?

10-31-2009, 03:34 PM	#4 (permalink)
Cryomaniac Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2007 Location: Newark, Notts, UK Posts: 2,945 Thanks: 4,387 Thanked 301x in 232 posts	I like feeder leagues, but they're a bugger to set up if you want a reasonable size. __________________

11-09-2009, 03:01 PM	#20 (permalink)
spleen1015 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Indianapolis, Indiana Posts: 5,193 Thanks: 61 Thanked 132x in 78 posts	Hotwheelz, using the math from above. 4 college and 4 HS leagues with 24 teams in each = 192 feeder teams. 192 feeder teams at 6 players per team for each draft = 1152 players in your draft pool. 1152 players across 25 rounds = enough players for 46 teams in your league. 1152 players across 30 rounds = enough players for 38 teams in your league. 1152 players across 40 rounds = enough players for 28 or 29 teams in your league. __________________ GM Indianapolis 500s- Classic Baseball Union The American Baseball Congress - a fictional/historical league dynasty currently in 1871

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10-31-2009, 03:30 PM	#3 (permalink)
Sweed Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Iowa Posts: 2,439 Thanks: 324 Thanked 289x in 134 posts	I played with feeders since added to OOTP until my last season where I got the bright idea to go without. Absolutely hated the draft with "draft day, so to speak, generated players". I found the talent level to be subpar (of course limited sample with this being the only year) but more than that there was no personality or depth. As you said being able to analyze their stats and then cross reference that with the players personalities is cool. Being able to see a HS or College players stats over 4 years is something that adds tons of depth to the game while not causing a noticeable slowdown, at least on the three computers I've run OOTP on (a P4, an AMD 3600(? IIRC) with dual channel ram, and now an intel core duo). I have since added feeders back into my game and can't wait for next years draft along with enjoying being able to check out college and HS league leaders and getting an idea of what strengths and weaknesses each class will be providing in the draft. 1. I use OOTP defaults for player creation and development and have no problems because of feeders. Keep in mind I play 'em all out so don't have 50-100 years of history as a sample. 2. I think the issue here is that once you set up your feeder and get the classes equaled out in numbers via the editor you then must set player creation min\max age to one year, eg. 15yrs min\ 15 year max for HS. That way every player coming into the league to replace the "graduates" will be 15. I think some forget this so get a incoming class covering all ages eg. 15, 16, 17, and 18 year olds. 3. I think this gets fixed by using the editor to even out the classes of your feeder league. It takes a little time but by using the filters you can sort players by age\batter\ or pitcher and change ages to even out the classes. I think the only time the draft would become screwed up is if your feeder doesn't produce enough players to fill the draft and OOTP has to fill in with draft day created players. Though it would have to be a big shortcoming for that to have effect IMHO. 4. I don't think it makes it that much easier. I've had busts that had great feeder league stats and booms that were late round fillers that were mediocre in their feeder league. 5.Haven't seen either speed issues or crash issues using feeder leagues. When testing OOTP I've simmed entire seasons with full minors and 120 feeder league teams in ~7 minutes. Without feeders ~5-6 minutes. For my money feeder leagues is the only way to go and I'll never playe without them again.

11-01-2009, 12:02 AM	#5 (permalink)
phightin Major Leagues Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 448 Thanks: 5 Thanked 15x in 13 posts	agreed on a lot of the points. I guess the age difference among prospects might be the one thing though that still irks me as a perfectionist. For instance, if I let the computer generate the draft it will generate players aged 17-23 the majority falling inbetween and the numberly of highly talented prospects spread evenly. I feel like if I did setup feeders I would have to look into the fraction of high school prospects compared to college prospects in each draft. I know IRL the its smaller but still i would rather have all the ages even out. I'm tempted but I've still heard the developmental stories from other people as well. I believe there were a few people on here who commented that dev modifiers have to be turned down with feeders. They and i could be wrong.

11-02-2009, 02:59 PM	#6 (permalink)
neojonas All Star Starter Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 1,076 Thanks: 89 Thanked 84x in 34 posts	I was going to respond to each of your points in your first post, but Sweed did a fantastic job. I had pretty much the same feedback as Sweed. I started using Feeders this year and love it. I'm curious where you heard about development issues. Do you have some threads I could read? From all the testing I did in beta and after beta, I'm pretty confident feeders don't have serious development issues. I ran dozens of long term sims to verify they worked similar to generated because I did not want to take a chance of finding years later that they are messing my up precious league. As long as you set them up correctly (as Sweed has noted), they work pretty well. And it doesn't take too long to set them up.

11-02-2009, 03:49 PM	#7 (permalink)
UWHabs Minors (Double A) Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 198 Thanks: 3 Thanked 66x in 38 posts	I just added them recently to my solo league, since I was tired of having like 2 rounds to pick players in the draft, and then after that, seeing them all as like 1 star potential. We'll see how it works.

11-02-2009, 11:57 PM	#8 (permalink)
RandyTiger All Star Starter Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 1,289 Thanks: 837 Thanked 295x in 208 posts	Is there a guide to setting up feeding leagues? I'd like to implement the idea of a HS feeder league, but I'm uncertain how to implement it with age levels (i.e. 15, 16, etc).

11-03-2009, 02:16 AM	#9 (permalink)
Hotwheelz All Star Starter Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Port Angeles, WA Posts: 1,419 Thanks: 6 Thanked 21x in 9 posts	I would love to see some good settings for an MLB setup.

11-06-2009, 11:21 PM	#11 (permalink)
BBallfreaKman21 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 27 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0x in 0 posts	Hey guys, So I think I've created a pretty realistic feeder, but I have yet to play with a high school feeder until this season, just a college feeder. I'm playing an MLB solo league with full minors. What I did was created a college feeder of the top 15 NCAA division I conferences based on the number of players drafted from the conferences in last year's mlb draft. For the start of the newest season, I just finished setting up a high school league with the top teams from a number of different regions(For instance Notre Dame Prep of Phoenix, AZ is in the Southwest Division). The high school teams are based on real teams and I used a site called maxpreps.com which provided rankings for the top high schools in various regions. I used ages 15-18 for high school and 19-22 for college. I even went so far as to check for each high school and college teams that they were located in the right city, had realistic(not actual I do have a life haha) stadium dimensions for the level of play and that the ballpark weather coincided with their actual location. I also threw in the mexican league which I set at the AAA level and affiliated as a feeder for MLB, but none of the teams have major league affiliates. There are about 300 feeder league teams I've made, about half college and half high school and I'm hoping I can get a pretty sizable draft for next year of about 20-25 rounds which would be up from 10 rounds just using college feeders. I'm thinking about adding a few independent leagues to the mix in the future. I saved it as a template so let me know if you are interested in taking a look or want any more info about it.

11-08-2009, 07:29 PM	#12 (permalink)
Hotwheelz All Star Starter Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Port Angeles, WA Posts: 1,419 Thanks: 6 Thanked 21x in 9 posts	I just set up 4 college feeders and 4 high school feeders in a 24 team fictional league. Looking at a lot of the talent immediately after creation it looks like there are a ton of 5 star talent in the pool. Did I create too many teams for my league? Should I use only feeders to fill the draft pool or set it to feeder leagues + additional players?

11-09-2009, 12:45 AM	#17 (permalink)
Hotwheelz All Star Starter Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Port Angeles, WA Posts: 1,419 Thanks: 6 Thanked 21x in 9 posts	Ive got 4 college and 4 high school. I already filled the teams so how would I take them out without having a bunch of players floating around? Right now I have a 25 round draft. I could raise that to 30, which I have thought about. And I really am not interested in having a completely feeder league fed draft. Just enough to have a solid draft pool. So with 4 college feeder leagues at 24 teams per league, along with 4 high school feeder leagues at 24 teams per league, is this too much? I figured since it had been stated that somebody had 300 teams for a fictional MLB setup, I would be fine with this number of teams. As I said I am not interested in a completely feeder league fed draft. I just don't want too much talent floating around.

11-09-2009, 04:31 AM	#18 (permalink)
Hotwheelz All Star Starter Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Port Angeles, WA Posts: 1,419 Thanks: 6 Thanked 21x in 9 posts	So have I screwed this league up? 8 feeder leagues total (4 college, 4 high school) with 24 teams per league. I am afraid I am going to flood the league with talent now. Deleting leagues would throw all those players into the free agent pool.

11-09-2009, 02:32 PM	#19 (permalink)
Hotwheelz All Star Starter Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Port Angeles, WA Posts: 1,419 Thanks: 6 Thanked 21x in 9 posts	Well if I have got too much talent I could always hold an expansion draft, adding 2 more teams each of the next 2 seasons. I could also add a second rookie league and raise the number of rounds to 40.