Hist minor disappointment
 

I just did a test of historical minors. Title says it all.
What bothers me is to play with all the players you must have the real life structure to the game. I can't just have 1 or 2 minors in the 1940's, I have to have all 50. If I turn off the minors, the players don't show.

I don't know why it can't run like the spritze database where the players are there and you can play with or without the standard format.
Too bAd as it seems the players rate well (except negro league players who take too much of an ab/ip hit).

Anyway it's not what I hoped for. So back to the adjusted spritze and keep playing from it.
Wish this db would change those options for the future.

I agree. Let us customize our historical games to our liking.

I think historical play has become way too constricted over the last two versions of OOTP. I used to love to create my own fictional historical leagues. Zero out all stats and erase all history. For instance, I could create a league in 1921 and all players would begin with no stats. Maybe I want the league to start with 12 teams instead of 16. Problem is, you can't do things like this anymore due to a bug fix. I'm glad the bug was fixed, but fixing that bug took away a very fun way of playing the game. Right now, as an example, say you created a league in 1918. When you create your league, Johnny Evers isn't going to exist, because he missed 1918-1921. But, when you get to 1922, Johnny is going to appear.....thing is, he's going to appear with all his statual glory. So, if you zeroed out stats and started fresh, your 1922 career leader board is going to be owned by Johnny Evers. Ole Johnny is going to have all those stats from 1902 through 1917, while the rest of your league only has the 4 seasons played.

you CAN just delete (each year) those minors you don't want to use. The players fall into Free Agency and you can have the actual minors you want. A bit of work each year, i agree.

Here's another thing, how cool would it be to be able to use the minor league player database on it's own, without the MLB (just the minor league players) to create our own baseball worlds? 1921 take the Texas League players and the Pacific Coast players, toss them in a draft pool and use them for a small 12 team league of your own.

Won't those minor league you delete just show up back again the next year.

We need an option to use the players in the minor league db without having "automatic minors" switched on. I fully support that. :thumbup1:

yes, so you'll need to delete each year if your desire is to trim the minors leagues to a desired size.

you, Sir, are absolutely correct!!!
the only way i've found around this (and it's a time guzzler) is each year take all the minors player IDs and put them in a notepad, add the year behind the player ID, and mass import then to a historical game WITHOUT real minors included, merely my own minors.
Yes, it's a lot of work, but then i don''t have teams vanishing from affiliation and i have the structure i want.

Combining the ideas above, how cool would it be to be able to simply go into the MiLBTeams.csv file and get rid of some of those lower-level minor-leagues that clutter up your game in 30's, 40's & 50's? And then have all the players that would normally import to those teams instead import as free agents? Alas...

... that appears to be trend with OOTP, at least as it applies to historicals...

The good news, though, is that while OOTP's historical minors were pretty much unplayable in version 17, in version 18 - while perhaps not as flexible as we'd like them - they are very playable, and have come a long way, IMO, considering it's only the second year of inclusion in the game. And that's from the perspective of not much emphasis on adding to historical minors' features & flexibility; rather, the focus for v18 seemed to be on simply making it work (which was probably a good plan given the unplayability of v17)... The hope is that in v19 some time will be spent on some of the ideas & wishes expressed in this thread and elsewhere.

beautiful dreamer! ... but ain't we all to some degree?

Oddly I for one don't find the 30's and 40's cluttered. One mans trash is another mans treasure I guess. Perhaps that is why supermodels get married so often. No other reason comes to mind.

But what if I wanted to expand MLB in 1920 to 20 teams. The setup won't allow that. I don't just mean control of minor, but MLB also to determine how many teams I have, structure, minors, and still have all the players entering the draft from the minors database.

None of these ideas have anything to do with real historical play. They are about a completely new semi-historical mode. Fictional structure with real players and/or partial historical structure with real players. Unless I am mistaken.

As such I am willing to adjust the database as necessary to achieve this goal but those of you who wish to play this way will need to help. I read vague complaints here without any actual helpful reporting of trials and results. MitchKenn points out that real players with fictional structures can be achieved by doing lots of hand work. Lets start there and start treating this as a bug report rather than a wine report. For instance can you create a fictional structure and fill it with real players? If not why not? Where exactly does doing this process fall apart? Lets create a useful plan by examining how this can be accomplished now and what actions the programmers can take to up the ease of use for the gamers like you.

For instance: a button to auto-delete all real historical leagues and teams and dump all the players into the free agent pool might be useful? I don't know if this matters if you are starting with a fictional structure anyway. Perhaps an auto-import real players choice would be better? Can this be done already? If not why not. Where does this process break down? This is what I am challenging interested parties with. Lets see where the processes already in place can be improved as well as defining anything that impedes this process.

This is a good post.

Right now I am running a test history to see how the db operates as I try various things. I can report what I find in the test process.

Here is the biggest limitation I have found thus far:

Start a historical league in 1871 with historical minors switched on. Delete the standard teams that are created and create your own league structure (i.e., re-create the National Association).

If you have the amateur draft on, then the rookies for 1872 will be in the draft pool.

If you have the amateur draft switched off (import as free agents), the you will get no (zero) new players for 1872.

A draft is required for 19th century leagues.
Not until 1901 can you switch off the draft.
This is by design.

During some patches importing as free agents has worked. Most not.
I think it is unintentional when it works.

I do not understand why 19th century historical play has to be fictional in structure. All of the databases use real stats and teams except leagues.csv and teams.csv. If real versions of those could be used the rest would fall into line. Alas and alack this is not to be.

I've been doing 19th century sims since v6.5. I don't recall being forced into a draft before this. The code is obviously in place to import into a draft pool. Why not just import into the free agent pool if the draft is not ticked? It is puzzling why this was removed.

I don't believe it is removed. In my current historical sim I do not have a draft and real players are importing fine as free agents. Note though I am using the standard game created major league structure, not deleting all teams and creating my own National Associations or other major league

And I think that is the key. I skipped v17, but I suspect this all changed once you could sim from 1871 with automatic evolution. Things break down when you start changing the default pseudo historical structure, which is a dramatic departure from v6.5 onwards.

Aye, it would be nice if the real structure were the default instead of the fictional one included with the game.