OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post - The Continental League comes to the MLB in 1961

uruguru · 07-14-2023, 09:13 PM

Awesome! I have rebooted my save into what I call a "Draft Only" variant. In this type of save, I restrict myself to acquiring players only through drafts (First-Year and Rule V). This seems to be the only one of the three ways of acquiring players (Draft, Trade and Free Agency) that is not very exploitable.

I scheduled a 90-round free agent draft for the first day of the save and picked free agents until all that remained were half-star players, then I left my scout in charge and auto-completed the draft.

Unfortunately when you to build a 25-man roster from scratch with nothing but draft picks, everything really thins out after about 4 picks. This means that all 8 of the Continental League teams would have to fill out their active rosters via Rule V picks, meaning they would all be mediocre teams. However, they are all playing against each other in their own league, so it works out!

In the "Draft Only" system, I turn off the Waiver system because the AI makes too many unforced errors this way. To compensate for the inability to improve via waiver claims, I schedule a Rule V draft for the first day of every month on the off-season (Nov 1 to Apr 1). Although six drafts sounds like a lot, you're really not improving that much after the first draft, but it is too much fun to comb through the picks and try to find a gem, so I enjoy this setup.

In this setup, I do not trade with teams at all, although other teams are still free to trade around. This means all of my roster building has to occur in the preseason and as a result my active roster is fairly static the entire season. While I personally find this playstyle enjoyable, it's not really conducive to an interesting blog since there are so few GM decisions beyond drafting in the offseason.

By the time April 1st rolled around, 22 of the 25 players on my active roster are Rule V picks and the other Continental League teams are about the same. So we are all going to have fun competing for the Continental League pennant only to get smashed every year in the round-robin World Series until the talent levels eventually stabilize.

07-14-2023, 09:13 PM	#27
uruguru All Star Starter Join Date: May 2022 Posts: 1,288	Awesome! I have rebooted my save into what I call a "Draft Only" variant. In this type of save, I restrict myself to acquiring players only through drafts (First-Year and Rule V). This seems to be the only one of the three ways of acquiring players (Draft, Trade and Free Agency) that is not very exploitable. I scheduled a 90-round free agent draft for the first day of the save and picked free agents until all that remained were half-star players, then I left my scout in charge and auto-completed the draft. Unfortunately when you to build a 25-man roster from scratch with nothing but draft picks, everything really thins out after about 4 picks. This means that all 8 of the Continental League teams would have to fill out their active rosters via Rule V picks, meaning they would all be mediocre teams. However, they are all playing against each other in their own league, so it works out! In the "Draft Only" system, I turn off the Waiver system because the AI makes too many unforced errors this way. To compensate for the inability to improve via waiver claims, I schedule a Rule V draft for the first day of every month on the off-season (Nov 1 to Apr 1). Although six drafts sounds like a lot, you're really not improving that much after the first draft, but it is too much fun to comb through the picks and try to find a gem, so I enjoy this setup. In this setup, I do not trade with teams at all, although other teams are still free to trade around. This means all of my roster building has to occur in the preseason and as a result my active roster is fairly static the entire season. While I personally find this playstyle enjoyable, it's not really conducive to an interesting blog since there are so few GM decisions beyond drafting in the offseason. By the time April 1st rolled around, 22 of the 25 players on my active roster are Rule V picks and the other Continental League teams are about the same. So we are all going to have fun competing for the Continental League pennant only to get smashed every year in the round-robin World Series until the talent levels eventually stabilize. Last edited by uruguru; 07-14-2023 at 09:15 PM.