Promotion/Relegation League questions

[LoneRhino]

I’m setting up a promotion/relegation league and I’m interested in how other people have theirs set up. Right now I’m starting in 1871 with historical players although I have created quite a few fictional players because I’m going to start playing with an early 20th century style. My current setup is 5 levels with all 8 team leagues. The top 2 levels will have 1 league each with 2 leagues at lvl 3, 4 leagues at lvl 4, and 8 leagues at lvl 5 for a total of 128 teams.

I’m not sure if I should start with all of the leagues at the start, or if I should start with the top 2 and add the others in gradually. I also plan on expanding as the years go by but I want to do that slowly and organically.

Some questions I have are:

If I have import real historical rookies on, will the game also import fictional rookies to make up for the need for more players?

Will the lower leagues trade or sell players to other leagues?

How should I set the market sizes for each team when there will be a large difference between markets?

I have the same question with media contracts. Do I set each level's baseline lower? How much lower?

Will negro league and historical minor league players start showing up at the appropriate times?

I’ll probably think of a million other questions as I set this up. Any help is appreciated.

[Dutch Alexander]

Quite an ambitious setup. I run a smaller 3 tier pro/reg league with a total of 32 teams. The more tiers and the more teams means it becomes more complicated in regards to market sizes and finances.

Originally Posted by LoneRhino

Will the lower leagues trade or sell players to other leagues?

They will trade players if allowed in your settings. In my league I do not allow teams in the highest tier to trade with teams from the 2 lower tiers. The reason for this is to prevent star level players being traded from the highest league to a lower league. This just doesn't feel right to me, in real life players would never accept this. Surely the players organisation would demand the right to refuse such a demotion or at least these trades would be severely restricted to protect the players.
For each league there is the option to allow players to be purchased by other leagues for a fixed price. Never used this option myself but I think this option is more meant to be used between Major Leagues and Independent Minor Leagues. With this option enabled I believe the team losing the player has no say in it, no option to refuse or to negatiate. So not ideal for a pro/reg league it seems to me. In the past I used the posting system to generate some player movement between leagues. This worked quite well in OOTP23 with sometimes more than a dozen players being posted. But in OOTP24 this no longer works, usually only one player is posted per year so I stopped using this option.

Originally Posted by LoneRhino

How should I set the market sizes for each team when there will be a large difference between markets?

In my league each team has a fixed market size ranging from 1 to 20. If a team promotes or relegates they maintain their market size. So in my league market size mainly determines the size of the club. In the long run the teams with higher market sizes will play more often in the highest tier and the teams with smaller market sizes will spend more time in the lower tiers. With only a total of 32 teams this works quite well.

For your setup this would not work as there are not enough market sizes in the game (only 20). So you would have to set the market sizes relative to each league. Which means you would have to adjust the market size for each team that promotes or relegates relative to the new league. For example a team with a market size of 14 promoting would then have a market size of 8 in the higher league. You would have to determine how each league relates to the others in relative market size.

Originally Posted by LoneRhino

I have the same question with media contracts. Do I set each level's baseline lower? How much lower?

In my league I use the same baseline for all 3 leagues. I do this to prevent teams who are promoting from receiving too much extra revenue. If this happens these teams will be able to sign all the top FA and dominate the new league in their first year. Using the same baseline also prevent bigger clubs who relegate from getting into financial problems. In my experience most players will not opt out when relegated (only stars will) so the team will have a large payroll in the lower league they cannot afford anymore with the reduced revenue.

In your setup you will have to use different baselines for each league. A team that relegates would see their Media Revenue reduced but it's market size would increase (relative to the lower league) so the reduced revenue would be somewhat dampened. You will have to find the right balance between these baselines and relative market sizes to make the finances work properly. Seems quite complicated to me and I think you will never get it right. For example in you have a team with market size 20 in the highest league that relegates (and this will happen since it's baseball) it's media revenue will decrease with the lower baseline but there is no room to increase this teams market size since it is already maxed out. Such a team could then end up in financial trouble as explained before. Don't be surprised to see such a team relegate a few years in a row.

[LoneRhino]

Thanks for the reply. I know that this setup is ambitious but I figure I may as well go big. I hadn't thought of having market sizes relative to each league. I like that idea. I would think that in the real world if a big market team gets regulated they would have serious problems. If a team has some weird problem I figured that I would give the team in question a cash boost. This would represent a team owner pouring money into a team.
I am considering starting small, playing only the top 2 leagues and then adding more teams gradually.

[Dutch Alexander]

Originally Posted by LoneRhino

Thanks for the reply. I know that this setup is ambitious but I figure I may as well go big. I hadn't thought of having market sizes relative to each league. I like that idea. I would think that in the real world if a big market team gets regulated they would have serious problems. If a team has some weird problem I figured that I would give the team in question a cash boost. This would represent a team owner pouring money into a team.
I am considering starting small, playing only the top 2 leagues and then adding more teams gradually.

In the EPL teams that relegate get a parachute payment (the first 3 years I believe) to help these teams deal with the reduced revenue and avoid financial problems. You could indeed simulate this by manually adding money. In OOTP pro/reg is not evolved very much so it might take a bit of manual input to work properly.

[LoneRhino]

In OOTRP 24 is it even possible to automate the pro/rel system like the EPL where some teams have to play a playoff game to be promoted or avoid relegation?

[Dutch Alexander]

Originally Posted by LoneRhino

In OOTRP 24 is it even possible to automate the pro/rel system like the EPL where some teams have to play a playoff game to be promoted or avoid relegation?

No. You can off course schedule such a series yourself and then handle promotion / relegation manual as well. But then there are no playoff roster rules for the teams involved I think and such a series would also not show up in league history.

[Baconi]

Be prepared for the finances to end up not making much sense anyway. As muchas I’ve tried tinkering to get pro/rel leagues to work, I have never been able to fix a chronic problem: skilled players signing for peanuts in leagues that are too low for them. It pretty much breaks the balance of the game when your lower leagues all have players putting up insane stats on a contract that’s less than what you have set for the “average player salary” in your settings.

[TheMaus2]

Originally Posted by Baconi

Be prepared for the finances to end up not making much sense anyway. As muchas I’ve tried tinkering to get pro/rel leagues to work, I have never been able to fix a chronic problem: skilled players signing for peanuts in leagues that are too low for them. It pretty much breaks the balance of the game when your lower leagues all have players putting up insane stats on a contract that’s less than what you have set for the “average player salary” in your settings.

I won't say this is a non-issue but in my first go at the Pro Rel experiment and in about ~50 years i've never really encountered this issue. i set league reputation to descend in the 5 levels (10, 7, 5, 3, 1) and provided a salary cap for each level (300m, 120, 80, 40, 20) and then ballparked the financials to get the player payroll/budget in the expected range, & there is only one 70 grade guy (according to OSA) who has reached free agency playing in the bottom 3 leagues of the pyramid. about 41 guys in total with a 55+ grade playing there. for homegrown players it might be a pain but you can also stymie those type of game breakers by limiting the amount of draft picks in each league and the IFAs/discoveries they can access. perhaps its because i dont follow the lower tiers closely but as far as the history books go i havent encountered many crazy gamebreakers.


as for a built-in playoff system, i would suggest using custom playoffs in league settings (making the playoffs for the 3rd-7th place teams) and then manually promoting them

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[Baconi]

Originally Posted by TheMaus2

I won't say this is a non-issue but in my first go at the Pro Rel experiment and in about ~50 years i've never really encountered this issue. i set league reputation to descend in the 5 levels (10, 7, 5, 3, 1) and provided a salary cap for each level (300m, 120, 80, 40, 20) and then ballparked the financials to get the player payroll/budget in the expected range, & there is only one 70 grade guy (according to OSA) who has reached free agency playing in the bottom 3 leagues of the pyramid. about 41 guys in total with a 55+ grade playing there. for homegrown players it might be a pain but you can also stymie those type of game breakers by limiting the amount of draft picks in each league and the IFAs/discoveries they can access. perhaps its because i dont follow the lower tiers closely but as far as the history books go i havent encountered many crazy gamebreakers.


as for a built-in playoff system, i would suggest using custom playoffs in league settings (making the playoffs for the 3rd-7th place teams) and then manually promoting them

Realistically though it should be impossible for a 70+ grade player to play in the bottom 3 leagues, and almost no one with a 55+ grade should be playing there either. Indeed if you don't really pay attention to the lower leagues so much it's not a huge problem but if you actually try to play as a lower league team you'll find you can break the game easily by signing (relative) star free agents for little cost.

[kcstengelsr]

I decided to try a relegation style set up. The top eight teams from the 2023 results in each of the AL and NL stayed in one league called MLB. The bottom seven teams from the 2023 results in each of the AL and NL were placed in the relegation league or RML. Technically professional baseball no longer has half in the American League and half in the National League--the new MLB has one division called AL and the other division called the NL. RML has one division called RAL and the other division called RNL.

I decided that there would be no interleague games between MLB and RML by using the checkbox option. All teams in MLB would play regular season games against all others in MLB regardless of division AL or NL. All teams in RML would play regular season games against all others in RML regardless of division RAL or RNL.

I set up custom playoffs with the top six in each division of the MLB making the postseason in 2024 and with the top two in each division of the RML making the postseason in 2024. The bottom two teams in each division of MLB will be sent to the RML for 2025 and the top two teams in each division of the RML will be promoted to MLB for 2025.

I just started my relegation 2024 season. Here is an example of an opening day game using this setup on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/kcstengelsr/video/2034199404