Expansion Draft Questions and Concerns

[pgjocki]

I am getting ready to execute an expansion for a MLB Quickstart as a test but have the following questions and concerns that I hope others have already dealt with and can help me avoid pitfalls.

1 - What date is the best (optimal) day to expand the league? When people say the first day of the offseason are they talking about the first day after the World Series ends?

2 - How many players should be protected and does it scale if I expand by 4 teams instead of 2? The default is 25 and Auto-protect Players with less 3 years Pro Service Years. If I understand what that is saying is that each team can protect almost their entire 26 man roster manually but will also not have to worry about protecting any of their young prospects? If I want the expansion teams to get some good talent I figure that number should be significantly less, but by how much?

3 - Per the Manual:

After the Draft
If you didn't pay close attention to the draft, for example if you weren't drafting, you can check out the draft log from the League Homescreen to see who was chosen. In OOTP, there is no mail notification or report that tells you which players your team lost, so it's pretty important for you to check this and react accordingly.

Why doesn't the game send an email? Why isn't there a league roll-up that gives a story of every team breakdown?

4 - How do I get the wizard to work without errors? When I tried to expand the league by 4 teams when I get to the Minor Leagues I get this error:

WARNING!

Cannot expand league this way, a sub-league would end up with an odd number of teams! (Appalachian League) Continue to next step?

5 - I was able to get around the issue in question 4 by adding another team to the Appalachian League with one of the new expansion teams but now that team has 2 Rookie teams while all the other expansion teams have 1.

6 - Schedules?

Is there an easy way to check which leagues need new schedules and what the format needs to be? I know I need to search the Mod Forum and either find a pre-built schedule or request one to be built? What version of OOTP is going to fix this btw? All I want is a schedule creator written in Python that is user friendly.

[Palaaemon]

Originally Posted by pgjocki

I am getting ready to execute an expansion for a MLB Quickstart as a test but have the following questions and concerns that I hope others have already dealt with and can help me avoid pitfalls.

1 - What date is the best (optimal) day to expand the league? When people say the first day of the offseason are they talking about the first day after the World Series ends?


The actual date is variable because of many factors. Yes the best method is to expand the day after the World Series.


2 - How many players should be protected and does it scale if I expand by 4 teams instead of 2? The default is 25 and Auto-protect Players with less 3 years Pro Service Years. If I understand what that is saying is that each team can protect almost their entire 26 man roster manually but will also not have to worry about protecting any of their young prospects? If I want the expansion teams to get some good talent I figure that number should be significantly less, but by how much?


First. Personally I have learned that expanding by too much too fast can and will dilute your league (especially pitchers) and can hurt the integrity for some time. I don't expand by more than 2 teams at a time, and wait at least 5 years in between expansions.

Second. When expanding I want the new teams to have at least a fighting chance. To that end I only allow the protection of 15 players. I would leave the auto protect players with less 3 years Pro Service Years.

3 - Per the Manual:

After the Draft
If you didn't pay close attention to the draft, for example if you weren't drafting, you can check out the draft log from the League Homescreen to see who was chosen. In OOTP, there is no mail notification or report that tells you which players your team lost, so it's pretty important for you to check this and react accordingly.

Why doesn't the game send an email? Why isn't there a league roll-up that gives a story of every team breakdown?


That is a good question. I have wondered that myself. The powers that be have never seen fit to include that into the game. Perhaps suggest that to Markus or Matt to see if that might be included in OOTP XXII.



4 - How do I get the wizard to work without errors? When I tried to expand the league by 4 teams when I get to the Minor Leagues I get this error:

WARNING!

Cannot expand league this way, a sub-league would end up with an odd number of teams! (Appalachian League) Continue to next step?


The wizard will not allow odd numbers of teams in a league. You have to go in manually and change it yourself.


5 - I was able to get around the issue in question 4 by adding another team to the Appalachian League with one of the new expansion teams but now that team has 2 Rookie teams while all the other expansion teams have 1.



One team having an extra rookie team is not really a problem.


6 - Schedules?

Is there an easy way to check which leagues need new schedules and what the format needs to be? I know I need to search the Mod Forum and either find a pre-built schedule or request one to be built? What version of OOTP is going to fix this btw? All I want is a schedule creator written in Python that is user friendly.

There is no "easy" way, but anytime you make changes to a leagues structure just remember that you will need to create a new schedule for that league and any minor leagues that were affected. Again, no idea what Markus and Matt have in store for the future concerning schedule building. As far as a schedule builder written in python that is user friendly, sadly I cannot help you with that.

Hope some or all of this has helped you.

Have a Great night!

Palaaemon