Thoughts on adding cash to AI teams?

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

Just to add my two cents to the pot, I'll mention again what I've found and posted about over the years.

1) If you are starting out in a new league, set all marktet sizes to 10. Less than that and some teams fall too quickly below 7, which is when trouble starts.

2) I set every owner's traits to 3 to begin. As they die off, I check to see no one falls below this level.

3) Remember, the owner increasing your budget by $20 million and demanding you increase cash by $30 is completely inrealistic. This NEVER happens in real life. In any realistic organization, the budget would set $10 lower and you would know what you can spend.

So the only option to prevent this total nonsense is to review each team at the end of the year. My point 2 makes this easier and less tedious.

Based on what you are saying ....the financial system is completely broken...and it's not worth even attempting a long term save in OOTP. That is disheartening to say the least. I do NOT want to have to do financial maintenance for every damn team in my league. This really just isn't right.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

Just to add my two cents to the pot, I'll mention again what I've found and posted about over the years.

1) If you are starting out in a new league, set all marktet sizes to 10. Less than that and some teams fall too quickly below 7, which is when trouble starts.

2) I set every owner's traits to 3 to begin. As they die off, I check to see no one falls below this level.

3) Remember, the owner increasing your budget by $20 million and demanding you increase cash by $30 is completely inrealistic. This NEVER happens in real life. In any realistic organization, the budget would set $10 lower and you would know what you can spend.

So the only option to prevent this total nonsense is to review each team at the end of the year. My point 2 makes this easier and less tedious.

Thanks for your thoughts. I've a bit of time before I do anything so will chew on this and see if\how it may fit into whatever I do.

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

See, this is the kind of stuff that ruins OOTP for me....I don't think you should have to go in and do this much work. It's not realistic, and it's not fun. OOTP should be able to self sustain financially as you move from year to year within the simulation.

This is why I don't really want to change actual budgets. I'd like the economy be the economy.

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

Based on what you are saying ....the financial system is completely broken...and it's not worth even attempting a long term save in OOTP. That is disheartening to say the least. I do NOT want to have to do financial maintenance for every damn team in my league. This really just isn't right.

I wouldn't go this far, at least not from what I've seen in my game. My game has been imported from v4 to v22 and while I can't say that has been part of the problem I do think there is some cause-effect.

Making the changes\tweaks is something that I've thought about for awhile. I've had seasons with quite a few teams in the green, half and more, I think. I've had small market teams get to the WS and challenge frequently for playoff spots. And it's not that this particular season I'm in is a disaster. There are teams that are doing ok too. I don't think it's a particularly big tweak I'll have to make. When I do it and, if, things stay smooth for 5- 10 years I'll be happy. Of course longer to permanent would be even better

I play out all games, about 2 ish seasons per version. So results are going to take awhile to see. It may be I won't know until I've imported into 23,24, and 25. Who knows? But I did retire so with more time it may come faster.

[Syd Thrift]

I do see a lot of teams running in the red every year and even if they're only slightly in the red, that adds up. I feel like this is the result of two things:

1. Owners who take money from the team seem to take a set percentage of your revenue every year (I think). If you take in $100M with a profit of $10M and internally they say "I'm skimming 10% off the top", they take that $10M and you break even. If you take in $200M but have $210 in expenses, they take $20M and you're $30M in the hole, not $10M.

1a. In real life, owners dump money into teams. I don't think I see AI owners do this so much.

2. While owners give you goals and while I *think* the AI tries to hit them, honestly it doesn't try all that hard, especially in pre-free agency leagues. To a big extent I understand this, since the game is built to simulate the modern game first and foremost, and you don't just cut a productive player because his contract is on the high side. That said, I very rarely see the AI do a straight-up salary dump.

I think the two issues run against each other, particularly in a non-FA league. I have to say, though, that the real, true issue here is much, much closer to 1 than to 2 but it's slightly not either. Prior to free agency, I'm sorry, but it was reeeeeeeeeeeally easy to make money on a baseball team. Yeah, you had occasional hold-outs and sometimes you did have to cough up money for star players, but the St. Louis Browns managed to remain solvent in spite of drawing under 100,000 fans for 3 years out of 4 from 1932 to 1935. You had former players who'd scraped together enough money to buy into the game and whose families were still owners well into the 80s. You had some of the larger clubs bankrolling entire minor league systems just for the competitive edge all of those players got them. There were all sorts of not-good-for-business things that everyone practiced, from playing day games during the week to offering the same boring concessions day after day, and so on, that teams implemented once they had to. The league had teams in the same 10 cities they'd been in since 1903 well into the 1950s in spite of massive population changes in the country as well as huge upgrades into things like speed of travel (TBF, it probably wasn't a long-term viable option for the same league to have teams in Boston and Milwaukee in 1901; by 1955, they could clearly handle New York and Los Angeles).

One can argue that the game wasn't as corporatized then as it's since become, sure, but it was also in all probability insanely high revenue for everyone, not just the Yankees and Cubs and Cardinals (and Dodgers and Giants when they moved out from NYC) but for everyone. I think if you really, really wanted to map real life, you'd figure out some way to fix revenue and salaries from 1903 to around 1970 so that even size 2 or 3 markets (i.e. the #2 teams in Boston and St. Louis) could break even with a league-average payroll and a .500 record. Maybe you'd also keep both salaries and inflation pretty low during this time. Then starting in the 70s and especially with free agency, you ramp yearly inflation way up, higher than 5% and probably over 10% some years (which, at that the late 70s had inflation rates approaching 10% but that's another story) and make sure that salaries - which you'd have to reset every year, surely - outpace inflation until, well, I guess it's up to you to decide where they go. Personally I still think that by 1994 a small to mid-market team could still turn a decent profit with a higher than average payroll if they were playoff quality, but I guess YMMV on that.

TBH that seems like an awful lot of work and even as someone who loves getting into the weeds on stuff like this, it's a bit much for me. I want to play baseball games. So instead, what I personally do is just inject some money into everyone from time to time. Hey, the Yankees found $2M sitting underneath their couch. How about that? Huh, the Astros are way in the red right now. Correction: they were in the red. They just invented nachos!

[PSUColonel]

We are proposing disabling the “owner controls budget” feature. This in theory could free up a lot of cash the owners might ordinarily withhold.

[Syd Thrift]

I saw that, but… I don’t know, some owners skimming off the top seems realistic to me in a vacuum at least…

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

See, this is the kind of stuff that ruins OOTP for me....I don't think you should have to go in and do this much work. It's not realistic, and it's not fun. OOTP should be able to self sustain financially as you move from year to year within the simulation.

Agreed.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

Based on what you are saying ....the financial system is completely broken...and it's not worth even attempting a long term save in OOTP. That is disheartening to say the least. I do NOT want to have to do financial maintenance for every damn team in my league. This really just isn't right.

Yes. I have been saying this for years. I get replies, but they "When we get to it" quality.

[Leo_The_Lip]

The biggest issue is similar to many other sports sims. The folks who create them have never workded at a real company with financial responsibilites.

Budgets and income statements don't have anything to do with each other. Budgets are plans--and plans don't survive contact with the enemy!

As I have written many, many times in various sport sim forums, ignoring taxes in sports produces the wrong information. Most owners lose money for tax purposes and write-off the loss on the ventures where they make money.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Having an owner goal of increasing cash is already happening. He owes less in taxes because of the baseball loss. Ask Trump, ask Snyer, ask all the other scoundrels if they aren't getting huge refunds on their consolidated tax returns.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Sweed

I haven't put any thought into it. I just take it in when it happens.

I'd like commissioner power to edit owner cash along with the budget and starting balance. At least in my mind this would be the easiest and quickest fix.
With the caveat there may be knock on effects I haven't thought of Heading to suggestion forum soon

I will report back what I do and results when I get there. I did just purchase the newest FM that will slow down my OOTP a bit I should still make good pace though as I can't go long without my baseball fix and I am looking forward (really ) to seeing how this works out.

I just picked up the new FM also. All I can say is …wow!! I wish OOTP was this streamlined and detailed.

The reason I love FM is because it truly puts you in the managers chair. OOTP attempts to do this, but in a very barebones sort of way when compared. Sometimes I feel like OOTP is too much of a model train set, and not enough of a true management game/simulator.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

The biggest issue is similar to many other sports sims. The folks who create them have never workded at a real company with financial responsibilites.

TBF this applies to a great deal of baseball history as well, particularly from 1920ish to 1975 or so: major league baseball teams only vaguely resembled real companies with real financial responsibilities. They were more like cash cows you occasionally had to pump a little bit of money back into.

If anything I think Markus / Matt Arnold / et al have far, far more experience working at "real companies" who have to worry about making ends meet, meeting payroll, etc. than a Clark Griffith or a Connie Mack Jr. ever did. OOTP Developments is, in fact, a company, a company that has been around for more than 20 years now, pursuing a niche market that has seen its ups and downs and has had several competitors bite the dust over the years.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Sweed

I looked into this a bit more and was surprised the only adjustments I can make, at least that I can see, is "budget" or "starting balance (cash)". My hope is I can add starting cash as I don't want to be increasing budgets. I prefer the realistic world of haves and have nots. Not sure what this will look like when I do this as far as the accounting screen. Will adding money in the starting balance change anything to make the math work in the accounting screen? Ie previous balance + revenue sharing + cash from owner = starting balance, so if I add $X-mil to starting balance will that change something in the accounting screen so the math looks right? I have no idea but will be testing it out, I guess I hoped along the way someone has done this and would pop into this thread

The other thing that surprised me as I looked through my league is owners are indeed putting in quite a bit of money to struggling clubs but, it IMHO doesn't seem to be enough. Note in my screen 2 yrs ago Rays owner put in 22.7 mil and this year almost 13 mil. However that left them starting balance of -$20 mil. These numbers fluctuate a lot between teams. Some owners contributed enough to get to approx -$1 mil.

So at season's end, working from a backup, I'll test out ways to do this starting with adding "starting balance". It will at least be interesting
In the end I'll just want to get teams back to financial stability and see if it lasts, or if, it deteriorates. This is a long time league so some of the problem may just be because things started in previous versions before the financials were improved over the years? Perhaps once adjusted it will stay somewhat inline. If not I may at least find a system of adjusting every few years that will make me happy.

Two screens from Tampa as an example of what I am looking at and the options to "fix". Accounting and the edit financial page available in commish mode.

Thanks again to all who made comments and suggestions.

One thing I have gathered regarding "disabling owner controls budget" is by disabling it...there is definitely more disparity between the have and have not. It becomes a bit more obvious when you don't have owners taking money away.

On a side note...I find it fascinating how long your league has been running and am curious about a few things regarding it's structure. Have you ever added on additional leagues such as international or independents? Are you using a full minor league system? Have your league imports always been seamless? I am very curious about what it looks like today compared to when you started it.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

TBF this applies to a great deal of baseball history as well, particularly from 1920ish to 1975 or so: major league baseball teams only vaguely resembled real companies with real financial responsibilities. They were more like cash cows you occasionally had to pump a little bit of money back into.

If anything I think Markus / Matt Arnold / et al have far, far more experience working at "real companies" who have to worry about making ends meet, meeting payroll, etc. than a Clark Griffith or a Connie Mack Jr. ever did. OOTP Developments is, in fact, a company, a company that has been around for more than 20 years now, pursuing a niche market that has seen its ups and downs and has had several competitors bite the dust over the years.

Yes, I was harsh there. What I originally intended to say was few to none of game designers have worked in finance/accounting and therefore have no knowledge of how real world, big company finances work. See Curt Schilling's video game company history for how that works out.

The interchange between income and cash that occurs in OOTP's financial statements is totally wrong. This is apparent to anyone who has knowledge of annual reports and other filings. Every company has a balance sheet, an income statement and a cash flow statement. And while they do tie-in, they don't in the simplistic way OOTP does 'financials'. And that is the heart of the problem.

[Leo_The_Lip]

The solution (as I have written in this forum over the years) is to forget all about income and simply give the player a budget. This is MUCH more realistic. Further, this would allow missions to be completed that would increase or decrease the money you have to spend.

There is no doubt this would make for more interesting game play.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

One thing I have gathered regarding "disabling owner controls budget" is by disabling it...there is definitely more disparity between the have and have not. It becomes a bit more obvious when you don't have owners taking money away.

On a side note...I find it fascinating how long your league has been running and am curious about a few things regarding it's structure. Have you ever added on additional leagues such as international or independents? Are you using a full minor league system? Have your league imports always been seamless? I am very curious about what it looks like today compared to when you started it.

I started my league in 2002 v4. Standard MLB setup, IIRC that meant 3 MiLB levels? Versions 4-5-6-6.5 imported fine. The total rewrite of 2006 actually went well too. I remember Markus said there was the possibility importing would not be possible. But then he did figure it out except only player stats imported. Player histories did not come along. However a user, Comedian(?), made a mod that would import the player histories. The only other issue I recall was the release version of 2006 didn't assign positions to CF that were imported and that was fixed in the first hot fix. After that, other than growing pains of a total rewrite, things went smoothly.

I do need to add that some things from v4 to v6.5 I am not able to see in v2006 and after. While individual player stats did come along things like standings, champions, most league wide stats BA, ERA etc. did not. For that I have my, now very old, last almanac created in v6.5. To be honest I don't think I've looked at that in the last 10 years

OOTP2006 up to v22 I've had no major issues with import. I do go through all of my settings to make sure everything comes in the same. I then make a backup before advancing a day just in case Of course one can also simply reimport as long as they don't delete the file from the previous version.

With the rewrite, not sure if it was right away in 2006, came a more full minor league. So I went to the new default 5 (R, SA, A, AA, AAA) levels and at the very beginning tried "full minors". Wasn't long and I switched to ghost players so I was maintaining players I drafted and not "filler fodder". Full minors may be ok if you let the AI run them but I'm keeping control myself, thank you very much

The only change I've made to minors is keeping up, for the most part, with affiliations. I've made some choices here to stick with my 5 levels vs the newer default OOTP minor leagues. IE some affiliates are not 100% accurate but all are either current\last year teams or at least a team from the near past. This year with the new Arizona and Florida rookie leagues also meant a change. Instead of R, SA, A, AA, AAA I changed R to ACL\FCL, moved teams, as close as possible to either Fla. or Ariz. and allowed only 1 team for each MLB organization . My "new" v22 MilB levels look like this (ACL\FCL, Low A, High A, AA, AAA). The old "short A that became Low A went from a 54 game schedule to a 138(?), or whatever they really play. Too me, MiLB is not about 100% accuracy but having a world as close to real as possible within my 5 level structure. I'll never play MiLB so the league is all about producing players for my MLB world.

For many versions I used feeders and was quite happy with them. I only stopped last year when v21 came out with the new way of creating a draft class with schools and stats. I've been very happy with this and the bonus is the league file size shrinks without all of those feeders.

I do keep up with the MLB ballparks and if MLB expands and adds a team so will I. What you see in MLB today is what you'll see in my world for team locations, parks etc. The Expos will only come to my league if the come back in the real MLB.

No to international or independent leagues. I'm about a somewhat realistic (we all have opinions on what that is) world where all leagues are there to produce talent to play in my MLB. The "default", "trimmed down", whatever you want to call my world works well for me without bogging me down with issues on if\how players move between leagues etc. Even if a world wide game could be made to work without issues I'm not sure I'd use it. I can't say I'd be interested in seeing what was going on in Japan, Korea, Cubs, or anywhere else. Nor be interested in growing my save file size to make that be possible.

The imports have gone very smoothly. Importing is my favorite feature of OOTP. I couldn't believe it was possible when I bought my first version in 2002. A dream come true that I could keep a game going year after year and never restart. I mean 19 years ago I started the game I'm still playing today. How cool is that?

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Sweed

I started my league in 2002 v4. Standard MLB setup, IIRC that meant 3 MiLB levels? Versions 4-5-6-6.5 imported fine. The total rewrite of 2006 actually went well too. I remember Markus said there was the possibility importing would not be possible. But then he did figure it out except only player stats imported. Player histories did not come along. However a user, Comedian(?), made a mod that would import the player histories. The only other issue I recall was the release version of 2006 didn't assign positions to CF that were imported and that was fixed in the first hot fix. After that, other than growing pains of a total rewrite, things went smoothly.

I do need to add that some things from v4 to v6.5 I am not able to see in v2006 and after. While individual player stats did come along things like standings, champions, most league wide stats BA, ERA etc. did not. For that I have my, now very old, last almanac created in v6.5. To be honest I don't think I've looked at that in the last 10 years

OOTP2006 up to v22 I've had no major issues with import. I do go through all of my settings to make sure everything comes in the same. I then make a backup before advancing a day just in case Of course one can also simply reimport as long as they don't delete the file from the previous version.

With the rewrite, not sure if it was right away in 2006, came a more full minor league. So I went to the new default 5 (R, SA, A, AA, AAA) levels and at the very beginning tried "full minors". Wasn't long and I switched to ghost players so I was maintaining players I drafted and not "filler fodder". Full minors may be ok if you let the AI run them but I'm keeping control myself, thank you very much

The only change I've made to minors is keeping up, for the most part, with affiliations. I've made some choices here to stick with my 5 levels vs the newer default OOTP minor leagues. IE some affiliates are not 100% accurate but all are either current\last year teams or at least a team from the near past. This year with the new Arizona and Florida rookie leagues also meant a change. Instead of R, SA, A, AA, AAA I changed R to ACL\FCL, moved teams, as close as possible to either Fla. or Ariz. and allowed only 1 team for each MLB organization . My "new" v22 MilB levels look like this (ACL\FCL, Low A, High A, AA, AAA). The old "short A that became Low A went from a 54 game schedule to a 138(?), or whatever they really play. Too me, MiLB is not about 100% accuracy but having a world as close to real as possible within my 5 level structure. I'll never play MiLB so the league is all about producing players for my MLB world.

For many versions I used feeders and was quite happy with them. I only stopped last year when v21 came out with the new way of creating a draft class with schools and stats. I've been very happy with this and the bonus is the league file size shrinks without all of those feeders.

I do keep up with the MLB ballparks and if MLB expands and adds a team so will I. What you see in MLB today is what you'll see in my world for team locations, parks etc. The Expos will only come to my league if the come back in the real MLB.

No to international or independent leagues. I'm about a somewhat realistic (we all have opinions on what that is) world where all leagues are there to produce talent to play in my MLB. The "default", "trimmed down", whatever you want to call my world works well for me without bogging me down with issues on if\how players move between leagues etc. Even if a world wide game could be made to work without issues I'm not sure I'd use it. I can't say I'd be interested in seeing what was going on in Japan, Korea, Cubs, or anywhere else. Nor be interested in growing my save file size to make that be possible.

The imports have gone very smoothly. Importing is my favorite feature of OOTP. I couldn't believe it was possible when I bought my first version in 2002. A dream come true that I could keep a game going year after year and never restart. I mean 19 years ago I started the game I'm still playing today. How cool is that?

that is really impressive...I could only hope to keep a save going for as long as you have. I just started a new one, which I hope will be very long term. I have decided to make it as challenging as possible, not by handicapping myself, but by simply creating as challenging an environment as I could.

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=332831

I do have Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico and Cuba, along with US & Japan Indy leagues. I also have the Arizona Fall League enabled. I decided against the European and Australian Leagues since none of them work the way they should. (Relegation & winter leagues)

I really went back and forth on including them. At the least I would have included US Indy Leagues. but I am concerned about having all of these leagues enabled when the true purpose here is to have a very long term save.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

that is really impressive...I could only hope to keep a save going for as long as you have. I just started a new one, which I hope will be very long term. I have decided to make it as challenging as possible, not by handicapping myself, but by simply creating as challenging an environment as I could.

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=332831

I do have Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico and Cuba, along with US & Japan Indy leagues. I also have the Arizona Fall League enabled. I decided against the European and Australian Leagues since none of them work the way they should. (Relegation & winter leagues)

I really went back and forth on including them. At the least I would have included US Indy Leagues. but I am concerned about having all of these leagues enabled when the true purpose here is to have a very long term save.

Sounds great. Yeah, when I started there was only MLB and MiLB. Then came feeders, which as noted, I had working and producing players just fine.

As other leagues were introduced I was tempted but, in the end, am glad I resisted. My league works well as is and adding too many moving parts, while cool, also means more things that can get wonky. The beauty of OOTP is all of these leagues from around the world are still addable to my on-going 19 yr old game. I don't think that will ever happen but then again... never say never

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

Yes, I was harsh there. What I originally intended to say was few to none of game designers have worked in finance/accounting and therefore have no knowledge of how real world, big company finances work. See Curt Schilling's video game company history for how that works out.

The interchange between income and cash that occurs in OOTP's financial statements is totally wrong. This is apparent to anyone who has knowledge of annual reports and other filings. Every company has a balance sheet, an income statement and a cash flow statement. And while they do tie-in, they don't in the simplistic way OOTP does 'financials'. And that is the heart of the problem.

I don't think the way the financials are done is... terrible. It can break down after a decade or two but, like, I can think of some games with far, far more detailed financials that fall apart much more spectacularly than that. My favorite example in fact is Victoria II, the Paradox Interactive game about the Victorian era (1830ish - 1920). It has an absolutely insane world trade model that tracks individual "pops" (not quite each person but groups of people per province per worker type, like "day laborers in London" and "soldiers in Milan", but there are I think 8 different kinds of pops over a few hundred different provinces), assigns them desired items, some of which are produced locally and some of which you need to trade for, the ability to expand what you make locally by building factories or, if you are running a capitalist economy, encouraging your capitalist class (literally one of the pops) to build them for you. The flow of trade is affected by wars, country-specific events, revolution, famine - all kinds of things, like just about everything that might effect trade in the real world. It's actually kind of a fascinating economic model, definitely the most in-depth model I've seen in any game, ever, maybe actually the most in-depth in the history of gaming.

So... what happens in this game is that everybody also starts out with a bit of "seed money" as well, both so that you have something to do in 1830 but also because IRL countries had money in their coffers. At around 1880 or so, that initial chunk of cash dries up... and the world economy collapses. Factories that just six months ago were at capacity are now sitting idle. In order to balance your budget you have to scale back, and everybody else has to do the same, creating a knock-on effect as lower trade begets more lower trade. Eventually things kind of rectify themselves in terms of there being a new "normal" for the economy but it never ever quite gets back to what it was before. The game hasn't really been touched in several years but I don't know that this is even a thing that the devs could fix even if they wanted to. It's, like, the long-term consequence of a hundred little design decisions all rolled up into one.

The point being here that the more complex you get, the more of these knock-on effects you're going to see, and the less a dev team composed of people with PhDs in economics, much less a regular old group of coders with CS degrees, will be able to "fix" that. Also, I'm reminded of a programming principle that all large systems look messy over time. This is more about not complaining when code in a system is hard to track when 20 different people have worked on it for 5 years, but it also applies here: the more complicated things get, the messier it gets as well.

Okay, back to the original point: I actually don't think OOTP is all that complicated in terms of the financial model. You *do* get that budget from the owner, it's just... just as in real life, you can go over the budget and the owner won't cry too much if you're successful. The game also has a dynamic where a 90 win team will make more money, even in smaller markets, than a 70 win team - I'm reminded of my own Seattle Mariners, who, when they win 110 games are a top 3 baseball market, but when they lose 95 they are considered "small". There are also some generalized standard contract levels to keep the AI from signing a 4.5 star 1B to the major league minimum while paying $15M a year for a 3 star middle reliever (which could completely happen if there was a glut of 1B on the market; you just wouldn't see that IRL, at least not in the short term, because GMs and agents aren't robots), and other ways beyond ticket prices that a team can make money, including the "national media" deal that amounts to a baseline of money that everybody gets. And, for games that have free agency, there's a relatively easy way for teams that are overspending to jettison too-large contracts.

That's still less than what competitors have tried - I remember people giving Baseball Mogul crap for setting hot dog prices - and it's still a relatively simple financial system. It doesn't surprise me that it breaks down over time, especially if you're not using it the way modern baseball uses their financials. I've pointed out that the true "issue" of pre-free agency baseball is that every team really should be making money hand over fist and the only clubs who should be penny-pinching are the ones stuck in truly awful markets (like the Browns, the 2nd team in the 18th largest market in the US in 1950) or whose owners are fantastically skinflint / intent on pulling massive wads of cash out of their team (the Griffith family Senators come to mind, although after the early 50s they also began to have the issue of sharing a market with the Orioles, granted that Baltimore/Washington was #4 in the country circa 1950). I *suspect* that even with the game treating these teams like their 2021 versions - baseball now is, I'm sure, a game where some teams do struggle to balance the budget, and sports in general has become a "prestige" buy for the wealthy rather than a means of generating revenue in and of itself - if you turned the reserve clause off and allowed free agency, things would shake themselves out for the most part. But even so, even in its not-as-complicated-as-it-could-be state, it's going to get messy, especially after the universe has been allowed to do its own thing for a while.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I don't think the way the financials are done is... terrible. It can break down after a decade or two but, like, I can think of some games with far, far more detailed financials that fall apart much more spectacularly than that. My favorite example in fact is Victoria II, the Paradox Interactive game about the Victorian era (1830ish - 1920). It has an absolutely insane world trade model that tracks individual "pops" (not quite each person but groups of people per province per worker type, like "day laborers in London" and "soldiers in Milan", but there are I think 8 different kinds of pops over a few hundred different provinces), assigns them desired items, some of which are produced locally and some of which you need to trade for, the ability to expand what you make locally by building factories or, if you are running a capitalist economy, encouraging your capitalist class (literally one of the pops) to build them for you. The flow of trade is affected by wars, country-specific events, revolution, famine - all kinds of things, like just about everything that might effect trade in the real world. It's actually kind of a fascinating economic model, definitely the most in-depth model I've seen in any game, ever, maybe actually the most in-depth in the history of gaming.

So... what happens in this game is that everybody also starts out with a bit of "seed money" as well, both so that you have something to do in 1830 but also because IRL countries had money in their coffers. At around 1880 or so, that initial chunk of cash dries up... and the world economy collapses. Factories that just six months ago were at capacity are now sitting idle. In order to balance your budget you have to scale back, and everybody else has to do the same, creating a knock-on effect as lower trade begets more lower trade. Eventually things kind of rectify themselves in terms of there being a new "normal" for the economy but it never ever quite gets back to what it was before. The game hasn't really been touched in several years but I don't know that this is even a thing that the devs could fix even if they wanted to. It's, like, the long-term consequence of a hundred little design decisions all rolled up into one.

The point being here that the more complex you get, the more of these knock-on effects you're going to see, and the less a dev team composed of people with PhDs in economics, much less a regular old group of coders with CS degrees, will be able to "fix" that. Also, I'm reminded of a programming principle that all large systems look messy over time. This is more about not complaining when code in a system is hard to track when 20 different people have worked on it for 5 years, but it also applies here: the more complicated things get, the messier it gets as well.

Okay, back to the original point: I actually don't think OOTP is all that complicated in terms of the financial model. You *do* get that budget from the owner, it's just... just as in real life, you can go over the budget and the owner won't cry too much if you're successful. The game also has a dynamic where a 90 win team will make more money, even in smaller markets, than a 70 win team - I'm reminded of my own Seattle Mariners, who, when they win 110 games are a top 3 baseball market, but when they lose 95 they are considered "small". There are also some generalized standard contract levels to keep the AI from signing a 4.5 star 1B to the major league minimum while paying $15M a year for a 3 star middle reliever (which could completely happen if there was a glut of 1B on the market; you just wouldn't see that IRL, at least not in the short term, because GMs and agents aren't robots), and other ways beyond ticket prices that a team can make money, including the "national media" deal that amounts to a baseline of money that everybody gets. And, for games that have free agency, there's a relatively easy way for teams that are overspending to jettison too-large contracts.

That's still less than what competitors have tried - I remember people giving Baseball Mogul crap for setting hot dog prices - and it's still a relatively simple financial system. It doesn't surprise me that it breaks down over time, especially if you're not using it the way modern baseball uses their financials. I've pointed out that the true "issue" of pre-free agency baseball is that every team really should be making money hand over fist and the only clubs who should be penny-pinching are the ones stuck in truly awful markets (like the Browns, the 2nd team in the 18th largest market in the US in 1950) or whose owners are fantastically skinflint / intent on pulling massive wads of cash out of their team (the Griffith family Senators come to mind, although after the early 50s they also began to have the issue of sharing a market with the Orioles, granted that Baltimore/Washington was #4 in the country circa 1950). I *suspect* that even with the game treating these teams like their 2021 versions - baseball now is, I'm sure, a game where some teams do struggle to balance the budget, and sports in general has become a "prestige" buy for the wealthy rather than a means of generating revenue in and of itself - if you turned the reserve clause off and allowed free agency, things would shake themselves out for the most part. But even so, even in its not-as-complicated-as-it-could-be state, it's going to get messy, especially after the universe has been allowed to do its own thing for a while.

What do you think about owners controlling the budget? I noticed it’s the default in most leagues, but not in a couple of the Indy leagues. I turned it off for all of the leagues. I’m wondering what the results in a long term save may eventually. The truth is, I don’t know which way to go on this.

What do you guys think? Maybe Matt could give us his two cents on this. I just want to make sure I have a financially healthy long term save.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

What do you think about owners controlling the budget? I noticed it’s the default in most leagues, but not in a couple of the Indy leagues. I turned it off for all of the leagues. I’m wondering what the results in a long term save may eventually. The truth is, I don’t know which way to go on this.

What do you guys think? Maybe Matt could give us his two cents on this. I just want to make sure I have a financially healthy long term save.

I personally like the owners taking money away. It's part of the game, especially during that period, and as I think others have noted if you don't have owners who do that it makes the divide between the haves and the have-nots even greater than it already is. That said, I also have no problems going in and just giving teams a fat stack of cash every now and then. YMMW, though if I really wanted to stay hands-off I'd probably put in something more "static, shared revenue" like a national media contract. Yes, I know the game didn't have those IRL but it did have lots of little backroom deals to keep teams like the Browns solvent that can kind of amount to "everyone gets $X every year, no matter what".