Where is Jackie Robinson???

[pstrickert]

OK, Kim. My sim produced the same results as your sim. KC to MON to BRO (in 1947). The other sim began in 1941. For whatever reason, in that sim, Robinson never entered the majors in 1947.

[pstrickert]

I went back to 1941 and simmed into 1947. Jackie Robinson was signed by the Dodgers on 10/23/45, as expected. But he was then released on 11/3/45. The next day, he signed with the Birmingham Black Barons. He did not appear on the Brooklyn roster in 1947.

Strange, isn't it?

[pstrickert]

What's odd is that I thought the AI would execute no trades or FA signings if historical transactions was enabled. It could promote from, or demote to, the minors -- but that's it. Am I mistaken?

[M's rule]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

What's odd is that I thought the AI would execute no trades or FA signings if historical transactions was enabled. It could promote from, or demote to, the minors -- but that's it. Am I mistaken?

If you are, then we both are.

It looks like the AI is making stuff up, which is (I assume) a byproduct of using minors/NeL in combination with real transactions. Not recommended, like it says in the game, for this reason among many.

[pstrickert]

Thanks for your help, Kim. I've created a bug report.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Has it ever been said one way or another by one of the game developers if real transactions/real lineups works with historical minors turned on? Seems like something that should be clarified.

As Lukas alludes, the game allows you to use both historical minors and historical transactions, but there is a warning that it's "not recommended." What's unclear (to me) is why it's not recommended. Perhaps Lukas can clarify

At any rate, based upon my experience, you can play with both historical minors and historical transactions and the game will work. It's just a matter of having the appropriate expectations...

- With historical transactions enabled but without historical minor leagues, you can expect OOTP's transactions database to do a great job of ensuring that players will be with the correct major league organization at the correct times.

- With historical transactions enabled and with historical minor leagues enabled, major league players will generally be with their correct organizations at the correct time (this is less of a sure thing with players who barely played in the majors); minor league players will be a crapshoot, especially as your league moves forward through the years, since there are no minor league transactions in the database... Future major leaguers will generally be with the correct organization (not necessarily the correct minor-league team because that's an AI decision), but career minor leaguers will get scattered around very non-historically. (Or, you can keep them from scattering by disabling trading and fooling with other settings to keep player movement to a minimum; that's not historically accurate either, but it's an option).

So my understanding - or best guess - as to why OOTP does not recommend blending historical transactions and historical minors is simply because it's sort of this and sort of that, thus unpredictable, and thus less likely to result in what a typical gamer might expect. But otherwise, assuming an understanding of how it works and therefore what the expectations are, it works.

That all said, I had a similar experience as the original poster, and as pstrickert mentioned in this thread. The details can be found here: https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=333547

So what I think this boils down to is that historical transactions and historical minors - if used together - should work as described above, and they generally do, but there may be an issue or bug that can cause a problem, although it is rare, and the cause of that issue has not been determined. Thus, "not recommended." (I'll add that I've done a lot of playing and testing with both hist txns and hist minors and other than the issue in my link above, I haven't noticed missing players... other than some missing career minor leaguers, but that is an issue that is unrelated to historical transactions. So I would say the issue is indeed rare, but perhaps investigating why Jackie Robinson seems to be missing in these types of leagues would be worthwhile endeavor for the developers from the perspective that not finding this bug now could cause bigger problems later...)

As for historical lineups, I have very little experience using them - with or without historical minors. I would assume that they would work fine for the majors - which is the only place they can be used - and would otherwise have no affect on minors. Not sure, though.

Lukas: Please feel free to correct anything I have wrong, and/or add comments. Thanks!

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

Thanks for your help, Kim. I've created a bug report.

Always appreciated!

That being said, this is just one (of many) reasons why we put it on the setup screen (in all caps for emphasis even!), that it's not recommended to use historical minors and real transactions together.

I suppose we should just stop people from being able to do it entirely, but it's never good to remove functionality imo. At least this way it's possible to experiment with things there still, but the understanding should be that there are going to be parts that won't work right, if you do set things up this way anyway, in spite of the recommendation.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

Always appreciated!

That being said, this is just one (of many) reasons why we put it on the setup screen (in all caps for emphasis even!), that it's not recommended to use historical minors and real transactions together.

I suppose we should just stop people from being able to do it entirely, but it's never good to remove functionality imo. At least this way it's possible to experiment with things there still, but the understanding should be that there are going to be parts that won't work right, if you do set things up this way anyway, in spite of the recommendation.

I would hope that rather than taking away the functionality, or even leaving it as is, the decision would be made to find out why a few of these weird things happen (and fix them). Because, in theory, there is no good reason why these two features cannot co-exist... And I've said it before, but one of the reasons that minor leagues in OOTP are (I suspect) not that widely used is because they are so inflexible: IOW, the gamer MUST accept historical minor league structure in order to have minor league players, but the game (very nearly) CANNOT have historical minor league player movement, and a gamer CANNOT have minor league players in any environment other than a rigid (mostly) historical minor league structure... I fear that because of these reasons, OOTP's minor leagues will eventually stop being supported/included... because of lack of game interest/use... which is in turn is because of the inflexibility & limitations... Which would be a shame given all of the hard work Spritze, BigRod, and surely others put into them...

Perhaps, with some care and attention, OOTP minor league module could be a one-of-a-kind, envy of the sim baseball game world. Here's hoping!

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by thehef

Perhaps, with some care and attention, OOTP minor league module could be a one-of-a-kind, envy of the sim baseball game world. Here's hoping!

It already is. No other game has anything close to the breadth and depth historical minors as included in OOTP! Don't miss seeing the trees for the forest here.

I hope you know I say that not critically, but with a lot of love and appreciation for all your efforts and passion for the historical minors It's truly appreciated.

And I know maybe you get the feeling I'm always the one saying, no or later, to your (great) proposals. But honestly, that's not coming from a lack of appreciation of the historical game. In fact, just speaking personally, this is probably my favorite part of OOTP and I'm always pushing behind the scenes for us to do more here.

The difference is, that I know a little more about just how much is required to add some of these features, along with how much manpower we actually have available to deal with some of this (along with juggling all the other things we want/need to develop or fix up).

Some of what (I get the feeling) seems like it should be a trivial thing to work out, to you or the other folks who love historical play too, is really not trivial at all. Separating the minors and making it less rigid f.e. This would very likely be a difficult and time-consuming thing to code. It's not a matter of just deciding to do it, and taking an hour or two and then it would be done.

To the larger question there, again, there's a reason playing historical minors with real transactions is not recommended. If it had been possible to make historical minors work satisfactorily with real transactions with just a few tweaks, we'd have done so already.

I suppose if someone presents us with a (reasonably) complete minor league transactions db, that could change the picture and make the extra effort needed to tweak things worth it.

But failing that, I do not think we're likely to put much extra effort into making this one specific aspect of things more functional (historical minors with real transactions and lineups), since even if we fixed up some stuff, this would overall still not be properly functional without a much larger minor league transactions/lineups database than is presently available (at least to my knowledge).

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

It already is. No other game has anything close to the breadth and depth historical minors as included in OOTP! Don't miss seeing the trees for the forest here.

I believe you! I think it's actually both, though: No other game comes close to the breadth and depth... but it's also not extensively used by gamers (my impression is based only upon how little historical minors are discussed on the forums, and when they are, it's usually expressing a) confusion due to its complexity, or b) exasperation due to it's limitations).

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

I hope you know I say that not critically, but with a lot of love and appreciation for all your efforts and passion for the historical minors It's truly appreciated.

And I know maybe you get the feeling I'm always the one saying, no or later, to your (great) proposals. But honestly, that's not coming from a lack of appreciation of the historical game. In fact, just speaking personally, this is probably my favorite part of OOTP and I'm always pushing behind the scenes for us to do more here.

Well, that's good to know

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

The difference is, that I know a little more about just how much is required to add some of these features, along with how much manpower we actually have available to deal with some of this (along with juggling all the other things we want/need to develop or fix up).

Some of what (I get the feeling) seems like it should be a trivial thing to work out, to you or the other folks who love historical play too, is really not trivial at all. Separating the minors and making it less rigid f.e. This would very likely be a difficult and time-consuming thing to code. It's not a matter of just deciding to do it, and taking an hour or two and then it would be done.

Yep, I DO get that many of the things I and others suggest are not as easy - programmatically - as they might seem.

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

To the larger question there, again, there's a reason playing historical minors with real transactions is not recommended. If it had been possible to make historical minors work satisfactorily with real transactions with just a few tweaks, we'd have done so already.

I suppose if someone presents us with a (reasonably) complete minor league transactions db, that could change the picture and make the extra effort needed to tweak things worth it.

Dude... you're tempting me. I'm actually giving this serious thought... The question is, would I really want to torture myself with something like this? I just might...

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

But failing that, I do not think we're likely to put much extra effort into making this one specific aspect of things more functional (historical minors with real transactions and lineups), since even if we fixed up some stuff, this would overall still not be properly functional without a much larger minor league transactions/lineups database than is presently available (at least to my knowledge).

I think we're actually talking about two different things here: The lack of a minor league historical transactions database is one thing, but the existence of "the Jackie Robinson issue" (or the issue of career minor leaguers not importing correctly, for that matter) would seem to be another in that it at least on the surface seems the Jackie thing as it relates to "hist txns not recommended w minors" goes a bit like this:

"The Jackie issue is weird & rare, we have no idea why it happens, and we don't have the time to troubleshoot it. Since it only happens when historical transactions are enabled with minors, let's just file it under "... not recommended..."

Don't get me wrong, I understand that approach, at least from a available resources perspective. But without an understanding of why it happens - and why either the combination of hist txns and minors, or the absence of a milb hist txns file, causes the problem - there's no reason to think that the enormous effort that would be involved to produce a milb hist txns file would be worth it. IOW, without that understanding of the issue, it would be nothing more than a crapshoot that the existence of a milb hist txns file would solve the issue.

I guess what I'm suggesting is that, while I understand it's not as simple as making a few tweaks to make hist txns work with hist minors, the specific Jackie issue should be investigated, identified, and fixed, even if that fix doesn't completely fix hist txns + hist minors. And I of course realize that "investigated, identified, and fixed" would require resources, and that it may not happen right away...

I mean, it really boils down to the fact that even with minors enabled, 99+% of historical transactions happen as they should, and other screwy things generally do not happen. So why is Jackie one of the very rare exceptions?

At any rate, Lukas, for a better understanding of the overall issue, could you please expand upon the following?

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

... this is just one (of many) reasons why we put it on the setup screen (in all caps for emphasis even!), that it's not recommended to use historical minors and real transactions together.

Other than the Jackie issue mentioned here, I have not read of any specific reasons for "not recommended." If there's a short - or long(?) - list of those that you could provide, that would be very helpful for those who, like me, seem to end up spending more time testing & tinkering vs actually playing...

[pstrickert]

If I may add my .02 to the discussion...

Here's how I've always understood the inherent problems with using real minor leagues when real historical lineups & transactions are enabled. The AI has freedom to move players back and forth between the minors and majors. So, even though real lineups will be used at the major league level, the AI is free to assemble the roster (apart from each day's starters) with minor league call-ups. So, the user may be surprised to see (especially) a bench player or relief pitcher on the active roster who IRL was never called up to the majors that season. And, conversely, a marginal player may be sent down to the minors, even though IRL the team kept him on the major league roster all season. For some users, this will be an unpleasant surprise. Other users, however, may not have a problem with it.

As for the Jackie Robinson problem...

Here's what happened. The AI released him from Montreal (in the BRO organization). The AI then had another team (in this case a Negro League team) sign him as a free agent. To my knowledge, this is not supposed to happen, even when minor leagues are enabled. I believe it rarely happens; but I do seem to remember it occurring one time in a past version of OOTP. So, I'm hoping it is something easily fixed. I could be wrong, but I've always thought this was the intention: no minor league releases, or FA signings, or trades. (Actually, I don't remember any user reports of the AI making minor league trades under these conditions.)

[thehef]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

If I may add my .02 to the discussion...

Absolutely! What took you so long?

Originally Posted by pstrickert

As for the Jackie Robinson problem...

Here's what happened. The AI released him from Montreal (in the BRO organization). The AI then had another team (in this case a Negro League team) sign him as a free agent. To my knowledge, this is not supposed to happen, even when minor leagues are enabled. I believe it rarely happens; but I do seem to remember it occurring one time in a past version of OOTP. So, I'm hoping it is something easily fixed. I could be wrong, but I've always thought this was the intention: no minor league releases, or FA signings, or trades. (Actually, I don't remember any user reports of the AI making minor league trades under these conditions.)

This pretty much identically matches what I experienced and reported here: https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=333547

Completely setting aside the much larger scope of "making sure historical transactions work seamlessly with historical minors" I think this particular issue is worth investigating as a bug.

[Erosa]

Dude... you're tempting me. I'm actually giving this serious thought... The question is, would I really want to torture myself with something like this? I just might...



Hef- if you ever decide to tackle this- count me in!! I'll help in any way that I can.

[doubles]

Just spitballing here...

Could it be that the color barrier was still in effect in 1945 when Robinson signed with Brooklyn per the historical transactions, meaning that the AI was thinking that Robinson was ineligible, so he was released and signed with a Negro League team?

Again, I have no idea of the timeline of when historical leagues check that box off, but it's not out of the realm of possibility it would only happen in 1947, right?

Therefore, it may be a blip in the space-time continuum where Robinson falls through the crack in the timeline.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by doubles

Just spitballing here...

Could it be that the color barrier was still in effect in 1945 when Robinson signed with Brooklyn per the historical transactions, meaning that the AI was thinking that Robinson was ineligible, so he was released and signed with a Negro League team?

Again, I have no idea of the timeline of when historical leagues check that box off, but it's not out of the realm of possibility it would only happen in 1947, right?

Therefore, it may be a blip in the space-time continuum where Robinson falls through the crack in the timeline.

When I previously encountered this issue, "Larry Doby, Hank Thompson, Willard Brown, Dan Bankhead (also a Dodger), Satchell Paige, Minnie Minoso all looked fine... Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, however, were both signed by the Dodgers on the same date (1/15/46: actual signing date unknown but this matches the date in OOTP's historical txns file) and were both released at the end of their first season (both on 11/13/46)."

So I don't think it would have to do with the color barrier. However, given that it is clearly a bug that has not been identified yet, who knows? I mean, it could be related to the color barrier somehow. Hopefully this bug will get some attention soon

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Erosa

Hef- if you ever decide to tackle this- count me in!! I'll help in any way that I can.

For sure. I will hit you up!