Calculating OOTP22 Modifiers

[kq76]

I just spent a couple days on this and I finally decided I got the results I wanted! Strikeouts are a bit low, but everything else is good so good enough. I'll post detailed instructions on how I did it and the spreadsheet I used. Interestingly enough, the order of when you do everything can matter greatly and whatever you do, don't check the "auto adjust..." box as it will screw everything up!

First, I started with the teams.csv file from Lahman's database. Then I created a year sheet that added all the teams' stats for each year. Next I created a rates sheet to get some per game stats. Then choose your target year. First I went with 1987 as it has the highest SB #s, but then I realized I like 1994 a bit better for the league totals themselves and I can still get the SB #s another way. Then I tweaked 1994's rates to get my ideal #s (line 152) and I went back to the year sheet to calculate the totals from the rates (again, line 152).

Now you open OOTP. Set all the settings you want to set, taking into consideration what to turn off to make testing faster (there are already good posts on that on the boards). Backup the game folder from the file menu (sometimes I find if I do it outside of the game the files get corrupted so do it from within the game). Go into your file explorer and zip that file just to be safe.

Now make a copy of your game folder and add the # 1 to the name. Load that save. Run your inaugural draft. From the left side of the Stats & AI screen, import the target year you want to use. I'm not talking about the drop down with the label "Historical Year", but the one below it titled "Select which settings to import". Change what "General Strategic Tendencies" you want (e.g., if you choose 1987, which had the highest SB/G in MLB history, the game has "Rarely" selected for stealing bases!).

Now go over to the right side of the screen and select your target year from the pulldown labelled "Totals from year". You'd think this would already have the totals from the year you selected, but it's actually the totals from the date in your game (e.g., my game date is 1985, but I'm importing 1987 settings)! If you have your own ideal league totals, enter them now. Click on "Auto-Calc Modifiers". Notice that the settings on the left side of the screen may have changed again, hopefully for the better! Change them now again, if you really want to, but I seemed to have better success with my stats by changing them beforehand (the order drastically changed the SB modifiers on the right side, so much so that I was getting double the already crazy high SBs I wanted).

Again, do not check the "auto adjust" box below as it will change the modifiers during the sim and you won't get the results you want! I have to imagine this feature is broken, whatever its intent original was, but no matter, we get what we want without it. Checking, or not checking, the "lock league totals..." box didn't seem to do anything (the totals never changed either way), even after running sims of successive years.

If there are any modifiers below that you want to change, change them now. From my spreadsheet you'll notice that I want 1.000 SB/G, which is higher than we've ever seen, even 1987's .852 (in 2020 it was down to .492 ). To get that you take your ideal rate and divide it by your target year rate which gives you your initial modifiers (line 157). Then you multiply that by the modifiers OOTP came up with (line 158) to get final modifiers (line 159) which you then enter into OOTP.

Doing all this, in this exact order, gets me surprisingly close to all the league totals I want (again, strikeouts are a bit low, but they're not that off, and they're still well above the historical average). Before doing all this I was getting crazy #s, like a .169 BA for the entire league! Admittedly, I'm running a fictional independent league I imported from several versions back, but still, the #s were so far off before they were nuts.

Next, go to the Financials screen and select the year you want to import (you can't do this until after you've run the inaugural draft) and change any other settings you want to change on this screen. I suppose you could run the inaugural draft, do what you need to do on the financials screen, and then run your backup, but I like different drafts for each test.

Now from the Play menu, sim "... until playoffs end". From the League menu select Statistics. Click on the "Team Stat..." tab. Scroll down and then enter the sim's totals into the year sheet in the spreadsheet (you can just re-use my lines starting at 153). Then go to the rates sheet and compare your rates with that of your target year and/or your ideal. If you didn't get exactly what you want, tweak from there. I tried tweaking BABIP, but it just seemed to make other stats more off so I ended up leaving it alone (note that OOTP doesn't include SF in their BABIP or OBP calcs when most sites do!).

To run another test, go back to file explorer, make another copy of your original folder and load that save.

Good luck! Believe it or not, this process used to be so much more complicated back in the old days (OOTP4-6). The order of when you did things didn't seem to matter as much / changed results, but the modifiers have really helped.

Zip of OpenOffice Spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ixy...ew?usp=sharing

[kq76]

Above I referred to threads here on how to make OOTP sim faster. My list is below. The things I personally do are marked with an x.

[x]turn off antivirus or at least make it ignore OOTP's data folder

[]try not to run too many other programs at the same time

[]defrag your hard drive
but if it's a SSD, then don't worry about it

[]update video card drivers

[]disable your PC's search indexing of OOTP folders

[x]restart your PC

[x]minimize leagues/teams
less so, but even including affiliated minor leagues

[x]disable creation of baseball cards
game settings > players & facegen > facegen settings > enable baseball cards

[]disable some facegen
especially away uniforms

[]disable 3D
file > settings > 3D & facegen > 3d features / opengl support

[x]run in windowed mode
file > settings > interface > display mode

[x]change "auto-play display" to simple dialog:
file > settings > auto-play display

[x]set helper threads to recommended
file > settings > expert > number of helper threads

[x]lower stats detail to normal or high:
league settings > stats & ai > select stats detail
https://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com...tistics_detail

[x]decrease auto-save & log settings:
global settings > decrease auto-save & log settings
auto-save "once a year"
https://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com...e=game_options

[x]boxes and logs will be overwritten every season, so if you want to keep them enable the almanac
and others to probably "major leagues"

[x]delete retired player that never reached the majors
game settings > players & facegen > retiring player settings

[]purge deleted records
game settings > database > database tools > purge deleted records from db

[]disable preseason predictions

[x]disable super 2

[]decrease scouting report updates
game setting > global settings

[]don't turn on almanac settings
game settings > almanac > archive html reports annually
https://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com...9&page=almanac

[]disable spring training

[]disable trading (MarkusH said this)
even in just some leagues will help

[]disable financials
even in just some leagues will help

[]backup and use the purge tool:
http://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com/...age=purge_tool

[Eugene Church]

kq76, thanks for sharing you research with us... this will be a big help to me... my teams stats in the last few leagues have been totally out of whack... .235 BA instead of .260 BA like I would like.

How do you increase frequency of errors in the game?

I want more stolen bases like the 1980s, but I don't want .980 team fielding averages... prefer the 1950s and .970 FA.

[Eugene Church]

Another question.

On the League Totals screen, could I change the Position Modifiers on the right side of the screen below the League Totals and raise the rate of Position Modifiers Range to 1.100 and increase the frequency of errors 10%?

I would not change the rate of errors for each position.

Would this work to raise the frequency of errors?

[Eugene Church]

One final question:

Do you know anything about the Game Engine Configuration File?

You can access it on the Start Screen that come up first when you open up the OOTP game... you can access the Engine Configuration File here.

Warning: You must know what you are doing to change these Game Configuration File settings... not advised for beginners or novices... or even for knowledgeable gamers that may not be familiar with this area of the game.

What does the "Game Defense Influence" Setting affect the game... what does this do?

I have use the various settings in the past to get my team stats where I wanted them and it worked well, but I really didn't know what I was doing... it was just trial and error... double play frequency, error frequency, wild pitch frequency, passed balls frequency.

My problem now is that I want 1980s base stealing numbers and 1950s Fielding Average Numbers... when I use the Game Engine Configuration File, it changes my two leagues and make them both use the same frequency of errors... I want one league to have .970 FA and the other, a semi-pro type league, to have a .950 FA.

Is it possible to have both of these league use one Global Setting?

Probably not.

Would appreciate any help from you or the OOTP Developmental Team like Matt Arnold and Lukas Berger.

[Eugene Church]

Sorry, folks... this is a selfish bump.

Really wish someone would respond to my questions... it would be very helpful.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

kq76, thanks for sharing you research with us... this will be a big help to me... my teams stats in the last few leagues have been totally out of whack... .235 BA instead of .260 BA like I would like.

You're welcome. Reading one of your threads and another's is what got me to post all this as I realized I wasn't the only one experiencing this.

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

How do you increase frequency of errors in the game?

I'm ashamed to say I've never really looked at error rates. I've just always assumed they were okay.

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

Another question.

On the League Totals screen, could I change the Position Modifiers on the right side of the screen below the League Totals and raise the rate of Position Modifiers Range to 1.100 and increase the frequency of errors 10%?

I would not change the rate of errors for each position.

Would this work to raise the frequency of errors?

Why would you increase the range? I'd try just increasing the error rate, with backups files first of course, and see if you get what you like from there.

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

One final question:

Do you know anything about the Game Engine Configuration File?

You can access it on the Start Screen that come up first when you open up the OOTP game... you can access the Engine Configuration File here.

Warning: You must know what you are doing to change these Game Configuration File settings... not advised for beginners or novices... or even for knowledgeable gamers that may not be familiar with this area of the game.

What does the "Game Defense Influence" Setting affect the game... what does this do?

I have use the various settings in the past to get my team stats where I wanted them and it worked well, but I really didn't know what I was doing... it was just trial and error... double play frequency, error frequency, wild pitch frequency, passed balls frequency.

My problem now is that I want 1980s base stealing numbers and 1950s Fielding Average Numbers... when I use the Game Engine Configuration File, it changes my two leagues and make them both use the same frequency of errors... I want one league to have .970 FA and the other, a semi-pro type league, to have a .950 FA.

Is it possible to have both of these league use one Global Setting?

Probably not.

Would appreciate any help from you or the OOTP Developmental Team like Matt Arnold and Lukas Berger.

I just now opened up engine.cfg and took a look, but I've never actually tried to do anything with it. You're probably right that all leagues have to use that file.

You might want to PM them your question as I wouldn't be surprised if they don't see this thread and even if they do they'd probably not want to read that first post and exit out.

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

Sorry, folks... this is a selfish bump.

Really wish someone would respond to my questions... it would be very helpful.

Sorry. I often post and forget / move on.

[Bulldog Johnny Blatnik]

Here is what is listed in the Manual, definitely worth checking out, it lists all Categories: http://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com/...22&page=engine

FOR EXAMPLE:
The engine config file is a simple text file with pairs of settings and values, one on each line, like this:

GAME_GROUNDBALL_FLYBALL_FACTOR
100

To edit the file, simply change the value in the value line, then save the file. Do not create new settings or change the formatting within the file, or it could cause OOTP not to work! The values in the engine config files are all numbers, set to 100 by default. These generally indicate percentage frequencies. If you want to increase something by 20%, set it to 120. If you want to decrease it by 20%, set it to 80.

Hope that helps.

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by kq76

You're welcome. Reading one of your threads and another's is what got me to post all this as I realized I wasn't the only one experiencing this.



I'm ashamed to say I've never really looked at error rates. I've just always assumed they were okay.



Why would you increase the range? I'd try just increasing the error rate, with backups files first of course, and see if you get what you like from there.



I just now opened up engine.cfg and took a look, but I've never actually tried to do anything with it. You're probably right that all leagues have to use that file.

You might want to PM them your question as I wouldn't be surprised if they don't see this thread and even if they do they'd probably not want to read that first post and exit out.



Sorry. I often post and forget / move on.

Thanks for the help.

I probably should leave the Engine Configuration File alone and not mess with it... no one seems to know much about it.

I will just use the default settings in it... and try to change the League Modifiers to get the stats I would like.

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by Bulldog Johnny Blatnik

Here is what is listed in the Manual, definitely worth checking out, it lists all Categories: http://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com/...22&page=engine

FOR EXAMPLE:
The engine config file is a simple text file with pairs of settings and values, one on each line, like this:

GAME_GROUNDBALL_FLYBALL_FACTOR
100

To edit the file, simply change the value in the value line, then save the file. Do not create new settings or change the formatting within the file, or it could cause OOTP not to work! The values in the engine config files are all numbers, set to 100 by default. These generally indicate percentage frequencies. If you want to increase something by 20%, set it to 120. If you want to decrease it by 20%, set it to 80.

Hope that helps.

Appreciate your post... I didn't realize the manual had any reference to Engine Configuration File.

I have used it to make adjustments for my Islandian Pro Alliance Dynasty League and got really accurate statistical results using the engine configuration file... but it is a global setting and effects all of your leagues.

The Engine Config File worked very well when I only used it for one league, the IPA.... but it caused me troubles when I added any leagues that had different statistical results goals.

The Engine Config File caused problems with my other dynasty league that had stats from a different level of play... semi-pro level as opposed to 1950 MLB standards... my Islandian Pro Alliance had stats results were similar to the 1950s... my North Island and South Island dynasty leagues were semi-pro league and I wanted more errors than the IPA... I wanted .950 FA to be the average for the two semi-pro leagues, while the IPA was .970 FA... I couldn't get that using the global Engine Config File settings.

This will force me to reset the Engine Config File settings to the game default settings... I will just have to run test on my semi-pro league and make adjustments in the League Modifiers and Position Modifiers.

[Eugene Church]

Thanks to kq76 and Bulldog Johnny for their replies.

Still hope Matt Arnold or Lukas Berger will chime in with their knowledge and advice about the Engine Config File and its effect on the game stats.

Does it make defense more important in the game results?

Right now it seems offense and pitching are the main elements... it would be good to make defense important, too.

My basic problem is I always create fictional leagues... OOTP by default seems to base my leagues on modern-day MLB stats... .980 or higher team-fielding averages... when I want .970 FA in one league and .950 in the other league.

[fredbeene]

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

Thanks to kq76 and Bulldog Johnny for their replies.

Still hope Matt Arnold or Lukas Berger will chime in with their knowledge and advice about the Engine Config File and its effect on the game stats.

Does it make defense more important in the game results?

Right now it seems offense and pitching are the main elements... it would be good to make defense important, too.

My basic problem is I always create fictional leagues... OOTP by default seems to base my leagues on modern-day MLB stats... .980 or higher team-fielding averages... when I want .970 FA in one league and .950 in the other league.

I always thought the MODIFIERS at the game level should be used to fine tune results.

I get the ENGINE CONFIG FILE is GLOBAL and effects every game. It seems DUPLICATIVE of the game modifiers. And you could set up TEMPLATES or quickstarts with game modifiers set

The only one that stood out to me that was UNIQUE was GAME_DEFENSE_INFLUENCE.
Still wrapping my head around Matt's post " So it's not about whether we roll the check on a player more often, it's more about how likely the check is to change things."

Since he seems to indicate every play is basically checked then i will likely leave this as is.

I do now wonder if you change the setting if DEF will really change the overall player ratings.....they should as they are valuable(???)

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by fredbeene

I always thought the MODIFIERS at the game level should be used to fine tune results.

I get the ENGINE CONFIG FILE is GLOBAL and effects every game. It seems DUPLICATIVE of the game modifiers. And you could set up TEMPLATES or quickstarts with game modifiers set

The only one that stood out to me that was UNIQUE was GAME_DEFENSE_INFLUENCE.
Still wrapping my head around Matt's post " So it's not about whether we roll the check on a player more often, it's more about how likely the check is to change things."

Since he seems to indicate every play is basically checked then i will likely leave this as is.

I do now wonder if you change the setting if DEF will really change the overall player ratings.....they should as they are valuable(???)

I was hoping that changing the Defense Influence would make good defender more valuable.

I set it up to 120% and hope that it will make defense more important in the game... have no way of knowing.... I just make casual observations and can't do scientific research that would tell if it is so.

I tell myself it makes a difference anyway.

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by fredbeene

I always thought the MODIFIERS at the game level should be used to fine tune results.

I get the ENGINE CONFIG FILE is GLOBAL and effects every game. It seems DUPLICATIVE of the game modifiers. And you could set up TEMPLATES or quickstarts with game modifiers set

The only one that stood out to me that was UNIQUE was GAME_DEFENSE_INFLUENCE.
Still wrapping my head around Matt's post " So it's not about whether we roll the check on a player more often, it's more about how likely the check is to change things."

Since he seems to indicate every play is basically checked then i will likely leave this as is.

I do now wonder if you change the setting if DEF will really change the overall player ratings.....they should as they are valuable(???)

I have always used League Totals to adjust the league settings... it works well for homers, doubles, triples, runs and such, but I don't know how to use them to adjust errors and get the team fielding stats I would like in my fictional leagues.

Only the Defense Influence settings do this as far as I know.

I'm going to try and use the Position Modifier Errors setting for each player to do this and see what happens... maybe I can lower the number in each position and get more errors, which should lower the league fielding average.

I need to run a test league to figure this out... using my league could mess up the stats even worse.

[Pembroke]

I think if you want more errors for a lower fielding percentage, you should increase the numbers beneath Errors. (It seems you did the opposite, reducing them?) The bottom of this page: https://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com..._page.strategy says: Increasing the Error component increases the number of errors at that position, causing a decrease in fielding percentage. As usual, all values are relative to modern day professional baseball.

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by Pembroke

I think if you want more errors for a lower fielding percentage, you should increase the numbers beneath Errors. (It seems you did the opposite, reducing them?) The bottom of this page: https://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com..._page.strategy says: Increasing the Error component increases the number of errors at that position, causing a decrease in fielding percentage. As usual, all values are relative to modern day professional baseball.

Thanks, Pembroke... I'll give this a try.