[Tiger Fan]

Prior to the release of OOTP 6 Henry posted a great idea about doing a detailed observation of both a fictional and a historical league. The idea would be that it would work both as a tutorial for newer users and as a workshop for all of us to trade ideas and discuss what we would like to see enhanced in the OOTP series in order to make the game more enjoyable.

I volunteered to set up and lead the discussion on a historical league. Now the nice thing with historical league play is there are so many different ways you can do things. Replay vs Career. Financials on or off. Draft rookies or assign to original teams. Edit players or use them just as they import from the database. Which database to use - Lahman or Ankit's modified. The options go on and on. The bottom line is there is no right way and there is no wrong way. Do what you want and experiment with all the different options.

I have decided to structure the league I will start in the following manner.

Database - Ankit's modified DB
Start Year - 1901
Mode - Career
Financials - Off until approx. 1970
Coaches and Scouts - Off
Draft or Assign - Draft (want to test the ai draft logic.)


Because of the unique player development curves that occur over a career sim I do not expect to generate perfectly accurate stats for every player. Not only is that an unrealistic expectation but it also takes all the fun out of the game as you would have very few surprises. However, what I always demand from my History of Baseball career replays is realistic league totals. If my league totals are in line than chances are my leaderboards will be realistic.

I also want most of my players to perform somewhat close to how they did in real life. Babe Ruth does not have to hit 714 homers but if he stays healthy he better be among the best home run hitters of his era. If Ruth is not the alltime homerun king when he retires than it better be a player like Hack Wilson or Jimmie Foxx...someone I can find believable in that position. Even a player like Joe Hauser would be moderately acceptable because I can accept in this alternate reality that his knees did not give out and he lived up to the promise he showed as a young Philadelphia Athletic. However, if Mark Koenig and Joe Dugan are the cornerstones of Murderers Row in my replay believability is gone.

That is what I look for in a historical sim and I think many of us feel the same. Please post any thoughts you have on this. I am sure when Henry first discussed this with me the idea was to give Markus some constructive criticism on how we can make historical play better. Be critical of things that don't work right as we go along. But make sure your criticism is constructive. Don't say this does not work right and leave it at that. Instead say here is why this does not work right and here is what I would like to see happen.



LEAGUE CREATION
Here are my settings

EDIT - If you are using Ankit's career DB rather than the default Lahman please look a couple of reply's down for his recommended settings. I have re-set up my league using his settings rather than what I listed below.

League Name - HOB (or History of Baseball. Kind of my signature name for a historical replay now)
Start Manager career - No (I will not run a team. I am the commish in this replay)
Import Year - 1901
path to database - directed to my ankit modified DB
Games per team - 140 (will change this when 1904 hits and they move to 154 game schedule)

ADVANCED IMPORT OPTIONS
adjust hitters with less than 300 AB staying with defaults on both the adjust and make bad numbers since I am using Ankit's DB and he removes the guys with just a few games experience.


Talent ratings based on - Remaining career (I always choose this since it makes more season to base ratings on just what a player has yet to accomplish in his career, not on what he already did in the past)

Make generic L/R splits - NO a big no here. I found it artificially makes lefthanded hitters too good in the game since there are many more righthanded pitchers. Players are already rated on what they accomplished against both righty's and lefty's in their career. To make generic splits is almost like giving the lefthanders double credit against righty pitchers and penalizing right handed hitters the same amount.

Now, ideally the game could read stats vs both lefty and righty seperately from a database so we would automatically have the proper splits but I doubt there is a database available that has that information particularily prior to 1950 or so.


I am creating the league tonight. It will be a few days likely before I start to go into detail on the things I always do before embarking on a historical replay.

Hopefully, many of us can contribute ideas that work for them, league setting tips and any challenges we have to face (like expansion) as our leagues progress.

Welcome aboard. I hope this thread is informative and helps enhance OOTP7 (or maybe some OOTP6 patches as we go along).