Dealing with wartime - mass-injury?

[ctorg]

I tend to play a lot of fictional-historical leagues, where I create a fictional league at some point in history and use historical settings, winding my way through history with some level of realism involved. However, I always have problems dealing with World War II.

As everyone knows, there were quite a few baseball players who suspended or delayed their careers to fight in the war. Unfortunately, there's no quick way to simulate this in the game, at least not that I've found.

What I've taken to doing is going in and manually setting long-term injuries for numerous players throughout the game, but this takes a long time and is pretty onerous. I have a spreadsheet that randomly determines which guys based on their ages (younger players are more likely to go for a variety of reasons), but I know of no way to mass-injure players. You can't check a bunch of boxes, and you cant export/re-import injury data. I thought about it as a storyline item, but I couldn't get it to work, and I'm not sure it would happen often enough that way anyway. I've had to go in to each guy's edit screen and set a number of days.

Unfortunately, this method is also problematic, because things can happen to injured guys, and the game can get a little wacky. Last time I did it (which was yesterday), I was dismayed to find a mass of messages saying "[player] has been diagnosed with an undisclosed injury. He is out for about no days." - for nearly every guy I painstakingly went through and manually injured.

Over 1000 guys from various levels of baseball fought in WWII, that I know of. I'm trying to get about that number.

Does anyone have any suggestions for handling this kind of thing? Anything that might work better than what I'm doing?

[megamanmatt]

Originally Posted by ctorg

I tend to play a lot of fictional-historical leagues, where I create a fictional league at some point in history and use historical settings, winding my way through history with some level of realism involved. However, I always have problems dealing with World War II.

As everyone knows, there were quite a few baseball players who suspended or delayed their careers to fight in the war. Unfortunately, there's no quick way to simulate this in the game, at least not that I've found.

What I've taken to doing is going in and manually setting long-term injuries for numerous players throughout the game, but this takes a long time and is pretty onerous. I have a spreadsheet that randomly determines which guys based on their ages (younger players are more likely to go for a variety of reasons), but I know of no way to mass-injure players. You can't check a bunch of boxes, and you cant export/re-import injury data. I thought about it as a storyline item, but I couldn't get it to work, and I'm not sure it would happen often enough that way anyway. I've had to go in to each guy's edit screen and set a number of days.

Unfortunately, this method is also problematic, because things can happen to injured guys, and the game can get a little wacky. Last time I did it (which was yesterday), I was dismayed to find a mass of messages saying "[player] has been diagnosed with an undisclosed injury. He is out for about no days." - for nearly every guy I painstakingly went through and manually injured.

Over 1000 guys from various levels of baseball fought in WWII, that I know of. I'm trying to get about that number.

Does anyone have any suggestions for handling this kind of thing? Anything that might work better than what I'm doing?

Well.... OOTP already does this but not at the same level in terms of player numbers. I'm pretty sure it's a storyline one so would it not be possible just to up the frequency?

[The Wolf]

Since it's fictional, assume that the Japanese worked out a deal on resources with the West, that Hitler and England signed a peace treaty in 1940, and that the United States stayed out of things while the Japanese fought the Chinese and the Axis fought the Russians. Perfectly historically plausible, and everyone in the MLB gets to keep playing.

[jaysdailydose]

If you aren't adverse to using commissioner mode, and keeping a handwritten log -- just retire the players and unretire them when you want to bring them back.

Or, you could just suspend them. That way you can define the exact amount of games you want them to miss for the suspension. As far as I know, the player only becomes "disliked" if they are suspended by the game for drug use, so I don't think there is a downside to using this method.

[jaysdailydose]

Obviously, you have to set the "suspensions" much the same as the injury -- but you CAN mass-retire players and mass-unretire them when they return from active duty.

[24Rocks]

I would retire the players manually and short list them because it keeps the Pitchers they have faced data and the ratings dont decline much or at all if your retired so the drastic rating changes from a long term injury wont effect them. Now some people didn't come back the same well if you want to change the ratings manually that's up to you, I do this for CEI to a player I really like make a not say remind me in 1378 days to unretire and do it that way because not all the players came back at the same time.

[ctorg]

Thanks for the replies.

Originally Posted by megamanmatt

Well.... OOTP already does this but not at the same level in terms of player numbers. I'm pretty sure it's a storyline one so would it not be possible just to up the frequency?

I tried playing around with it. I upped the frequency quite a bit and took out some of the qualifiers, like the player needing to be humble, whatever that means. Still, it didn't even happen for one guy that I saw. And I need it to happen for around 1000.

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Since it's fictional, assume that the Japanese worked out a deal on resources with the West, that Hitler and England signed a peace treaty in 1940, and that the United States stayed out of things while the Japanese fought the Chinese and the Axis fought the Russians. Perfectly historically plausible, and everyone in the MLB gets to keep playing.

Well, sure, that would be the easy way to do it, but I don't really want to undo WWII.

Originally Posted by jaysdailydose

If you aren't adverse to using commissioner mode, and keeping a handwritten log -- just retire the players and unretire them when you want to bring them back.

Or, you could just suspend them. That way you can define the exact amount of games you want them to miss for the suspension. As far as I know, the player only becomes "disliked" if they are suspended by the game for drug use, so I don't think there is a downside to using this method.

Originally Posted by jaysdailydose

Obviously, you have to set the "suspensions" much the same as the injury -- but you CAN mass-retire players and mass-unretire them when they return from active duty.

Originally Posted by 24Rocks

I would retire the players manually and short list them because it keeps the Pitchers they have faced data and the ratings dont decline much or at all if your retired so the drastic rating changes from a long term injury wont effect them. Now some people didn't come back the same well if you want to change the ratings manually that's up to you, I do this for CEI to a player I really like make a not say remind me in 1378 days to unretire and do it that way because not all the players came back at the same time.

I did the retiring thing several versions ago, and it didn't work out. Maybe this is no longer the case, but at the time, when I unretired the guys, their ratings were pretty much zeroed out. Maybe that was just a glitch, but I have assumed that the game does that to retired players ever since. I'll give it a try. I'll have to keep track of their contracts and such, though - I'm having it that their contracts are still active, so if they come back before their contract is over, they should still be with the same team.

I do wish there was an easier way to handle this, like some kind of "inactive" list or something.

[24Rocks]

Originally Posted by ctorg

Thanks for the replies.


I tried playing around with it. I upped the frequency quite a bit and took out some of the qualifiers, like the player needing to be humble, whatever that means. Still, it didn't even happen for one guy that I saw. And I need it to happen for around 1000.

Well, sure, that would be the easy way to do it, but I don't really want to undo WWII.






I did the retiring thing several versions ago, and it didn't work out. Maybe this is no longer the case, but at the time, when I unretired the guys, their ratings were pretty much zeroed out. Maybe that was just a glitch, but I have assumed that the game does that to retired players ever since. I'll give it a try. I'll have to keep track of their contracts and such, though - I'm having it that their contracts are still active, so if they come back before their contract is over, they should still be with the same team.

I do wish there was an easier way to handle this, like some kind of "inactive" list or something.

at least with 13,14,15 this isnt the case there are some players that you could unretire 30 year after the fact, but are you using free agency ? I thought that wasnt around then (my mind is drawing a blank sorry baseball gods) and every player went back to the original team if they wantred him?

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by ctorg

Well, sure, that would be the easy way to do it, but I don't really want to undo WWII.

Given the well over seventy million deaths caused by WWII, I personally think that undoing it would be a great idea. But it's your game, play it your way.

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by 24Rocks

at least with 13,14,15 this isnt the case there are some players that you could unretire 30 year after the fact, but are you using free agency ? I thought that wasnt around then (my mind is drawing a blank sorry baseball gods) and every player went back to the original team if they wantred him?

In my little universe, free agency is instituted in the 1930s.

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Given the well over seventy million deaths caused by WWII, I personally think that undoing it would be a great idea. But it's your game, play it your way.

I'm trying to change as little about the outside of baseball as possible, although there are certain areas (e.g., Jackie Robinson) that are so entwined with history that it's not entirely possible. I'd love for those 70 million not to have died in the way they did, but I'm not enough of a student of history to be able to say what would have happened if the US did not get involved (although I can imagine some pretty bad things).

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by ctorg

I did the retiring thing several versions ago, and it didn't work out. Maybe this is no longer the case, but at the time, when I unretired the guys, their ratings were pretty much zeroed out. Maybe that was just a glitch, but I have assumed that the game does that to retired players ever since. I'll give it a try. I'll have to keep track of their contracts and such, though - I'm having it that their contracts are still active, so if they come back before their contract is over, they should still be with the same team.

I do wish there was an easier way to handle this, like some kind of "inactive" list or something.

I don't think the game zeros out retired players ratings anymore. It used to drive me crazy when it did that, but I've noticed that most (all) retired players in recent versions still have their ratings. So I'm pretty certain you'd be ok doing this now.

[OakDragon]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I don't think the game zeros out retired players ratings anymore. It used to drive me crazy when it did that, but I've noticed that most (all) retired players in recent versions still have their ratings. So I'm pretty certain you'd be ok doing this now.

I've had them appear to zero out, but they come back when you do a rescout.

[Déjà Bru]

I like the suspensions idea. You could do it manually but if you wanted so have some spontaneity, how about taking a few of those suspensions entries in english.xml and editing them to talk about how "So-and-so has been drafted!" Of course, you would need to lengthen the terms of "suspensions" and there might be the rub. I see the entries all refer to [%string#1] for the number of days and I am not sure what that refers to (a random number?) or whether you could just insert a number in that field instead of the expression.

[kingcharlesxii]

I think a "war" switch would actually be a really useful feature. I'm envisioning it as an option you select and you fill out the number of years it lasts. OOTP would then select a percentage of guys and basically make them "retire" for a set amount of time. Some guys wouldn't return, due to their age or an injury sustained.

You could also use this feature to simulate an upstart league forming that is poaching some of your league's talent until the league collapses. It would open up some interesting game play ideas, especially if you could make this feature randomly occur through league evolution.

[24Rocks]

Originally Posted by kingcharlesxii

I think a "war" switch would actually be a really useful feature. I'm envisioning it as an option you select and you fill out the number of years it lasts. OOTP would then select a percentage of guys and basically make them "retire" for a set amount of time. Some guys wouldn't return, due to their age or an injury sustained.

You could also use this feature to simulate an upstart league forming that is poaching some of your league's talent until the league collapses. It would open up some interesting game play ideas, especially if you could make this feature randomly occur through league evolution.

That could be a awesome feature but would it get used enough for it to be coded in IDK how much is alot of people and is this option really necessary.

[24Rocks]

.

[scott1964]

There is an injury that i saw in ver 14 that was set to a believe 12 to 16 months for a war time service But I could be wrong.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by scott1964

There is an injury that i saw in ver 14 that was set to a believe 12 to 16 months for a war time service But I could be wrong.

There's a storyline valid for 1942-45 that involves a player being drafted. The "injury" length is one year.

[Carlton]

Like Joe said, there is a storyline and although it only grabs a handful of players, it's pretty neat

Also, do NOT do suspensions, as they have to stay on the 25 man and 40 man roster, teams will field skeleton crews and if injuries get bad enough they might DFA the war time player

Best bet is to edit the injury file, put the Wartime Service on top of your injury file, with the length of time you want, and make it a 1 (common) injury or go into the player's profile and do them yourself. The former will be nice and random and you can kick up your injuries to very high to get those 1000.
If you are savvy with the storylines, I think you tie in injuries with a certain storyline or vice versa

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Carlton

Also, do NOT do suspensions, as they have to stay on the 25 man and 40 man roster, teams will field skeleton crews and if injuries get bad enough they might DFA the war time player.

Good point. I withdraw my suggestion, ctorg.