How do I turn off player creation for independent league?

[OWill40315]

I've set up a historical major league simulation with an independent Pacific coast League as an independent major league. My goal was to have the independent PCL compete for the historical major league talent, but with a somewhat lower salary structure. The only way I could see to create the PCL initially was as a league with fictional players which I then released and deleted from the database. Is there another way I could have created the league, but without any fictional players (i.e., with initially empty rosters)?

Also, is there any way I can turn off the annual creation of fictional players for the PCL? What I've been doing is scheduling an amateur draft of one round with only enough players created to fill the round. That means just 8 players to release and delete in the following seasons. This makes for a pretty easy work-around, but I'd like to know if there is a way to completely shut off the addition of more fictional players.

[No Pepper]

I'm not sure if I'm correct - poor memory and I haven't tried it myself - but if you create a minor league and unaffiliate it, you could have teams without players. I'm not sure if there would be other consequences (financial, transactions, etc) in doing that, however. In my short experience, you may run into problems of teams not signing available players even with cash available, if you don't have an accompanying minor or feeder league of some sort.

[chimanbj]

The way the game is set up, I don't believe you can have two separate leagues draft from the same pool of players. With '09, there is more flexibility in how the playoffs are scheduled, so you might be able to play with the structure of the league so that the MLB and the PCL are equal leagues, like the American and National Leagues are under the MLB. That was my initial thought with how the Federal League could be set up...but time will tell with '09...

[OWill40315]

Originally Posted by No Pepper

I'm not sure if I'm correct - poor memory and I haven't tried it myself - but if you create a minor league and unaffiliate it, you could have teams without players. I'm not sure if there would be other consequences (financial, transactions, etc) in doing that, however.

Yes, I tried that approach and it works as far as allowing you to create teams without players. However, you can't adjust financials, so the independent league signs only a few players. Also, The AI won't make trades within the independent league or between the independent league and the majors; you can only manually force trades. I don't think I checked to see if you could change the independent league from a AAA level minor league to a major league level league. If I could, that might make a difference.

In the meantime, my workaround works OK once I've got the game set up. I have all names in my historical league capitalized, and the 8 fictional players created for the annual independent league draft all have names with mixed upper and lower case. So it's very easy to find them on the day after the draft, release them and then delete them from the game (I tried deleting them before the draft, but new replacements were created on draft day).