balancing control of teams

[thehef]

So I'm wondering about the best way to accomplish this...

Let's say I have majors and several minor leagues. And for a particular minor league - none of the teams of which are affiliated with a major league team - I want...

- To set the rosters myself (I determine who's on each team's opening roster by moving players around in commissioner mode, etc.)
- Have OOTP AI decide which players are on the active vs reserve rosters, set lineups & rotations, etc.
- No trades, signings or releases by OOTP AI to occur. Only I will sign, release, and make trades (all of which will be few).

What would be the best & easiest way to accomplish this? From my testing & research, I've come up with...

- Create a separate manager for each team in the particular minor league.
- For each manager, on the Manager Options panel, under Team Control Settings, I'd set everything to "Computer AI" except for "Transactions (Signing Free Agents, Releasing Players, etc.)" and "Initiate/React to Trades." ... I think this is essentially the General Manager role, except that for "Active Roster Moves (demotions, promotions, IL, etc.)" I would change to Computer AI, since I don't want to control those moves between the active & reserve rosters...*

*Note that Drafting Players, Setting Budgets, Sign Int'l Free Agents, and Sign/Fire Personnel would not apply in my setup.

However, that's a lot of PITA; not just setting up the managers, but more so the never-ending switching back and forth between the manager I'm controlling at the time (and sometimes accidentally screwing things up by forgetting to change mgrs and thus controlling the wrong manager).

If it is what it is and that's way to accomplish this, then so be it. But if there's an easier way, I'd love to learn about it!

[thehef]

Anybody?

[mytreds]

It sounds like you have it set up to be a PITA. Nothing much else you can do unless you stop micromanaging each team.

[Pelican]

I have attempted something like this, and no, I have not found an easier way. I thought this might be less obsessive about such a thing; but it didn't.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by thehef

So I'm wondering about the best way to accomplish this...

Let's say I have majors and several minor leagues. And for a particular minor league - none of the teams of which are affiliated with a major league team - I want...

- To set the rosters myself (I determine who's on each team's opening roster by moving players around in commissioner mode, etc.)

This is a real pain because there is no "mass move" of players to a team. It has to be done individually. If there are really a LOT of players, one way I've used periodically is to take control of a team and mass-offer contracts to free agents. Do that for each team and most of the -lower-rated players will hopefully go to the team that offered the contract. Higher rated players will get multiple offers and need to be manually assigned to their team

Originally Posted by thehef

- Have OOTP AI decide which players are on the active vs reserve rosters, set lineups & rotations, etc.

That's the default behavior. If you are GM for a team, you can set your options to have the AI do that as well.


Here's a neat trick, though. If you want to trigger all of the AI to do their personnel moves without advancing to next day, just go to any random minor league and change the "Active Roster Size" to a new value and then back. Voila! Every AI has done its moves.

Originally Posted by thehef

- No trades, signings or releases by OOTP AI to occur. Only I will sign, release, and make trades (all of which will be few).

There's a league setting to turn off trades. I'm not sure of a way to globally turn off releases but one thing you'll want to do on League Settings under "Financials" is to change "Minimum Service Years for Free Agency" and "Minimum Service Years for Minor League FA" to "No Free Agency". This will keep players from being automatically granted free agency.

Also, don't forget about the flag on each team's settings that say "Prevent any AI roster moves"


Hope some of that helps

[thehef]

Originally Posted by uruguru

This is a real pain because there is no "mass move" of players to a team. It has to be done individually. If there are really a LOT of players, one way I've used periodically is to take control of a team and mass-offer contracts to free agents. Do that for each team and most of the -lower-rated players will hopefully go to the team that offered the contract. Higher rated players will get multiple offers and need to be manually assigned to their team

The way I do it is to search for each player using - of course - OOTP's search feature, and then put each guy on a shortlist. Once I've done that for a full team, my shortlist will be full of the, say, 28 players that I want to be on the Hollywood Stars. So then, in commissioner mode, I'll mass-select the group of players, release them, and then "sign" them to Hollywood. I'm not using financials or anything, so I don't need to worry about offering contracts... Then I clear the shortlist and start over with another team... It still involves a lot of research and a lot of searching for players in OOTP, but at least some of the steps can be group as opposed to individual.

Originally Posted by uruguru

Here's a neat trick, though. If you want to trigger all of the AI to do their personnel moves without advancing to next time, just go to any random minor league and change the "Active Roster Size" to a new value and then back. Voila! Every AI has done its moves.

Cool. Did not know that. Thanks!

Originally Posted by uruguru

There's a league setting to turn off trades. I'm not sure of a way to globally turn off releases...

Yep, trades are off. It's those releases and signings that seem to be the main component that necessitates creating separate GM's/managers for each team...

Originally Posted by uruguru

... but one thing you'll want to do on League Settings under "Financials" is to change "Minimum Service Years for Free Agency" and "Minimum Service Years for Minor League FA" to "No Free Agency". This will keep players from being automatically granted free agency.

Not playing with financials but maybe this is something to experiment with...

Originally Posted by uruguru

Hope some of that helps

Thanks!

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by thehef

The way I do it is to search for each player using - of course - OOTP's search feature, and then put each guy on a shortlist. Once I've done that for a full team, my shortlist will be full of the, say, 28 players that I want to be on the Hollywood Stars. So then, in commissioner mode, I'll mass-select the group of players, release them, and then "sign" them to Hollywood. I'm not using financials or anything, so I don't need to worry about offering contracts... Then I clear the shortlist and start over with another team... It still involves a lot of research and a lot of searching for players in OOTP, but at least some of the steps can be group as opposed to individual.

omg this is a huge help for me managing players in my leagues that get deleted because the players are already shortlisted according to the teams they are on so the "searching" step doesn't apply.

Once I can recreate the leagues/teams, I can advance to the next pre-season, turn off financials, mass release and reassign the shortlisted players, and then turn financials back on!

In fact, some quick testing showed that I can assign them to any unaffiliated minor-league team by acting as their GM and doing the assign then. So I can briefly unaffiliate the team, then assign players, and re-affiliate the team.

I would have never considered a solution involving turning off the financials. THANK YOU!

Originally Posted by thehef

Yep, trades are off. It's those releases and signings that seem to be the main component that necessitates creating separate GM's/managers for each team...

Would the team setting flag "Prevent any AI roster moves" stop this?

[thehef]

Originally Posted by uruguru

omg this is a huge help for me managing players in my leagues that get deleted because the players are already shortlisted according to the teams they are on so the "searching" step doesn't apply.

Once I can recreate the leagues/teams, I can advance to the next pre-season, turn off financials, mass release and reassign the shortlisted players, and then turn financials back on!

In fact, some quick testing showed that I can assign them to any unaffiliated minor-league team by acting as their GM and doing the assign then. So I can briefly unaffiliate the team, then assign players, and re-affiliate the team.

I would have never considered a solution involving turning off the financials. THANK YOU!

You're very welcome. Also, although I knew about the shortlist feature for some time but rarely used it, I also recently discovered that you can have multiple shortlists. So, for example, if you are doing roster work or whatever with two, or ten different different teams, you can have separate shortlists for each team...

Originally Posted by uruguru

Would the team setting flag "Prevent any AI roster moves" stop this?

I think that will. However, it will prevent everything. And in my case I want the OOTP AI making changes if a guy gets injured (like activating a guy from the reserve roster).

Also, I seem to recall experimenting a few years ago with Strategy settings such as Lock to Team, Force Start and Force Lineup Spot, and I think it only applies if there's a human manager assigned. However, I must say the this panel looks a LOT different in v23 than I recall. So perhaps this feature has become more robust... I'll need to mess with it... (Maybe someone knows more about this than I do, which isn't much...)

[No Pepper]

Unless I'm missing something, you can export rosters to a file, edit them as you wish to move players to other teams, etc, and reimport with your changes taking effect. I know this applies to active free agents but not 100% sure how it handles minor league systems.

http://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com/...port_functions