Project Isekai no Yakyu - Alternate universe league in Japan

[tehsuigi]

Cheers, Sandklown and uknownick!

I'm still making headway on the 1975 Quickstart, actually playing through each season and making adjustments to ballparks, financials, and team designs as I go. In the graphic below, black cells denote a Nihon-Koku Series win.

Some interesting storylines coming out, like Osaka supplanting Tokyo as baseball capital of Japan, and the Kansai Cubs replicating their IRL counterparts' eternal haplessness (they missed the '66 NL pennant on percentage points!). No pennants yet for the Cubs, Gladiators, or Meteors.

The only team change in the 1960s is a regrettable one - the Tokyo Express renaming to the Tokyo Power. The colour scheme is San Diego Chargers-esque, the logo with the lightning bolt is from a Japanese freight locomotive introduced the same year, and the uniforms are intentionally garish. Good thing they turn into the Jaguars within a decade!


The A Set complete ZIP is updated with the Power.

Three more jersey sets coming in the 1970s, then one more in the 1990s, and we're done!

[39_Ringo]

Oh, right, I'm supposed to do things here.

I do have my history done, I'm just not ready to present who won when just yet. However, I do have something else...

Team Flags!

All 19 concepts will have their own original flags, with some inspired by their real-life inspirations. Others are original designs.

Osaka Stars:



Chiba Pirates:



Tokyo Jaguars:



Nagoya Dolphins:



Tokyo Kinshi-Gun:



Hiroshima Phoenix:



These have no real purpose, except for a tertiary "logo" that one can use if they want. They are typically used in the draft.

[tehsuigi]

At Last, The 1975 Show!

The Zenkoku League just introduced the designated hitter rule, two years after the first playoff structure ever seen in Japan. Shunji Shimizu of the Phoenix shows no signs of slowing down, reliably slugging 30+ HR even as his team's dynasty fades. The move to Sendai still didn't produce a pennant for the Meteors, so now what to do?


The 1975 Quickstart for A Set is ready for you.
Also all historical uniforms are present in the A Set complete folder on drive. I may loop back to add 50s/70s looking designs for the Kinshi, Cubs, and Dolphins eventually, but not right now when there's other stuff to pull together.

EDIT: oh, and we've got historical quickstarts for B Set now too! Check out the top post!

[tehsuigi]

While I'm exporting the fixed 1975 Quickstart, please enjoy the 1978-1992 Yokohama Whalers uniforms, including a "green day" alternate. I leaned allll the way into the Hartford references on this one, although I at least adjusted the logo to have less of an H in the negative space.

[39_Ringo]

Introducing the Kobe Thunder, the team with two histories, based on where they are in the Sets.




In Set A, the Thunder were initially the Hyogo Gladiators, but the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 destroyed their old stadium. As a result, ownership gave up and sold them to an investment group that moved the team to Kobe proper. A fan vote for the name was held, the winner was Thunder, and, realizing they just alienated part of their own fan base, decided to keep the name as a sign of good will. New ownership underestimated the costs of running such an organization and they would eventually merge with the Osaka Bulls in 2004.

In set B, the Thunder were always in Kobe, but came up under a different name; the Flyers. After 2 decades of failure to 'fly high' as the name suggested, ownership decided to hold a name the team contest. The winner came from a high school girl from Okayama, citing the harsh summer weather experienced during the peak of baseball season. She was clearly ahead of her time as the Thunder remain an intimidating presence to this very day.

Font is Vampire Wars by Darrell Flood, and the colors are taken from Kobe's city flag. The logo is taken from a generic logo set in the forums (the 6000+ logo one) with modified colors to match Kobe's city colors.

[tehsuigi]

I swear, the 2000 QS will be ready today or tomorrow. In the meantime, the Yokohama Whalers just renamed to the Astrals, and boy howdy these guys are peak 90s-00s design.


Space Age is the font, that starburst from the 10s design is present, and because it's the 90s, black is the primary colour and it's a vest design. Purple alternate because of course.


A Set updated with the above, plus the world template file to save you a download.

[tehsuigi]

Celebrate the Future, Hand in Hand!

The 2000 quickstarts are here. I only missed one year's worth of [LEAGUE REDACTED} actual stats to tune the output, in 1999.


Lots of changes to team locations and uniform designs, and now the posting system is enabled. MLB will happily take your best and brightest players, if you let them.

A and B sets are now linked in the top post, as well as pre-23 format A Set uniforms!

The history photos here are from A Set.

[uknownick]

Wow the whole history now.

That was missing in the default South African league..

Forgot to ask but are the ballparks (and ballpark factors) the same as old?

Looking at this history sheet, two franchises need new GMs to take them to the promised land.

[tehsuigi]

Originally Posted by uknownick

Wow the whole history now.

That was missing in the default South African league..

Forgot to ask but are the ballparks (and ballpark factors) the same as old?

Looking at this history sheet, two franchises need new GMs to take them to the promised land.

Not the whole history - there will be a further QS or two. Ballparks are based on SilvaM and Flying_Canuck's work, and park factors are tuned using OOTP's weather and re-calculations.

[39_Ringo]

As for the B Set...

[tehsuigi]

A Distortion in Reality

I wasn't planning on doing a QS between 2000 and 2023, but 39_Ringo suggested this, so I had to.

Because the Bulls had won 7 Nihon-Koku Series championships (even if they were all in the 1950s), and the Thunder hadn't, I made the decision to flip which team gets deactivated to better match the IRL results in [LEAGUE REDACTED]. Thus, the Bulls franchise survives, the Gladiators/Thunder are toast, and the Woodpeckers are starting up to fill their place.

This quickstart takes place on the day of a free agent draft that mirrors the IRL 2005 dispersal draft - the Bulls get 25 picks first, then the Woodpeckers get 20, then they alternate another 20.

Have fun!

EDIT: the draft order in the QS didn't do what I wanted it to, so please try the attached instead.
EDIT 2: also forgot to include the playoff setup! Ladder style, 2-seed hosts 3-seed for best of three, then best of five with the top seed, all games at the upper seed, before the NKS.

P.S. The Dolphins finally won a title in 2002!

[kq76]

First, thank you very much for this. It's quite an impressive effort!

A few questions and a suggestion:

1) You have a lot of links available, but I don't know which I should use. I think I want to use the 1950s quickstart, but why might a person want to use the first two, the ones with templates and why do some of the others list 2 years?

2) I read through the thread and see that you played it out with some teams changing. Does this happen automatically when using a quickstart or do we need to do that manually? Either way is fine, it just didn't occur to me that OOTP had this capability with fictional quickstarts.

3) 24 team leagues are probably the most popular setup. Instead of having the user have to choose set A or B and miss out on some teams, why not make the extra teams all expansion teams that come in at some point? I thought maybe it was tradition, but I see *** didn't always only have 12. I like what both of you and 39_Ringo have done, I don't really want to have to choose only one.

4) Before I decided I should just play yours, I was envisioning making a league with one division, or even one whole league, with Tokyo area teams only and the other divisions with non Tokyo area teams. If you were to go even further away from ***'s setup, would you maybe do this or does it not make sense somehow? I don't know much about Japan.

Again, thank you very much for all of this. It's unfortunate what lead to it, but I think it's great that this is the result.

[tehsuigi]

1) The ones listed with two years are quickstarts with league history. For example, I started the save in 1950, simmed ahead to 1975, and saved that as a quickstart so there's 25 years of history and established players already present. The top one is just the uniforms and logos, with a world_template included so people can import the modern JPBO into their existing saves, and the one below it is a start in 2022 without any history. I'll restructure the top post to clarify what's in each link; I appreciate the request for clarity!

2. Nope, although that would be pretty cool if it was possible like with the MLB. I included an "InY Timeline.txt" file in the root of each quickstart to cover what changes to make and when.

3. True, [LEAGUE REDACTED] had more than 12 teams at one point, but 39_Ringo and I decided to keep the league structure the same to appeal to fans of that league.

4. There was talk at the time of the [IRL equivalent of Bulls and Thunder] merger that two other teams would merge and then the [LEAGUE REDACTED] would run with a 10-team 1-league setup, so that's grounded in prior thinking. And part of the reason that interleague took as long to incorporate as it did was the extra travel schedule, so going Tokyo-area teams (Jaguars, Golden Kites, Astrals, Panthers, Pirates, plus one more to keep it balanced) vs everyone else would be intriguing.

[uknownick]

Once finished downloading these teams and identities, you are free to play with them however you want.

I already used Matsuyama and Kobe as two expansion teams in my original *** saves.

I think Kansai and Kanto can have two separate sub leagues. Historically, two regions are fighting for power, with Kyoto being the center of everything.

Kanto - Tokyo, Saitama, Yokohama, Nagoya, Chiba

Kansai - Osaka, Kobe, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Mastuyama (technically Kansai or west of Kyoto)

The problem are Sendai and Sapporo being too far away from everyone else.

[tehsuigi]

Tying It All Off

The 1950 saves have been brought all the way forward to the start of 2022. Unlike the existing Modern 2022 saves, these have history. LOADS of it. I may post some eventually.
I did make sure the financials and stats & AI tabs align with the Modern 2022 QS, which in turn match the [LEAGUE REDACTED] before it was yanked. Lone difference is the League Totals, this QS uses the actual 2022 [LEAGUE REDACTED] season.
Only thing it lacks are the alternate jerseys because I forgot to include them. Maybe in a future release? They're in the uniform set anyway.

These are now in the top post. And now I can let this thing rest for a while...although there are some expansion team identities I need to upgrade to 23.

I've attached the A Set championship history for the 2000-current year span and the overall A and B Set team histories.

[39_Ringo]

Originally Posted by tehsuigi

Tying It All Off

The 1950 saves have been brought all the way forward to the start of 2022. Unlike the existing Modern 2022 saves, these have history. LOADS of it. I may post some eventually.
I did make sure the financials and stats & AI tabs align with the Modern 2022 QS, which in turn match the [LEAGUE REDACTED] before it was yanked. Lone difference is the League Totals, this QS uses the actual 2022 [LEAGUE REDACTED] season.
Only thing it lacks are the alternate jerseys because I forgot to include them. Maybe in a future release? They're in the uniform set anyway.

These are now in the top post. And now I can let this thing rest for a while...although there are some expansion team identities I need to upgrade to 23.

I've attached the A Set championship history for the 2000-current year span and the overall A and B Set team histories.

I have some historicals I still need to do...

[39_Ringo]

Originally Posted by kq76

First, thank you very much for this. It's quite an impressive effort!

A few questions and a suggestion:

1) You have a lot of links available, but I don't know which I should use. I think I want to use the 1950s quickstart, but why might a person want to use the first two, the ones with templates and why do some of the others list 2 years?

2) I read through the thread and see that you played it out with some teams changing. Does this happen automatically when using a quickstart or do we need to do that manually? Either way is fine, it just didn't occur to me that OOTP had this capability with fictional quickstarts.

3) 24 team leagues are probably the most popular setup. Instead of having the user have to choose set A or B and miss out on some teams, why not make the extra teams all expansion teams that come in at some point? I thought maybe it was tradition, but I see *** didn't always only have 12. I like what both of you and 39_Ringo have done, I don't really want to have to choose only one.

4) Before I decided I should just play yours, I was envisioning making a league with one division, or even one whole league, with Tokyo area teams only and the other divisions with non Tokyo area teams. If you were to go even further away from ***'s setup, would you maybe do this or does it not make sense somehow? I don't know much about Japan.

Again, thank you very much for all of this. It's unfortunate what lead to it, but I think it's great that this is the result.

Considering how many historical identities we have it is totally feasible that one could run 24 different teams in this league, if we ignored how many teams Tokyo would have as a result (Kinshi, Jaguars, Express, Power, Blue Sox, and Bruisers, and that's being harsh-you could also have the Meteors in Tokyo too). I do like the idea, though. However it's like shoving 24 teams into the California League, I just don't think it'd work out too well logistically, especially with how many extra stadiums we'd have to use as a result.

Personally, if you were crazy enough to do a 24 team league, I'd keep the two league structure (this time with 12 teams each) with 2 divisions of 6 teams each:

Higashi Nihon Division: (Nihon League, East Division)
Sendai Hawks
Sendai Woodpeckers
Sapporo Bruisers
Sapporo Cranes
Kawasaki Meteors
Chiba Pirates

Nishi Nihon Division: (Nihon League, West Division)
Tokyo Kinshi
Tokyo Jaguars
Tokyo Power
Nagoya Dolphins
Saitama Panthers
Yokohama Astrals

Higashi Zenkoku Division: (Zenkoku League, East Division)
Kansai Cubs
Osaka Stars
Kobe Thunder
Kyoto Aces
Osaka Bulls
Hyogo Gladiators

Nishi Zenkoku Division: (Zenkoku League, West Division)
Shimonoseki Typhoons (Original concept for this idea, will get to)
Hiroshima Phoenix
Fukuoka Marines (would need to make historical jerseys for them anyway)
Fukuoka Clippers (same as Marines)
Fukuoka Vipers
Matsuyama Arrows

[uknownick]

I think 16 to 18 teams are well enough for Japan. 24 might be too many.

You probably just need to get a team in each of Niigata, Okinawa, Shinkoku, and Shizuoka.

If you want, two more go to Okayama and Kumamoto so both Fukuoka and Hiroshima get some local rivalries.

There are already lots of teams in Tokyo.

Team identities can stay, just need to move them to new cities.

[uknownick]

Hey Suigi, you have signing international amateur free agents on in JPBL?

I am messing around with this league setup and trying to start a new save. Looking at the settings for JPBL now.

Also, minor leagues are missing in the world template version.

[uknownick]

Originally Posted by tehsuigi

Tying It All Off

The 1950 saves have been brought all the way forward to the start of 2022. Unlike the existing Modern 2022 saves, these have history. LOADS of it. I may post some eventually.
I did make sure the financials and stats & AI tabs align with the Modern 2022 QS, which in turn match the [LEAGUE REDACTED] before it was yanked. Lone difference is the League Totals, this QS uses the actual 2022 [LEAGUE REDACTED] season.
Only thing it lacks are the alternate jerseys because I forgot to include them. Maybe in a future release? They're in the uniform set anyway.

These are now in the top post. And now I can let this thing rest for a while...although there are some expansion team identities I need to upgrade to 23.

I've attached the A Set championship history for the 2000-current year span and the overall A and B Set team histories.

I am gonna start a new save with the JPBO world template. Might merge some of the A and B sets teams, and use some as expansion franchises.

Will keep you posted if I run into any issues.