Feeder League Draft Quality

[toxicavenger74]

Hello all,

I have never really used feeder leagues that much, always tried to stay away from them to cut down on file size. However, the talent level in a non-feeder league, AI generated draft seems extremely, extremely low.

Those with exprience using feeder leagues--are you happy with the talent levels? Is it better than using AI generated drafts?

Thanks,

[Daern]

I had good quality for my first few drafts, but I've noticed complete crap in my drafts with feeders recently.

I've heard that you need to speed up development to improve the drafts.

[Biggio509]

YMMV with drafts in feeders leagues in the beginning. Two things to note.
1. Make sure you have a bit more than minimum feeder teams for the number of draft rounds or you set the draft to feeders only. Default will add the same drafts that no feeders give if you fall short.

2. When creating feeders leagues the first 3 years are a crap shot. The problem is players are randomly generated from 18 to 21 in year one for college feeders. It may be 21 yo heavy or 18 yo heavy. So you might get a big draft class than a small one. The same go for HS just younger ages.

2 can be avoided. After creating the game or feeders, go to player creation modifiers and change your HS feeders to min 15 max age 15 and college to min age 18 and max age 18. This means each year colleges and high schools get feed a class of youngsters. Note make sure this is on the options page and not the rules page. If you change the rules then you only 15 yo in your HS leagues. If you do this in 4 years your first class are all seniors, you second class are all juniors, etc. So theoretically you should have ages balanced out in 4 years. If you don't do this the players are randomly generated from 18 to 21 again so you have 21 yo going into the draft with only one year of play and you might have some huge classes and some tiny classes.

I would suggest for the first 6 seasons or so keeping things set to draft feeders + computer generated players. This will keep enough prospects flowing.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by Daern

I had good quality for my first few drafts, but I've noticed complete crap in my drafts with feeders recently.

I've heard that you need to speed up development to improve the drafts.

Does the player development affects drafts? I suppose it would affect current ratings but maybe not potential. I was using some player development settings suggested for normal injuries. I usually play on high injuries and the development setting did mean a lot of prospects crapped out. Injuries meant premature promotions.

I am not sure how this affects the quality of the draft potential wise but it would definitely affect affect the current ratings of draftees with slow development you might find a rookie teamwith a lot of 1 rating abilities in it. College kids might not have the ratings for short A or even advanced A. Also note your sabremetrics player creation ratings will affect where the AI puts draftees and if your draftees are ready for the next level. I noticed with high injuries a lot of prospects went bad with slow player development.

I really think the crapshoot is lessened if you change your feeder player creation modifiers to only allow new players to be min age. This leads to more balanced ages and a more constant flow of draftees rather than a huge class than a tiny class or 2 and another huge one. All new players come in at min age rather than random age if you do this.