Historical transactions/lineups

[Darviathar]

I am trying to replay Dodger seasons from 1980 until present day. These historical transaction and lineup options are new to me (last played OOTP 11 2 years ago), and I think they might save me the hours of effort moving players around that I endured after each season when I played about 5 seasons 2 years ago. I see the list of historical transactions and wonder if any of them can be overridden at any point, or are you locked in. For example, I don't want to have to trade Pedro Guerrero to St. Louis in August of 1988, but I DO want the computer teams to have accurate rosters each season. In other words, I want to run the Dodgers myself. How does historical lineups work? I apologize if the answer for this is somewhere within the game, but I've not been able to find it, and want to resolve this before I start playing games

[David Watts]

Using real transactios you will not be able to make trades. If you want to keep Pedro, you would have to do so in commish mode. Also know that when using real lineups, every player is active and available. In other words there is no 25 man roster rule.

Using your Guerrero example, remember that if you keep him on the Dodgers, the Cardinals will have a hole at that position and will have to play whomever is available. 1989 he played 160 games at 1B for the Cardinals.

[Charlie Hough]

This seems to be a recurring theme: people want real life transactionss but not for their teams. It can't be done that way. If you don't complete a transaction that your team made in real life, then it affects other teams and even affects future transactions that can't be made because your initial deal never took place.

It's logically impossible for you to control your team's transactions and yet have all the computer teams use their real transactions. Some of those deals involved your team!

[thehef]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Using real transactios you will not be able to make trades. If you want to keep Pedro, you would have to do so in commish mode. Also know that when using real lineups, every player is active and available. In other words there is no 25 man roster rule.

For these reasons I find that using real lineups is not a realistic option, although others, in their pursuits, may certainly find otherwise ;-)

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

This seems to be a recurring theme: people want real life transactionss but not for their teams. It can't be done that way. If you don't complete a transaction that your team made in real life, then it affects other teams and even affects future transactions that can't be made because your initial deal never took place.

It's logically impossible for you to control your team's transactions and yet have all the computer teams use their real transactions. Some of those deals involved your team!

That said, it would still be nice to have a checkbox on the Real Transactions listing so you can uncheck, say, a handful of transactions that you don't want to happen.

Here are a couple of examples where it would be handy:

1) I don't want a Dodger icon such as Duke Snider to finish his career with the Giants. In this example, I don't need to worry about what hole this might create in SF's lineup...
2) I want to see how the Dodgers' early-to-mid 60's teams would have done if they didn't break things up... or if the early 80's Dodgers hadn't broken up the classic infield... or how the Red Sox would've done if they kept most of the 1975 players (such as Lynn, El Tiante, Fisk, Rooster)... Sure, undoing some of these trades would have immediate and down-the-road ramifications, but if I had that flexibility, I could deal with that (or not) any way I want.

One reason people may want real transactions but not for their teams is because they want to explore 'what-if' scenarios with their teams, without having to manage real-life transactions for all the other teams... If I try out my what-ifs as described in #2 above, but find that the Reds never acquired Joe Morgan, George Foster, Jack Billingham, Pedro Borbon, Cesar Geronimo... well, that's not really the what-if I'm going for ;-)

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by thehef

One reason people may want real transactions but not for their teams is because they want to explore 'what-if' scenarios with their teams, without having to manage real-life transactions for all the other teams... If I try out my what-ifs as described in #2 above, but find that the Reds never acquired Joe Morgan, George Foster, Jack Billingham, Pedro Borbon, Cesar Geronimo... well, that's not really the what-if I'm going for ;-)

Sure, and if Markus thinks something like this can be coded, maybe it will be considered. But if you want 'what-if' opportunities for your team, why not extend the same thing to everyone else? That way the game is fine as it is, and you don't have to manage anyone else's transactions. You turn off real transactions and away you go!

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Sure, and if Markus thinks something like this can be coded, maybe it will be considered. But if you want 'what-if' opportunities for your team, why not extend the same thing to everyone else? That way the game is fine as it is, and you don't have to manage anyone else's transactions. You turn off real transactions and away you go!

Well, managing all transactions - on an as-in-real-life basis or on a what-if? basis - for all teams is a beast. It's great, though, that we do still have that option. But it would be nice to have the additional flexibility, just like we do with, say, league evolution where I can let all other teams in my historical league evolve as in real life, but keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn, and it wouldn't be that difficult.

As for coding, I don't know. Seems like it would be pretty simple compared to some other requests. Or if we could edit the transaction file, that would open up a bunch of possibilities and add flexibility.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by thehef

As for coding, I don't know. Seems like it would be pretty simple compared to some other requests. Or if we could edit the transaction file, that would open up a bunch of possibilities and add flexibility.

It is anything but easy. It is impossible. Once you decide you don't want a trade made or you want to make a trade that didn't happen, you can't use historical transactions/line-ups.

In the OP's Guerrero request....how does St Louis have a historically accurate line-up if the guy that was in the historical line-up is in Los Angeles?

What if he wanted to not trade Piazza? Gary Sheffield now not in Los Angeles. Who takes his GS while maintaining historical accuracy? Is he still on the Marlins? But he didn't play for them, so you are deviating from history immediately and, therefore, cannot use historical line-ups.

Since Piazza is not traded to the Marlins, he is also not traded to the Mets...what do you do with those players? Where does Preston Wilson play in order for this environment to be historically correct? He can't be a Met and be historically correct. And he can't go to the Marlins with any sense of historical accuracy if Piazza doesn't also go to the Mets, and in order for him to go to the Mets, he must first be traded from the Dodgers.

Playing "what if" is fun. Once you make that "what if" change, you are saying good bye to historical reproduction and saying hello to an alternate alternative universe, and OOTP is fabulous in playing out such scenarios, but you can't expect it to be historically accurate if you have introduced historical inaccuracies.

Thinking that an alteration to history can be contained in a vacuum, and that it is somehow easy to code the impossible, is pure insanity.

ADD: Rereading your post, if you are saying that merely allowing a team to stay in a location while having others move/build new stadiums would be doable, yes, I agree, and think that would be cool. If you are saying that maintaining your roster in this location as you see fit but asking the rest of the league to execute transactions true to history, that is simply impossible.

[thehef]

VG - I am solely referring to playing with historical transaction and without historical lineups. If you factor in playing with historical lineups then, yes, you couldn't allow deviations in the historical transactions file.

I suspect there a fair amount of players who use historical transactions but not historical lineups. I think many of those would dig having flexibility with transactions.

If you are saying that maintaining your roster in this location as you see fit but asking the rest of the league to execute transactions true to history, that is simply impossible.

Was not necessarily connecting location changes to roster changes. But to address the rest of the quote, it would absolutely be possible by simply having the checkbox option and/or the editable transaction file option. Keep in mind that OOTP's historical txn module doesn't care where players are; it only cares that they are supposed to go somewhere else. So if, for example, I don't allow Freddy Lynn to go to California but I don't later uncheck the box that sends him to Baltimore, he will end up on Baltimore.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by thehef

VG - I am solely referring to playing with historical transaction and without historical lineups. If you factor in playing with historical lineups then, yes, you couldn't allow deviations in the historical transactions file.

it would absolutely be possible by simply having the checkbox option and/or the editable transaction file option. Keep in mind that OOTP's historical txn module doesn't care where players are; it only cares that they are supposed to go somewhere else. So if, for example, I don't allow Freddy Lynn to go to California but I don't later uncheck the box that sends him to Baltimore, he will end up on Baltimore.

Your Lynn example keeps him from going to Baltimore as a Free Agent, how do you propose handling Chris Hoiles? Does he simply stay in Detroit when the Orioles trade Lynn, who is still in Boston to the Tigers, or does he go Baltimore for nothing?

In the Piazza example what happens to Sheffield? Does he just stay in Florida? What happens when the Dodgers IRL trade him to Atlanta? Does he THEN depart Florida and become a Brave while Atlanta sends Brian Jordan and Odalis Perez to Los Angeles? Do the Dodgers get players in a trade for a player that they received in a trade that they never made? Do they get the benefit of trading Gary Sheffield to Atlanta without ever having given up Piazza to get Sheffield in order to get Jordan and Perez, but wind up having Piazza as well as Jordan and Perez???

[thehef]

VG - Those are all interesting questions, but I'm not sure why you'd care what would happen in my game ;-) If the additional flexibility with the transaction file were allowed, then those are questions *I* would have to answer.

Keep in mind that I already can and do these kinds of things. I can use real txns and keep Lynn from going to California and then later figure out - or not worry about, if that's my choice - what happens to Chris Hoiles. In fact, I already have it planned out for what I will do with the Dodgers when I reach the end of 1966. I expect that (w RAH off) Koufax will continue to be dominant for at least a few years. So I will keep Wills and Tommy Davis and Johnny Roseboro, etc., and see what happens had the Dodgers stayed together but 99.5% of the MLB player moves still happened. And I will make adjustments for the affected teams and players for whom they were traded. Some will work out fine, others will not. Kinda like real life, only different.

The bottom line is that I'm simply asking for more flexibility with the txn file. Would that raise questions like the ones you asked? Perhaps. But we can play historical and still modify LOTS of things in OOTP, and those modifications can result in major deviations from real life. This would be just one more area where we can tweak history.

[VanillaGorilla]

hef-

I don't care how you play your game...heck, clone Fred Lynn 1000 times if you want. It doesn't bother me at all.

You offer that this would be easy to code, I don't see it that way. Maybe I am missing something, and if you point to what I am missing then I am enriched for the insight.

There is a difference in what you have talked about and what the OP asked about.

Asking for the game to be more flexible in any editing options that you or anybody else want to do is certainly a legitimate request.

If I understand the OP correctly, he wanted a reality to be exactly the same as history except for the Guerrero transaction. As Charlie pointed out, this is an impossibility. The OP is, in fact, asking how to make his reality work with historical line-ups.

What you are wanting to do is different from the OP. I infer that part of the fun you get from doing this is dealing with the complications that arise from the Butterfly Effect of making a select few transaction changes. It is these complications that prevent this from being an easy coding task.

As you play out your scenarios you might have a "Eureka" moment and come up with a nifty way to code what you like doing. That would be cool. More options, mo' better.

Cheers.

[thehef]

VG – Re the OP, I agree completely that you can’t have (can't program for) the ability to override certain txns and still use historical lineups.

I was only referring to txns. OOTP’s real txns module doesn’t care about downstream affects. It only moves players from one team to the next when it’s time - and it doesn’t care about what team a player is currently on when the txn occurs and doesn't care about which players are involved in a trade (which is why programming for this flexibility shouldn’t be a big deal – the txn would just be ignored by the game). And any concern about the downstream ("Butterfly") effects would be the user’s issue to either account for, ignore, or explain away ("crazy one-sided trade" or "free-agent signing" instead of trade). OOTP doesn’t know and doesn’t need to know. It will continue to do whatever the real txn file tells it to do... or won't do...

In the Freddy Lynn example, if I prevent him from going to the Angels, he stays on the BoSox until which time the txn file sends him to the Orioles. However, I could uncheck the box every time Freddy moves to another team, thus keeping him on the Red Sox for his entire career. All other related player moves (those guys involved in his trades, or those acquired in other trades to account for his departure) would either happen, or not happen, depending upon what I as the user do (or don't do). Either way, OOTP will do what it's told. It doesn't have to be coded to think, "Wait. Fred Lynn isn't being traded to the Angels: What do I do about the others involved in that trade? And what are the downstream effects?" Those wouldn't be the program's concerns. It would either move players to their new team, or it wouldn't if those moves are overridden. Just like it happens occasionally in my game now (via manual editing), only it would be simpler for the user to control.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by thehef

It doesn't have to be coded to think, "Wait. Fred Lynn isn't being traded to the Angels: What do I do about the others involved in that trade? And what are the downstream effects?" Those wouldn't be the program's concerns. It would either move players to their new team, or it wouldn't if those moves are overridden. Just like it happens occasionally in my game now (via manual editing), only it would be simpler for the user to control.

Re the bold italics: That makes things much simpler.

I don't feel comfortable in saying such an option would be easy to code without an AI meltdown if financials are in play, for instance. But this is certainly not impossible. Then again, meltdowns can be fun to watch!

[Darviathar]

I suppose forgoing one historical transaction would create a butterfly effect. If LA retains Pedro Guerrero, then they don't trade for Eddie Murray. Baltimore in 1989 was coming off a monstrous season, and likely would have traded Murray to someone. I suppose now that I think about it, that my options at the point the trade is made in August 1988 are to make it, or accept the fact that history goes off the rails for my league at that point. The Piazza trade 10 years later would be an even more significant crossroads, and impact just too many teams to abort, and then pretend the league is still historical

[swampdragon]

Trade Murray from Baltimore to the Cardinals. I do think the butterfly effect will get you at some point, but you can use automatic transactions and commish mode to minimize the effects of the changes you want to make. You just have to be careful about it, and there are some you'd likely have to make to stay with it.

[GMLoophole]

Thanks for this discussion, I was wondering about this and now understand the logic behind the whole thing.

Originally Posted by David Watts

Using real transactios you will not be able to make trades. If you want to keep Pedro, you would have to do so in commish mode. Also know that when using real lineups, every player is active and available. In other words there is no 25 man roster rule.

Using your Guerrero example, remember that if you keep him on the Dodgers, the Cardinals will have a hole at that position and will have to play whomever is available. 1989 he played 160 games at 1B for the Cardinals.

This basically is the time-saver posters are asking for here, IMO. Yes, I manually have to move Willie McCovey back from San Diego in 73 or whenever, or get the AI to agree to a tradeback. Other than creating a budget problem here and there, and as stated a hole for the AI in its lineup, it's really not that difficult if that's what you want to do.

[RonP]

Originally Posted by thehef

For these reasons I find that using real lineups is not a realistic option, although others, in their pursuits, may certainly find otherwise ;-)



That said, it would still be nice to have a checkbox on the Real Transactions listing so you can uncheck, say, a handful of transactions that you don't want to happen.

Here are a couple of examples where it would be handy:

1) I don't want a Dodger icon such as Duke Snider to finish his career with the Giants. In this example, I don't need to worry about what hole this might create in SF's lineup...
2) I want to see how the Dodgers' early-to-mid 60's teams would have done if they didn't break things up... or if the early 80's Dodgers hadn't broken up the classic infield... or how the Red Sox would've done if they kept most of the 1975 players (such as Lynn, El Tiante, Fisk, Rooster)... Sure, undoing some of these trades would have immediate and down-the-road ramifications, but if I had that flexibility, I could deal with that (or not) any way I want.

One reason people may want real transactions but not for their teams is because they want to explore 'what-if' scenarios with their teams, without having to manage real-life transactions for all the other teams... If I try out my what-ifs as described in #2 above, but find that the Reds never acquired Joe Morgan, George Foster, Jack Billingham, Pedro Borbon, Cesar Geronimo... well, that's not really the what-if I'm going for ;-)

Hey Hef, Dodger Snider was a zero for the Giants a big cypher. Here he is and you are welcome to him.
RonP