Some comments and Questions

[vixmurphy]

Haven't played OOTP since OOTP3 so I 'm considering myself somewhat of a newbie. Changes in life limit the amount of time I can spend playing so when I skimmed the rules I may have missed some of the things I have questions about.

First of all I love the ball animation. That said, I have to say I enjoyed the interface from OOTP 3 much better. Everything seemed much easier to access and control. Even the newspaper style reports seemed more enjoyable in #3. I stopped playing for a few weeks and I can't even remember where I access my minor league reports that suggest who should be promoted /demoted.

I tried to jump right in as manager and gm of the 2008 Orioles. Left everything at default. Didn't expect much by way of results but team started off horribly (2-12) and all players were underacheiving. I went into the roster and realized that the players were all exhasuted and needed rest. I made adjustments for platooning, depth chart, etc. And boom! The Orioles end up with 100 wins and with 5 starting pitchers under 3.75 ERA. Only made 2 minor trades so this didn't make sense.

Then I noticed there were no other trades all year long in the league.

Josh Beckett , who starts the year on the DL for Boston, never gets activated. Clearly I have missed some steps with the setup but I 'm not sure what.

Also I get the idea of ghost players in the minor leagues but how is it handled when you have say 8 starting pitchers at AAA. Will they all get starts evenly, every 8 days, or just the top 5?

Thanks,

Shawn

[1998 Yankees]

EDIT: Sorry for the doubled answer to this doubled thread. I did not notice the other thread when I responded to this one, but I'll let my answer stand even though it's probably redundant (or wrong altogether ).

Originally Posted by vixmurphy

Haven't played OOTP since OOTP3 so I 'm considering myself somewhat of a newbie. Changes in life limit the amount of time I can spend playing so when I skimmed the rules I may have missed some of the things I have questions about.

First of all I love the ball animation. That said, I have to say I enjoyed the interface from OOTP 3 much better. Everything seemed much easier to access and control. Even the newspaper style reports seemed more enjoyable in #3. I stopped playing for a few weeks and I can't even remember where I access my minor league reports that suggest who should be promoted /demoted.

I tried to jump right in as manager and gm of the 2008 Orioles. Left everything at default. Didn't expect much by way of results but team started off horribly (2-12) and all players were underacheiving. I went into the roster and realized that the players were all exhasuted and needed rest. I made adjustments for platooning, depth chart, etc. And boom! The Orioles end up with 100 wins and with 5 starting pitchers under 3.75 ERA. Only made 2 minor trades so this didn't make sense.

Then I noticed there were no other trades all year long in the league.

Josh Beckett , who starts the year on the DL for Boston, never gets activated. Clearly I have missed some steps with the setup but I 'm not sure what.

Also I get the idea of ghost players in the minor leagues but how is it handled when you have say 8 starting pitchers at AAA. Will they all get starts evenly, every 8 days, or just the top 5?

Thanks,

Shawn

Yes, the learning curve for this game is steeper and the user interface is definitely more complicated but the tradeoff for these drawbacks is more realism, more flexibility, and ultimately more immersion with OOTP 9 than I ever had with OOTP 6.5. It has not been a straight path; OOTP 2006 was a pothole to be sure (sorry for the mixed metaphors) but I would never go back to 6.5 now that I have spent the time and effort to get into this version.

Your questions, as best as I can answer them (others, chime in please):

1. There are two functions in League Setup, either one of which could have been off. These are Set All Teams Back to Being Computer Controlled and Set All Computer Controlled Teams to Allow AI Roster Changes. See if these are your problem; I don't think either one will upset your human control of your team. That takes us through Josh Beckett, I believe.

2. As far as ghost players, that's a pretty handy option (I use and love it) for having only true prospects to handle in your minor leagues as it simulates the riff-raff that you would have to manually search for, sign, and manage in order to fill out the team. However, if you overstock your minor league teams anyway, let's say 8 SP's on the roster, then yes, the computer will pick the top 5 for its rotation and the other 3 will languish. It simulates the missing players fine but it cannot simulate realistically having all starters getting equal playing time when there are more than the usual amount of them by position on the roster.

[vixmurphy]

Thanks '98, I appreciate the info