Historical players in non-historical league
 

I am trying to use historical players from the Spritze HS database starting in 1871, but I want my league setup to be fictional - meaning I don't want to use the standard un-editable 8 team league that is default for 1871. Then I want to import the new players each year as they make their professional debuts.

How do I do this? I'm butting my head against the wall trying to do this, am I missing something?

Thanks for any help.

Since you am starting in 1871 you can safely remove the odb files from the stats folder. Then make the teams.csv file into whatever you wish. And away you go.

OK, thanks, that should help.

What if I didn't want to start in 1871? Would that be possible?

Not easily.

ok i sent a pm to scruf to figure out what he was meaning with this league...a league of all historical players but his own setup and format

you have 2 ways to go. start as a historical league, stasrt as a fictional league

second issue is if you want to follow strictly the "league systems" ie before 1900 there are not that many pitchers around, so if you try to have 4-5 man staffs and a lot of teams there will be no pitchers. about the only db that would support that are spritzie's hs db's (which i highly recommend for the possability). if you want to play with the mbl only db that comes with the game you will have to make this decision.
if you want more teams, and-or large pitching staffs at least for a number of years you are going to have to add fictional players to the game- at least pitchers to make up for it. there is a problem with that i will address at the bottom

as for league set up. if it is historical. start you 1871 game. there will be an inagural draft. you can add or delete teams on the game setups screens before the draft. if you need players, you can always on the draft pool or free agent pages create more fictional players in the spots you would need- certainly pitchers, and perhaps some hitters as well

the other way you can do this is to start a fictional league in 1870. with all the teams, ect you want. but then- gosh where is it, rules page maybe, there is a box somewhere asking you if you want the game to import historical rookies, if you check that box, and then send the database to the folder you want (you can choose any db) then in 1871 the only draft players will be from that db (ie if mlb, you will get all the players in 1871, then the rookies in 72, 73 ect) if you choose the spritze hs, the players will all come in at age 18
part of this depends on number of teams and the number of players needed over time to stock those teams. this gets easier as you move into the 1900's

the catch is using fictional players. due to how the game creates fictional players, that group will always be better than the regular historical players. thus you either have to weaken them coming in (on the player creation modifiers) or manually. the second problem is if you want the historical players on recalc, but the fictional players on development- both can't happen

i had hoped ootp would have had a box on each player's form to check devlopment yes or no. that way you could have fictional players checked, and historical players not ect

anyway that is my suggestions for you. hope something in this long post helps
cheers

Thanks for the help. I don't plan on needing more pitchers per team than were realistic, I don't want to run a 5 man rotation in 1873 or anything.

I don't think I want fictional players, but I wouldn't mind some in the lower leagues - I plan to set up unaffiliated minor leagues. I know there is the option to keep them from ever reaching the majors, but I wouldn't necessarily have an issue with some making the majors if they were replacement level types.

With the Spritze DB everyone comes in at 18? I thought they'd come in when they first reached the pros (i.e. signed or drafted year), not necessarily 18 if they went to college. Is there a different DB I want for that?

As far as development, I was planning to have them develop the OOTP way, not to recalc each year. I was going to have potential ratings based on real life peak seasons. Based on this, how would you recommend I have the defense and pitcher stamina calced?

Thanks a bunch for your help, really appreciate it.

of course spritze is the main guy for this...
but short answer. he has a few different databases. one set of db's are for a player's entry year to the majors
another db is called a hsdb, come in out of hs at 18
those db's can also include negro league, japanese and minor league players- that is why given you wanted maybe a larger league 24 teams or something, you can do that with the bigger spritze hs db's

having on develop might give you some strange things, as long as are ok with babe ruth only hitting 40 homeruns, and a guy who played 1 season hitting 700
if you still want to do development but not have that rating change too much you can drop the talent randomness changer in the game options. the setting is 100 but i never use that. even in a fictional league i have it at 20 or lower (ie meaing potential ratings change 1/5 the time than 100)- for something like this if yuo don't want those numbers to change too much, only for a few select players- try 10 or even 1. something you have to test a few times to see what works best for you

pitcher stamina and defense should probably be where they are set at for each year, if you will play through that way and not trying to "massage" the overall stats for your league

I start lots of different leagues and using a fictional world with real world players is not as difficult as it seems.

You do have a couple of choices, you can start as historical and not use the automatic expansion, doing what you want when you want; you can start a fictional league and using the league history/rules section, you can just mark the box that bring in the historical players.

The latter can be achieved in two ways, you can set up your ficitional league and at the same time, set up a historical league and when you start the game, simply delete the historical league and the players all become free agents. Or you can start your ficitional league, import the teams from the 1871 (or whatever year you want to start in) on the edit league setup and delete them, agani making the players all free agents. These two options can give you more work, depending on how you want the league to be, in both cases it will be mixed fictional and real players or you can add step in to get rid of the ficitional players.

Easiest way to do that, before you delete the teams from the real league, simply go to the league menu, select all the players from the fictional league and delete them. Then delete the historical league and the players are the only ones available to use.

You do have to make sure that once you start the league, you assign the correct location for the database you want to use in the league set up section or you will be left with fictional players again.

If this is not clear, which it may not be, I can try to clear it up.

Hope this helps somewhat.

Thanks a lot elfsutton, that definitely helps.

What is the correct location? Or do you mean I need to point the league to the correct database?

You need to point the game to the database master.csv location. Usually it is in the ootp folders in your documents section of your harddrive. You need to go to that location, find the database folder, the one you got from the game or the one you downloaded, open that folder, and then on the master.csv file, right click to get the properities section to come up. There is a link there that you need to highlight and copy.

Once back in the game, using the keyboard paste function, you need to go to the historical tab or the setup tab and you will see a blank spot where it says to import historical players. Put your cursor there and then control C (or is it control V) and the link to the database will be there for you.

I hope that is clear enough

I start lots of different leagues and using a fictional world with real world players is not as difficult as it seems.

You do have a couple of choices, you can start as historical and not use the automatic expansion, doing what you want when you want...

Maybe a dumb question, but why is it when I set up an historical league, move teams around and change cities, the AI always switches everything back to the original setup in the off-season?

Unclick League evolution and you should be fine.

I was able to delete the fictional players and import the real players after I set up my world. Basically I manually opened up master.csv from the Spritze DB, sorted by entry year, and created a text file with the 253 player IDs, in the format of aaronha01,1871 and the players imported.

Since I'm only using 15 man rosters, I only need 120 major league players.

I have a 16 team AAA and a 36 team AA also. Both are independent minor leagues.

How can I move the 133 players that aren't drafted in the inaugural MLB draft over to the AAA draft pool? Is that possible?

I never have league evolution on.

It might be different on 14, I am still on 13. i did a test trying to keep Montreal vs them moving to Washington. Unclicking the League Evolution button fixed this. Also for historical OOTP pre 1901 setup. when I unclicked the league evolution button I was able to control when and what teams came in vs having the White Sox appear in 1882 vs 1901. So it must be a 14 thing, a setup error or possibly but unlikely a bug.

Thanks. I'm also using ootp13, and yeah, I seem to have an issue whether to edit the league structure first or edit the names and affiliations first. I will watch out for that league evolution button on setup, though I had the same troubles with ootp11.

Canaveral: I may know what's happening - at least I've had similar happen to me.

Though it seems to give you the option, do not bother changing names on the league structure screen. It won't take.

I would first make any league structure changes you need to during an offseason. If you do this and the new format is ahistorical, then generate a schedule.

After you're done, THEN go to the names page and change names/abbreviations etc. I'm not sure if it's still required or not, but for OOTP I got in the habit of hitting enter after every single change.

For example, if I wanted to move a team to Hartford, I'd input 'Hartford' <enter><tab>'Nickname'<enter><tab>'HAR'<enter>