Suggestion Collection Thread: Historical Leagues

[battists]

I'm going to be posting a number of Suggestion Collection threads like this one, each one designed to collect a number of ideas for one specific area of the game. I'm going to compile these suggestions into some kind of helpful format, and see if this helps Marc and Markus. If necessary, I'll create polls later on to gauge the relative interest in different features.

However, if you want to join my thread, you need to follow my rules, and here they are:

1. Only 1 suggestion per post.
2. Suggestions must be on-topic for the thread.
3. Constructive, non-inflammatory suggestions only. I'm flat-out deleting posts that are angry in nature. If you want to do that, start your own thread.
4. No comments on others' suggestions necessary. That means, no posts saying "Great idea!"
5. No linking me to other forum threads. If it's important enough to you that you want it in this thread, then it should be important enough to put it in the format I've asked for here.
6. You can certainly post suggestions that conflict with or build upon earlier suggestions. You can also add screenshots of mockups and such if they help.

Format for Suggestions:
Suggestion: What is your suggestion? Be as specific as possible; include the screen you're talking about, if applicable.
Reason: Why do you think this is important?
Priority: High (MUST have), Medium (should have), Low (nice to have)

Thanks for participating!

Steve

[battists]

Today's Topic: Historical Leagues

What's In?
- Suggestions about historical leagues, Lahman/Arod/Garlon databases, etc. This includes league setup as well as other game-play stuff.

What's Out?
- Um, non-historical stuff

I know that Marc D. recently had a thread about historical leagues. I'm still going to compile this information and provide it to them.

[eriqjaffe]

Suggestion: Automatically import & update park dimensions & calculate factors.
Reason: Hopefully, the reason is pretty obvious
Priority: High

...this data, while not available in the Lahman download, can be obtained - the Yahoo! "Baseball Databank' group has a MDB file with park factors, dimensions, history, etc., through 2004 available for download (if you're a registered member of the group). A relatively simple CSV file which references the team abbreviation should do the trick.

[dougaiton]

Suggestion: Cash-only trades for players
Reason: Flat-out purchases were the most common method of trading between historical unaffiliated 'minors' and 'majors'.
Priority: Low. Nice feature, but would need to work in conjuncture with historical universes.


EDIT: As raidergoo has pointed out, this actually works at the minute. I've never seen the AI do it, though.

[BruceM]

Suggestion: The ability to import entire teams from different eras as was possible in 6.5
Reason: Should be obvious but it's a lot of fun to pit the 27 Yankees against the 67 Cardinals or the 75 Big Red Machine against the 45 Tigers. Would also allow more flexibility and options for online leagues
Priority: Medium

[bp_]

Collection of Requests to make Historical Replaying better

[Highlander]

Suggestion: Add an option for Historical (or any) Leagues to have "ghost players" in the minors as in past OOTP versions.

Reason: Even though the reserve list allows players to develop, historical leagues should have the option to have minor leagues without involving fictional players. People who enjoy mixing real/fictional players could use the "Fill minors with fictional players" feature in previous versions of the game.

Priority: HIGH

[redsox45]

Suggestion: Automatically Expand and Reconfigure Divisions According to History

Reason: Automatically calculating for historical accuracy has gone a long way in making stats believeable without much effort, now. Having the game conduct the expansion process automatically would really make life a lot smoother for historical players.

Priority: HIGH

Will

[redsox45]

Suggestion: (Re)Generate Ratings for all players based on real life statistics.

Instead of generating ratings for each player when they are imported, regenerate them each year based on their real life statistics. If they didn't play in real life that year, or they retired, then the game could "carry over" their ratings from the previous season.

Reason: More accurate simming, thus ensuring that the "right" players get their due.

Priority: MEDIUM -- I'd like to see it, but I also realize it's a radical idea and that there are other things the game needs more....

Will

[Mr. Capo]

Suggestion: Built in support for cross-era play.

Reason: To me, and I think others, cross-era is the most fun way to play this game. Presently the only tool I've found for this is ARod-Garlon's random debut DB. It's good, but limits you to one reshuffling of the deck. Additionally, this functionality should include a one-button reset of league strategies and equivalencies, with options for a given year or an average over a span of years.

Priority: High.

[cephasjames]

Suggestion: Easy in-game expansion (i.e. expansion draft included)

Reason: Because expansion happens and it needs to be easy.

Priority: High

[Raidergoo]

Processed to this point.

[molarmite]

Originally Posted by redsox45

Suggestion: Automatically Expand and Reconfigure Divisions According to History

Reason: Automatically calculating for historical accuracy has gone a long way in making stats believeable without much effort, now. Having the game conduct the expansion process automatically would really make life a lot smoother for historical players.

Priority: HIGH

Will

Expanding on this

Suggestion: Change team names and stadiums according to when they happened in history

Reason: Saves some time for those who want a real historical simulation

Priority: Medium

[Charlie Hough]

Suggestion: Eliminate the save rule for all historical play before 1969 and/or allow two options for league settings: (A) eliminate the closer role or possibly all relief roles from the game; and (B) keep the closer role but force the AI to use the designated closer in other roles as well.

Reason: The problem with closers and saves goes back to the very first version of OOTP. The AI will almost never use its designated closer in any situation other than to close out a game. The closer usage settings were added to try and address the problem with saves and the lack of the closer role before the late 1960s. But it fails to solve the problem while creating another. For example, if a league is set for very rare closer usage, the pitcher assigned to the closer role will appear in only 25 to 35 games per season! This might artificially keep save totals down for certain eras, but it means that certain pitchers will appear in far fewer games than they should, thus skewing their career totals dramatically. To accurately model historical play before 1969, the save role should be eliminated, and if that is not possible before OOTP2007, then the options above should be available. This way, we can force the AI use the pitcher for 25 to 35 games as a "closer" and pitch in another 25 to 50 games as an all-purpose reliever. Or, we can force the AI to use all of its relievers in a variety of roles.

Priority: High

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by bp_

Collection of Requests to make Historical Replaying better

"

That all needs to be included.

[targy]

Suggestion: Weather

Reason: Weather exists in real life and makes manager decisions on lineups more difficult. Rainouts or games postponed because of weather make for more realisitc situations. We also need a way to turn this option on and off

Priority: High

[Raidergoo]

Suggestion: Import a year or series of years from master.csv and treat those results as simmed seasons.


Reason: I'd like to very quickly get a historical background for my sims. I would like to load a few ( hey, why not 105 ) years and turn the master.csv file data into OOTP web page data. That way, my record books, career leaders, HoF, and so forth are populated with real data. This way I can run a real world sim, getting all the nice HTML pages, until date X and then I can fork reality and go off into my alternate world.



Priority: Medium

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

That all needs to be included.

The problem with this thread is that many of these requests are already in the system, and they are not in the desired format, and there are single posts with a half dozen gems inside said post.

My goal is to take each posting in that thread, divide the big posts into single idea posts, and enter it into the spreadsheet. That process has already begun.

I have already started to IM people on their posts, and may again as time allows.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Mr. Capo

Suggestion: Built in support for cross-era play.

Reason: To me, and I think others, cross-era is the most fun way to play this game. Presently the only tool I've found for this is ARod-Garlon's random debut DB. It's good, but limits you to one reshuffling of the deck. Additionally, this functionality should include a one-button reset of league strategies and equivalencies, with options for a given year or an average over a span of years.

Priority: High.

How about Davenport Translations?

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by targy

Suggestion: Weather

Reason: Weather exists in real life and makes manager decisions on lineups more difficult. Rainouts or games postponed because of weather make for more realisitc situations. We also need a way to turn this option on and off

Priority: High

We've already collected the US data. Now all we have to do is persuade Markus to use it.