Are there any improvements to the feeder system?

[ra7c7er]

I like the feeders. Makes the world more fleshed out.

In huge "worlds" feeders can slow things down but even on 4 year old computer my world of 10 leagues and 120 teams runs just fine. Yeah it's a little slower when simming but it's worthing it for the player histories.

Also I've found setting the leagues to not all run at the same times helps


Another thing I've found is that you don't need nearly as many feeders as feeder tutorials posted here say you do. I've found that the tutorials set up the game to after a few years (5-7) give every team nearly all 4-5 star players, including bench players) and hundreds of players in FA that will never see a playing field. What I think people have looked past is the amount of retiring players to incoming players. I don't even use half of what the tutorial says and my world runs just fine. In my world the top league (only on that drafts) has 4-6 4+ star players each and then player levels trickle down to the other leagues. My feeders are 16 team HS and 12 teams college. No league creates players they all take from my feeders.

I find it sad that a Dev doesn't like the feeders because it slows the game down. a 20 team feeder doesn't slow the game down anymore then adding another 20 team league. Just because a few people don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't add a lot realism for other people. I'd love to see feeders get worked on and be able to associate them and all sorts of stuff. One thing I think NEEDS to be implemented is different league drafts coming from the same draft pool. Like the NFL and CFL do now. Set your top league to draft first to get the "best" potential players and then trickle down your leagues draft the leftover players.

[Jase]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

I never use feeders personally either, I don't see the point. It slows the game down, you can only have a limited number of leagues / teams unless you want your computer to explode etc.

To make it close to real life we'd have to simulate thousands of teams / leagues properly, and this would produce data which most PCs simply cannot handle.

So, in a nutshell, feeders have not been worked on in OOTP 16 and I have no plans to spend significant time on that future unless every PC has 16 GB of RAM.

Mine has 32. So can you work on it now?

[Manny42]

I too use feeders and enjoy having them as part of the game. I would enjoy them being worked on a little as allowing them to be in Associations would be great.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

I like the feeders. Makes the world more fleshed out.

In huge "worlds" feeders can slow things down but even on 4 year old computer my world of 10 leagues and 120 teams runs just fine. Yeah it's a little slower when simming but it's worthing it for the player histories.

Also I've found setting the leagues to not all run at the same times helps


Another thing I've found is that you don't need nearly as many feeders as feeder tutorials posted here say you do. I've found that the tutorials set up the game to after a few years (5-7) give every team nearly all 4-5 star players, including bench players) and hundreds of players in FA that will never see a playing field. What I think people have looked past is the amount of retiring players to incoming players. I don't even use half of what the tutorial says and my world runs just fine. In my world the top league (only on that drafts) has 4-6 4+ star players each and then player levels trickle down to the other leagues. My feeders are 16 team HS and 12 teams college. No league creates players they all take from my feeders.

I find it sad that a Dev doesn't like the feeders because it slows the game down. a 20 team feeder doesn't slow the game down anymore then adding another 20 team league. Just because a few people don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't add a lot realism for other people. I'd love to see feeders get worked on and be able to associate them and all sorts of stuff. One thing I think NEEDS to be implemented is different league drafts coming from the same draft pool. Like the NFL and CFL do now. Set your top league to draft first to get the "best" potential players and then trickle down your leagues draft the leftover players.

That's an idea! I do want to share the draft with my various league but I want the more prestigious league to go first. Or allow a player to be drafted in multiple leagues and have him sign where he wants to

[ra7c7er]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

That's an idea! I do want to share the draft with my various league but I want the more prestigious league to go first. Or allow a player to be drafted in multiple leagues and have him sign where he wants to

It would also help with the "feeders take up to much resources" because instead of making a bunch of smaller feeders for each league you could have one or two larger ones. Which will take up less resources in you don't have all the excess information flying around. Not to mention will mean less garbage FA players which again will help eliminate resource hogging.


I'd like to know how large of leagues Markus is talking about that require 16 GB Ram because of feeders. I highly doubt the majority of players of OOTP make leagues larger than 200 total teams feeders included.

[Matt Arnold]

Well the standard game has something like 6 minor league levels of 30ish teams each, so already you're talking about 200 teams. And in a league that size, i think you end up needing something like 100 more feeder teams to get enough guys for the draft (~35 rounds or more). They can definitely heavily slow the game down.

Hopefully we can make enough other improvements to speed them up, so that it won't slow things down by having them in, as I do believe they help enrich the immersion of the game. But I do also like being able to sit down and sim more than a week without cursing how slow my computer is.

[TomVeal]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Well the standard game has something like 6 minor league levels of 30ish teams each, so already you're talking about 200 teams. And in a league that size, i think you end up needing something like 100 more feeder teams to get enough guys for the draft (~35 rounds or more). They can definitely heavily slow the game down.

Hopefully we can make enough other improvements to speed them up, so that it won't slow things down by having them in, as I do believe they help enrich the immersion of the game. But I do also like being able to sit down and sim more than a week without cursing how slow my computer is.

Are you sure that you aren't overestimating the impact of feeders on game speed? I usually run a standard game with the default set of feeders. Even on a very ordinary laptop (now a couple of years old), it runs without any especially annoying delay. The last day of a month might take 30 seconds. Other days are quicker.

All those leagues do hog hard drive space, but that's scarcely an issue for anybody these days.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by TomVeal

Are you sure that you aren't overestimating the impact of feeders on game speed? I usually run a standard game with the default set of feeders. Even on a very ordinary laptop (now a couple of years old), it runs without any especially annoying delay. The last day of a month might take 30 seconds. Other days are quicker.



All those leagues do hog hard drive space, but that's scarcely an issue for anybody these days.

30 seconds isn't an annoying delay?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

One thing I think NEEDS to be implemented is different league drafts coming from the same draft pool. Like the NFL and CFL do now.

I have been making that point for several years. There should only be one universe-wide draft pool from which ALL leagues draw. What limits a real-life league in terms of which players it can draft are its own rules. The reason MLB doesn't allow drafting of players from Japan or Korea is because of its own rules.

[jpeters1734]

Matt, are you able to comment on my second post? The one in response to markus' comment?

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

Matt, are you able to comment on my second post? The one in response to markus' comment?

Sorry, I haven't had a chance to look at our game-generated players, so I'm not positive how much detail we actually give them, and if there's anything else that we can show you that would help. At some point in the future we'll want to do some changes to the draft to make it more fun to do, so likely at that point we can look to improving the game-generated players.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

30 seconds isn't an annoying delay?

Load"*",8,1

When you come from that world no 30 seconds is not annoying

[ra7c7er]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Well the standard game has something like 6 minor league levels of 30ish teams each, so already you're talking about 200 teams. And in a league that size, i think you end up needing something like 100 more feeder teams to get enough guys for the draft (~35 rounds or more). They can definitely heavily slow the game down.

Hopefully we can make enough other improvements to speed them up, so that it won't slow things down by having them in, as I do believe they help enrich the immersion of the game. But I do also like being able to sit down and sim more than a week without cursing how slow my computer is.

You don't actually need that many feeder teams though. If you just want to go with the standard MLB setup you really only NEED about 50 feeders if you set the feeders to 35 players on each team. Maybe even less. I've done it in a standard MLB setup and simmed 40 years I think (it was 35 or 40 years) and never ran into anything other then there were a few less top end players.

You're rarely losing as many players as you are drafting and when you include the draft international FA and the like you are adding tons of players all the time. All that the standard "you need 100 teams" does is gives you a larger amount of 4+ star players. IMO to many. Which is why I did test with fewer feeders and found they worked fine.

Like i said in another post my fantasy world has over 100 teams and I only have 24 feeder teams. Each feeder sends roughly 8 players to the draft and FA every year. So 24 teams x 8 players each is 192 players every year entering the league that's more than enough. to cover retiring players.

The standard MLB setup doesn't need 35 rounds of draft. Honestly it should be scaled way back. 10-15 rounds I've found to work just fine. 35 is way way to many. It isn't the real MLB players don't play around in the minors for a few years and quit. In the game the players stick around till you release them and even then they go to FA not leave the game.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

Originally Posted by ra7c7er

It isn't the real MLB players don't play around in the minors for a few years and quit. In the game the players stick around till you release them and even then they go to FA not leave the game.

Yes, but in the game most of those players don't amount to anything, so they might as well be the players that play for a few years and then quit (they're just more stubborn than their real life counterparts). The old standby of 5 rounds per level of minors and the related recommendation for the number of feeder teams to yield that draft pool size is designed to replace the talent level, not the number of players retiring from the majors. I'm not sure what the balance is, and I haven't done any long-term tests like you, but I haven't seen a lot of posts claiming massive talent inflation either.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

But I do also like being able to sit down and sim more than a week without cursing how slow my computer is.

Try playing FM with extra league mods and all leagues loaded

[Caporegime]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Try playing FM with extra league mods and all leagues loaded

I think if I tried that with the old PC I'm currently using it would react like the ark of the covenant did at the end of Raiders of the Ark and melt my face.

[ra7c7er]

Originally Posted by Cinnamon J. Scudworth

Yes, but in the game most of those players don't amount to anything, so they might as well be the players that play for a few years and then quit (they're just more stubborn than their real life counterparts). The old standby of 5 rounds per level of minors and the related recommendation for the number of feeder teams to yield that draft pool size is designed to replace the talent level, not the number of players retiring from the majors. I'm not sure what the balance is, and I haven't done any long-term tests like you, but I haven't seen a lot of posts claiming massive talent inflation either.

I've seen lots of players using the tutorial as a feeder base post up about inflated players over time. The usual thing people tell them is to adjust the modifiers. Pretty much anyone who's done long term tests sees star player inflation. I'd venture to guess most people don't care so long as it's spread out and not just all on one team.

[TomVeal]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

30 seconds isn't an annoying delay?

No - and certainly not when it occurs one simulated day out of 30 or 31. People who are too impatient for that can't possibly enjoy baseball.

[Trebro]

I'm wondering if the feeder slowness issue is due to the number of teams that get created for one league.

It's not extensive, but I ended up deciding to go with 3 major leagues for my world (totaling 48 teams) because when I put all 48 together in one league, my sim time was VERY slow.

Has anyone tried making the feeders a *series* of smaller leagues, but the same number as recommended? I wonder if that would be faster?

[ra7c7er]

Originally Posted by Cinnamon J. Scudworth

Yes, but in the game most of those players don't amount to anything, so they might as well be the players that play for a few years and then quit (they're just more stubborn than their real life counterparts). The old standby of 5 rounds per level of minors and the related recommendation for the number of feeder teams to yield that draft pool size is designed to replace the talent level, not the number of players retiring from the majors. I'm not sure what the balance is, and I haven't done any long-term tests like you, but I haven't seen a lot of posts claiming massive talent inflation either.

The problem is the draft pool talent levels aren't based on retiring players it's based on modifiers and percentages. You're nearly always bringing more good to great players then you are losing good to great players.