Disable Automatic creation of Free Agents?
 

I had a fictional player, historical MLB league going. I reached the first amateur draft: No amateurs.

I ran the league ahead a few years, making sure that "Automatically import real historical rookies" was off and "Enable Amateur Draft" was on. No amateurs.

It was not until I discovered "Disable Automatic creation of Free Agents" that I found the trouble. This box is checked by default and only appears when amateur draft is disabled!

When I cleared "Disable Automatic creation of Free Agents" and enabled amateur draft again, that's when I began getting amateurs in my drafts again.

This appears to be a bug.

I looked at 17. This setting "Disable Automatic creation of Free Agents" is OFF by default when revealed by the Amateur Draft being disabled.

In 18, it is ON by default and it does not appear until the Amateur Draft is disabled. Presumably, it is operational from the start.

This does not seem to be optimal design if "Disable Automatic creation of Free Agents" is operating in the background, unnoticed, and impeding the creation of amateurs for the Amateur Draft.

Okay, one last note: This issue occurs only when creating an historical league. The setting is off by default in a fictional league.

I think in an historical league, most of the time, people are using real rookies and historical transactions so they would not encounter this issue. I did because I am not using real players and wanted fictional amateurs in my draft. This "Disable Automatic creation of Free Agents" setting prevented me from getting them.

It should be off by default in all situations, like I believe it was in 17. This is especially true because it is hidden until the amateur draft is disabled.

Thanks for the warning. I'll make a mental note and hope it doesn't get lost.

Thanks, aj. It seems in 18, some issues and confusion are being caused by various default settings that have been flipped from what worked previously.

I play random debut historicals so I'm gonna have to pay close attention to this one. I do not want automatic creation of free agents on...At least I don't think I do. I'm so confused. :confused:

I hope you don't think I have any power whatsoever to get this changed. I'm just a regular average Joe customer like you. Hopefully somebody with the proper credentials will see this thread and get things the way they should be as soon as possible.

While it's very likely Matt or Markus will notice the thread tomorrow, they'll just as likely be preparing to issue the first patch and may not respond. Given that, just to cover all the bases, please link to this thread in the bug forum with a general comment of its issues, if you haven't already.

I believe Mr. Bru has already placed it there, at least the first three posts or so, which are his. ;)

Good. Just checking. Can't keep up with all of it anymore. :@@: Thanks.

I get what you mean man. :@@:

So to make a clear: If I started a historical league with real players but want rookies to be added directly to the FA pool but not come in via draft, I should disable amateur draft and enable automatic creation of FAs?

You want the opposite situation than me. In your case, you want to check the box for Automatically import real historical rookies and you want to disable the Amateur Draft. When you do that, by default, the game already has Automatic creation of Free Agents disabled. I believe that is your goal in that you don't want any fictional players created.

But I am saying that this box should either NOT be hidden or it should be left as default OFF. This is the way it has been up until now. Once people in your situation elect not to have an amateur draft, then they should see the option to not create any free agents at all, and click it. Otherwise the option is hidden to fictional/historical players like me.

Good call. That should follow what has been set in 17.

Thinking this over, it's not really a bug per se but maybe something that needs to be tidied up. For those few people who play the way that I do (fictional players / historical MLB), this could be a significant problem.

Notice how I said in my OP that I "had" such a league (past tense)? I was thinking of throwing it out because I had missed an entire season of amateur drafting. All because I was completely unaware of this setting which is hidden and now on by default.

Now, though, I have thought better of it and I have decided to keep the league, either by creating a special class of free agents or maybe just foregoing the draft for a season, which is tough in the first year of a league.

Mental constructs to rationalize:

• Short but intense war in which everybody was drafted . . . by the military!
• College player strike that was cruelly crushed by MLB team owners and their goon squads.
• League temporarily ran out of money, with current players volunteering their services for a year to tide things over (yeah, right).
• Deranged commissioner, now deposed, decided to ban the entrance of any free agents into the league, relying instead on current player procreation (yeah, that's it, that's the one. :rolleyes:)

The ability to creatively rationalize and reconcile one's inner milieu with the unpredictable hand of fate. Yet another talent to add to your growing list. :thumbup1:

Along with his awesome imitation of the Clint Eastwood "Get off my lawn" meme all over this forum. :p :laugh: ;)

Thanks. That and a sense of humor can get one past the bitter vicissitudes of OOTPB at times. :closedeyes:
Um, if that's complimentary, I'll own it, whatever it is. Yeah, that's me! If it's not, then I have no idea what you are talking about. :p

Embrace your curmudgeonly side Bru! ;)

Thank you! I have a historical league using Spritze's database, but fictionals kept popping up every year, getting their muddy feet all over my nice clean universe -- I had to manually delete them every year! (I could tell they were fictionals because I rigged my last names file to have an apostrophe after every name...so, if someone named John Smith' shows up, I know he's not a "real" player.)