Is this the game I should buy?

[davidmarver]

My brother and I have a league of our own we created when we were little, yet still like to mess around with from time to time. We've been looking at getting a baseball simulator to insert our league into to see how each team does. I have a few questions though...

Can a league have 36 teams?


Is it possible to turn off certain features? For instance, we took arbitration out of our league...is it possible to turn that off?

Can we control all 36 teams or are we limited to just one? We're not so much interested into actually playing the games as we are seeing the results of a season given the teams we create.

Is it possible, after a simulated season, to go back in time and re-do the season if we didn't like the results? I mean that when we first program in all our players -- and their attributes -- we won't know how the results are going to turn out, ie. how much we're favoring hitting or pitching. Without having to re-program a whole nother league, can we simply revert to an earlier time?

Thanks a ton, David.

[bp_]

Yes you can have 36 teams, you can turn off financials (not sure about just disabling arbitration), you can control all 36 if you want, you could just make a copy of your league file before you start a season and then if you don't like the results you can use that file (I also think there might be a way to reset the season but I am not certain on that).

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by davidmarver

Can a league have 36 teams?

Easily.

Originally Posted by davidmarver

Is it possible to turn off certain features? For instance, we took arbitration out of our league...is it possible to turn that off?

Yes.

Originally Posted by davidmarver

Can we control all 36 teams or are we limited to just one? We're not so much interested into actually playing the games as we are seeing the results of a season given the teams we create.

You can make a large number of human GM's and control all the teams you want.

Originally Posted by davidmarver

Is it possible, after a simulated season, to go back in time and re-do the season if we didn't like the results? I mean that when we first program in all our players -- and their attributes -- we won't know how the results are going to turn out, ie. how much we're favoring hitting or pitching. Without having to re-program a whole nother league, can we simply revert to an earlier time?

The quick start feature does exactly that. You freeze time, and you can load everything and run it over and over and over, tinkering with it to suit.

[davidmarver]

Sweeeeeeeet. Thanks for the swift response.

[molarmite]

We hope you like the game.

[davidmarver]

Is one of the financial options a salary cap?

Am I allowed to allocate budgets for each team; like if I wanted the Padres to have a $200 million budget and the Yankees a $4 million budget can I do that?

[Nukester]

You can set a salary cap, and you can tinker with the finacials of each team any way you want (adjusting cash on hand, media contracts, and budgets). You can also set teams market size, fan loyalty, and fan interest.

[davidmarver]

A few more questions:

How long does it take to create a player? I plan on programming every player in the league: their age, all attributes, everything. How long will that take?

What's a hypothetical rating you would give a player who would put up a 2.50 ERA and have a 9 K/9? What's a hypothetical rating for a 10.0 R/G player, like a Travis Hafner or Albert Pujols? I'm just trying to gauge how I should start my players' attributes.

Last question: is it possible to have a limited minor league roster? My brother and I only run a 3 round draft for prospects each year so we would only have more like a small reserve roster than an actual minor league system. Is it possible to have that and still have the players progress as normal? Also, how much do prospects progress; do I need to give them good attributes now?

Thanks again,
Future buyer,
David.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by davidmarver

A few more questions:

How long does it take to create a player? I plan on programming every player in the league: their age, all attributes, everything. How long will that take?

Um, just how many players are you talking about?

[davidmarver]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

Um, just how many players are you talking about?

Well, I wouldn't mind having the bench players auto-made, but I'm talking about every starter on every team. The players don't have to be perfect, I'll probably go through some of them quickly. I'd estimate 500-700 players.

Just wondering how long it takes to create a player and how difficult it is.

Also, is expansion/moving/contraction possible?

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by davidmarver

Well, I wouldn't mind having the bench players auto-made, but I'm talking about every starter on every team. The players don't have to be perfect, I'll probably go through some of them quickly. I'd estimate 500-700 players.

Just wondering how long it takes to create a player and how difficult it is.

Also, is expansion/moving/contraction possible?

Getting a player made will take 3-5 minutes. It's pretty easy to make one person, but there are so many ratings for each person.

I am looking at a starting pitcher in the editor right now, and he's got 60+ items that you can change. Some are monkey simple, height, weight, hometown, and some you have to thing about, endurance, ground ball%, stuff, movement, control . . .


Expansion, team movement and that sort of stuff is very simple. An expansion draft, however, is not. The lack of an expansion draft is a flaw.

[davidmarver]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

Getting a player made will take 3-5 minutes. It's pretty easy to make one person, but there are so many ratings for each person.

I am looking at a starting pitcher in the editor right now, and he's got 60+ items that you can change. Some are monkey simple, height, weight, hometown, and some you have to thing about, endurance, ground ball%, stuff, movement, control . . .


Expansion, team movement and that sort of stuff is very simple. An expansion draft, however, is not. The lack of an expansion draft is a flaw.

Awesome. (The respond time of this forum is amazing).

How about the minor league question I posted?

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by davidmarver

Awesome. (The respond time of this forum is amazing).

How about the minor league question I posted?

The way the minors works now, I think will cause you pain.

Minors require a full roster.

You could skip that and just have a reserve roster on your ML level club, but it will not give them real stats or develop them.

You probably go for one or more (up to you) levels of minors. I use 3. You could easily get away with 1 or 2.

A good rule of thumb is 5 rounds of drafting per minor league level.

Players progress slowly, on average. I have had a few guys ready for the show in 400 AB total, but they are few and far between. It takes my guys 3-4 years to get decently ready, and really, they don't fully develop into ML players instantly at the big league level. You can have a .300 25 HR 100 RBI guy you think is the next Edwin Encarnacion, and you promote him, and he plays like Onix Concepcion half the time, and the other half he's clobbering the ball.

[davidmarver]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

The way the minors works now, I think will cause you pain.

Minors require a full roster.

You could skip that and just have a reserve roster on your ML level club, but it will not give them real stats or develop them.

You probably go for one or more (up to you) levels of minors. I use 3. You could easily get away with 1 or 2.

A good rule of thumb is 5 rounds of drafting per minor league level.

Players progress slowly, on average. I have had a few guys ready for the show in 400 AB total, but they are few and far between. It takes my guys 3-4 years to get decently ready, and really, they don't fully develop into ML players instantly at the big league level. You can have a .300 25 HR 100 RBI guy you think is the next Edwin Encarnacion, and you promote him, and he plays like Onix Concepcion half the time, and the other half he's clobbering the ball.

Alright, as long as there is a minor league system, we'll survive. Is there a way to create, say 75% of the league and then have the computer auto fill the rest? Like, can we create just out top five prospects per club and then have the computer junk-fill the remaining players?

Also, in the MLB Draft, can we create the prospects that are to be drafted from? We already have our next two drafts figured out prospect wise and were wondering if that's going to be able to be used.

Thanks again for all the help. I'm on a college budget and wanted to make sure I wasn't buying something that wasn't going to be useful. Thanks a ton again; very helpful.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by davidmarver

Alright, as long as there is a minor league system, we'll survive. Is there a way to create, say 75% of the league and then have the computer auto fill the rest? Like, can we create just out top five prospects per club and then have the computer junk-fill the remaining players?

Also, in the MLB Draft, can we create the prospects that are to be drafted from? We already have our next two drafts figured out prospect wise and were wondering if that's going to be able to be used.

Thanks again for all the help. I'm on a college budget and wanted to make sure I wasn't buying something that wasn't going to be useful. Thanks a ton again; very helpful.

RE: the technique you probably want to use in the minors is have the AI do 100% of the work, then edit 5 prospects per org to suit your needs.

RE: the draft, this is not an issue I am familiar with yet. I am pretty sure you can create a prospect and enter them into the draft pool, but I've never tinkered with it.

Have you d/l the game guide yet?

[davidmarver]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

Have you d/l the game guide yet?

On my laptop yes...been skimming through it looking at player personalization -- attribute related stuff -- just been posting here with oddball questions that may not be addressed in the guide, or may be harder to find.

By the way, when I create the league, do I create all the players at the same time, or should I have the rosters autofilled and then just edit every player? Also, I can save during player editing right; I don't wanna do 100 players only to find that I have to edit the other 400 before a proper save can be done.

[davidmarver]

By the way...I keep reading about the patches on this forum. When I first purchase this game, do I want to also DL the patch(es)? Which one(s) do you recommend.

I'm a question whore.

[Charlie Hough]

If you create a fictional league, the game will populate it with players as soon as you click 'Start Game'. You can create players later, from the league transactions/free agents screen, but there is no way to prevent the game from generating the initial players to populate your baseball universe.

As far as patches go, just download the latest 1.03 patch. You don't need to patch the game in an accumulated fashion. The latest patch always contains all previous fixes.

[sporr]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

You could skip that and just have a reserve roster on your ML level club, but it will not give them real stats or develop them.

I thought they still developed?

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by sporr

I thought they still developed?

I am often wrong. Below is what I saw last week.

I know that my sims for Arod / Garlon used the reserve roster, and I rarely, if ever saw anyone come out of the reserve roster to do anything worthwhile. Paul O' Neill was my whipping boy on that. I follwed him closely. He stayed a Brave reserve for 4 years and quit. He never showed any inclination to bust out to a MLB roster spot.