Just purchased OOTP 14, need league setup advice!

[HawkyTom]

Hello there, last night I bought OOTP 14 and was trying to start my season when I quickly realized how hard it was to get everything in order that I was hoping to accomplish.


I was hoping to do the following:
-All 30 real life MLB teams/divisions/rules, etc...but with less minor leagues (4total: AAA, AA, A, Rookie ball).
-Trimming down to only 4 minor league affiliates for each MLB team: AAA, AA, A, Rookie. (opposed to the default 7teams)
-Still maintaining all the real life MLB rosters with all top prospects and best minor leaguers overall. (spread across the 4 minors teams)
-College+High School feeders supplying 100% of the amateur draft, think I would need 100 feeder teams and 20 rounds of draft to accomplish this (all 30 MLB teams with 4 minor league affiliates each)
-Bigger and thus less league divisions for the minor league systems across all levels...similar to MLB/AAA setups with just NL/AL or PCL/IntL, (rather than like 5 A ball leagues and 4 rookie ball leagues)... while maintaining 1 per MLB team per level, etc...
-Coaching staff off, but scouting still on...if it's necessary, not exactly sure how the scouting system works (probably using 'stats only' for added challenge)...I'd like to only evaluate players based on production, etc...rather than 90rating > 70rating




Actual minor league teams for a MLB team seemed to be 7, which would make me have to do like 175 feeder teams and 35 rounds of amateur draft according to the feeder manual/guide.
It seemed very challenging trying to setup the minor league system! Trying to keep all the good prospects while trimming down the minor league systems overall roster sizes for each organization would be a daunting task, but going from AAA, AA, A(x2), SA, Rookie(x2) leagues(7total) to a simple 4 (AAA,AA,A,R) would result in 3 full teams worth of cuts to be made for each squad! I also realize this would make the minor league teams a lot stronger overall, but would hopefully balance out after the real players started finishing off their careers.
I'd like to maintain real life minor league teams, but probably have to combine various leagues to make better/super leagues similar to majors level with 2 conferences only.


I'm not sure if this would be best accomplished through quick start--> majors, custom game via wizard or advanced mode or new mlb 2013 season or historical mode and selecting a recent year.


Sorry for such a long post, but this is really quite overwhelming for my first season in my first OOTP game. I'm trying to make up for lost time and start it off with something better for my first run!! I'm sure most people will suggest a fictional league or just a basic MLB quick start for getting my feet wet, but that just doesn't appeal to me!


While turning off coaching personnel, but leaving on scouting: scouting director's still seem to be in place and have ratings...do I need to manually edit all the league's scouting directors to be equal? or do their actual ratings not matter with coaching turned off? I'm going to use 'stats only' evaluation and hide ratings and also need to figure out the best way to actually go about setting this up.

Should I turn scouting off while having hidden ratings, can I still see written scouting reports in this setup? I want evaluating players to be challenging and have to base my decisions on their production, rather than picking the 90OVR guy over the 75OVR guy.


Ugh so many questions!! Will probably add a few more tomorrow! Thanks in advance.

[GiantYankee]

Originally Posted by HawkyTom

Hello there, last night I bought OOTP 14 and was trying to start my season when I quickly realized how hard it was to get everything in order that I was hoping to accomplish.


I was hoping to do the following:
-All 30 real life MLB teams/divisions/rules, etc...but with less minor leagues (4total: AAA, AA, A, Rookie ball).
-Trimming down to only 4 minor league affiliates for each MLB team: AAA, AA, A, Rookie. (opposed to the default 7teams)
-Still maintaining all the real life MLB rosters with all top prospects and best minor leaguers overall. (spread across the 4 minors teams)
-College+High School feeders supplying 100% of the amateur draft, think I would need 100 feeder teams and 20 rounds of draft to accomplish this (all 30 MLB teams with 4 minor league affiliates each)
-Bigger and thus less league divisions for the minor league systems across all levels...similar to MLB/AAA setups with just NL/AL or PCL/IntL, (rather than like 5 A ball leagues and 4 rookie ball leagues)... while maintaining 1 per MLB team per level, etc...
-Coaching staff off, but scouting still on...if it's necessary, not exactly sure how the scouting system works (probably using 'stats only' for added challenge)...I'd like to only evaluate players based on production, etc...rather than 90rating > 70rating




Actual minor league teams for a MLB team seemed to be 7, which would make me have to do like 175 feeder teams and 35 rounds of amateur draft according to the feeder manual/guide.
It seemed very challenging trying to setup the minor league system! Trying to keep all the good prospects while trimming down the minor league systems overall roster sizes for each organization would be a daunting task, but going from AAA, AA, A(x2), SA, Rookie(x2) leagues(7total) to a simple 4 (AAA,AA,A,R) would result in 3 full teams worth of cuts to be made for each squad! I also realize this would make the minor league teams a lot stronger overall, but would hopefully balance out after the real players started finishing off their careers.
I'd like to maintain real life minor league teams, but probably have to combine various leagues to make better/super leagues similar to majors level with 2 conferences only.


I'm not sure if this would be best accomplished through quick start--> majors, custom game via wizard or advanced mode or new mlb 2013 season or historical mode and selecting a recent year.


Sorry for such a long post, but this is really quite overwhelming for my first season in my first OOTP game. I'm trying to make up for lost time and start it off with something better for my first run!! I'm sure most people will suggest a fictional league or just a basic MLB quick start for getting my feet wet, but that just doesn't appeal to me!


While turning off coaching personnel, but leaving on scouting: scouting director's still seem to be in place and have ratings...do I need to manually edit all the league's scouting directors to be equal? or do their actual ratings not matter with coaching turned off? I'm going to use 'stats only' evaluation and hide ratings and also need to figure out the best way to actually go about setting this up.

Should I turn scouting off while having hidden ratings, can I still see written scouting reports in this setup? I want evaluating players to be challenging and have to base my decisions on their production, rather than picking the 90OVR guy over the 75OVR guy.


Ugh so many questions!! Will probably add a few more tomorrow! Thanks in advance.

Want to be sure that you realize that you are creating a huge league. It will probably take you sometime to get it the way you want it. I would go about this by using the majors quickstart. All your rosters will be current as of April 2013. Set lowest minor league affiliate to no roster limit. Move all the players in the minor leagues (that you will delete) to the lowest level of minors that you will keep. You will need to manually create minor league for AAA, AA, A, and rookie ball. Move all the International league and Pacific Coast League teams into your newly created AAA. I believe you will need to delete the AI generated teams for the new leagues. Than do the same thing for AA, A, and R ball. You will need to figure out how you want to align the teams and divisions so it works for you. Make sure to generate a new schedule for all of the minor leagues once you make the change. If you don't do this the game will crash. Also you will need to manually set the affiliations of all of the minor league teams. Feeder leagues, you will need to decide how many college and HS teams you want and create a feeder league for each. If you plan on simming, your sim times will be much slower (unless you have a fast computer) due to the size of your league. I turn scouting off, so I can't help with those questions. Take your time while doing this. Missing something small (i.e. forgetting to regenerate schedule) can cause a crash. I would back up the file after creating and assigning your teams to each of the minors. It really sucks when you put hours into and a mistake results in a crash. Hope this helps.

[le receveur]

based on my experience from last fall, i would just get the 2013 Quick Start as it is, and get used to OOTP, it is a lot to find out.

At first i also thought the minors was too deep for me to handle, so what i did i reassigned 2 of my minors to another franchise (picked ones that only had 6 affiliates), and let AI handle those (i moved the players assigned to my team first). I had enough prospects to follow, and i didn't mind that other team had more spots, most are filled by career minor leaguers like real life.

[Déjà Bru]

Following up on GY's and lr's good answers, I'll disagree slightly in that I don't think your baseball universe will be too large. Just don't pile on the international and independent leagues, etc.

I definitely agree with having only four levels of minor leagues, though. Any more than that is just silly (as IRL, IMO); too many players, 95% of them scrubs, floating around.

As far as the scouting situation goes, it sounds like you want your cake and eat it too. Turning scouting off would level the playing field in that regard; you and the AI would be relying on statistics and 100% accurate ratings if you chose to look at them (you can turn some or all of them off as well). However, you might miss some things; for example, you don't get scouting reports. Also, there's something to be said for the uncertainty that is introduced, particularly with young players, when you turn scouting on.

So what I do is this: I leave it on and I let the AI use scouts in the way that it does (which we think is as a filter through which the AI looks at actual ratings so that an AI team with poor scouting is handicapped, etc.). I turn my own scout into something generic like "Scouting Bureau" (in lieu of a name), give it a "contract" of $1 for 10 years with an extension for another 10 years, and I give it decent (that is, average) ratings across the board with a neutral preference as to veterans versus youngsters.

This way, I can have scouting to assist me in some aspects but I don't overly rely upon it. The AI can indulge in the scramble for good scouts and the teams that end up with them may have an advantage over me. I balance that with my personnel savings (only $1 a year for salary) and the fact that I have an advantage over AI teams with poor scouting. Works for me.

[HawkyTom]

Thanks for the responses guys! GiantYankee the step by step processes you provided especially helped me with figuring out how exactly to ATTEMPT to pull this off! I realize the league is going to be rather large, but it would be even larger if I wasn't reducing the amount of minor leagues out there! I do want the feeders though so I can have stats to analyze to decide who to draft.

Concerning the scouting...I was thinking if I turned it off, but keep overall/potential/batter/pitcher and injury ratings all hidden (so uncertainty would still be in play). Keeping only "Other Ratings" as non-hidden then I would have to rely heavily on the production/splits/stats/history/etc for player evaluation.
Doing it this way: I would be getting 100% accurate information on fielding, speed/stamina. (I don't like the idea of losing games because I'm trying to find out if my SS can also play 2B in a pinch, or missing out on the fact that my 1B is actually fast and capable of running the bases and plays the corner outfield positions well, etc..) If I discover a way to evaluate their defensive ability at various positions and in general or evaluate speed/stamina realistically then maybe I'll hide those too.

Keeping scouting on and editing/signing my scout director to a long term deal does sound like a great idea as well, so I could keep scouting turned on...although I will probably still play with it on very low. I might also edit all CPU controlled scouting directors to long term deals with good ratings as well, because I want the computer to be at an advantage and not handicapped.

Honestly though, since I haven't even actually played through a regular season of OOTP I don't even know exactly how scouting works...but I like the idea of seeing some text on their playing styles/strengths/weaknesses.

Going to continue working on trying to setup/tweak this league...I'll probably be back with some further questions! Thanks again.

[le receveur]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Following up on GY's and lr's good answers, I'll disagree slightly in that I don't think your baseball universe will be too large. Just don't pile on the international and independent leagues, etc.

I definitely agree with having only four levels of minor leagues, though. Any more than that is just silly (as IRL, IMO); too many players, 95% of them scrubs, floating around.

As far as the scouting situation goes, it sounds like you want your cake and eat it too. Turning scouting off would level the playing field in that regard; you and the AI would be relying on statistics and 100% accurate ratings if you chose to look at them (you can turn some or all of them off as well). However, you might miss some things; for example, you don't get scouting reports. Also, there's something to be said for the uncertainty that is introduced, particularly with young players, when you turn scouting on.

So what I do is this: I leave it on and I let the AI use scouts in the way that it does (which we think is as a filter through which the AI looks at actual ratings so that an AI team with poor scouting is handicapped, etc.). I turn my own scout into something generic like "Scouting Bureau" (in lieu of a name), give it a "contract" of $1 for 10 years with an extension for another 10 years, and I give it decent (that is, average) ratings across the board with a neutral preference as to veterans versus youngsters.

This way, I can have scouting to assist me in some aspects but I don't overly rely upon it. The AI can indulge in the scramble for good scouts and the teams that end up with them may have an advantage over me. I balance that with my personnel savings (only $1 a year for salary) and the fact that I have an advantage over AI teams with poor scouting. Works for me.

Not sure where i said it was too large. I just meant that it was useful learning to play with an already established Quick Start when i started, instead of going into full customization mode.


and OP your proposed rating approach is how i ended up within a few weeks. i also set accuracy to low...

[HawkyTom]

I think I'm going to combine all the minor leagues at each various level into super-leagues...currently working on the AA system.

Basically taking all teams from Eastern League(AA), Southern League(AA) and Texas League(AA) and making those leagues actually divisions now instead and placing them all into a 'Super AA League'.

I basically went from 30 AA teams across 3 leagues to 30 AA teams all into one league, but separate divisions(based on their previous league). Since these leagues are going to be large and have unbalanced division sizes, I think I'll just disable playoffs/allstar game, because they don't seem that necessary. *shrug*

Does anybody see an obvious downsides to this approach that I'm possibly overlooking?

[bwburke94]

At the very least include playoffs, OOTP sometimes goes wonky in multidivision leagues with no playoffs.

As for how to handle rookie leagues, I suggest converting the Midwest League and South Atlantic League into a super-rookie league, two divisions of 15 teams with Bowling Green joining the SAL teams to even the divisions up. Ideally an 88-game schedule should be used, just remember to turn on "ghost players" to cover the possibility that an organization may not have enough players for a rookie league team.

[HawkyTom]

Originally Posted by bwburke94

At the very least include playoffs, OOTP sometimes goes wonky in multidivision leagues with no playoffs.

As for how to handle rookie leagues, I suggest converting the Midwest League and South Atlantic League into a super-rookie league, two divisions of 15 teams with Bowling Green joining the SAL teams to even the divisions up. Ideally an 88-game schedule should be used, just remember to turn on "ghost players" to cover the possibility that an organization may not have enough players for a rookie league team.

Ok good to know, I'll add some sort of playoffs then. It seems the all star games are still scheduled (according to the page that shows the upcoming events by league) even though I disabled them in league options.

I hit a slowdown once I started trying to convert the 60 Single A teams into 30 Single A teams...my plan is basically to just goto every MLB organization and move all their A-ball players onto a single A-ball team of theirs and delete their other/emptied team...but I also have to manual remove injured players that are associated with those minor league teams as well off the DL and onto that roster and then back onto the DL(meaning I had to edit them off the DL in commish mode)...or else they become free agents when I delete the teams!

Oh well, will be back at it again tomorrow

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by le receveur

Not sure where i said it was too large.

Yes, sorry, I goofed that sentence up. Not you; I was referring to GiantYankee who said "Want to be sure that you realize that you are creating a huge league."