Tell me about your feeder leagues!

[CH1MA3RA]

I'm contemplating creating a feeder league system for the online league that I run, which is set in a fictional 1980s universe.

I've read through previous versions of the manual to glean insight and guidance about how to best use feeder leagues, but I would love to hear your thoughts, stories, suggestions, etc about them (whether they be good, bad, or in-between).

Any success stories? Any customizations you suggest? Any issues you've experienced that might cause concerns?

[twins_34]

Originally Posted by CH1MA3RA

I'm contemplating creating a feeder league system for the online league that I run, which is set in a fictional 1980s universe.

I've read through previous versions of the manual to glean insight and guidance about how to best use feeder leagues, but I would love to hear your thoughts, stories, suggestions, etc about them (whether they be good, bad, or in-between).

Any success stories? Any customizations you suggest? Any issues you've experienced that might cause concerns?

I, one time, setup all of the Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, MAC and then high school leagues in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Nebraska. The High School leagues had real teams from real cities and conferences. I would have 6-10 schools in each conference and used 4 conferences.

So in total in HS I had something like 190 teams and then however many in the college setup at the time.

[CH1MA3RA]

Originally Posted by twins_34

I, one time, setup all of the Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, MAC and then high school leagues in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Nebraska. The High School leagues had real teams from real cities and conferences. I would have 6-10 schools in each conference and used 4 conferences.

So in total in HS I had something like 190 teams and then however many in the college setup at the time.

That's a lot of HS! Did you find any bloat in the player pool and file size with that large of a feeder system?

[CH1MA3RA]

Originally, I was thinking about doing a 48 team NCAA Div 1 style college league, roughly 16 teams in a JUCO league, and then between 48-60 HS teams (Split into geographic regions)

[Cod]

I haven't done one since OOTP 23. I built entire D1 college, JUCO, and high school feeder leagues that produced some great results. However, the results were short lived as ~3-5 seasons in, the all of the draft pools would be 90% full of 80 potential guys. I never could find a way to tone it down. The closest I got was in OOTP 17 (I think?) where I wasn't seen the overloaded draft pools until a decade into a save.

[CH1MA3RA]

Originally Posted by Cod

I haven't done one since OOTP 23. I built entire D1 college, JUCO, and high school feeder leagues that produced some great results. However, the results were short lived as ~3-5 seasons in, the all of the draft pools would be 90% full of 80 potential guys. I never could find a way to tone it down. The closest I got was in OOTP 17 (I think?) where I wasn't seen the overloaded draft pools until a decade into a save.

interesting. thanks for sharing. didn't OOTP23 have issues with draft pool players developing at a ridiculous pace? I feel like there was a patch or maybe it was addressed with OOTP24, where that development was toned down

[kidd_05_u2]

Two important tips:

1) If you want the talent at the draft to be normal, you have to find the right balance between player creation modifiers and size of the feeder leagues. If you leave modifiers at default and create a real NCAA and huge HS leagues, the draft will be all 80 potential players.

2) Change the League Totals for statistics. The default League Totals when you create a feeder league are the ones tested for the talent distribution of the MLB, so stats can get really out of whack in the feeders, especially if they have more than 30 teams.


In my particular case, I have the real MLB and created one college league of 60 teams and two high school leagues of 60 teams each. This with the standard player creation modifiers.

This setup gets me talent ratings at the draft that look right to me. Potentials are a touch high, but I play with injuries on very high, which helps limit development a little. My main problem is that relievers at the draft are like 20%-30 better than they should be, but I couldn't find a solution and it's ultimately not that big of an issue.

I did have to change the League Totals for statistics, because the standard setup was giving me 60 players hitting at least one HR every two games in every feeder league. What I did was lower the Home Run category by about 30% and it worked fine enough.

[twins_34]

Originally Posted by CH1MA3RA

That's a lot of HS! Did you find any bloat in the player pool and file size with that large of a feeder system?

I turned off all creation of fictional players and everything was ok for the most part. Only went in about 2 years before other things took over. I am going to have to go back and try and play it some more when I have the chance.

But my online league has way more feeder teams than this spanning Canada, Korea, and many other countries and then high schools teams and a bunch of C1 colleges and our drafts have been pretty good. Very few 80's bunch of potential 70 players and we have been doing this league now for years. The league itself started in ootp 19

[CH1MA3RA]

Kidd, thanks for that insight. I've never messed with stat totals in the settings but did plan on adjusting PCMs for the feeders.

Twins, currently my league only has our MLB equivalent and no foreign leagues created. We do have foreign free agents turned on, so that'll add players to the pool. Good to know feeders are at least sustainable in online leagues.