I'd like to thank BradC for the interview as I really enjoy talking about my leagues. I'll try to explain a few things that people have asked me over the last few weeks.
Quickstart
At the moment I have not released a Quickstart as I need to clear the history as the file size is ridiculous (in it's compressed state it's over 800mb). Furthermore there are a few differences that will put people off:
- You currently have to move all the teams around manually on the 1st of January, which isn't super time-consuming, but it does become problematic when you get to the Regional Leagues as teams are placed in divisions according to their location, which does mean a bit of shuffling around and isn't the most fun part of the game.
- As you near Opening Day some teams (in particular Divisions 2 and 3) struggle to sign all the players they need and so I am forced to help fill them out using the 'create fictional players' button. This has been somewhat solved since the introduction of International Free Agents, but teams get stuck in tit-for-tat contract negotiations with players until one team pulls out for whatever reason. This can cause teams to not have a full active roster at the start of the season. This is the only reason I don't schedule Spring Training.
- One of the biggest criticisms I have for OOTP is the whole "first past the post" system is flawed. If two or more teams finish the season with the best winning record, the team alphabetically last will be declared champions, rather than forcing an extra game. I can solve this by scheduling the extra game before the season is finished (on the second last day, usually) and then deleting the extra game if it's not needed. Also, due to the whole Promotion/Relegation thingy, I am also forced to schedule extra games if team records are tied when deciding who gets Promoted or Relegated.
I personally use winning record between the teams to decide who has home field advantage, followed by current streak, Last 10, and then how they finished the previous year.
- As I have only ever played commissioner, I'm not really sure how the AI will hold up against a human opponent. For instance, the AI obviously isn't programmed to be aware of relegation where as the human would be, so I think it'll make the game too easy.
Doing a Promotion/Relegation setup
This is actually considerably easier than you probably think. Following the basic rules I mention above about moving teams and what have you, the best advice is to create every division as a Major League and then reduce all finances by between a third or half of the division above. For instance, The Super League
finances compared to Division One's
finances and Division Two's
finances.
Unlike more conventional league setups you do have to keep an eye on the finances as you don't want teams jumping through divisions too quickly (which has become a bit of a problem for me once I added the sixth tier) but at the same time you don't want newly-promoted teams falling straight back down with too much regularity.
Of course, if you are going to use International Free Agents then you need to adjust the budget accordingly like above.
It's important not to set a media contract number (leave it at $0) otherwise relegated teams may still have a number of years to run on their previous contract and will therefore have a much bigger budget than teams in the division below.
I've never tried setting up a Pro/Rel league using ML, AAA, AA levels, but I think the gulf between the levels would be too great to prove useful.
I wouldn't go any lower than six tiers of divisions as the players attributes just aren't varied enough and teams in the lower three tiers tend to be very equally matched compared to the top three tiers which have a much wider arc attribute-wise.
Team logos
I have had a few requests from people asking if I'm going to release the logos so others can use them, and at the moment the answer is no. Due to the money I invested in them, I don't really want people "pinching" them. I don't have a problem so much with people in the OOTP community using them, but I don't want people using them for their local teams or anything and once they're out in the interweb I can never get them back. If I released them as part of the quickstart I'd probably get justafan to do his magic in turning them into circular logos so they can only be used in OOTP.
Once again, thanks to everyone, and if anyone has any questions don't hesitate to ask.