A simple financial option?

[AZTarHeel]

I am trying to create a fictional universe with 64 teams in various market sizes, from huge to tiny.

I want to use financials but my head spins with all the details. I frankly don't care about ticket prices and media contracts and teams turning a profit.

Is there a simple way to set each team's budget for player/coach payroll, scouting and development? I don't care how the sausage is made. I just want my big market teams to have big budgets every year and my tiny market teams to try and see what they can accomplish with much smaller pocket books.

Thanks! I'll hang up and listen... (I don't mind doing some of this work manually if I just know what and how to edit)

[Rain King]

The easiest way to do this would be to have an Inaugural Fantasy Draft and choose the option to set each team's budget manually.

That budget will be used to set their market size (which will then be used to set the initial value for all of those other financial settings). By default they will all have an average budget so you can use that default number as a base to set the market sizes you want for each team.

[AZTarHeel]

Originally Posted by Rain King

The easiest way to do this would be to have an Inaugural Fantasy Draft and choose the option to set each team's budget manually.

That budget will be used to set their market size (which will then be used to set the initial value for all of those other financial settings). By default they will all have an average budget so you can use that default number as a base to set the market sizes you want for each team.

How do I set each team's budget manually? Under the "edit finances" tab? Thanks!

[Rain King]

Originally Posted by AZTarHeel

How do I set each team's budget manually? Under the "edit finances" tab? Thanks!

No, you do that during the Inaugural Draft process. You will have the option to set each teams budget during the draft. The game will then use that number (relative to the initial default number) to set their market size.

[AZTarHeel]

Originally Posted by Rain King

No, you do that during the Inaugural Draft process. You will have the option to set each teams budget during the draft. The game will then use that number (relative to the initial default number) to set their market size.

Thanks for the heads up!! I never would have discovered this on my own.

Tinkering with it now. May have some follow-up questions.

[AZTarHeel]

One question I have: All of the ballparks are about the same size, no matter the market size (20-30K capacity).

What happens if I mess with these numbers, giving the small teams stadiums of 5-7K and the large teams stadiums of 25-30K (and everything in between for middle market teams).

Will that mess things up long term since small teams won't be able to generate nearly as much revenue with ticket sales?

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by AZTarHeel

One question I have: All of the ballparks are about the same size, no matter the market size (20-30K capacity).

What happens if I mess with these numbers, giving the small teams stadiums of 5-7K and the large teams stadiums of 25-30K (and everything in between for middle market teams).

Will that mess things up long term since small teams won't be able to generate nearly as much revenue with ticket sales?

Do you think those small ballpark teams will generate so much fan interest they'll be able to charge 3x or 4x as much for tickets as the big ballpark teams? Sounds like you're the pioneer here. Let us know.

[Rain King]

Originally Posted by AZTarHeel

One question I have: All of the ballparks are about the same size, no matter the market size (20-30K capacity).

What happens if I mess with these numbers, giving the small teams stadiums of 5-7K and the large teams stadiums of 25-30K (and everything in between for middle market teams).

Will that mess things up long term since small teams won't be able to generate nearly as much revenue with ticket sales?

Smaller stadiums are definitely a disadvantage. It really just depends on what you are going for...as well as how your other settings are set up. If you have a draft, teams are going to have a decent flow of talent coming in and will likely be somewhat competitive even if they don't have the money to sign star players in free agency.

[AZTarHeel]

This is my hope in setting all this up:

I'm fascinated with the minor league baseball history of my home state, North Carolina.

I want to bring that to life in a 64-team baseball universe where every franchise has some basis in NC history. My ideal situation would be to create five different leagues operating simultaneously:

* An eight-team, statewide league for the largest markets (Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, etc.). These franchises would have the biggest budgets and stadiums, have the top players, etc.
* Four other regional leagues with teams from medium, small and even tiny markets (recreating the old Tobacco State League and the mill-town minor leagues from the 1930s, 40s, 50s).

I don't want it to be majors and minors. I want each league to stand on its own, crown their own champions, be a "major" league - though with different reputations and different calibers of players due to market size and financial differences.

At the end of the season -- or maybe right in the middle -- I want to run a 64-team tournament. SINGLE ELIMINATION until the semis, then best of three. The Old North State Championship, if you will. Everyone has a chance, even the Snow Hill "Billies" or Leaksville-Draper-Spray "Triplets," who play in front of 700 fans on a good night (whereas Charlotte and Raleigh may draw 20,000-25,000, while Rocky Mount and Hickory draw 10,000-15,000).

I want all the teams to draw from the same pool of players if possible. I like the idea of superstars maybe getting drafted by the tiny market squads and cutting their teeth there for 4-5 years before free agency calls them to the bigger markets... Maybe aging superstars take minimum salaries to finish out their careers with the little teams as well.

My thought was to start right after WWII -- 1945 or so.

I know this will take awhile to get set up. I want to do the financials as best I can and not have teams with wonky numbers screwing everything up. In some ways I don't want parity. I want dynasties across each of the markets.

I would love to have a simple system where I can just input for each franchise what their payroll numbers will be each year (or decade) and not have to fool with ticket prices and media deals or math! Charlotte = $1.5 million per season ... Rocky Mount: $800K ... Snow Hill $350K etc.

I will post results as I test this out ... so far, my first seven-year test run with a 16-team setup produced some seriously inflated budgets for the smaller market teams.

But as far as W-L records, it seemed about right. The larger market squads fared best -- except for one magical season when the North Wilkesboro Racers upset the favorites to win the end-of-season tournament...

Once I get things set up in an acceptable way (if I ever do), I want to create a GM/coach, start with one of the smallest franchises (Snow Hill? the Elkin Blanketeers? Mount Airy Graniteers?) and see what kind of damage we can do across the state, hunting championships and glory...

[AZTarHeel]

Did a test with a five-league setup last night, just four teams in each league. Was able to create an association that enabled one draft for all - that was cool!

One thing I forgot to do was set media contracts to reflect different market sizes for each league. So my small market teams had huge budgets for the first 10 years or so and were the dominant teams. Oops.

I fixed that and reset budgets and media to reflect the size of the market I want for each franchise. But it seems AI sometimes comes in and overrides everything. I simmed several more years and market sizes went back up along with budgets for some of the teams... I'll have to tinker some more but I am getting closer...

[Rain King]

The game is going to try to balance the Markets sizes in each league around 5 or 6, so if everybody starts lower than that it is probably going to start increasing them.

The League financials are meant to be the "average" for that league and 5/6 is the "average" market size line.

[AZTarHeel]

Originally Posted by Rain King

The game is going to try to balance the Markets sizes in each league around 5 or 6, so if everybody starts lower than that it is probably going to start increasing them.

The League financials are meant to be the "average" for that league and 5/6 is the "average" market size line.

I think I understand better. Market size isn't just about population of the franchise. It's more market share or prestige within a league?

So, even in a league where every team is from a small town, you might have a few teams with an 8-9 market size and others with 3-4 and others 5-6?

[Rain King]

Originally Posted by AZTarHeel

I think I understand better. Market size isn't just about population of the franchise. It's more market share or prestige within a league?

So, even in a league where every team is from a small town, you might have a few teams with an 8-9 market size and others with 3-4 and others 5-6?

Correct. Market Size is really about the team's financial level compared to the "average" team in that specific league.

So, if League A has all small market teams and League B has all large market teams, individual teams from each league might have the same Market Size. However, the League Financials for League B should be much higher than League A to represent their true financial differences.


For anyone who runs a Promotion-Relegation setup, this is the primary hurdle when teams move between leagues. When I have done this, I've created a spreadsheet that can evaluate the impact of the teams that have changed leagues and then make adjustments to the League Financials, the Market Sizes of the teams that change leagues and in some cases Market Size adjustments to the teams that remain (because of the shift in the League Average financials).

[AZTarHeel]

Originally Posted by Rain King

However, the League Financials for League B should be much higher than League A to represent their true financial differences.

What is the best way to make sure this happens?

I assume setting the individual team budgets at the beginning and then setting up media contracts and the like that match what I want each league's financials to be?

Who knew I would be spending more time on this than on my own finances, lol

[Rain King]

Originally Posted by AZTarHeel

What is the best way to make sure this happens?

I assume setting the individual team budgets at the beginning and then setting up media contracts and the like that match what I want each league's financials to be?

Who knew I would be spending more time on this than on my own finances, lol

No, you need to set your League Finances before your Inaugural Draft. Your League Finances determine what the "Average" budget will be and you can then set team budgets based off of that.

On the League Settings --> Financials page there are a lot of numbers. However, there is an easy way to adjust them all up/down. In the top-left of the page there is a "Mass-adjust current financial values" option where you can adjust everything by a percentage.

[AZTarHeel]

Did some more test runs tonight ... plugged in all 64 teams across multiple leagues ... edited stadium sizes and budgets (before the initial draft) to reflect size of each franchise... I still see payrolls out of whack with some of the smaller teams (too high)... not sure if I neglected something somewhere...

I am wondering if instituting a salary cap for each league (except for the one with the largest sized teams) would help keep things under control...

[Rain King]

Would likely need to see the actual details of your financials for each league to help further at this point with understanding why the smaller team payrolls are getting too large.

I don't have any experience with Salary Caps in OOTP.

[AZTarHeel]

It actually wasn't as bad as I thought upon further review ... and money doesn't guarantee championships ... the teams that I gave the largest initial budgets to (Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham) didn't fare so well in terms of championships ...

I have multiple leagues of varying budgets. And the annoying thing now is when I first set everything up, I didn't uncheck the "expand league automatically" option on a few of the leagues. Didn't want that. And I was inconsistent with checking/not checking the luxury tax and revenue sharing options (I wanted them off for all leagues but forgot on a couple)...

So many details! It makes the game fun. And taxing when you are trying to set up something so big. I try to save every step of the way just in case I have to go back

[AZTarHeel]

Did another test run last night, further fine-tuning the finances, stadium sizes, etc.

It was more in line with what I wanted - the larger market teams being more dominant. They won most but not all of the 64-team end-of-season tournaments...

I used 1940 finances and chose 0-1% inflation rather than importing updated financial numbers each season ... My budgets ranged from $1.25 million (Charlotte, Raleigh, etc.) to $200-$250K for the smallest franchises ...

I found it interesting that the payrolls weren't all that different between the high budget and low budget teams. The bigger teams just choose to take more profit. Charlotte's payroll by the 1960s was $560K ...

A little more work to do before I am ready to launch into actually trying to manage a team in this universe. Thanks for all the input!

[Khartolrey]

Originally Posted by Rain King

No, you do that during the Inaugural Draft process. You will have the option to set each teams budget during the draft. The game will then use that number (relative to the initial default number) to set their market size.

Thanks, I've been looking for this!