Do you all use feeder leagues?
 

Do you guys use feeder leagues? I have done a new league and I have chosen to do feeders for the first time (only using college, no high school players). I like the concept of feeders, but it's a bit wonky in my game. In the first round of drafts, almost the entire first round will be starting pitchers so I can poach the best position players in later round which ruins the immersion a bit.

Just wondering if you guys use feeders and whats the pros/cons?

Never used. Looking for suggestions

I use feeders in my solo league and I really like it.

I like the fact that you can track how draft prospects have done in high school or college and (if you track a lot of detail and game stats for all levels) can even go game-by-game if you want to. It really helps to give the kids some 'meat' in terms of background info.

As far as how many feeders to have, I used THIS GUIDE to figure out how many feeder teams to have.

Too many and you get thousands of useless free agents and the talent level in your main league is way messed up. Too few feeders and you simply run out of players to use and your league talent level goes WAY down real fast.

From the guide above, the two magic formulas go like this :

Formula for suggested draft rounds.
Rounds = 5 * levels of minors

Example : my solo league has 3 levels of minors, so I have 5x3 = 15 rounds

Number of feeder teams needed
= (number of teams in league * number of draft rounds)/6

Example : my solo league has 24 teams and 15 draft rounds

so, (24 x 15) divided by 6 = 60 feeder teams.
Currently I have 62 feeder teams, so it works out pretty well.



If you decide to add feeders, hope it helps! :D I feel it adds a whole other element of immersion to the game!

I used Stealofhome's Fictional Feeder League Quickstart (I love his set-up)... then I edited it to my liking. Starts in 1900. Or 1901. He links it in the thread and gives a great overview of all of his settings. I use it as a base for all my random leagues and have been running it for Strangeverse since I started with it - and, let me tell you, I've had way more fun with it than I should.

The feeder league guide in this thread shared by rleb is what I have used for years. It's great. I have heard some say that it is a bit outdated, but I never had an issue using it as a base to build from. However, it can be overwhelming. There is an in game option that will take care of everything you are looking for. I have not tested this heavily so you may want to run a dummy league to test.