Feeder Leagues Worth the Trouble?

[JHSheridan]

I'm just about to dive into my long-term OOTP franchise, and, naturally, I'm trying to get all the settings jussssst right before I kick things off.

I'm torn about feeder leagues. I'd like the realism and immersion of having college/high school stats and scouting reports and all, but not at the expense of some of the issues I see posted on this forum.

What is your experience with feeder leagues? Do they add a lot to the game for you? Have you had any scenarios where a feeder system really messed up a game save for you? Are there are good mods/quickstarts I should know about that would save me some trouble? Or should I just forget the feeder leagues all together and get on with my franchise?

Thanks in advance!

[mitchkenn]

i've used feeder leagues in some of my leagues. not in others. if i don't use feeder leagues, i use international complex. seems the quality is about the same - pretty mediocre. as far as messing things up, i've never had an issue.

[jtnlange]

I always use feeder leagues. Never had any issues in my world, I do only do fictional so maybe my expectation is a little lower. I do not find an over abundance of pitching or hitting either way. I also run a total of 37 leagues in my world so the dispersement is pretty big. I don't think I could go back and not play without feeders, just seems pretty boring without being able to watch a young player from freshman to retirement and see him grow

Trevor L.

[JHSheridan]

Originally Posted by jtnlange

I always use feeder leagues. Never had any issues in my world, I do only do fictional so maybe my expectation is a little lower. I do not find an over abundance of pitching or hitting either way. I also run a total of 37 leagues in my world so the dispersement is pretty big. I don't think I could go back and not play without feeders, just seems pretty boring without being able to watch a young player from freshman to retirement and see him grow

Trevor L.

Thanks a ton for the input.

Do you use the international complex alongside your feeder leagues? How do you setup your feeder leagues? College and high school? Do you use any of the mods/quickstarts to get yours rolling?

[jtnlange]

Originally Posted by JHSheridan

Thanks a ton for the input.

Do you use the international complex alongside your feeder leagues? How do you setup your feeder leagues? College and high school? Do you use any of the mods/quickstarts to get yours rolling?

I use only international complex for my Major league. I use the actually NCAA Div 1 for my feeder. 300 teams. (I add Wisconsin and Marquette my hometown teams) and a 52 team High school feeder. I use 1 team per state and add in Washington DC and Puerto Rico. The only issue is that the teams have players from all states. I have never taken the time to do the US as regions so that I can add players from each state to correct HS teams. Really not a big deal for me. I have not used a quick start. I add each team at time as I have logos and unis for each. takes me about 3 days to add them in, but that is one of the things I enjoy doing. I can send you a spread sheet of how I set it up if you are interested. Trevor L.

[Mr. Marlin]

Feeder leagues work fine in terms of building a draft pool for OOTP. They don't work like "real life" amateur baseball. The knock on them is you end up needing a lot of feeder teams if you have a big league with all levels of minors. These teams have players, play games and generate stats. That means they tax the resources of your game & system. A reasonably middle to high end computer with decent RAM that should never be an issue.

As far as what they add, it depends on what you want. My preferred play style is stats only. The beauty of feeders is every player in the draft pool has a 4-8 year stat history that you can look at and judge. Without feeders the game will make stats for draft pool players but you really don't know what they are, if they are ratings weighted or if they are even "career" or "senior season" stats. It makes drafting when you can't see the ratings a total crap shoot.

Beyond stats only play I don't think I'd use them for not other reason than that the game runs a little smoother without them. But they do work fine.

[jfb8300]

Feeders for sure. However, read through the following thread to see one rather significant loophole that leaves some players without a team for a year after high school - http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=288054

Hopefully it will addressed in a future patch.

[prono]

So if I'm starting my league in 1995 and always import historical rookies as they appear in the draft classes, will this work with feeder leagues as well?

[Mr. Marlin]

Originally Posted by prono

So if I'm starting my league in 1995 and always import historical rookies as they appear in the draft classes, will this work with feeder leagues as well?

I'm afraid not. Unless '19 is very different from previous versions feeder players are 100% fictional. I don't know for sure because my entire game it 100% fictional. But I seriously think not.

[byzeil]

I use feeder leagues. I find it adds greatly to immersion and I like that I have HS and/or COL stats to help evaluate players.

It used to be I did a lot of customizing of the feeders but I did quite a bit of testing in OOTP19 and it seems to me that the default feeders set up by OOTP do a pretty good job of things, at least they seem good to me. The one change I make is I set it so all new players (after the initial creation of players) are created as freshman(youngest) or freshman and sophomores(youngest+1).

There is one issue that I have found that is big for some and not so much for others(referred to by jfb8300 above). Players who are drafted out of HS and do not sign go on to college but many of them end up not playing for a year between HS and College because of the way the game determines eligibility by birthday). To me this isn't huge, I just think of it as the player playing JV or being red shirted.

The obvious difference between feeder players and the generated draft classes is that the feeder players play games for multiple seasons and the generated players have generated stats for 1 season. I find the former more helpful and immersive,

The other big difference is that to my understanding the generated draft class takes into account the talent in the parent league (please correct me if I'm wrong here). So if your parent league is pitching heavy the draft class will lean towards hitting. Whereas the feeders produce talent based on the PCMs of the feeder league and not based on the parent league.

I also use the IC and international sources of players )international amateur free agents, international free agents, scout finds, players from indy leagues).

[LegalEagle80]

Can someone tell me what the benefits of the feeder league are?

If you don't create one, you still get a cpu-generated draft class with high school/college stats. Is it just that feeder leagues give you more years of stats? Is this basically just for stats-only scouting?

[stealofhome]

Originally Posted by LegalEagle80

Can someone tell me what the benefits of the feeder league are?

If you don't create one, you still get a cpu-generated draft class with high school/college stats. Is it just that feeder leagues give you more years of stats? Is this basically just for stats-only scouting?

stats-only scouting and immersion. It helps to see that the player didn't just random appear but that they've been working away in high school/college and have some history before getting into the major league system

[Aumakua]

I don't use High School feeders, just college and have my league set up to only draft from those feeders. Eventually I will open up the international complex for international finds, but I have my feeder league constantly evolving as the years go on with a bigger and bigger international mix of players (really makes it interesting, basically makes it like the best of the best throughout the world come to the US to play college baseball, totally realistic, haha). But I love having real college teams and seeing them battle for the NCAA title every year, don't really pay attention to the actual stats of it, but like having the few real players I import actually have a college team they played for (Mickey Mantle went to Virginia, Shoeless Joe Jackson Penn St, I know he couldn't even sign his name...).


One odd thing is that any IMPORTED players always says "drafted out of High School" even though they play 3-4 years on a college team, while all the AI made players say drafted out of college, not sure why it does that.


I decided to take the time with feeders because I am doing limited minors, I will only have AAA, AA, A, and not all up front, I started in 1900 with only AA, in 1940 I am adding A, then in 1970 I am adding AAA which is actually an international minor league system (one league in Europe and one league in Asia, only play each other for the Championship as there would be obvious travel issues). In my little imaginary world, I view AAA as a long term assignment as teams won't be sending hot rookies there for just a few weeks or month, its the place to send lifetime minor leaguers or young players you plan on developing for 1+ years (granted I know the game won't adhere to that, although I set up age limits for each league to try and make them). Sorry what was the question again

[Syd Thrift]

I've tried and I generally don't because I don't think they're a particularly realistic look at real amateur baseball. In real life I believe you've got a split of around 2/3rds guys who came from high school or at most a year of community college. That's the top players from *thousands* of programs, and while it's true that everyone drafted out of college was also available in high school, the game just doesn't work all that well with anything approaching a "realistic" level of colleges and high schools unless your minors are truly massive (37 leagues might approach enough spots for college players but even that guys example has only 52 "prep programs").

And on top of that, when the game generates a crap ton of players like that, it generates a crap ton of good players too. In turn, your best players won't be truly great the way they are IRL (consider for instance that a top rated high school league might only have a handful of guys good enough to get drafted or play at a major college... what you'd truly need to make this work is to have thousands of high schools simmimg but each one with just one or two players actually "generated" by the game).

All that being said, if what you really want is like an under 23 league and an academy system like they have for football in Europe, the game will totally do that for you and do it well. Play the game you want to play it.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

All that being said, if what you really want is like an under 23 league and an academy system like they have for football in Europe, the game will totally do that for you and do it well. Play the game you want to play it.

This is an interesting idea that I think I am going to take a look at.