OOTP6 Bug: Game freezes when AVGBIP is below .220

[dappawit]

I decided to try a fictional historical league, but ran into a serious problem. I found that when I set the League Totalls Setting "AVG of balls in play", to below .220, the games are not simmed. This affected the historical sim I set up for 1915 because clicking the calculate button next for AVGBIP resulted in a value of .150 or something near there. With this value, I couldn't sim.

In trying to find the source of the problem I found that changing the setting to .210 prevents simming, while .220 doesn't have any ill effects. This is the only thing I had to change to get it to stop simming. That is not an exaggeration. Changing just the integral League Totals does not result in any problem. Only when I change to .210 (and .200, .190, .180 etc) was there a problem. I was able to sim with .220, .230, .240, .250, and the default .297.

After making the change and going to the schedule screen, I try to sim any length, and it doesn't work. The scoreboard in the upper right of the window doesn't show up, the league leaders on the left don't show up. The only thing that does show up is the league standings. Then nothing happens, and after a while I ALT-CTRL-Delete and find the program is not responding.

I am using Windows 98. (No jokes please )

I am not having any other problems. (I've been able to sim a league using "modern" settings for several seasons already without incident.)

Dave

[dappawit]

Bump.

Can anyone help me with this issue or, failing that, let me know that the problem has been noted and be looked at by whoever does that?

Thanks,
Dave

[Eugene Church]

just a bump for him.

[Steve Kuffrey]

This will be looked at.

[dappawit]

I installed the new patch, but I still have the same problem I described above. I'm not sure whether it was supposed to fix it... hopefully it wasn't

I hope this can get fixed in the next patch because it is really frustrating not being able to do a fictional historical sim.

Thanks,
Dave

[AcesFull]

This also happened to me. My game simmed, but then locked up. I ctrl-alt-del'ed and then restarted the game. I found the game had finished, and the AAA game and AA game also had a result, but the A game would not sim.

Once I raised the BABIP up a little, the problem went away.

[dappawit]

Yes, the problem goes away after raising the BABIP, but we shouldn't have to do that in the first place . And for the league I tried to start in 1915, using the "Calculate Totals from Historical Stats" option (it may not be called that exactly), requires a BABIP of around .140. And using an inflated number just to get it to work results in dramatically inflated stats.

Since in your experience, the major league game is simmed and the problem only comes from the A level, I wonder if the problem would go away if we didn't sim the minors? That is something I'll have to try as a temporary fix.

Dave

[AcesFull]

Yes, if you don't sim minors it does go away. I should have typed that in my last post.

Also, I got in the same hole as you because I was simming early history, too, in my case 1871. I kept running sims, trying to get the batting average in the ballpark. I was always about 8% too low, so I would drop my Hit number and then hit "recalculate" which also dropped the BABIP number. I'd re-sim, and land in the -8% area again.

What I discovered is this, if I set the BABIP and leave it alone, then when I adjust the other settings, it works as it always has. But, if I keep recalculating the BABIP with each adjustment to the H/AB ratio, then my BA stays roughly the same for each sim.

So... I was able to successfully recreate the sim for 1871 by *raising* the BABIP above the trouble spot, and then readjusting the other numbers until the problem was fixed.

I am not disputing that we shouldn't have to do this, but unlike many here, I don't expect a 100% perfect product upon release, especially in matters of the new sim engine. They can beta test plenty, but only upon wide release is the game going to encounter every system configuration, and every person's experimentation.

Anyways, I hope my info helps you work around until the patch comes, which it will.

[Johnny Slick]

I found that the same thing happened when I tried using manually adjusted stats to get correct-looking stats for a fictional league set in 1930. Due to the way that the game engine figures out how good pitchers are relative to the league, I've found that leagues that use older eras have to have their stats further adjusted downward to achieve the proper amount of offense.

To exacerbate things, 1930 is already a pretty notable season in that a. the entire National League hit over .300, and b. despite memorable outliers like Hack Wilson's 56-homer, 191 RBI performance, or Leo "Sugar" Sweetland's 167 IP and 164 runs allowed, teams in both leagues actually averaged slightly under 100 HRs for the year. In the end, I'd figured out that I needed to give the engine a .191 BABIP to make things work out correctly. It didn't like my 1929 season, in which I used a BABIP in the low .210s (I had to restart it 3 times before it would play a whole year without crashing and/or giving out unintelligible statistics); it wouldn't play a single game of 1930.

There are really two insta-problems here, and a third, more subtle one:

1. The engine doesn't like really high or really low BABIP numbers, which I assume is what you are all looking at.

2. In the early part of baseball history, you've got teams running pitching staffs in which 4 guys eat up sometimes 90% of the available innings for a team. The game engine apparently still figures out ratings as though those guys are using no more than 50% of a team's available innings (as would be the case with today's game). This drastically lowers numbers (and my theory here is supported by the fact that with this league in question I changed the starter endurance and use of bullpen in the era screen and both leagues saw an instant and significant ERA increase).

(3). The way the computer uses pitchers in the 20s through the 50s isn't terribly realistic. For one, teams very rarely used strict 4-man rotations; instead, they used 4 or 5 men as starters and basically started whomever was ready on a given day. Some teams (most notably the Athletics with Lefty Grove) used their best pitcher in late-inning pressure situations on his days off, and in general no pitcher seemed to be immune to being used like this every now and then. The result: you very rarely saw a guy start more than 35 games a season until teams started using rigid rotations in the 1960s.

[dappawit]

I don't expect a 100% perfect product either. After all, one person's idea of "perfect" could be very different from another's.

However, I'm a little surprised that this particular problem made it through testing--I would think a tester would have tried to sim a historical season at some point. On the other hand, the rest of the game has worked perfectly for me, so I am simming more modern-type seasons (and enjoying it ) while I wait for the fix.

One more thing, I found that recalculating the totals without recalculating the BABIP still resulted in unrealistic stats. Batters had batting averages for the season above .500.

Anyway, I'm actually happy to see that I'm not the only one with the problem--now I know I'm not somehow causing it

Dave

[AcesFull]

What I did was set the BABIP at it's actual number, by taking the actual season stats and calculating it (or as close I could quickly figure, which is roughly (H-HR)/(AB-H-HR-BB), which is not completely accurate but pretty close.

Then I ran a sim and, like you, got unrealistically high BA.

So, then from there, I *raised* the number for hits and reran the sim. It is confusing, but raising the number of hits lowers the leagues BA when you sim. By doing this, you can leave the BABIP above the trouble-spot, and eventually get your sim to produce accurate numbers. I have done it for two seasons now. It takes a few trial runs, but then you get it pretty close.

[dappawit]

Ahh, I misunderstood what you said before. I'll have to try adjusting the hit totals. It sounds like a good workaround to use until the problem is fixed.

Thanks,
Dave