Expansion Draft

I've never ran an expansion draft on OOTP yet and my online league is about to go through the 1993 expansion. Well, it's a season and a half off but I want to start prepping for it so everything runs smoothly. I plan to run some tests and learn the in's and out's of the in-game expansion. I do have a few questions if anyone can help me.

A) Are there any problems I need to keep an eye out for? I know when I expanded my league using OOTP 6, it changed all of the team ID's. Any problems like that [or any issues at all?] with expansion?

B) The protect lists. Are they like the Rule 5 draft lists? Put 25 guys on there and then it protects anyone without a certain amount of expereince? Like, the 25 you pick plus any guy under X-Pro Years etc...? Or is it straight 25 protect and everyone else in your organization is available? How does the protection work?

C) If I remember correctly, one team got first pick in the expansion draft and then the other got 1st pick in the AMA, right? Was the '93 expansion draft serpentine or straight? I'm assuming serpentine but I'm not sure.

D) Anyone commissioners expand in an online league yet? How'd that work out for you? Mind if I pick your brain and get ideas on how to run it smoothly?

As always, thanks for the help in advance!

[Honolulu Blue]

Originally Posted by avwjase

I've never ran an expansion draft on OOTP yet and my online league is about to go through the 1993 expansion. Well, it's a season and a half off but I want to start prepping for it so everything runs smoothly. I plan to run some tests and learn the in's and out's of the in-game expansion. I do have a few questions if anyone can help me.

A) Are there any problems I need to keep an eye out for? I know when I expanded my league using OOTP 6, it changed all of the team ID's. Any problems like that [or any issues at all?] with expansion?

B) The protect lists. Are they like the Rule 5 draft lists? Put 25 guys on there and then it protects anyone without a certain amount of expereince? Like, the 25 you pick plus any guy under X-Pro Years etc...? Or is it straight 25 protect and everyone else in your organization is available? How does the protection work?

C) If I remember correctly, one team got first pick in the expansion draft and then the other got 1st pick in the AMA, right? Was the '93 expansion draft serpentine or straight? I'm assuming serpentine but I'm not sure.

D) Anyone commissioners expand in an online league yet? How'd that work out for you? Mind if I pick your brain and get ideas on how to run it smoothly?

As always, thanks for the help in advance!

Hello, I've never been in or run an online league, so can't answer (D) at all. But I've run several expansion drafts as a single player, and I feel comfortable in answering your other questions:

A) There does seem to be one quirk with the expansion draft - if a player decides to sign with a team after the protection lists are issued, then he will be exposed in the draft. I'm guessing this will be cleaned up in the next patch or two, but to avoid that, I'd suggest having the draft as soon as possible after the free agents file.

B) The protection lists are straight protection lists - anyone outside them is NOT protected.

C) The "real" '93 expansion draft worked differently than it works in the game. Too long and detailed to explain... so I'll just go to the way the game does it. The expansion draft is serpentine, and the amateur draft order (if done during the season) is based on a projection of the expansion team's record compared to the previous season's record of the other teams. Since expansion teams usually aren't very good out of the box, they figure to get high picks.