Quote:
Originally Posted by koohead
I had made a suggestion in the 'Suggestions for OOTP21' forum regarding MLB's plans to create a Draft League where the top draft eligible players would play in a showcase league. Rain King made the comment that Feeders essentially are showcase leagues.
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...74#post4719574
I can see that, but it made me think about why I don't use Feeders. For whatever reason, I like seeing players coming from little known colleges, and seeing the random high schools. If I used Feeders, I would get draft pools of players coming from the same schools over and over. I know it has zero bearing on the statistical aspect of the game, but it still bothers me. And trying to create a feeder system with hundreds of 4 and 2 year colleges plus thousands of high schools just doesn't seem worth it.
So the thought I have at the moment is if there is a way to not only combine the use of feeders and computer created draft pools, but to control the talent from that? Say for the feeders the talent level would be x, while the generated pool would have a considerable drop in overall talent level? Would exaggerating PCMs for MLB and the Feeder league achieve this?? Has anyone done this and found a good ratio of Feeder vs Created? |
I was testing the capabilities of the current system in OOTP as it currently stands. This next part is a copy of the conversation I had about this topic with another user last night:
"So check this out. I had a feeder test I had not yet erased from last night. In that league I had the draft already set for December. I simmed to the end of the college season. I created an independent league of 6 teams that fed into the main league. I then went to my draft pool for that season and manually placed players on the teams. It was a short 60 game schedule as a test. I also turned off creation of free agents in that league so when it ended I didn't get new fictional players. Season went off just fine and when it came to draft time the guys in that league were still selected. Players had college or high school stats from that year's feeder and another line for how they did in the elite draft league. I mention this because I like how the stats didn't bleed together. I sim to the draft signing deadline and and all the players that were signed were on the major league rosters. Pretty cool that it worked like a charm. Here are the 2 downsides of this though. I have to manually put the players from the draft class on the elite teams. That can be tedious. I started by being very specific to balance the clubs but in the end I said screw it, because I didn't know if it would even work. So it IS a time investment to fill the league. Second issue that I haven't figured out yet is that some of the guys in the elite league were not drafted. So they became free agents in that independent league which you obviously do not want. The problem is the game would not let me manually move these guys to the main leagues free agent pool. I don't know why? Two ways I could go with this. I can just retire the guys that are not drafted but that seems mean as I would like them to have a chance at a career still. The other way was to fool the system by manually putting the guys on a major league roster and then releasing them from that roster. When I do that it will put the guys in the right free agent pool. Also a bit time consuming to do. In all, I thought it was pretty cool that you could actually do a elite draft league in OOTP right now".
This was all done with a fictional set up with established hs and college feeders. So the league I created lumped the draft eligible high school and college kids together. However, going off of Rain King's thoughts on feeders in the thread you referenced, I'm not sure if the work is worth the pay off? Feeders as they are may be enough for me personally. I feel this way because to use them functionally, you can't have a ton of them in your universe. So they are acting as a showcase already. The other issue is that the elite league did not seem to change where the ai drafted players either. In a perfect world you would like to have this elite league factor into the decision making of the AI. If it doesn't, then it is a lot of work for not much payoff in my opinion. I will say though, that there could be further testing into various settings that could change things. I just ran out of steam yesterday testing this time and again. Also in closing, I didn't test this system in a universe that did not have feeders established because I am a fan of feeders, warts and all. I would imagine you could still pull it off with just a game created draft pool but I am not 100% on that. I also make zero claims that the process I used is the most efficient way of pulling this off. I just thought it was cool that you could do it, but I probably wouldn't implement it in my serious solo leagues.