Historical Simulation Questions

[Mister Twist]

I'm attempting an admittedly insane, hyper-OCD-level accurate recreation of the entire history of the major leagues themselves, but with fictional players. Things like adding affiliated minor leagues in the 30's and 40's when they actually originated, changing foreigner percentages through the years, starting without a draft, etc. There's a few things i could use some help with:

1. Is there any way to eliminate the trade deadline completely? There was none up until 1921. Would setting the date a full year ahead mean there was effectively no deadline?

2. If i put zeroes in any of the Language/Name Origin columns in the Nation Editor, it corrupts my save (i think because they're figured as ratios and it creates a divide-by-zero error). Is there any way to guarantee that certain Name Origins will not be used when creating players? Since in the 19th and early 20th century basically no (for example) Filipino or Pakistani people even lived in the U.S. let alone played pro baseball.

3. Since I won't be using minor leagues until the 30's-40's, would it work better to start a FYP draft in 1921, when real MLB began their draft of minor league players, or 1965, when they started the actual amateur draft?

Sorry for the long post and crazy-nitpicky questions, if anyone could take the time to help with any of this I'd be immensely grateful.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by Mister Twist

I'm attempting an admittedly insane, hyper-OCD-level accurate recreation of the entire history of the major leagues themselves, but with fictional players. Things like adding affiliated minor leagues in the 30's and 40's when they actually originated, changing foreigner percentages through the years, starting without a draft, etc. There's a few things i could use some help with:

1. Is there any way to eliminate the trade deadline completely? There was none up until 1921. Would setting the date a full year ahead mean there was effectively no deadline?

2. If i put zeroes in any of the Language/Name Origin columns in the Nation Editor, it corrupts my save (i think because they're figured as ratios and it creates a divide-by-zero error). Is there any way to guarantee that certain Name Origins will not be used when creating players? Since in the 19th and early 20th century basically no (for example) Filipino or Pakistani people even lived in the U.S. let alone played pro baseball.

3. Since I won't be using minor leagues until the 30's-40's, would it work better to start a FYP draft in 1921, when real MLB began their draft of minor league players, or 1965, when they started the actual amateur draft?

Sorry for the long post and crazy-nitpicky questions, if anyone could take the time to help with any of this I'd be immensely grateful.

1) Just set the trade deadline to be the last day of the regular season.

2) You can edit the world_default.xml BEFORE you start your league OR you can change the language of any country to be US Modern which would make players created there basically Americans who happened to be born abroad. As for the USA you can copy and paste the US name list to any of the languages you want to eliminate. You should also edit ethnicities.txt if you want to replicate the color line. This file cannot be changed in game but can be re-imported whenever you desire.

3) I do this very same project you are describing with every new version of OOTP. My solution to the draft problem is to have the draft from the get go, but before 1965 teams draft in reverse order Instead of the worst team getting first pick, the BEST team gets first pick. Meant to simulate that amateur players would probably want to sign with the best teams over the worst ones.

[gord]

Originally Posted by Questdog

3) I do this very same project you are describing with every new version of OOTP. My solution to the draft problem is to have the draft from the get go, but before 1965 teams draft in reverse order Instead of the worst team getting first pick, the BEST team gets first pick. Meant to simulate that amateur players would probably want to sign with the best teams over the worst ones.

How do you go about doing this? Commish mode and edit draft order?

[Mister Twist]

Thanks a ton Questdog, super helpful as usual. Somehow i knew you'd be the one with the answers on this kind of thing...

Quick follow-up if you don't mind. The "same language twice" solution unfortunately doesn't seem to be allowed, and i am absolutely clueless when it comes to xml. I'm thinking adding a zero or two to the end of the "US Historical" line would be good enough to make it astronomically unlikely for any of the "wrong" names to show up.

I'm intrigued by your "reverse draft" idea. As i understand it, without a draft in place, the league simply generates free agents each year for the teams to compete over. Have you found your way to be more optimal?

As for the color line I'll probably just forgo generating any pictures until 1947.

Again, i appreciate your taking time to help out, and if you have any further thoughts on the above i'd love to hear them.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by Mister Twist

Thanks a ton Questdog, super helpful as usual. Somehow i knew you'd be the one with the answers on this kind of thing...

Quick follow-up if you don't mind. The "same language twice" solution unfortunately doesn't seem to be allowed, and i am absolutely clueless when it comes to xml. I'm thinking adding a zero or two to the end of the "US Historical" line would be good enough to make it astronomically unlikely for any of the "wrong" names to show up.

I'm intrigued by your "reverse draft" idea. As i understand it, without a draft in place, the league simply generates free agents each year for the teams to compete over. Have you found your way to be more optimal?

As for the color line I'll probably just forgo generating any pictures until 1947.

Again, i appreciate your taking time to help out, and if you have any further thoughts on the above i'd love to hear them.

I don't know about optimal, but it seems to me that the reason they put they draft in place originally is because the "have-nots" were having a tough time competing with the "haves" for talent. So it only makes sense to me to make it so that the "haves" get first pick of the players in the pre-draft era. If you don't have a draft, it is more or less just random.

On draft day, you can manually set the first round to whatever order you want and then hit the button for "Copy this order for the rest of the draft" (not sure the exact wording, but I think it is the bottom right of the screen on that page). Not sure if you have to be in Commissioner mode or not, since I always am and can't check right now.

Ethnicities.txt is just a text file and is no brain teaser to edit. The fields are outlined at the top. All you have to do is set the Caucasian entry to 1000 and the rest to zero. (Be sure to back up the original before you edit it).

Yes, I edited my post above, when I tried my suggestion and found it didn't work. You don't need to do a ton of editing to the world_default.xml to get rid of all the extraneous languages. Just find the entry for the USA and below the heading will be the ethnicity language entries. Just delete the ones you don't want (again backup the file first). But you have to do this BEFORE you start your league, because the game only reads this file at league creation.

[jar2574]

Originally Posted by gord

How do you go about doing this? Commish mode and edit draft order?

If it's like OOTP11 then yes, and after you change the first round you click on "use this order every round"

[jar2574]

Originally Posted by Questdog

2) You can edit the world_default.xml BEFORE you start your league OR you can change the language of any country to be US Modern which would make players created there basically Americans who happened to be born abroad. As for the USA you can copy and paste the US name list to any of the languages you want to eliminate. You should also edit ethnicities.txt if you want to replicate the color line. This file cannot be changed in game but can be re-imported whenever you desire.

So if I read this correctly, you could change the ethnic text file as your game progressed through the decades, then push "import new names database", and have a new ethnic makeup for new players entering the draft?

The only problem with that, is that you have to manually change certain facegen created faces, right? At least that was my experience in OOTP11 when I tried to recreate the color line.

But assuming you were willing to change the ethnic text file (which is pretty easy) and then change certain players' pictures, I think that with adjustments to the "international players percentage" and with changes to the quality of different nations' baseball programs, you could replicate the ethnic makeup of historical MLB pretty well.

Is that basically what you do?

Thanks. I always play fictional-historical but I've never tried to get the ethnic makeup correct because it seemed too hard.

[Biggio509]

Actually it is not that bad. Since the nations.txt file is gone I set all nations that are not applicable to the era to non-existent using explore world then nation editor. I have done some research that is far from complete on where actual players came from and use this to set baseball quality for each nation.

The main hurdle with defualt files is segregation. Questdog's modern uses US historical for African American names so you can set US Historical to 0 in nation editor as well as Hispanic until those come into the league.
The issue with segregation if you are playing fictional and using facegen is there is no way to control the percentage of facial types created. At least not that I know of. You used to be able to do this with nations.txt but the problem was once the game started you could not re import nations.txt. So putting 0% African, Asian, etc. faces in the US stuck that way for the length of the game.

Over time, about every decade I change the baseball quality for nations to add in countries that becoming more prominent, increase baseball quality of the nation, and decrease quality for those becoming less prominent. For instance England and Ireland get a 5 in the 1870's and decline over time. Note, I am basing this off where players were born. I would be surprised if back in those days a team found someone in England and enticed them to come to America to play baseball. Rather than having players recruited from foreign countries that mostly represents immigrants who played baseball in the early eras.

[Questdog]

Setting ethnicities to zero in game through the Nation Editor seems to be a bad idea and is corrupting games, so I reccommedn replacing ethcnicities instead. For my Modern nameset, I would recommend changing the US Historical to Irish and setting the percentage to be very low, rather than 0. If you are using my name set, you don't have to do anything else to the USA to insure that you can replicate the color line.

One problem new to OOTP12, however, is that the distribution of foreigners for leagues set in the United States is hard-coded into the game. This means it doesn't matter what you set the baseball levels to and that you will always get Hispanic players whether you want them or not. The only solution to this that I have found is to change your league country to something other than the USA and then you can alter baseball levels to control immigration into your league.

I am currently working on a historical name set that will have a world_default.xml that solves this issue, but it will be a good while before it is ready.

[jar2574]

Originally Posted by Questdog

One problem new to OOTP12, however, is that the distribution of foreigners for leagues set in the United States is hard-coded into the game. This means it doesn't matter what you set the baseball levels to and that you will always get Hispanic players whether you want them or not.

As a side note, this would suggest that you should choose the countries you scout based upon how many players they send to MLB in modern days. (Assuming your league is based in the USA.)

[gord]

Originally Posted by Questdog

I don't know about optimal, but it seems to me that the reason they put they draft in place originally is because the "have-nots" were having a tough time competing with the "haves" for talent. So it only makes sense to me to make it so that the "haves" get first pick of the players in the pre-draft era. If you don't have a draft, it is more or less just random.

It never occurred to me to turn the draft off. That would certainly be more true to the era. I wonder a few things:

1) would that setup be more advantageous to a human player (are the players more likely to sign with a human than any of the other teams)

2) would that get too tedious, offering contracts to upwards of 30-35 players in order to simulate drafting that many

3) would the finances get affected in a negative way (would all the bidding drive up prices).

If anyone can shed some light on that, it would be very helpful. Thanks.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by gord

It never occurred to me to turn the draft off. That would certainly be more true to the era. I wonder a few things:

1) would that setup be more advantageous to a human player (are the players more likely to sign with a human than any of the other teams)

2) would that get too tedious, offering contracts to upwards of 30-35 players in order to simulate drafting that many

3) would the finances get affected in a negative way (would all the bidding drive up prices).

If anyone can shed some light on that, it would be very helpful. Thanks.

It's been a long time since I played without a draft and don't really remember how it works (exce[t in historical leagues where guys go to the team they actually started with), but I thought teams just got assigned a few new players, not having them sent to the FA pool. I'll check this.............

[gord]

I'm playing with feeder leagues and no historical rookies (purely fictional players, but historical stats and teams). I assume all of the feeder league players get dumped into the FA pool and all the teams can bid on them/offer contracts?

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by gord

I'm playing with feeder leagues and no historical rookies (purely fictional players, but historical stats and teams). I assume all of the feeder league players get dumped into the FA pool and all the teams can bid on them/offer contracts?

With feeder leagues, that makes sense.

However, these guys are signing minor league contracts so there is not a lot of competition for them and I think you'd find that it is more of an issue of "first come, first served".....

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by Questdog

It's been a long time since I played without a draft and don't really remember how it works (exce[t in historical leagues where guys go to the team they actually started with), but I thought teams just got assigned a few new players, not having them sent to the FA pool. I'll check this.............

Looks like without a draft new players are created to the FA pool.

I'd think that would not be an ideal solution since their really isn't any bidding to be done (all minor league contracts) and the first team to offer a contract would have an advantage.

But like I said, I haven't played this way in a long time and maybe someone with more experience at it can explain its subtleties to us.

[Sano&Salcedo]

I don't mean to quickly hijack your thread or anything, but I have a historical question and don't want to make a whole thread for it as it will be a fairly quick answer I believe.

I'm wanting to start a historical league starting in 2002 (can you even call that "historical" lol?), and I'm wondering about the minor leagues. I see there are some options regarding the players in the minor leagues, but it makes it sound like if you have minor leagues, only fictional players will in the minors. Does this mean guys like Joe Mauer and Mark Teixeira, who were in the minors with their respective ballclubs at the time, won't be in the game? Or does that just mean it will fill up the minor league "scrubs" with fictional players?

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Questdog

One problem new to OOTP12, however, is that the distribution of foreigners for leagues set in the United States is hard-coded into the game.

I appreciate you probably don't know, but why? That seems like a pointlessly backwards step.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

I appreciate you probably don't know, but why? That seems like a pointlessly backwards step.

Using only baseball levels it is IMPOSSIBLE to get the percentages correct, except by resorting to funny tricks as I did in older OOTP's (i.e. making two or three copies of the same country set to different baseball levels).

I wasn't in on the decision or discussion, but someone either convinced Markus or he took it upon himself to fix this.

To me, it causes as many problems as it fixes, but the facts are this: The majority of players who just want to start an MLB league out of the box have had their experience improved. The rest of us who want to dive deeper into other possibilities are more likely to be willing to develop work arounds for any issues we have.

My Mantra: If I can work around the problem, then it isn't a problem.........

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Questdog

Using only baseball levels it is IMPOSSIBLE to get the percentages correct, except by resorting to funny tricks as I did in older OOTP's (i.e. making two or three copies of the same country set to different baseball levels).

I wasn't in on the decision or discussion, but someone either convinced Markus or he took it upon himself to fix this.

To me, it causes as many problems as it fixes, but the facts are this: The majority of players who just want to start an MLB league out of the box have had their experience improved. The rest of us who want to dive deeper into other possibilities are more likely to be willing to develop work arounds for any issues we have.

My Mantra: If I can work around the problem, then it isn't a problem.........

The problem is that it seems to have made fictional historical leagues based on the US (which is likely to be where most people base leagues) very difficult to do in a way which is "realistic".

One way round it would be to have an "ethnicity by year" database (that works in the same way as the financials or player creation modifiers). The figures almost certainly exist for the US (and the UK for that matter), if nowhere else.

I appreciate why this was done (because modern, US baseball is the market), I just think it's a regressive step to hard code something that wasn't before.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

The problem is that it seems to have made fictional historical leagues based on the US (which is likely to be where most people base leagues) very difficult to do in a way which is "realistic".

One way round it would be to have an "ethnicity by year" database (that works in the same way as the financials or player creation modifiers). The figures almost certainly exist for the US (and the UK for that matter), if nowhere else.

I appreciate why this was done (because modern, US baseball is the market), I just think it's a regressive step to hard code something that wasn't before.

It is easily worked around by creating a new "USA" in the database....