Fictional league help plz at least look

[xx2khazard]

thanks for taking the time to look at this, you don't know how much I appreciate it. so I recently been thinking about starting a fictional league but idk the rule of thumbs in this field... like do I sim a few years to get rid of the initial batch of players or what? I say this because i've heard that the initial players are inflated offensively so you know... also I want to do like a fictional mlb except with different logos, so how do I import logos( I know a noob question) do you guys actually sim 30+ years to get a history cuz that takes a long time even on a solid rig at least that I know of? so yea any tips and answers to my questions will be fantastic.

P.S I want to play in like 2005ish so when do I start the league, at 199something to get a history and delete the first set of players or better to just go with the 2005 straight and run with the players? also how do I create logos and unis?

[Thunder]

I'm about a week into my first fictional league and really enjoying it.

I went with two leagues, two divisions in each, six-team divisions, no wild cards. Old school, but you can set it up however you like. The creation wizard is fairly straight forward.

I only ran five years. I'm using high school and college feeders and just needed enough data to have my draftees have some stats and honors to go by. My all-time major-league HR leader didn't have 200 HRs, but I really didn't care. If I ran 50 years and my leader had 700, it wouldn't really change my experience.

The general set-up (and hiding the OV/POT numbers and all current ratings) has caused me to slow way down and enjoy some things I may whipped by in the past.

When you see something like John Seale was AL Player of the month, it doesn't mean the same thing to you as seeing Mike Trout win it. Actually, it doesn't mean anything to you at first. You need to check him out and slowly you get to know your opponents.

As far as importing logos, I'll leave that to one of the experts. But depending on how many minor league teams you also want to do, plan on hours tracking them down (or designing them yourself if that's your thing) and importing, double-checking them all, yadda, yadda.

Good luck!

[battists]

Originally Posted by xx2khazard

thanks for taking the time to look at this, you don't know how much I appreciate it. so I recently been thinking about starting a fictional league but idk the rule of thumbs in this field... like do I sim a few years to get rid of the initial batch of players or what? I say this because i've heard that the initial players are inflated offensively so you know... also I want to do like a fictional mlb except with different logos, so how do I import logos( I know a noob question) do you guys actually sim 30+ years to get a history cuz that takes a long time even on a solid rig at least that I know of? so yea any tips and answers to my questions will be fantastic.

P.S I want to play in like 2005ish so when do I start the league, at 199something to get a history and delete the first set of players or better to just go with the 2005 straight and run with the players? also how do I create logos and unis?

So, first things first: there is no NEED to sim past the initial players. OOTP 16 is pretty good about generating initial players. Many versions ago it wasn't quite so good. That said, there is no reason NOT to sim for a few years if it makes you feel better to have some history. That's what I did.

As for logos, you can either look for ones other people have created, or create your own. If you look in the mods forum, there are millions of good ones people have created. I have my own fictional league with 24 teams and 5 levels of minors, and every single logo and jerseys/caps I "borrowed" from other people. If you want to create your own, you should considering getting this tool, it's invaluable for logo stuff. I'm going to leave the details of how to get logos and get them into the game to others.

As far as building your own league goes, here are a bunch of thoughts:

1. Start in Excel or Word or something, and just map out your league structure. Teams and cities, levels of minors, etc.
2. Look for / create your logos / uniforms. While you can add these to your league after the fact too, it's just easiest to do up front. Like I said, I will leave the details of how to deal with logos up to others.
3. Once you have all of that ready, start a new game in OOTP. Set up your Major League structure and create the teams. (Basically, everything on the League and Team tabs.) Then use the Save as a Template option and, well, save as a template. You're going to save a bunch of templates, so either give them names that mean something to you. Personally, I start with "1" and go up from there. The reason we are doing this is that creating your own fictional world is almost ALWAYS a process of repetition, tweaking, and so on. If you don't do this, and you later find you messed something up, you'll have to start over from scratch. With templates saved at each step along the way, it will be MUCH MUCH easier to go back and start over from any step you want!
4. If you want minor leagues, add them, set their affiliations, and repeat the previous step for each minor league, saving a template after each one. Note that we haven't touched ANY of the rules or other options yet. Just the league structure.
5. Once you have all of your teams set up and structures saved, go to the Game Settings tab and set all of those settings to your liking. Save as a template.
6. Now, go back to your Major League. Carefully go through all of the tabs and set the options according to your preferences: Rules, Financials, Options, Players, Stats & AI. Save template.
7. Repeat this process for your minor leagues. (I might just do all of my minors and then template here, as there aren't too many options for minor leagues.)
8. Save a final template, and start your game.
9. Immediately, go to Game > Game Settings. Double-check all of the settings here, and especially check the Almanac tab, as you didn't set that up during league creation.
10. Go to the Team Settings of each team and check that the "city" is set correctly. Most cities with unique names will get set effectively, but for example, if you have the "Springfield Bearcats" and you want them in Springfield OH, the game might have selected Springfield, PA.
11. Not a bad time to check the logos of each team either.
12. At this point, I would exit OOTP and save a copy of your .lg folder. Just zip it up with a name like "My League Version 1 Day 1" or something.

OK whew that was a lot. Now, a few more thoughts. At this point, whether you want some history or not, I would highly recommend doing at least one long-term sim for testing purposes. Here's what you do:

1. Go back into the settings. Turn OFF: fictional faces, baseball cards, and almanac. For the purposes of this test, all of those things just cause the system to take extra simming time.
2. Quit your job and just be the commissioner. This is to stop the sim from stopping to ask you questions.
3. Set aside some time when you have plenty of time, such as overnight. Use the Play option, and choose a date well into the future. At least 5 years, maybe 10. Doesn't have to be super precise. Then let it sim overnight or something.
4. When it has finished a decent sim, re-open the save and poke around a bit to see if the league looks stable.
5. Restore from your backup, tweak, and repeat, until you're pretty comfortable that the league is doing what you want. Then you're ready to start!

As a last note, here are some of the things I check for stability:

1. Look at the league history index. Do the overall league ERA and batting average look stable? The first time I tried this, my league very rapidly became such a pitcher's league that the team average BA was like .235. I didn't like that.
2. Try looking at the free agent pool. It shouldn't be filled with many talented players. It also should have a decent number of players, but not an ungodly number. (After 12 years, my FA pool has close to 4,000 players, while there are around 4,000 active players in my league as well. I don't think you need that many FAs, but it's also not so much that I think it's causing my game to perform horribly.)
3. Look at the schedules at each level of my game. Are the seasons starting and ending when you think they should? I had some problems with custom schedules where some leagues were running well past where I wanted them to run.
4. If you want, look at individual records. Did someone hit .475 for a season? 89 home runs? These can be indicative of talent/settings issues in your league. CAUTION: I try hard not to look at names when I do this. Remember, you're doing these test sims off a base save file that will ultimately be the one you use. That is, your final run of this will use the same players. I don't want to know in advance who is going to be a superstar. Alternately, of course, you can rearrange the steps slightly and do this test run with players you never plan on using.
5. Perhaps others can suggest some other things to check.

Good luck!!!

[Thunder]

Originally Posted by battists

[*]Quit your job and just be the commissioner. This is to stop the sim from stopping to ask you questions.

Great post. I got to "Quit your job" and though yep, it's going to consume you . . . oh he meant your OOTP job . . ahhh, well, that too.

That is one bit I didn't do, but probably should have. I just checked the Do Not Disturb option and ran five years. But the AI didn't manage my 40-man roster and when I started after the fifth World Series, my 40-man only had 25 guys on it (the active roster). Part of the reason I started with such a weak organization I imagine was losing depth in the Rule 5 draft . . although I'm not sure if I can verify that.

[battists]

Ouch that stinks. Luckily for me, I didn't have a particular team in mind to take over. What I also did was I created a "commissioner", and then when I took over a team myself, I created a separate manager identity. I just switch back and forth if I want to do "commissioner-y" things.

[Thunder]

I could have just re-run it, but I wasn't savvy enough with this stuff to know exactly what went wrong. For all I knew, a redux would yield the same thing.

It was only in reading your post did I realize how to make it different.
Besides, having a total crap organization has been fun in a weird way.

[battists]

Originally Posted by Thunder

Besides, having a total crap organization has been fun in a weird way.

That is actually my favorite thing. I enjoy the ride more than just winning per se. In my world, this time, I simmed 10 years as the commissioner right away. (11 actually, I messed up haha.)

Then I created a new identity, saw that a few teams had offered me jobs, and took a position with the rookie league Titusville Barracudas, who had had the worst record in the league the previous year. Didn't do much better under me, but the "big league club" still thought highly enough to promote me to manage the low-A Modesto Bullfrogs next year. They are a little more competitive, at 61-61 with 10 games left in their season.

My plan is to manage one year in each of my minor league levels, and then get a major league gig.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by battists

So, first things first: there is no NEED to sim past the initial players. OOTP 16 is pretty good about generating initial players. Many versions ago it wasn't quite so good. That said, there is no reason NOT to sim for a few years if it makes you feel better to have some history. That's what I did.

As for logos, you can either look for ones other people have created, or create your own. If you look in the mods forum, there are millions of good ones people have created. I have my own fictional league with 24 teams and 5 levels of minors, and every single logo and jerseys/caps I "borrowed" from other people. If you want to create your own, you should considering getting this tool, it's invaluable for logo stuff. I'm going to leave the details of how to get logos and get them into the game to others.

As far as building your own league goes, here are a bunch of thoughts:

1. Start in Excel or Word or something, and just map out your league structure. Teams and cities, levels of minors, etc.
2. Look for / create your logos / uniforms. While you can add these to your league after the fact too, it's just easiest to do up front. Like I said, I will leave the details of how to deal with logos up to others.
3. Once you have all of that ready, start a new game in OOTP. Set up your Major League structure and create the teams. (Basically, everything on the League and Team tabs.) Then use the Save as a Template option and, well, save as a template. You're going to save a bunch of templates, so either give them names that mean something to you. Personally, I start with "1" and go up from there. The reason we are doing this is that creating your own fictional world is almost ALWAYS a process of repetition, tweaking, and so on. If you don't do this, and you later find you messed something up, you'll have to start over from scratch. With templates saved at each step along the way, it will be MUCH MUCH easier to go back and start over from any step you want!
4. If you want minor leagues, add them, set their affiliations, and repeat the previous step for each minor league, saving a template after each one. Note that we haven't touched ANY of the rules or other options yet. Just the league structure.
5. Once you have all of your teams set up and structures saved, go to the Game Settings tab and set all of those settings to your liking. Save as a template.
6. Now, go back to your Major League. Carefully go through all of the tabs and set the options according to your preferences: Rules, Financials, Options, Players, Stats & AI. Save template.
7. Repeat this process for your minor leagues. (I might just do all of my minors and then template here, as there aren't too many options for minor leagues.)
8. Save a final template, and start your game.
9. Immediately, go to Game > Game Settings. Double-check all of the settings here, and especially check the Almanac tab, as you didn't set that up during league creation.
10. Go to the Team Settings of each team and check that the "city" is set correctly. Most cities with unique names will get set effectively, but for example, if you have the "Springfield Bearcats" and you want them in Springfield OH, the game might have selected Springfield, PA.
11. Not a bad time to check the logos of each team either.
12. At this point, I would exit OOTP and save a copy of your .lg folder. Just zip it up with a name like "My League Version 1 Day 1" or something.

OK whew that was a lot. Now, a few more thoughts. At this point, whether you want some history or not, I would highly recommend doing at least one long-term sim for testing purposes. Here's what you do:

1. Go back into the settings. Turn OFF: fictional faces, baseball cards, and almanac. For the purposes of this test, all of those things just cause the system to take extra simming time.
2. Quit your job and just be the commissioner. This is to stop the sim from stopping to ask you questions.
3. Set aside some time when you have plenty of time, such as overnight. Use the Play option, and choose a date well into the future. At least 5 years, maybe 10. Doesn't have to be super precise. Then let it sim overnight or something.
4. When it has finished a decent sim, re-open the save and poke around a bit to see if the league looks stable.
5. Restore from your backup, tweak, and repeat, until you're pretty comfortable that the league is doing what you want. Then you're ready to start!

As a last note, here are some of the things I check for stability:

1. Look at the league history index. Do the overall league ERA and batting average look stable? The first time I tried this, my league very rapidly became such a pitcher's league that the team average BA was like .235. I didn't like that.
2. Try looking at the free agent pool. It shouldn't be filled with many talented players. It also should have a decent number of players, but not an ungodly number. (After 12 years, my FA pool has close to 4,000 players, while there are around 4,000 active players in my league as well. I don't think you need that many FAs, but it's also not so much that I think it's causing my game to perform horribly.)
3. Look at the schedules at each level of my game. Are the seasons starting and ending when you think they should? I had some problems with custom schedules where some leagues were running well past where I wanted them to run.
4. If you want, look at individual records. Did someone hit .475 for a season? 89 home runs? These can be indicative of talent/settings issues in your league. CAUTION: I try hard not to look at names when I do this. Remember, you're doing these test sims off a base save file that will ultimately be the one you use. That is, your final run of this will use the same players. I don't want to know in advance who is going to be a superstar. Alternately, of course, you can rearrange the steps slightly and do this test run with players you never plan on using.
5. Perhaps others can suggest some other things to check.

Good luck!!!

battists, judging by this, you would be a strong candidate for updating the online manual! ()

[NoOne]

yes, you really should do a test sim - not necessarily to start at a later date, but to verify your league is not fundamentally flawed by your settings. also, do not rely on league history unless you are adding both your leagues and averaging them. there is significantly more volatility when you arbitrarily split your data in half. use the data dumps available onthe database page - you only need league total batting and pitching, and insert headers. you don't need anything else from the checklist when configuring the dump.

you need 3 existing worksheets plus insert sheet from file (2 times) - copy the inserted sheets to 2 of the existing worksheets. then using a clean worksheet, you have to add the two leagues stats together (just the ones you plan to track). once you have the first year completed (use $ - "=$batting.sum(a2:a3)"), higlight that row and a blank row, then fill down. all the other years are now added up - you never have to do this again, unless have a range of years longer/shorter than previously used. for averages and such, you'll need to divide by 2, of course. (when i just used the insert from sheet, my links got broken when i deleted the csv imported sheets to add new ones - there is probably a setitng that stops this from happening - so you can potentially just insert sheet from file and if named the same each time you do it, the worksheet with formulas should remain unbroken and all the calculation will happen on their own.) once completed all you have to do is insert sheet from file and everything else should be automated in the worksheet.

sim out 150-200 years - just to verify your settings. if you don't see an obvious problem, go ahead and start from year one. if you see that after 30-50 years an obvious shift has occured, add 10 to that and that's how far you should sim before beginning to play and/or erasing history etc etc...

you don't want to invest all your time into a league and then realize after 10-20-50-100 years it's fatally flawed in its setup.

tip for a faster long-term sim - turn off baseball cards, turn off awards, turn off all-star game, keep nothing (news etc), stats tracking detail set to very low (this doesn't affect league totals tracking), turn off facegen, turn off everythign that doesn't affect players development... keep playoffs, keep spring training. all other settings keep them as you will use in your league. you will save 20-33% of sim time. if you want to check in once in a while, set the csv dump (headers + batting/pitching only) on a yearly basis. import that to a spreadsheet and do your magic.

what this is based on:
when i made a 28 team league, it kept the settings for a 30-team league in regards to players created for the draft, int'l FA created, and int'l amateur FA. i didn't realize i'd have to change these settings by hand. this caused an upward trend in my league until an equillibrium was reached based on new talent/year influx.

i think this also caused less fluctuation from year to year in statistical output. my stats got flatter after the league rolled over and reached an equillibrium in regards to influx of talent each year.

so, 21 rounds of amateurs created for a 20 round draft (other settings default too) is too much for a 28 team league with minors. your stats won't escalate forever, but they will increse over the first few decades before they level out a bit, and then remain fairly flat.

so, there are plenty of ways for us to screw up a good simulation. i'd love to see how many new players/year relates to # of teams in the league. i want fluctuation, i want periods of lesser/normal/above average talent to occur based on the randomness of player creation. i want fluctuation and randomness in that way. using the "automatically adjust modifiers" is just plain wrong for a simulation game. it's a poor attempt to correct either bad settings or a poorly programmed game (more likely the settings, but the fact that we can screw it up so badly without feedback from the game is partly to blame on the program, too)

a new checkbox to keep these related settings proportional to number of teams would be nice. the game warns us if too few players will be made, but we also need to be warned about too many being made.

if new players for 21 rounds is correct for a 30 team league then 28/30 * 21 = 19.6 would be good for a 28 team league - if it is 1:1 proportional - int'l FA and amateur FA settings means it will not be 1:1. i shouldnt have to simulate multiple 150-200 year leagues just to find some settings that work well together. 100years is probably enough, but just in case of poor settings, the first 50 years might need to be ignored.

i really liked this game at first, but i am slowly starting to dislike what i have to go through to setup up a functioning league. also, you can't even play a real-world league more than a few years without having massive problems with the differences between created players and real players in the database. i would love to play with real players - but as it is currently it's untenable and incredibly complicated due to the drastic change in player talent as created players begin to fill the league.

default home runs for a 30 ream fictional league is 5900?? thats just insane. 5000hr was breached in 1987? and also during obvious steroid years and no other time in history, let alone nearly 6000hr (1987 was probably steroids too, but was handled behind the scenes). this game requires so much work for it to be somewhat realistic. if you lower that hr total you have to adjust other things and it goes on and on and on.