Using Nutt's NCAA as feeder - bad idea?

[sandman2575]

I'm interested in setting up a stats-only league with feeders -- basically using the MLB teams with fictional players.

I'd love to use Nutt's 300 team NCAA mod as the college feeders. However, I'd also like to have HS feeders.

Since it appears I need around 175 feeder teams for the 7-tiered MLB minors system (30 x 35 / 6), is this going to be massive overkill? I'd want to set it up so that at least 50% of the incoming draft is HS, so that would mean adding 300 HS teams for a total of 600 feeder teams.

I know this sounds like a terrible idea - having so many feeders is likely to skew the talent pool, not to mention probably bog my game saves/loads down.

For anyone who has tried it -- any suggestions for successfully using the NCAA mod as a feeder in combo with HS teams?

[Déjà Bru]

Years ago, I remember reading about a "bug" called "Draft, sign, and release" or something to that effect. It was caused by having too many rounds in your amateur draft or, in more recent years, that and/or having too many feeder leagues and teams. The gist was (you long-time OOTPB players, a bit of help here please), too many quality players being generated so unrealistic results were occurring such as young players with relatively high potential being drafted or signed only to be immediately released by the AI.

I don't see much mention of this these days. Either the game has been improved to adjust the talent curve in an over-sized player pool (you'll still have thousands of free agents, though) or people have generally learned and accepted the guidelines that have been published here whenever this question comes up (see the attached notes for my compilation).

If asked to guess, it would be the latter for me. Your suggested setup seems to me to be unwieldy and unlikely to yield satisfactory results. Still, if you have a fast enough computer (and no one else comes along who says "Sure, I did that and it turned out great!"), you could always run a test league and see. I would give it a good 20 seasons at least.

[The Wolf]

It's massive overkill. Prune it way down.

[sandman2575]

Thanks for the feedback. I figured it was overkill but good to get confirmation from the veterans.

Problem with pruning the mod is, if you start eliminating teams and conferences, it seems to randomly redistribute the remaining teams, so you wind up with Pepperdine in the Big East and other nonsense.

I guess the question is, whether it's worth it to try to preserve a semblance of NCAA reality, or cutting the 300 teams down to something manageable, like 90, even if it produces totally out of whack conferences. I guess I don't really care what the college feeders do in terms of their team performance... But it kind of kills immersion to see the Tarheels in the Big Ten and the like...

[GiantYankee]

I have tried setting up leagues with 100 feeder teams and the sim times were extremely slow. The file size became too large as well. I might suggest something like 60 feeders but I'm not sure if that will work either. I love the idea of feeders but I think it works best when the leagues are smaller.

[nebradska]

Every time I use a universe with real NCAA teams, I just check the CWS article on Wikipedia and include the teams that have been historically successful there, with weight placed on total championships, total qualifications, and more recent appearances. Then I just go down the list until my quota is filled.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Years ago, I remember reading about a "bug" called "Draft, sign, and release" or something to that effect. It was caused by having too many rounds in your amateur draft or, in more recent years, that and/or having too many feeder leagues and teams. The gist was (you long-time OOTPB players, a bit of help here please), too many quality players being generated so unrealistic results were occurring such as young players with relatively high potential being drafted or signed only to be immediately released by the AI.

I am not sure if that was the problem. I think it had to do with roster limits on your lower leagues but too many draft rounds or too many feeders could contribute. I still have a feeder league guide floating around but honestly as much pre-draft sims as I have played for a couple of versions I would need to reread it myself! It has been a while and also player creation without feeders got a lot better.

The main problem with too many feeders is your distribution doesn't change. So if you add a lot of feeders the same percentage of potential superstars still exists. Say with 150 feeders teams you get 5 potential superstars a year or so with 300 you get 10. So what happens is only the top of the curve makes it to the big leagues. The more feeders above recommend the more star caliber players you get.

In the end this makes 0 difference to league stats. You get as many more good pitchers as you do good hitters. What happens is there is much less variation in players. Everyone is closer to average but that average is much higher than with the more rounds you choose or the more feeders you add. This also has little bearing on league stats. Not only do the better pitchers balance out but the engine is designed to match something close to league totals even if you have a league of all super stars in it.

It will not ruin your game but it may decrease the value of it. You will find a lot fewer diamonds in the rough that become above average players because the bar is raised by the influx of talent. Your average rating guys and journeymen don't make it to the bigs. They are replaced with guys who would have been solid with fewer feeders but now are just average or below.

OOTP does not allow you to change the distribution of players created. So if you double the feeders you double the scrubs, the cup of coffee guys, the journeymen, the average players, and the type A and B free agents. If you don't double the teams the bottom parts of the curve just don't make to the big leagues anymore. If you could change the distribution you could cut say the % of stars, above average and average by half. Then you would get a huge number of scrubs that never go anywhere but the average talent would stay about the same. There is no way to do this however. That feature would be the key to creating unlimited feeders.

Markus designed feeder leagues with a certain number of feeders per draft round in mind. You can play with more or less. Less means CPU generated players like you get with no feeders. More means you raise the average ratings quality but not necessarily the statical outcomes those are controlled by your league totals. I think if you put modern rated players into a 1871 totals league you would have guys with 20 out of 20 power only getting 2 or 3 HRs a year. So it will not screw up your game but it will present a lot flatter distribution of talent in the majors. Essentially the more feeders you add the more of the bottom part of the distribution you truncated.

In some ways this makes stats only the only way to play. If all of your players have high ratings then stats is the only way to choose. You start choosing between guys with 16 or 18 ratings instead of comparing guys with 12 or 9 ratings. Since the average is so close to the top, stars and ratings make it less clear who your stars in the league will be and since they are so close in ratings they become pretty much interchangeable and not much difference between player A and B. A star is defined merely by the season he is having.

So it is not horrible nor is it bad but it does change the feel of the league.To me it was like being a kid and jacking everyone's ratings up in games well before OOTP. It just wasn't as fun when player A gets hurt and player B,C,D, and E are the perfect cogs in the machine to replace him.

[sandman2575]

Originally Posted by GiantYankee

I have tried setting up leagues with 100 feeder teams and the sim times were extremely slow. The file size became too large as well. I might suggest something like 60 feeders but I'm not sure if that will work either. I love the idea of feeders but I think it works best when the leagues are smaller.

It sounds then like having feeders for the MLB just isn't practical - ? Unless I'm miscalculating something you need close to 200 feeder teams to cover all tiers of the minors - ?

Originally Posted by nebradska

Every time I use a universe with real NCAA teams, I just check the CWS article on Wikipedia and include the teams that have been historically successful there, with weight placed on total championships, total qualifications, and more recent appearances. Then I just go down the list until my quota is filled.

nebradska, do you do this with the NCAA mod, or is this just something you put together yourself? I haven't figured out a way to tweak Nutt's mod, reducing the huge number of teams and conferences, without it also screwing up the organization of teams.


@Biggio509 -- thank you for the extremely detailed information - !


I'm left scratching my head over what to do though -- it seems like you need more feeders than the game can really handle for a 30-team, 7-tier minors league. But I'd like to have feeders in order to run a Stats Only MLB-type league, so that the amateur players will have some statistical history by the time they enter the draft.

[GiantYankee]

Originally Posted by sandman2575

It sounds then like having feeders for the MLB just isn't practical - ? Unless I'm miscalculating something you need close to 200 feeder teams to cover all tiers of the minors - ?

Not for a league with that many minor leagues. I would try max 3 levels of minors which I believe is about 75 feeder teams. I'm guessing you are looking at 30 mlb team league. I might run a test of this in the next day or two.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by sandman2575

It sounds then like having feeders for the MLB just isn't practical - ? Unless I'm miscalculating something you need close to 200 feeder teams to cover all tiers of the minors - ?

...

@Biggio509 -- thank you for the extremely detailed information - !

You are welcome. As for the practicality of say 175 feeders I never had a problem with that on my machine. I also haven't set up feeders for a couple of versions though. What makes one man CPU run slow may be no problem for another machine. CPU, HD speed, and memory all play a factor in game simulation speed. I have noticed OOTP seems faster every version though.

One tip if you experiencing slowness in areas other than OOTP download Core Temp. I was virus and spyware free but having huge problems with my machine slowing down. It turns out my CPU fan was going bad. At 60 degree Celsius my main board would slow down my CPU speed to lower heat. I found my CPU was running from 60 to 65 C. Once I looked and saw my fan was stopping at times then going again I was able to buy a $20 heat sink and fan that fixed the problem. Now that CPU temp is 40 to 50, 50 maybe a little higher I think I put too much thermal paste on, the machine runs just like it did 5 or more years ago when I built with a Dual Core E6600. About $50 bucks later I replaced my CPU fan and case fans and I am running fine again.

I think CPU heat is something over looked on older machines. That fan will wear out long before your CPU does and if your processor overheats the mainboard seriously clocks down your processor to keep it from getting damaged.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by sandman2575

Thanks for the feedback. I figured it was overkill but good to get confirmation from the veterans.

Problem with pruning the mod is, if you start eliminating teams and conferences, it seems to randomly redistribute the remaining teams, so you wind up with Pepperdine in the Big East and other nonsense.

I guess the question is, whether it's worth it to try to preserve a semblance of NCAA reality, or cutting the 300 teams down to something manageable, like 90, even if it produces totally out of whack conferences. I guess I don't really care what the college feeders do in terms of their team performance... But it kind of kills immersion to see the Tarheels in the Big Ten and the like...

That's not the case. I pruned it by conferences, saved the result as as a template, and it works fine. I can import that template into custom leagues at will.

[sandman2575]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

That's not the case. I pruned it by conferences, saved the result as as a template, and it works fine. I can import that template into custom leagues at will.

I must be overlooking something in editing the NCAA template. The only options I can find for editing are pretty crude: either setting the number of conferences -- I think there are 38 -- to a lower number, or setting the number of teams within a given conference to a lower number. I can't figure out how to do more 'refined' surgery than this. And when I tweak any of those settings, it throws the whole template out of whack.

I've also tried going into the Names tab ("Names and Affiliations" Tab? don't have it in front of me at the moment) and seeing if I can delete teams / conferences that way. But once again, any changes I make lead to crazy reshuffling of teams across conferences. --

[polydamas]

Originally Posted by sandman2575

I must be overlooking something in editing the NCAA template. The only options I can find for editing are pretty crude: either setting the number of conferences -- I think there are 38 -- to a lower number, or setting the number of teams within a given conference to a lower number. I can't figure out how to do more 'refined' surgery than this. And when I tweak any of those settings, it throws the whole template out of whack.

I've also tried going into the Names tab ("Names and Affiliations" Tab? don't have it in front of me at the moment) and seeing if I can delete teams / conferences that way. But once again, any changes I make lead to crazy reshuffling of teams across conferences. --

Maybe start a game with it and then prune in league options. Save as template. You might have to change the number of conferences later, but they will be empty.


You will also have to fix the league schedule. I can talk you through that too if you aren't familiar.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by sandman2575

I must be overlooking something in editing the NCAA template. The only options I can find for editing are pretty crude: either setting the number of conferences -- I think there are 38 -- to a lower number, or setting the number of teams within a given conference to a lower number. I can't figure out how to do more 'refined' surgery than this. And when I tweak any of those settings, it throws the whole template out of whack.

I've also tried going into the Names tab ("Names and Affiliations" Tab? don't have it in front of me at the moment) and seeing if I can delete teams / conferences that way. But once again, any changes I make lead to crazy reshuffling of teams across conferences. --

I edited it that way and no teams were reshuffled. Go in and delete entire conferences.

[Déjà Bru]

Biggio, you certainly know your [stuff]. More than once I have bookmarked your posts to come back to later and read in more detail. As a matter of fact, that notes compilation file which I uploaded above? I'm pretty sure much of that came from you feeder league guide. Check it out and see if it sounds familiar to you. It should!

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by sandman2575

Problem with pruning the mod is, if you start eliminating teams and conferences, it seems to randomly redistribute the remaining teams, so you wind up with Pepperdine in the Big East and other nonsense.

Big East? What's that? You mean C-USA 2.0 otherwise known as AAC now? Maybe the outcome wasn't weird Boise State and San Deigo State almost joined the Big East for football.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by sandman2575

I must be overlooking something in editing the NCAA template. The only options I can find for editing are pretty crude: either setting the number of conferences -- I think there are 38 -- to a lower number, or setting the number of teams within a given conference to a lower number. I can't figure out how to do more 'refined' surgery than this. And when I tweak any of those settings, it throws the whole template out of whack.

I've also tried going into the Names tab ("Names and Affiliations" Tab? don't have it in front of me at the moment) and seeing if I can delete teams / conferences that way. But once again, any changes I make lead to crazy reshuffling of teams across conferences. --

Go to league setup > edit league structure in order to switch teams to different conferences, delete teams or conferences, add conferences.

If you want to add a team without the crazy switching, first create a separate dummy league, then create the team there and use the edit league structure for that league to move the team to the conference and league you want. Doing that keeps the ai from switching teams and conferences.

[Lukas Berger]

I'd also suggest using the simplified version of my NCAA mod that Bigrod put together. It's more current than Nutt's older version.

link here