Is anyone planning on the structure of their new (fictional) baseball world yet?
 

If so, do you have anything on paper yet? I am toying with the idea of getting my leagues, teams, minors+afilliations, and logos together now so I can have something to pass the time. I am trying to maybe think of a way to chart it out and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

Also, it would be good to hear what plans people have

Thanks

I've been planning 2 new leagues in different universes for a few months now! :) I don't want to say too much yet, but one is in a future fictional universe and the other is in a present alternate universe. Both have background stories.

I have some possible structures already in mind (final depends on what we're able to do in the end) with some team names and their color schemes already picked out. I've already picked most of the settings we see in the existing version, but of course there will be more to choose from in the newer version.

The only downer so far are the schedules. I'm very picky with what I want. I was going to go ahead and do them up, but without a fast way of getting exactly what I want and with the format possibly changing I guess I'll just wait on that.

With the newest version soon on its way I just can't find the interest to play with the old game. So I plan for the next. :)

My only suggestions would be to keep your plans flexible and don't do too much with things that could very well change.

I'd like to start, but really have no idea what the game is going to be like and what I'll be able to do. Maybe more late February/early March (if more info is out).

My baseball universe's structure has been designed since the mid-80s. It's just been waiting for a game that lets me fully implement it. 20 years of patience have nearly paid off. :happy:

One of my big questions is What if we only want to have one level of minors in a given league. How does this affect player development? Does every league have to have an amateur draft? If so, where does the pool of players come from? Highs School? College? Random Created players? Other leagues?

Same here. The FBL is an old and venerable league that seems to stand a decent chance of being realized.

Like tim has said, it's a little too early to give exact details, because we don't know precisely what the game is capable of doing and where it's more limited. But I do have a general structure worked out.

Basically, I will be having things as they are, but will be creating a fictional independent minor league (starting as either High A or AA), with a view to it expanding and improving, moving into AAA territory, then 'open' classification before becoming a major league. The background for this will be as all-inclusive as it possibly can be, with as many indepedent minors and foreign leagues as I can realistically research. I'm not too bothered about getting things spot-on, to be honest, as long as players out of the Great British league don't start hitting .300 in the Majors.

The League will be aimed at purist fans, and will attempt to hark back to the 'golden era'. Tough steroid policies (doubt this is in the game, but I will make a point of mentioning it in the Dynasty thread), a salary cap, player contracts which can be bought and sold, an even pitcher-hitter balance (or, if anything, pitcher dominance), no DH, no Interleague and perhaps some other rule changes - some I might add in just to test out new game features.

I will run it in God Mode, if possible, and if not I'll take control of one team but not really interfere too much.

I'm always coming out with ideas but it's tough choosing which one to go with. I will be giving some logos a bash soon and work on my backstories for my first two ideas, both fictional.

The possiblities though could be endless. Also, IF things like a Champions League or other multi-league tournies happen in future versions then I think my head will explode!

After playing 8 seasons, it sounds like our league will get a whole new shot of depth. (We'll probably do the 9th season on 6.5 before switching to the new game, though.)

Our fictional league is loosely based on Tolkien, so it's pretty easy to come up with ideas for the countries/cities database. However, we have never restricted it to that genre entirely. So, we have everything from RPG characters to characters from "Summerland" (Michael Chabon) to Babylon 5 names. Theoretically, we could have players come through portals from any fantasy world to play in ours. Yikes! :)

We probably won't dump the current league minor league structure of AAA, AA, A with one affiliate for each Major League team right away. However, I can see there being leagues of different races (all-elf, all-orc, all-dwarf, all-hobbit) and realms (other worlds).

The best thing about this game has always been its ability to project realistic baseball play into any kind of scenario. From the sound of things, it's gonna get a whole lot crazier.

I'm planning out a fictional universe based on the current format. I'm going to add 2 expansion franchises to the current major league teams. Then I redesigned the minor leagues, swaping teams and leagues, as well as taking away independant leagues but having some independant teams in the minor leagues. I also changed low-A ball to B and added a C level between B and the ss leagues. I made a spreadsheat on excell to plan out all the teams and minor leagues, with each league on a seperate sheet. At the end I made a sheet that listed each ML team and each of their minor league affiliate. It took me several days to do because I had to research all the stadiums, attandance figures, resort teams and leagues, and assign affiliations, but this way when the game comes out all I have to do is type in city names, and edit each minor leagues roster structure and age limits (which I did on another sheet)

I have two fictional leagues planned (as much as I can with the info at hand): One more or less following real life with a majority of the majors and minors, a few foreign leagues, and so on. I don't know when I'll start it, 1871 or 1901. The other is a 96 team Michigan League with 10 divisions, playing a shorter season. There'll be six wild-cards so there be a nice 16 team post season tournament.

I plan to keep my Metro Leagues in tact with the addition of one or two independent leagues were contracts can be bought by the major clubs if that's possible. It all depends on what the final release allows.

My dream baseball world
 

I have created a database of current Major and Minor League Teams (now I am working on affiliations). With a new baby - the process is slow - 10 minutes here and there.

I plan on including the 7 independent leagues and I have researched all of the Metro Areas and "Micro" Areas and looking at creating/adding a fictional independent league in the MI/WI/MN area.

Not sure yet, will probably wait and see what the new game looks like then go from there. I'll probably do some humongous North American league with every city and town having their own team.

(Ok that might be a bit too much!)

I've wanted to know what baseball would look like if it had followed the British soccer model, i.e. freakin' teams everywhere.

The Football League in the UK contains 20 teams in its top league (the FA Premier League); 24 in the next-highest league; 24 each in Level 3, 4 and 5; 44 in Level 6; 66 in Level 7; 120 in Level 8; 200 or so in Level 9...and so on, until there are thousands and thousands of soccer teams in a country of 60 million people. All British citizens are required by law to play for at least one soccer team; many play for several at once. (OK, not really, but...)

The USA is four, nearly five times larger than the UK, so I devised what I call The Baseball League:

The top four levels would be all-professional leagues:
*LEVEL 1: MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. 96 teams, 8 leagues of 12 teams each.
*LEVEL 2: AAA, 96 teams.
*LEVEL 3: AA, 96 teams.
*LEVEL 4: A, 96 teams.

The next two levels would be semi-pro:
*LEVEL 5: B, 96 teams.
*LEVEL 6: C, 192 teams (two for each MLB affiliate).

The next three levels would be amateur:
*LEVEL 7: R-league, 288 teams (three for each MLB affiliate).
*LEVEL 8: X-league, 384 teams (four).
*LEVEL 9: Y-league, 768 teams (eight).

A player's career trajectory might go something like this: he starts out as an Y (Youth)-Leaguer at the age of 12, then moves up to the X-League at 16 or so. After high school graduation, he gets shipped to A-ball, then makes his way up the chain to the majors. When his skills start to decline, he might play AAA again or become a playing scout or manager in the B or C leagues, trying to find an undiscovered phenom among the guys who weren't picked to play pro ball. If he's not interested in scouting or coaching, he can play in the R (Recreation) Leagues until well into his forties or even longer.

Not only, but I've actually created this whole mess: assigning teams to over 2,000 North American cities using a list of current pro teams and a census database. Basically, I assigned them by size of city:

MLB: 180,000 people or more
AAA: 107,000 - 218,000
AA: 81,000 - 131,000
A: 67,000 - 99,000

B and C: 45,000 - 81,000

R, X and Y: 20,000 - 50,000

There's some overlap because all cities that currently have real professional teams were included in the system ("the baseball pyramid") as high as they reasonably could expect to be. (I even used a hideously complicated formula to figure it all out...don't ask.)

Good grief.

I thought I knew how I wanted my leagues. Then I read Tiger Fan's blog.

That's an understatement! Looks fantastic, hope you let people use it if you ever complete it.

Lol. Lots of options now, huh.

I'm thinking I'm going to have a league for each of the 50 states. Maybe the top 10 cities in population in each state get a major league team. I'm not sure of the exact way I'll setup the minor leagues yet, but it will more than likely be based on suburbs of the big cities. Maybe areas of states that are devoid of big cities, such as western Kansas, will have their own independent league. Obviously some leagues (Texas, California) will have better players than others (Alaska). I'll also probably only allow foreign players to come to coastal leagues. The playoffs will probably be a 64 team tourny.. 50 league winners and 14 wildcards.

Gosh, the possibilities really are endless.

I was thinking of making a MLB meets the NHL universe. It'll be all the NHL teams and their affiliates as well as top foreign leagues. Only difference is they'll be playing baseball instead of hockey! It'll be interesting to see if I can pull it off. Might be too much research!