Deleting and recreating personnel

KevinTMC · 07-07-2016, 06:27 PM

Hello again...long time lurker and experimenter with OOTP, long time failure at actually playing the game.

I'm on OOTP 16 at the moment, and have gotten far closer to getting a custom league of my dreams up and running than ever before. But I've hit a rough patch in playing around with personnel.

The short version: I released all coaches and scouts, deleted them all from the Available Personnel screen, and am now stuck and do not know what to do. (I was wanting a way to start over with staff, and for me and all the AI teams to then pick our own from scratch.) Also, there are entries in the Transaction Log for personnel who no longer exist.

The longer version:

I have set up a major league of 12 teams, with three levels of minors below (AAA, AA, A). I meant to set it up as a fictional league, but may have made a mistake by starting with a real-world league structure. I did it this way because my custom league is built from rearranging real-life teams. The major leagues, for instance, consist of six current AAA teams, two Mexican teams, three newly-created franchises, and the Washington Nationals.

(There's a slightly involved backstory involving the 1994 strike; this league is starting with calendar year 1995.)

Because teams have been shuffled between levels, I thought it was both necessary and desirable to hit the reset button on everything. Among other things, that meant releasing all players and then clearing out the free agent pool. (I'm figuring out how I should best create the new pool of players for my inaugural draft; I've asked a question in another thread about that.)

I tried to do the same thing for scouts and coaches, but may have made a mistake, as I'm not sure how new ones should be generated, or how many of them. Maybe I'm supposed to just go the fill-all-teams-then-release route...but surely I'd need to add a few extras to the mix at that point too? And since there's no draft for scouts and coaches, how does it work from there?

Oh, and presuming that it takes time to hire people, and since the draft is the first order of business in this new league...is it a problem if nobody has scouts in place for the inaugural draft?

Finally, in poking around trying to find more information and answers, I happened to open the transaction log, and noticed something odd. As noted above, I created three new teams to fill out my new major league. (Well, technically, two are revivals of old minor-league clubs, and one is a team from the Puerto Rican league, but I digress.) In the transaction log I see where each of those teams (under the random names they were given when first generated) signed some coaches. Now here's the fun part: even though all of those coaches were released and then deleted from the pool, clicking on their names still takes me to their profiles. Is this a sign that something has gone wrong?

Oh, and here's what else is strange about this: I'm seeing this log after having just run the "Erase the entire league history" command. Is this also a sign that something has gone wrong? (And would it perhaps have any relation to the fact that this league's coaches.dat is still over 1 MB in size, players.dat is over 13 MB, and retired.dat is over 35 MB? That doesn't look like I'd expect for a league that should be currently devoid of players, personnel, and history.)

Maybe I should just delete these phantom coaches individually (which seems to be an option, from both their profiles and the log), delete the log (if one can), and forget about it. It seems worrisomely weird though.

KevinTMC · 07-08-2016, 10:30 PM

A follow-up note about deleted players and personnel that don't seem to be completely deleted:

As noted above, my retired.dat file was over 35 MB, even after deleting league history. Doing some further poking around, I discovered that my league still in fact had 22 thousand or so deleted players showing in the Retired Players screen. I deleted them all, saved the game again...and retired.dat is still the same size as before.

It doesn't seem that any data is actually removed from coaches.dat, players.dat, or retired.dat when players or personnel are removed from the game. (Teams.dat also seems pretty beefy at close to 10 MB...perhaps information about all the teams I deleted to get the real-world MLB universe plus Mexico down to 48 teams is still in that file as well?) This is concerning.

Is there a way to lose or strip out data that's no longer needed? I thought perhaps saving the game as a quickstart might do this, but the quickstart folder didn't turn out any smaller. Can files be safely deleted or regenerated or edited by hand...and if so, which ones? (Surely it's a no-brainer to delete caps and jersey and logos for teams that have been deleted from the league universe...but beyond that I don't know.)

I would greatly appreciate any light that anyone could shed on any of this...even just links to existing forum threads that address some of these questions and answers (I searched diligently before posting, but I could well have missed something).

I can't offer to share any OOTP expertise in return--at least, not yet--but I would be delighted to share a quickstart (and/or a template, if and when I can figure out what templates actually are) of my completed ready-for-inaugural-draft league universe when I do finally finish it. It's being put together with great care and attention to detail, and I would hope others might find it pretty cool as well.

07-07-2016, 06:27 PM	#1
KevinTMC Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Georgia, USA Posts: 55	Deleting and recreating personnel Hello again...long time lurker and experimenter with OOTP, long time failure at actually playing the game. I'm on OOTP 16 at the moment, and have gotten far closer to getting a custom league of my dreams up and running than ever before. But I've hit a rough patch in playing around with personnel. The short version: I released all coaches and scouts, deleted them all from the Available Personnel screen, and am now stuck and do not know what to do. (I was wanting a way to start over with staff, and for me and all the AI teams to then pick our own from scratch.) Also, there are entries in the Transaction Log for personnel who no longer exist. The longer version: I have set up a major league of 12 teams, with three levels of minors below (AAA, AA, A). I meant to set it up as a fictional league, but may have made a mistake by starting with a real-world league structure. I did it this way because my custom league is built from rearranging real-life teams. The major leagues, for instance, consist of six current AAA teams, two Mexican teams, three newly-created franchises, and the Washington Nationals. (There's a slightly involved backstory involving the 1994 strike; this league is starting with calendar year 1995.) Because teams have been shuffled between levels, I thought it was both necessary and desirable to hit the reset button on everything. Among other things, that meant releasing all players and then clearing out the free agent pool. (I'm figuring out how I should best create the new pool of players for my inaugural draft; I've asked a question in another thread about that.) I tried to do the same thing for scouts and coaches, but may have made a mistake, as I'm not sure how new ones should be generated, or how many of them. Maybe I'm supposed to just go the fill-all-teams-then-release route...but surely I'd need to add a few extras to the mix at that point too? And since there's no draft for scouts and coaches, how does it work from there? Oh, and presuming that it takes time to hire people, and since the draft is the first order of business in this new league...is it a problem if nobody has scouts in place for the inaugural draft? Finally, in poking around trying to find more information and answers, I happened to open the transaction log, and noticed something odd. As noted above, I created three new teams to fill out my new major league. (Well, technically, two are revivals of old minor-league clubs, and one is a team from the Puerto Rican league, but I digress.) In the transaction log I see where each of those teams (under the random names they were given when first generated) signed some coaches. Now here's the fun part: even though all of those coaches were released and then deleted from the pool, clicking on their names still takes me to their profiles. Is this a sign that something has gone wrong? Oh, and here's what else is strange about this: I'm seeing this log after having just run the "Erase the entire league history" command. Is this also a sign that something has gone wrong? (And would it perhaps have any relation to the fact that this league's coaches.dat is still over 1 MB in size, players.dat is over 13 MB, and retired.dat is over 35 MB? That doesn't look like I'd expect for a league that should be currently devoid of players, personnel, and history.) Maybe I should just delete these phantom coaches individually (which seems to be an option, from both their profiles and the log), delete the log (if one can), and forget about it. It seems worrisomely weird though. Last edited by KevinTMC; 07-07-2016 at 06:30 PM.

07-08-2016, 10:30 PM	#2
KevinTMC Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Georgia, USA Posts: 55	A follow-up note about deleted players and personnel that don't seem to be completely deleted: As noted above, my retired.dat file was over 35 MB, even after deleting league history. Doing some further poking around, I discovered that my league still in fact had 22 thousand or so deleted players showing in the Retired Players screen. I deleted them all, saved the game again...and retired.dat is still the same size as before. It doesn't seem that any data is actually removed from coaches.dat, players.dat, or retired.dat when players or personnel are removed from the game. (Teams.dat also seems pretty beefy at close to 10 MB...perhaps information about all the teams I deleted to get the real-world MLB universe plus Mexico down to 48 teams is still in that file as well?) This is concerning. Is there a way to lose or strip out data that's no longer needed? I thought perhaps saving the game as a quickstart might do this, but the quickstart folder didn't turn out any smaller. Can files be safely deleted or regenerated or edited by hand...and if so, which ones? (Surely it's a no-brainer to delete caps and jersey and logos for teams that have been deleted from the league universe...but beyond that I don't know.) I would greatly appreciate any light that anyone could shed on any of this...even just links to existing forum threads that address some of these questions and answers (I searched diligently before posting, but I could well have missed something). I can't offer to share any OOTP expertise in return--at least, not yet--but I would be delighted to share a quickstart (and/or a template, if and when I can figure out what templates actually are) of my completed ready-for-inaugural-draft league universe when I do finally finish it. It's being put together with great care and attention to detail, and I would hope others might find it pretty cool as well.