creating new minors problem

[wlight1]

So, I'm still playing through the first year of my first league. I created the league with Majors, AAA, AA, A, Short A, and Rookie levels. I also added a single College feeder league.

I realized my Short-A and Rookie league seasons end in June, right before my amateur draft. I wanted somewhere to put some of the more exciting prospects so they could continue to play & develop in the latter half of the regular season. There wasn't room to accomodate everyone I wanted to keep watching in my other minors levels. So I figured I'd add what I'd call a developmental league that ran from mid-June to the end of August.

I went to league setup and used "Add Minor League" command to add a new minor league at the Short A level. I went through and customized all the options. In the league listing on the left on the setup screen it shows up as an "S A" league, but if I go to one of the teams from that league, the team banner reads "Central Valley Plainsmen (All, SAC)". And in my transactions options for players the option is to "promote to All Levels Central Valley", regardless of what minor league level the player is currently at.

Why does the game, under certain circumstances, think this new league is an "All Levels" minor league? It would actually be fine with me, except that I bet that when I went to promote someone from that league to A or AA they'd consider it a demotion and get mad.

Is there a setting somewhere I missed? I went through all the league setup pages two more times to make sure, and even created another minor league at the Short A Level (and one at A, just to be sure) to make sure I didn't mis-click something when I added it. Is it that I can't have two minor leagues at the same level? I thought I saw someone say that that was possible. What have I done wrong? Thanks for any help anyone can provide...

[1998 Yankees]

Just a reassurance post that, AFAIK, you did nothing wrong and missed nothing in the setup.

I had never heard of this before, although historically the game has had problems adding new leagues, designating their levels properly, and correctly integrating them with the major leagues.

I tested it and got the same results as you. No matter what you choose as a level, it ends up "All Levels" which, by the way, is a selection on the Add Minor League menu. What "All Levels" means, I don't know. Maybe a development league as you intended.

Two things that I noticed, however, don't bode well. First, the "All Levels" team appears at the top of the Minor League System Report. Second, right-clicking any of the players newly created for that league gives the options of moving him to other minor league levels; in all cases, it's a demotion.

Let's see if anybody who sees this knows something about it. In the meantime, you may want to search Tech Support to see if anybody has reported it there. If not, you may want to post it yourself.

[Nukester]

Im an older historical league that I had to scrap because of the same problem, I had one AAA minor league for the first couple of seasons. I wanted to add a AA, but when I did that, the newley created league showed up as "All Levels" and the CPU moved a bunch of guys around and some players just flat out disappeared.

I scrapped that league and tried again, but this time, I actually went and used the dropdown list that shows the league level and affiliation before doing anything else, and even though it showed in the dropdown list as a AA league and affiliated with the major league, I chose the same options from the menu (chose AA again)....this time it worked. I decided to scrap that league also and jsut start my historical league with both AAA and AA at the outset, instead of creating the AA later.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by Nukester

I decided to scrap that league also and jsut start my historical league with both AAA and AA at the outset, instead of creating the AA later.

Thanks, Nukes. Unfortunately "getting it right the first time" appears to be still the way to go, which is not good. Do you know if anybody has TT'd this on Tech Support?

EDIT: I did a quick search over there of "All Levels" and came up with nothing. I urge OP to post the issue in Tech Support and include as much detail as possible.

[English_Ray]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

Thanks, Nukes. Unfortunately "getting it right the first time" appears to be still the way to go, which is not good. Do you know if anybody has TT'd this on Tech Support?

EDIT: I did a quick search over there of "All Levels" and came up with nothing. I urge OP to post the issue in Tech Support and include as much detail as possible.

I can't offer any help as such on this, only to say that after about 6 seasons of my universe, I added an A league and have had no problems. I do have a suggestion - after adding the league, and it showing up as 'All Levels' or whatever, I think you should close the game and restart it, before doing anything else, allowing teams the chance to make transactions, etc. I have a feeling I might have done that (as I usually do after I make any changes - its for slow computer, memory related reasons), so you never know...

EDIT: In fact, thinking about it, this may well be the thing - maybe forcing the game to reload the database structure, something along those lines perhaps? I shall try it when I get home and see...

[wlight1]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

Two things that I noticed, however, don't bode well. First, the "All Levels" team appears at the top of the Minor League System Report. Second, right-clicking any of the players newly created for that league gives the options of moving him to other minor league levels; in all cases, it's a demotion.

Exactly.

Choosing "All Levels" from the "Add Minor League" function actually creates 5 minor leagues, 1 at each level from AAA on down through Rookie League. Unfortunately, all of those leagues also share this flaw.

I'll post it in the Tech Support forum and see what comes up. Thanks for the feedback guys.

[wlight1]

Originally Posted by English_Ray

I can't offer any help as such on this, only to say that after about 6 seasons of my universe, I added an A league and have had no problems. I do have a suggestion - after adding the league, and it showing up as 'All Levels' or whatever, I think you should close the game and restart it, before doing anything else, allowing teams the chance to make transactions, etc. I have a feeling I might have done that (as I usually do after I make any changes - its for slow computer, memory related reasons), so you never know...

EDIT: In fact, thinking about it, this may well be the thing - maybe forcing the game to reload the database structure, something along those lines perhaps? I shall try it when I get home and see...

That sounds like a good idea. I had thought to avoid letting any teams make transactions because if I had to end up deleting the league that'd make it that much extra work to get back to square one. I guess I'll just back it up first. Thanks for the idea. I'll post back.

[Nukester]

Just to be clear about what I did earlier, when I wanted to add the AA league in, I went to the "structure" tab of the game setup, chose "add minor league" and added a AA league. The first time I did this, I went to a different screen, then after awhile I noticed the "all levels" setting. The second time I tried, I did the same thing except after adding the AA league but before moving to a different screen I went to the top of the screen, where it says "league level" and "parent league", and although both were set correctly (as AA and the name of my league), I clicked the dropdown box and rechose AA, then clicked on the dropdown box for parent league and rechose my league name. Doing this worked.

I didnt experiment any further. I just scrapped the league and started fresh with both the AAA and AA league included from the beginning

[wlight1]

Originally Posted by Nukester

Just to be clear about what I did earlier, when I wanted to add the AA league in, I went to the "structure" tab of the game setup, chose "add minor league" and added a AA league. The first time I did this, I went to a different screen, then after awhile I noticed the "all levels" setting. The second time I tried, I did the same thing except after adding the AA league but before moving to a different screen I went to the top of the screen, where it says "league level" and "parent league", and although both were set correctly (as AA and the name of my league), I clicked the dropdown box and rechose AA, then clicked on the dropdown box for parent league and rechose my league name. Doing this worked.

Ah, thanks for the clarification on that. I bet that might have worked too.

I followed Ray's suggestion and it worked. I realized you meant exit & restart before advancing a day. I did that and the league now seems to work correctly. On the team banner it's correctly marked Short A. Promotion/demotion options seem to work right -- the only irregularity is that the new league still appears at the top of that list. But functionality appears to be right.

Should I still post it in the tech forum? I think Ray nailed it on this one.

[English_Ray]

Originally Posted by wlight1

Ah, thanks for the clarification on that. I bet that might have worked too.

I followed Ray's suggestion and it worked. I realized you meant exit & restart before advancing a day. I did that and the league now seems to work correctly. On the team banner it's correctly marked Short A. Promotion/demotion options seem to work right -- the only irregularity is that the new league still appears at the top of that list. But functionality appears to be right.

Should I still post it in the tech forum? I think Ray nailed it on this one.

Cool, I'm glad that sorted it for you. Oddly, my new minor league is at the bottim of the list - below my international league etc...

It might still be worth a tech forum post I guess, as I would think ideally you shouldn't need to go through extra steps to make a feature work. Whether it can be changed or not is another matter, as I would imagine its one of the hardest features to code properly!

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by wlight1

Choosing "All Levels" from the "Add Minor League" function actually creates 5 minor leagues, 1 at each level from AAA on down through Rookie League. Unfortunately, all of those leagues also share this flaw.

This forum is great, isn't it? By trying to help, I learn something that I did not know myself. Thanks for that.

Originally Posted by wlight1

I followed Ray's suggestion and it worked. I realized you meant exit & restart before advancing a day. I did that and the league now seems to work correctly.

Very good, thanks ER.

Originally Posted by wlight1

Should I still post it in the tech forum? I think Ray nailed it on this one.

I would, just to call their attention to this quirk. Just link to this thread, post it, and forget it; let them pick up on it or not.

Originally Posted by English_Ray

Cool, I'm glad that sorted it for you. Oddly, my new minor league is at the bottim of the list - below my international league etc...

That I recall from earlier threads as well. Last league in is on the bottom regardless of level, but as long as it is functioning properly, that's just a nuisance.

[wlight1]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

That I recall from earlier threads as well. Last league in is on the bottom regardless of level, but as long as it is functioning properly, that's just a nuisance.

My lists have re-ordered themselves again. Now most of them are making the most sense. Previously, even after the first problem fixed itself, when I right-clicked a player and used 'Transactions' to view all my minors levels, the new league's team was right below my majors, above all other leagues. Now that list is back to a sorted order, but as '98 points out the league dropdown on the top left has the "last in last out" rather than any intelligently sorted order.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by wlight1

I realized my Short-A and Rookie league seasons end in June, right before my amateur draft.

If you want such leagues to run calendar correct schedules, then create those league with a size and alignment which matches the actual size and alignment of the real Short Season A and Rookie class leagues. Also, match the number of games in the season for that size and alignment, as well as the balanced and interleague schedule options.

If this key data matches up, OOTP will import the existing schedule files automatically so the leagues will operate at the correct times.

There isn't a lot of choice in league size and alignment in the game currently. For Short Season A, it's 76 games, with either 14 teams in a 4-6-4 alignment or 8 teams in a 4-4 alignment. For Rookie, there's 8 teams in a 4-4 alignment and 76 games, as well as 10 teams in a 5-5 alignment and 68 games.

I hope for OOTP9 to get added more real-world schedules which will offer more league size and alignment choices.

Another item to recall is that creating the minors all at once causes them to be created using a size and alignment which mimics whatever your major league size and alignment is. Depending on how one's majors are structured, this may not result in a good setup for the minors.

While currently in the real world the AAA and A levels match MLB in terms of relative size (30 teams with a 14 team and 16 team leagues), the AA and A-Advanced levels have 30 teams but split into three leagues of 12 teams, 10 teams, and 8 teams. The Short Season A and Rookie levels do not operate on a one-to-one parent-affiliate relationship; for example, there are only 22 Short-A teams compared to 30 in MLB, and 42 teams in Rookie compared to 30 in MLB (17 at the Rookie Advanced level and 25 at Rookie, excluding the teams in the Dominican and Venezuelan summer leagues).

Given these differences in the relative league sizes and parent-affiliate ratios, one may want to adjust the structure of their minor leagues accordingly. Of course, this does take more time and effort on the part of the player.

[wlight1]

I appreciate the advanced info LGO. I'm starting small with my league to learn about using v8 effectively before I make any real decisions about how I'll play going forward. Right now I just have 12 teams in the majors (2 6-team sub-leagues), with the corresponding size and structure in each of my 6 minor leagues (although the league affiliations are pretty much random in the minors). I'll probably try to expand to about double that size within the first 12-15 years of the league and see if I end up with a world I want to play in or if I feel like starting over at that point.

My concern with "realistic" minors structures would be game balance. Is the AI smart enough to manage rosters with organizations of different sizes? Wouldn't some teams end up cutting prospects after each amateur draft with no minor league rosters to put them on?

Actually, this is another question I wanted to ask in general, as an outcome of the setup I've got now: it doesn't appear that the AI understands that they have 2 low-level minors teams sitting idle and only 1 team playing games. Most teams in the Short A league I just created are populated with scrubs with no future in their mid-20s playing great basebal. I just checked on a couple of young huge prospects and they're sitting on the wrong team in Short A (the team that won't play again for 7 months). Is the AI able to understand the idea of a minor league offseason, or am I giving myself an undue advantage by adding this feature? Does the AI feel obligated to maintain 2 'competitive' teams at Short A even though one team isn't playing games? (And, while I'm at it, does the long layoff in the minors retard young players' development?)