Ultra Noobie Question.

[Cap]

Ok. This has no doubt been asked a million times before (I've probably asked it myself and just forgot). From a casual baseball fan, can this be done?

To play the game as manager without any financials or auto-trading or other specialty functions on.

Set up two leagues of eight teams each. Some real historical teams and a few fictional teams. Populate each team with historical players, both MLB and Negro League, of my own choosing (ie. Maybe Honus Wagner plays for the Tigers or the Red Sox.) and maybe one or two fictional players. Each team with a few pitchers and position players in a farm club to be brought up if needed.

No inter-league play. Play both leagues with DH. Play a 132 game season with the best team in each league going to the World Series. In other words a simple Fantasy/Historical universe where I act as manager of one team per season and only change pitchers in-game and pinch-hit or make defensive changes between innings. Mainly sit back and watch the game play out.

If this can be done, is there a child-proof step-by-step instruction somewhere on how to set this up? I only have so much time in a day and only so many years left to learn. For some reason my wife likes to see my face once or twice a day....

Cap

[Brad K]

"To play the game as manager without any financials or auto-trading "

So it's a one year deal?

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Cap

Ok. This has no doubt been asked a million times before (I've probably asked it myself and just forgot). From a casual baseball fan, can this be done?

To play the game as manager without any financials or auto-trading or other specialty functions on.

Set up two leagues of eight teams each. Some real historical teams and a few fictional teams. Populate each team with historical players, both MLB and Negro League, of my own choosing (ie. Maybe Honus Wagner plays for the Tigers or the Red Sox.) and maybe one or two fictional players. Each team with a few pitchers and position players in a farm club to be brought up if needed.

No inter-league play. Play both leagues with DH. Play a 132 game season with the best team in each league going to the World Series. In other words a simple Fantasy/Historical universe where I act as manager of one team per season and only change pitchers in-game and pinch-hit or make defensive changes between innings. Mainly sit back and watch the game play out.

If this can be done, is there a child-proof step-by-step instruction somewhere on how to set this up? I only have so much time in a day and only so many years left to learn. For some reason my wife likes to see my face once or twice a day....

Cap

Aside from the Negro League part of it, the answer is yes. For the Negro Leaguers to be included, you'd need to invoke historical minors, which rules out the fictional side of things. But you cannot selectively include or exclude historical players - it is an all-or-none, season-by-season (or, alternatively, random debut) deal, I'm afraid. You could, of course, go through and delete those you don't want after they come into the league.

As for the rest of it, trust me you don't really need a step-by-step guide - the Setup Wizard is fairly straightforward.

As far as the individual parts of your request are concerned:

• financials are only activated by the user, the default is OFF
• for no trading, simply uncheck it on setup
• I think the way to go would be a fictional setup but check real historical rookies; this will give you fictional teams and from there, in the wizard, you can select historical ones as desired, otherwise you'd be beholden to the historical setup of the day rather than the structure you want
• either select the MiLB level you want at setup or it can easily be added later
• make sure the Draft is checked if you want historical players going to random teams

Off the top of my head, that's it. Others may have deeper insights but really, what you are asking for is pretty easy to do.

Hope that helps

G

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by luckymann

for no trading, simply uncheck it on setup

He said he's playing as manager not as GM so how does no trades work past a single season?

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by Brad K

He said he's playing as manager not as GM so how does no trades work past a single season?

You can turn off trading all together. For all teams. You and AI. It’s a checkbox in the advanced settings (or after game creation). It will prevent all trades for all teams until you toggle trades back on.

[AESP_pres]

This is what I do when I play my simulation before the end of the 1871 season, I play with real trade and, since there is no trade database loaded before January first 1872, the AI teams will start signing players who aren't suppose to play the following season or are unassigned rookie (because of the league structure in OOTP but this is another story). Only problem with this if you forgot to uncheck it is that the AI teams will do no moves at all... not only trade and free agent, but they won't replace an injured player or change the starting lineup from game to game or make move between them and their reserve rooster.

I only use that for one reason and it's to stay historically accurate so I have no idea if what I said is also true in a fictional context...

[Cap]

Thanks for the advice, everyone.

I guess I'd set up things as GM but watch the games as manager.

Sounds to me that I'd run into a few obstacles to set up and run things the way I'd like to.

Two fictional leagues with eight fictional teams in each league. Some of the fictional teams would have historical names and I would populate each team myself with individual players from any era in MLB and the negro league. Just like you were able to do with Stormfront's Oldtime Baseball back in the day. You could pick say Babe Ruth from the best season he had in real life, or Ty Cobb or Joe DiMaggio. Seems like this would be way too complicated to do in OOTP because in my scenario they wouldn't finish a season with the same numbers they ended up with in their selected seasons.

Cap

[LansdowneSt]

It’s not too complicated. You are on a forum where people know the 5,000 different ways to do things and we all have preferences. A 1923 Ruth won’t finish the season in OOTP with his exact 1923 stats but he will be 1923 Babe Ruth performing as best the game can replicate him and accounting for the league, era, and all the other contextual circumstances of your sim. Don’t overthink it. Dive in. Start simple. Explore variations. Have fun.

[Cap]

Bought OOTP24.

So many screens and options and buttons and settings and stuff....

I'm hoping one day I'll be able to figure this out. Just to play through a season.

I switched to OOTP Classic display. It looks better and I increased the font size so I can actually see the words.

Can I do without all the Manager news and information? I just want to set up two leagues of eight teams. Apparently I can't import players from the Negro leagues unless I utter some magical incantation.

Is there a step-by-step instruction somewhere, an OOTP For Dummies? Long time players here fail to grasp, through no fault of their own, what all this looks like when you first get started. Easy to forget how overwhelming this game looks.

I'll give it another shot tomorrow....

Cap

P.S. How do you get to see an actual game played out?

[Cap]

I set up a Fictional Game and created two sub leagues called National and American and filled them each with eight teams, some historical names some not. Then I tried to populate those teams and discovered I can't use historical players and had to endure 168 rounds of a draft of fictional players. I finally ran the game and somehow went through a bunch of games auto-played. When my back was turned my PC froze. This never happens.

Another thing I noticed once I rebooted my PC. Portions of the game screen are cut off. Is that normal? (My laptop has a 15" screen) When I finally got to watch a game the screen was filled with charts and stats and a small area in the middle where baseball was actually happening. Is that normal? I tried to do a screen capture (ALT + Print Screen) but that didn't work.

This seems more work than fun. I mean most people go to a ball game to watch the players play not watch the stats on the jumbotron.

Cap

[Cap]

Two days ago I downloaded Stormfront's Oldtime Baseball. I had it up and running yesterday loaded with historical players and stars of the Negro League, and played through the first game. It was fun just like baseball is supposed to be.

I had Josh Gibson behind the plate, Hank Greenberg at 1st. Charlie Gehringer at 2nd. Pop Lloyd at SS and Jud Wilson at 3rd. The star of the OF was George Selkirk. My team The Sydney (NS) Miners beat Joe Jackson and the Chicago Whitesox 3-0.

Cap

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Cap

Two days ago I downloaded Stormfront's Oldtime Baseball. I had it up and running yesterday loaded with historical players and stars of the Negro League, and played through the first game. It was fun just like baseball is supposed to be.

I had Josh Gibson behind the plate, Hank Greenberg at 1st. Charlie Gehringer at 2nd. Pop Lloyd at SS and Jud Wilson at 3rd. The star of the OF was George Selkirk. My team The Sydney (NS) Miners beat Joe Jackson and the Chicago Whitesox 3-0.

Cap

You're right that it's a very fun game. Curt Gowdy as the announcer puts text to speech on OOTP to shame.

Please be aware there aren't enough triples in the game. The data base doesn't include any triples for hits against pitchers. It's a lot of work to edit each pitcher. You could also edit down the range of OFs. But even wrong the game is still fun.

Are you running it on an old computer or did you make it work with DOSBox or whatever?

[Brad K]

Old Time Baseball opening sequence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOgVEP_Lo18&t=5s


Old Time Baseball Curt Gowdy 68 Tigers/Cardinals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_UYK-2RP_Q

[Brad K]

Reds at Pirates 1968 Rose AB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odTZHMQD9EM