Color Line Question

[matttb324]

Question: For historical leagues, if there is no color line in place, when do African-American players start to enter the draft? I just held the 1913 Draft and am wondering if OOTP recognizes any of the early Black stars?

[thehef]

Do you have historical minors enabled? You'll need to in order to have NeLg players appear before Jackie, etc., actually did.

[matttb324]

Can you remind me where that is, I can't seem to find it.

[italyprof]

It's an option when you first begin to set up your league. I don't know if you can activate the historical minors and Negro leagues after you start the league. Maybe you can. Anyone?

[Charlie Hough]

Ideally, I think you need to use historical minors from the beginning of your game, but I'm not sure. If your game is in 1913, then historical minors players may not start entering the game until 1915 and afterward, so you might be able to turn this feature on during the off-season before your next season. The historical minors feature says it applies to 1915 onward. Negro League players are now officially considered MLB players, so OOTP may start importing them earlier if there are players with stats available that early in the database. But I don't know if there are, and I'm not sure that OOTP treats them as MLB player imports.

[thehef]

Typically, you would choose whether or not to include historical minors at the beginning, on the Historical Wizard Step 1 panel. However, you can also turn this on or off under League Settings > Historical, left side under Historical Progression Settings: Import & maintain real minor leagues.

Timing on this makes a difference. If, for example, you start your game with the 1925 season and you do not turn on historical minors on the Wizard Step 1, and then turn it on immediately after finishing the setup of your game, you won't have minor leagues or minor league players for your 1925 season. However, when your sim progresses to the 1925-26 offseason, minor leagues & players will then appear.

Minor-leagues begin appearing in OOTP as follows:

1914 - Federal League, though technically considered a major league by historians, etc., is part of OOTP's minor league module. In addition, although the Federal League existed as a major league for 1914 & 1915, and appears in OOTP for those seasons, for some reason OOTP's Wizard says that minor leagues begin appearing in 1915. Again, this is just a labeling error, as the Fed Lg will appear in OOTP in 1914, as it should.

1919 - Texas League appears in OOTP

1920 - Negro Leagues appear in OOTP

1921 - PCL appears in OOTP

... after that, more and more minor leagues start appearing...

However, whenever you enable minor leagues, minor league players will start appearing in the game. If their league/team exists, then they'll import to that team. If their league/team does not exist, then they will appear as free agents. So if you were to enable minor leagues in 1910, you should get a bunch of minor leaguers all appearing as free agents in OOTP.

Negro Leagues & players are handled much like the Federal League: They are part of OOTP's minor league module. Perhaps noteworthy is that OOTP Wizard is not really saying that NeLg's are not major league. It's just that the default to not import NeLg's and minors creates an MLB environment that is AL & NL only. And then you can check the box to also include NeLg's and minors. This probably makes sense, as in most cases gamers who are interested in playing MLB history are going to be thinking actual (and not retroactive) history, where that means NL & AL... (OOTP continues to improve NeLg's and my suspicion is that in future versions there will be more flexibility on how they are handled.)

[matttb324]

I'm actually not sure if I checked that when I set up the league. I we t to the settings mentioned and mine seem to look different. Maybe because im still on OOTP 23? On the Historical Progression settings it looks like the photo here:

Originally Posted by thehef

Typically, you would choose whether or not to include historical minors at the beginning, on the Historical Wizard Step 1 panel. However, you can also turn this on or off under League Settings > Historical, left side under Historical Progression Settings: Import & maintain real minor leagues.

Timing on this makes a difference. If, for example, you start your game with the 1925 season and you do not turn on historical minors on the Wizard Step 1, and then turn it on immediately after finishing the setup of your game, you won't have minor leagues or minor league players for your 1925 season. However, when your sim progresses to the 1925-26 offseason, minor leagues & players will then appear.

Minor-leagues begin appearing in OOTP as follows:

1914 - Federal League, though technically considered a major league by historians, etc., is part of OOTP's minor league module. In addition, although the Federal League existed as a major league for 1914 & 1915, and appears in OOTP for those seasons, for some reason OOTP's Wizard says that minor leagues begin appearing in 1915. Again, this is just a labeling error, as the Fed Lg will appear in OOTP in 1914, as it should.

1919 - Texas League appears in OOTP

1920 - Negro Leagues appear in OOTP

1921 - PCL appears in OOTP

... after that, more and more minor leagues start appearing...

However, whenever you enable minor leagues, minor league players will start appearing in the game. If their league/team exists, then they'll import to that team. If their league/team does not exist, then they will appear as free agents. So if you were to enable minor leagues in 1910, you should get a bunch of minor leaguers all appearing as free agents in OOTP.

Negro Leagues & players are handled much like the Federal League: They are part of OOTP's minor league module. Perhaps noteworthy is that OOTP Wizard is not really saying that NeLg's are not major league. It's just that the default to not import NeLg's and minors creates an MLB environment that is AL & NL only. And then you can check the box to also include NeLg's and minors. This probably makes sense, as in most cases gamers who are interested in playing MLB history are going to be thinking actual (and not retroactive) history, where that means NL & AL... (OOTP continues to improve NeLg's and my suspicion is that in future versions there will be more flexibility on how they are handled.)

[LansdowneSt]

It's not something you toggle in the Wizard at Game Setup. It's in Advanced Settings, or just after you create the game on Day 1... go to Leage Settings> Rules> Left-hand-side, look for the toggle.

But as was said, it must be a historical game and to get the Negro League players to cross the line, you need them in the game which requires turning on Historical Minors. And that (turning on NeL and Historical Minors) ought to be done in Step 1 of the Historical Game set-up Wizard.

[luckymann]

The HM toggle is in the Historical tab of League Settings (at the bottom left of this screenshot.

[matttb324]

So weird...my game is just not lining up with those screenshots. Again I am using OOTP 23, could that be why? Could it be "automatically import historical rookies" I am just not seeing something that says "import and maintain real minor leagues" on that screen.
Again here is what my screen looks like...

[LansdowneSt]

Click the "automatically expand league" toggle. It will then appear.

[matttb324]

Okay that worked thank you. So I have checked that box...would anyone mind explaining what automatically expand league means? Is that like when I hit 1961, it will create a couple new teams automatically? Should I check expansion draft? I am assuming it will stick with two leagues of 8 as I have it now up until 61? Will it allow me to rename and move the new franchises when it creates them? Thanks so much for your help with this.

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by matttb324

Okay that worked thank you. So I have checked that box...would anyone mind explaining what automatically expand league means? Is that like when I hit 1961, it will create a couple new teams automatically? Should I check expansion draft? I am assuming it will stick with two leagues of 8 as I have it now up until 61? Will it allow me to rename and move the new franchises when it creates them? Thanks so much for your help with this.

Sadly it is kind of an "all or none" binary deal here. I truly hope the devs figure out some compromise in a future release, but for now they are all tied in together without a workaround that I'm aware of.

So, yes, auto-expand will follow the historical in this sort of save. I recommend you choose Expansion Draft. I am at present actually in this era for my Bucs save and have made some observations in that thread, the link for which is in my signature.

You can rename and move clubs, but be aware at the end of every season, the game will realign the save with the IRL structure.

For a long-term historical save, I recommend you make a copy each year at the end of the final playoff game but before the offseason, which is when all the changes and recalc is made.

Hope that helps.

G

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by matttb324

Okay that worked thank you. So I have checked that box...would anyone mind explaining what automatically expand league means? Is that like when I hit 1961, it will create a couple new teams automatically? Should I check expansion draft? I am assuming it will stick with two leagues of 8 as I have it now up until 61? Will it allow me to rename and move the new franchises when it creates them? Thanks so much for your help with this.

Given this started with a color line question, and NeL players being able to play in the NL & AL, you need this now but can turn off Auto-expansion in the 1950s and be fine. If you turn it off before 1954, you need to (or not) move the Browns to Baltimore, and later on the A's to KC, and expand manually in '61. Or, again, not do any of those. So, solve your color line issue with it on and turn it off after integration as you deem fit.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by matttb324

Okay that worked thank you. So I have checked that box...would anyone mind explaining what automatically expand league means? Is that like when I hit 1961, it will create a couple new teams automatically?

To add to what LansdowneSt wrote, it's also worth noting that - as I understand it - automatically expand league is a bit of a mislabel. It should actually be named something like automatically evolve league because it also encompasses things like franchise relocations, changes to team nicknames, ballpark relocations & name changes, league structure changes (like 1969 division additions), changing playoff formats (like 1985 LCS' going to best-of-seven)...

Originally Posted by luckymann

You can rename and move clubs, but be aware at the end of every season, the game will realign the save with the IRL structure.

You can overcome that by editing the teams.csv file. For a newer gamer I would not recommend it, especially if we are talking widespread changes. However, if we're only talking about something like changing a team or two's nickname, or keeping a team (say NL Boston or AL Philadelphia) from moving in the 50's, then it wouldn't be that difficult. You'd need a familiarity with Excel and csv files, though.

[matttb324]

Actually as advised by Luckymann when I set this up for 1903, I renamed all the teams to the franchise cities and nicknames I wanted and released all players and held a draft. That all worked really well but it does seem that Negro leaguers were not going to be included until I made the change to the minors you guys advised above. Hopefully we are good now.

I'll probably have some questions about how to expand the league to add new franchises when I get to 61 but got aways to go until then.

[luckymann]

Cool, here to help.