Feeder Leagues or No Feeder Leagues?

[FoosballWizard]

I used that "wizard" function to create my new fictional league and I've played a couple seasons, and I noticed that it didn't make any feeder leagues.

Previously I've only played with feeders. Is it really any different, except that you don't get more scouting reports/stats on draftees?

Which do you tend to prefer?

[Aumakua]

I just started a new league (1900) that is fictional although I import about 2 real players every year. Using a feeder for the first time, it gives me about half the players I need for the draft (16 team pro league, only 1 minor league, 8 team college feader league). I set up the college feeder as the Ivy League and figure I will add more as my league expands. Since the feeder only gives me half the players needed for the draft the AI generates the other half as younger players (17-20 year olds) where my college league gives me all 21 year olds. So far through 5 seasons I really like it. To me it makes the game a little more fun. Eventually I plan on having all my rookies come from college teams, sort of like football and new basketball rules, but will still use the international scouting and complex (speaking of which does anyone know if you can set the minimum age to say 20 for your league, but have younger players in the international complex?)

Every year I look at who won the College league and save their "team picture", love that new option, and I also manually create baseball cards of the top hitter and pitcher awards. By spending just 5-10 minutes looking at the feeder league each season you get a feeling of who the top picks will be, one guy won the best hitter award 3 straight years, and sure enough he was the #1 pick, had a pretty great rookie season too.

If doing a fictional league (even semi fictional) I suggest using feeders.

[FoosballWizard]

Yeah, unless a feeder league is configured wrong I see no reason not to run one. I'll probably add them to this league if it is possible to do so.

[catcherjul]

I created 2 feeder leagues in my fictional universe, its been running for 35 years (Started at the beginning of ootp 13) and it works pretty well for me. You just have to be sure that you have enough players each year to fill every team's picks.

I like to follow them throught their college/high school career

[Bobble]

Originally Posted by FoosballWizard

Yeah, unless a feeder league is configured wrong I see no reason not to run one. I'll probably add them to this league if it is possible to do so.

On the other hand, sim time and league file size bloat might be considerations...

[GMLoophole]

Originally Posted by Bobble

On the other hand, sim time and league file size bloat might be considerations...

This... I have an older machine (Win XP) and feeders tend to make file sizes large and my game crashy.

[DustinthePOWERHOUSE]

This is without a doubt the most obvious statement possible, but when they work and work well it's a delight having them.

Seeing players dominate college or high school or seeing a surprise pick at 1 instead of the guy you though...plus extra stats and more information about the players.

Someone else already said how cool it is to follow the college and high school season as well (if you're using both) but it needs to be restated. Watching the college baseball playoffs or HS playoffs is very exciting and usually includes and upset or two.

I recommend feeder leagues now since I FINALLY got it to work. I don't know if could play a regular game without it.

[cavebutter]

I used to use feeders all the time as it was the only way I could manage the number of players of specific nationalities for my ammy draft. I have a Pan-Asian league that limits the number of foreign players based on team nationality. Feeder leagues solved that problem wonderfully, and it was nice to have those extra years of stats. I didn't like how laggy it made gameplay though.

With the new player creation settings that allow you to specify the nationality of created players, I've been playing 14 without them. I don't miss them at all.

[Aumakua]

Originally Posted by cavebutter

I used to use feeders all the time as it was the only way I could manage the number of players of specific nationalities for my ammy draft. I have a Pan-Asian league that limits the number of foreign players based on team nationality. Feeder leagues solved that problem wonderfully, and it was nice to have those extra years of stats. I didn't like how laggy it made gameplay though.

With the new player creation settings that allow you to specify the nationality of created players, I've been playing 14 without them. I don't miss them at all.

How do you limit the number of foreign players based on the "team nationality"? I haven't seen this option anywhere but would like to use something similar, the only option I see is to limit the number of foreign players per team, but thought that was based on what nation the League is...

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by Aumakua

How do you limit the number of foreign players based on the "team nationality"? I haven't seen this option anywhere but would like to use something similar, the only option I see is to limit the number of foreign players per team, but thought that was based on what nation the League is...

On the Rules Tab in League Setup.

Foreign Players Limit
Base Limit On - this is the one you want - the choices are League Nationality or Team Nationality

[cavebutter]

Originally Posted by Aumakua

How do you limit the number of foreign players based on the "team nationality"? I haven't seen this option anywhere but would like to use something similar, the only option I see is to limit the number of foreign players per team, but thought that was based on what nation the League is...

It's in the same place, under the Rules tab. Underneath "Foreign Player Limit," is "Base Limit On," and you can choose Team Nation or League Nation. Depending on your league, though, you have to tinker with it to make sure that you have enough players created for each nation- hence the need for feeder leagues or changing the country of origin percentages of created players.

Edit: Yeah, what Bluenoser said.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

Aside from a few test leagues, I haven't really been interested in using them. Focusing my OOTP universe on professional baseball and abstracting away amateur ball suits me fine. The idea of a draft pool coming from a relative handful of colleges/high schools just seems weird to me. I suppose I could just have a few feeders and fill the rest of the draft pool with created players, but then the idea of some draft pool players having multiple years of stats and some just having the created stats bugs me too.

One thing I've thought about is using a feeder league to simulate a league that isisn't strictly college or high school at all, but some kind of "junior league" (in a hockey sense), for 17-19 year olds. Not sure if I would use a high school or college feeder as the basis for that.

[Aumakua]

Originally Posted by cavebutter

It's in the same place, under the Rules tab. Underneath "Foreign Player Limit," is "Base Limit On," and you can choose Team Nation or League Nation. Depending on your league, though, you have to tinker with it to make sure that you have enough players created for each nation- hence the need for feeder leagues or changing the country of origin percentages of created players.

Edit: Yeah, what Bluenoser said.

is this new to OOTP 14? I don't remember seeing it in 13 and completely missed it when setting up my league in '14. I won't need it for several years as I only plan to use it once I add my European and Asian teams. My goal was to make them have 5-10 national players, so I would set limit foreign players to 15-20. Does this only effect the majors? So they could have 100% foreign players in their minors as long as the major league has X local players?

so glad they have this feature, I want it to simulate how real teams would pick up players more so than making it a rule a league would actually have, if that makes sense... Like if Tokyo had a team in MLB (once supersonic flight becomes the normal mode of travel ) I am sure they would sign many japanese players onto the team, especially stars, but OOTP AI might not act the same way...

[cavebutter]

I believe this feature was new to 13. Minor leagues will not have the limit set by default- it doesn't inherit the rule from the major league. So while it would be technically possible to have a Korean team with a 4-foreign player limit and it's AAA club made up entirely of non-Koreans, this is not the best thing for your league. I don't believe that the AI uses a lot of foresight in stocking its farm systems. You could end up with a major league team that does not have enough local talent in its organization to field a team.

I have a less strict foreign limit in my minors and I still see a lot of AAAA players waste years in the Pan-Asian farm system that they could have spent playing in the majors at home (or at least sitting on a major league bench). Past their primes, they usually end up in my indy league. It's a little sad, actually.

This is what happens when you become emotionally involved in the lives of your players.

[Aumakua]

my limit would be reversed of most, I would have the foreigner limit pretty high, to like 15-18, so only 7-10 "local" players would be required on the major league team.

lets say I require 7 local players, I am planning on having 15 foreign teams (21 US teams) but I plan on my foreign percentage being 50% at that point, including increasing baseball quality in the countries that have MLB teams and setting their percentages high for the international player features, hopefully it should all work out okay. I just want to see a few Japanese players in the starting lineup for Tokyo or German players for Frankfurt...

[majesty95]

So I started tinkering with feeder leagues in a fictional setup as I thought it would be a cool feature.

I created 120 high schools and 120 colleges. I simulated through the first season and then shortlisted what I perceived to be the best hitter and best pitcher at each level.

After the draft I looked at the 4 shortlisted players. The two college players looked normal. One was 18 and the other 19. Neither got drafted but looked to be stars down the line. In high school, however, the two guys I shortlisted were 28 and 30. (???)

I went to the draft and looked at the top players drafted. The #2 pick hit like .278 in college and was very mediocre rated. The #3 pick had a 5.14 ERA in college and the #5 pick hit .179 on the season. The only commonality was the hitters were highly rated defensively but had almost no offense. The pitcher was very much a spare (10/10) in most categories.

Not only did I get 28-30 year old high school players (I had it set at 17-21) but I also had the CPU teams favoring defense highly over offense and stats having almost no impact in the draft.

I'm certain some setting somewhere needs to be adjusted but shouldn't the game know by default that HS players are generally 14-18 and college 17-23?

Any help with those settings would be greatly appreciated!

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by majesty95

So I started tinkering with feeder leagues in a fictional setup as I thought it would be a cool feature.

I created 120 high schools and 120 colleges. I simulated through the first season and then shortlisted what I perceived to be the best hitter and best pitcher at each level.

After the draft I looked at the 4 shortlisted players. The two college players looked normal. One was 18 and the other 19. Neither got drafted but looked to be stars down the line. In high school, however, the two guys I shortlisted were 28 and 30. (???)

I went to the draft and looked at the top players drafted. The #2 pick hit like .278 in college and was very mediocre rated. The #3 pick had a 5.14 ERA in college and the #5 pick hit .179 on the season. The only commonality was the hitters were highly rated defensively but had almost no offense. The pitcher was very much a spare (10/10) in most categories.

Not only did I get 28-30 year old high school players (I had it set at 17-21) but I also had the CPU teams favoring defense highly over offense and stats having almost no impact in the draft.

I'm certain some setting somewhere needs to be adjusted but shouldn't the game know by default that HS players are generally 14-18 and college 17-23?

Any help with those settings would be greatly appreciated!

The player creation age is in the league set-up under "options," and the age limits are under "rules." My advice when creating feeders is create the league under the MLB league set-up, edit age range creation to 18-20 for college, and 15-18 for highschool. Then hit the "fill league with fictional players" under functions (that is if the league was empty when created which I believe they are. If not, release all players, erase all free agents, then proceed with above). You then want to reset the age rules and creation. Creation ages 14-15 for highschool, and 17-18 for college. And then the age rules 14-17 HS and 17-20 for college. That gives you 18 year old hs players in the draft, and 21 year old college players.

[majesty95]

Ahhh! I did the age limit but didnt realize there was a creation modifier too. Thanks for the input!

Any ideas as to why the paltry players being picked at the top if the draft?

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by majesty95

Ahhh! I did the age limit but didnt realize there was a creation modifier too. Thanks for the input!

Any ideas as to why the paltry players being picked at the top if the draft?

Haven't noticed it happening for me. The top players generally are the top stat wise players. Try resetting the league, and see if that doesn't fix it.

[DustinthePOWERHOUSE]

Originally Posted by majesty95

Ahhh! I did the age limit but didnt realize there was a creation modifier too. Thanks for the input!

Any ideas as to why the paltry players being picked at the top if the draft?

Is your scout any good? Are their college/HS numbers good? Second question is less relevant, but scouting makes a HUGE difference.