Fictional/Historical Tests Thread

[Tiger Fan]

From the post above I mentioned the two issues that were preventing me from feeling I have the structure I want with a draft. They were the crazy strikeout numbers for elite power hitters and more importantly that lack of career leaderboards living up to what I want to see in terms of hits, homers, pitchers innings thrown, etc.

So in discussing things with Hrycaj, the originator of this thread, he was having some success importing rookies as free agents instead of using draft. We are still talking fictional players of course, so I decided to try that option. It solved my career leaderboard concerns but brought on a whole new issue.

SETUP

Identical to my first set of tests ( outlined in my post above) only after filling teams with fictional players at all levels I then set the min/max age for free agent fictional players to 18/20. This is designed to replace the draft with young players appearing each year that can be signed by major league organizations.

RESULTS

At first glance these look really good. Here are my career hits,career HR, single season HR and pitcher career Wins, career Innings Pitched and careeer strikeout leaderboards. Can't ask for much better in a sim that ranged from 1871-1951.

Historical accuracy was very comparable to previous tests with draft and these were the settings that worked the best I found (again using my modified era_modifiers.txt file.

Of course our old adversary -outlier Batter Strikeouts struck again- but it was not a player who distanced himself from the pack in homeruns this time.

That I could live with. It really was just the one player but I have no idea how he held a job so long. He was a third baseman and decent with the glove but not exceptional.

But here is what kills it for me.

PLAYERS PEAK AT AGE 20-22
The career leaderboard numbers are outstanding for my target goals. The Fred Standard strikeout exceptions I can handle since they seem restricted to just 2-4 players in a 70-80 year sim. But the issue is the incoming free agents are just too good.

Here are the ages of my single season leaders in homeruns and hits.

They simply skew too young. While pitchers seem to be working fine and hit their pick in their late twenties the hitters that dominate do so in their first year or two at age 20-22 for the most part. Many of them drop off very quickly and by age 27-28 are really just bench players at best.

The last hurdle I need to overcome (I will just leave those few batters with incredibly high strikeout seasons out of the conversation now because they are fairly rare) is how to I get the position players average peak age to be higher without eliminating all the elite counting stat guys. I am happy with one or Ed Grey types from the sim above - a star at 19 who continues to produce for close to two decades. I can also tolerate the Joe Charbonneau types who have a huge year and then quickly fade but I can not handle dozens of them who are huge producers at 20-22 and on the bench or in the minors at 28.

Maybe it is too much to ask as I want a happy medium between the draft, where guys take too long to develop, and using the free agent option, where too many guys have elite current ratings at age 18-19.

If I tone down batter development speed anymore (with no draft) or raise it any more (with a draft) it throws everything else off. Same with aging speed. I wish there was an option to adjust the overall quality of the draft pool so their current ratings were a little better to start (without touching potential) or the rookie free agents so their current rating was a little lower to start.

The solution of course is to manually edit players but I don't want to do that because then it gives me the same issue as playing historical. In that I know immediately (I typically play stats-only with all ratings hidden) who the Babe Ruth's (or in my recent sim Ike Grey's are) in advance.

I want the game to have those players created naturally without my intervention. And I am close, but have become frustrated because the aging curve is not something I have (so far) been able to find a fix for.

[No Pepper]

Nice tests Tiger Fan, as always.

I'm curious to know why rookies coming in as free agents rate better than those from a draft. I wonder what happens in your tests if you leave the created age min/max settings at default. Your free agent "rookies" appear to behave like veterans out of the box and decline faster than they should.