Suspending Historical Fictional League Due To World War?
 

I am considering running a fictional league from scratch starting in the 1880s. Because of World Wars I and II, the league is going to have to suspend operations completely during those years.

How can I effectively suspend the league for those years, and have the players return being that much older? For example, if I suspend the league for the six seasons of 1940-1945, when we resume in 1946, the guys in their early 20s need to return in their late 20s; mid 20s are early 30s; late 20s are mid 30s; and almost everyone over 33 need to be retired. Plus, I need a fresh crop of early 20s guys coming in from my college feeder league, who will keep playing on a reduced schedule.

IOW, I want to skip right from 1939 to 1946, but all the players have to age those years without playing, with the attendant consequences.

Has anyone either attempted to do something like this, or have a good idea on how to go about this?

Others will be able to answer this more effectively and i am just throwing an idea that someone else mentioned before. I have not tried this but plan on trying this soon. Delete the entire league schedule for those years. No games will be played. Players will age but contracts and such will still happen.

OK, I'll give it a whirl and report back.

You might want to shut off trades during that time period too. Probably the best thing to do would be to just select the 'set all teams to NOT allow ai roster changes' button during that whole time period.

I had not thought of that. thanx.

So I finally tried this, and it does work. For the league I am setting up, here are the steps I took:

Suspending play for war:

• Turn off AI ability to change rosters (League Setup home)
• Turn off trades for all subleagues (Rules)
• Uncheck “Schedule Spring Training” (Options)
• Disable Financial System (Financials)
• Turn off other news generating things: suspensions, drug suspensions, injuries, scouting, coaching (Global Setup)
• Turn off Almanac (Almanac Options)
• Set schedule in League Setup to zero games, for every EVERY LEAGUE AND SUBLEAGUE (Options)
  • On dry run, I screwed up by doing only one sub-league and I missed the other three
• Go to preseason.
• Clear schedule, create fictional schedule (should be zero), make sure you do this for EVERY LEAGUE AND SUBLEAGUE (Edit League Schedule)
  • Again, on dry run, I screwed up by doing only one sub-league and I missed the other three

Resuming after war:

• Turn ON AI ability to change rosters (League Setup home)
• Turn ON trades for all subleagues (Rules)
• Uncheck “Schedule Spring Training” (Options)
• Enable Financial System
• Turn ON news generating things: suspensions, drug suspensions, injuries, scouting, coaching (Global Setup)
• Turn ON Almanac (Almanac Options)
• Set schedule in League Setup to play your number of games, for every EVERY LEAGUE AND SUBLEAGUE (Options)
• Go to preseason.
• Clear schedule, create fictional schedule (should have your number of game shown), make sure you do this for EVERY LEAGUE AND SUBLEAGUE (Edit League Schedule)

And the best part is, the players do age, and the intervening years are not shown on their records, although those years are shown on the team record as all zeros (unless you forgot to turn off financials).

Thanx Chuck. in my league I am going to suspend the ML but keep one leagues AAA & AA for 5 seasons.

I just saw this thread and wanted to chime in. I actually had a similar experience in a fictional league when I decided to have a World War. I randomly selected a number of players each year and individually gave them lengthy injuries lasting 1 or 2 years to simulate a "tour." To prevent any sort of long-term effects, I set the injury type to "none."

Anyways, that's my experience. Maybe this will help anyone out there in the future.