Ratings q / idea in expansion

[chriskelly]

Ugh...it drives me nuts that I've been playing this awesome game for years yet I still don't think I fully understand it. I guess that's a good thing!

I start w/ 2016 rosters and expand. I manage the expansion process myself to make it realistic; 3 rounds, teams lose 1 player per round, then get to hold back 3 more players. I have to do this offline and then manually move the players when I am done.

My first issue is that the AI makes horrible protection decisions. I try to fix this by moving scouting to 100% accurate to take bad scouting out of the mix. Even then, I edit their lists to make sure they aren't protecting mediocre RPs over their starting SS, even when they are deeper in the pen than at short, or when they protect over-paid players who an expansion team would never take.

I think to do this right I need to change settings to 100% accurate scouting, and skew AI decision making to at least 80% ratings.....that would put the AI on the "very easy" setting and probably allow them to protect the right players. Then, before I draft, go back to lower accuracy and a blend of ratings / stats for evaluation.

I'm wondering if anyone has messed w/ this, or has any advice.

[malor]

By not protecting starting SS, are you sure the AI management is not attempting to dump salary during a rebuilding process?

I do this all the time when leagues expand. If I have a high salary player that I want to get rid of, he does not get protected with the hope that he will be chosen during the expansion draft freeing my team from the salary.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by chriskelly

Ugh...it drives me nuts that I've been playing this awesome game for years yet I still don't think I fully understand it. I guess that's a good thing!

I start w/ 2016 rosters and expand. I manage the expansion process myself to make it realistic; 3 rounds, teams lose 1 player per round, then get to hold back 3 more players. I have to do this offline and then manually move the players when I am done.

My first issue is that the AI makes horrible protection decisions. I try to fix this by moving scouting to 100% accurate to take bad scouting out of the mix. Even then, I edit their lists to make sure they aren't protecting mediocre RPs over their starting SS, even when they are deeper in the pen than at short, or when they protect over-paid players who an expansion team would never take.

I think to do this right I need to change settings to 100% accurate scouting, and skew AI decision making to at least 80% ratings.....that would put the AI on the "very easy" setting and probably allow them to protect the right players. Then, before I draft, go back to lower accuracy and a blend of ratings / stats for evaluation.

I'm wondering if anyone has messed w/ this, or has any advice.

I don't like the idea of going to 100 percent accurate ratings, but I have often thought about going to accurate or very accurate scouting and then go from there. I would need to test different AI evaluation settings to see what feels right. The reason I say this is I don't feel scouts in baseball disagree about prospects as vastly as they do in OOTP...particularly top teir prospects. This allows for SOME fog of war, and players will still boom and bust anyway, regardless of ratings. What do you guys think?

[chriskelly]

I'm not sure if how the AI scouts or if it's the logic the AI uses when determining what players to protect that is off. That's why I bump up the accuracy, to try to help the AI make better decisions.

I agree with you that as a human player, you will leave your big contracts unprotected in the hope they get drafted. but, the AI really doesn't appear this smart. For example; using 2016 rosters, the AI will always protect A-Rod, their DH at $25M / year and leave Didi Gregorious, their starting SS exposed, despite the fact that A-Rod's value above replacement at DH (where any other hitter can take his place) vs Didi's is low. Same with guys like Matt Kemp.

It feels like the AI can't handle the the odds vs. impact of losing A-Rod is much less than that of losing Didi. In other words, the real life odds of an expansion team selecting a 40 year old, over paid A-Rod is slim to none, and leaving him unprotected is like getting to protect another player

I end up with the house rule of unprotecting him and just not drafting him. I have never once had the scout recommend drafting a guy like this.

[PSUColonel]

One thing you could consider is using high scouting accuracy with 2-8 ratings, while using AI evaluation at 40/30/20/10