Not exactly sure how the AI maneuvered itself into this corner, but crack is wack

[LansdowneSt]

Sid Bream was explained. He played CF and the user’s game settings made him a CF based on actual historical usage.

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...ight=Sid+bream

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

Sid Bream was explained. He played CF and the user’s game settings made him a CF based on actual historical usage.

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...ight=Sid+bream

Below are Sid Bream's 1987 batting ratings, with 3-year fielding averages. He has 200 fielding experience at a position that gives him a grand total of 1 rating.

There is no sane world in which he should be starting CF but the OOTP AI will do that. It's just a pretty serious bug.

[LansdowneSt]

The question imo is why 28 games at CF irl yields at 200 as an experience rating. Or the degree to which the game values offense vs defense trade-offs.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

The question imo is why 28 games at CF irl yields at 200 as an experience rating. Or the degree to which the game values offense vs defense trade-offs.

That was a cumulative save, snapshotted on Opening Day 1987. It's quite possible that Bream played more than 28 games at CF in the save when he was qualified to do so.

The question imo is why he would ever start at CF with 1B ratings.

edit: I'm done debating this topic. It's a significant bug, imo. I just discovered it a few days ago and the devs know about it. I can sort of work around it. If it's fixed, awesome.

[Garlon]

What is happening is that minor league stats are messing your fielding ratings. When you do a replay game with real lineups and transactions the player must be rated at every position they played in a given season. That is not the situation here but the game may be treating it that way for some reason.

For 3yr and career fielding they should only get rated at positions in which they played at least 10% of their games. Basically, this is an issue when enabling minor leagues or that 10% limit is being applied properly.

For careeer fielding any position at which a player is considered eligible will result in 200 experience. The game has to work that way otherwise they cannot get rated properly. The experience rating works in conjunction with the component ratings as a multiplier with 200 being 100%. The experience rating is not there as an indicator to the game as to which positions they played the most. The game can find that in their fielding statistics. So you cannot knock down the experience rating because it will wreck the fielding results by tanking their ratings.

[Brad K]

If the devs changed a tire on their car when they were done the windshield wipers would be broken.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Garlon

What is happening is that minor league stats are messing your fielding ratings. When you do a replay game with real lineups and transactions the player must be rated at every position they played in a given season. That is not the situation here but the game may be treating it that way for some reason.

For 3yr and career fielding they should only get rated at positions in which they played at least 10% of their games. Basically, this is an issue when enabling minor leagues or that 10% limit is being applied properly.

Garlon, none of that matters. Players will get pushed out of their historical position any time you enable trading and that is a key feature of the game that cannot be waved away. So it doesn't matter whether they get their position experience from milb stats, mlb stats, or deviations from historical data in the OOTP sim.

I personally don't care that position experience carries over. Personally I think it's a great feature and should be expanded. But watching the AI start guys at positions where they are not rated is the real problem. It just needs to be smarter about not doing that.

It doesn't have to be some super AI change (hopefully) because OOTP literally already does that with pitchers. It doesn't matter if all of the other pitching ratings are like Sandy Koufax, if the editor stamina is 49 or below then he's a reliever. If it's 50 or above, then voila the game will consider him a starter.

Similar logic for the position rating (the max rating, of course) would fix this problem without harming the carryover of position experience. But I don't know how complicated or not a change would be, so I can only speculate.

[Brad K]

But uruguru, he was just getting to the part where it's your fault for not playing with historical lineups! LOL.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Brad K

If the devs changed a tire on their car when they were done the windshield wipers would be broken.

dude, no. This is a super complicated game with a ton of variables that all interact with each other. There will always be bugs and problems in something this complex. All we can do as users is report the bugs we find and give as much information as possible, and hope they can come up with a good solution.

The more we do that, the better the game will be. 25 is clearly a better game than 24.

[Brad K]

And, of course, the interactions aren't documented. They had no idea the windshield wipers were grounded through the wheel on the tire they changed.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Brad K

And, of course, the interactions aren't documented. They had no idea the windshield wipers were grounded through the wheel on the tire they changed.

I understand your frustration, but software development is never as straightforward as it looks from the outside. It's complicated, sometimes very complicated, which is why there is only one OOTP.

[Brad K]

Having no documentation is a major source of the problems.

Hey, the tire comments was supposed to be truth in jest. LOL.

[Brad K]

Without starting the game, do I recall correctly that there is a switch about whether to choose positions based on history or computer evaluation? What is the setting in this save? Is perhaps Bream in CF because of history rather than AI misevaluation?

[Brad K]

In my current save the computer manager is playing Hank Aaron and Tony Oliva in CF in 1967. Neither is a bad CF.

[Garlon]

In a game I recently finished from 1871-2023 with 3yr fielding and minor leagues off, Bream has 200 experience at 1B and no experience at any other position. In the game he was used at 1B for all of his playing time except for 3.1 innings.

If I go to transactions and import Bream as a free agent using 1985 from the historical DB and set fielding career, he still has 200 experience at 1B and no experience at any other position. I did not check the box that says "include players in minor league database".

However, if I select "include players in minor league database" and import Bream, then he does receive experience at the OF positions because he played 28 games in the OF in the minor leagues in 1985. If I do the same but use 3yr for 1985 he also receives experience in the OF.

The issue here is how to handle anything with fielding and the minor leagues. When you use the minor leagues, you have an entire history of players who have very little in terms of fielding stats and they need to be able to play positions. You also have many major leaguers who barely played at the major league level and their major league fielding statistics may not capture what they were doing in the minor leagues, so the game attempts to use both sources. You could have a player who came up for a couple of games and played 2B in the major leagues but played 7 years at SS in the minor leagues, or a player who played a few games in LF in the major leagues but was a CF for the rest of their games in the minor leagues. The game has to make a decision on how to handle all of those situations. If you are using minor leagues, you are telling the game that you want to allow all of those extra players who never made it to the major leagues to be potential major league players, so the game needs to do something.

If you do not play with minor leagues though, then players are not receiving these extra positions because they are only rated on their major league fielding.


Aaron in real major league history played over 300 games in CF and logged over 2600 innings there. In my game he ended up playing 237 games in CF and 1600 defensive innings there and ended up with a 1.7 ZR, as a corner outfielder he has really good defense though.

[uruguru]

Garlon, I appreciate your input but I feel like you are still missing the point. No one would have a problem with Sid Bream playing CF in the minors, getting experience there, and then having the experience stay with him in the majors. That is all perfectly fine.

The issue arrives when the recalc decides that he cannot play CF anymore and his fielding ratings become based exclusively on his appearances at 1B.

At that point, one of several things needs to happen. Any of these would be fine:

1) Bream's experience at CF decays over time as he goes years and years without playing CF. This would turn his position rating at CF to 0 and prevent the AI from starting him there.

2) If his experience at CF does not decay but his fielding rating recalcs so that he can't truly play CF anymore, then the AI needs to recognize this and not attempt to start him at CF.

or 3) If the CF experience does not decay and the AI isn't changed, then he needs to retain some of his outfield ratings so that he can at least play a remedial CF. The game already ages fielding ratings for fictional players, but this seems the least like how the historical game currently works.

Any of those solutions would work. Which is best or easiest to implement? I can't say. And maybe there are other possible gameplay solutions. Maybe none will be implemented. But telling players that the fix is to use real-world transactions or to not use minor leagues is not really a solution.

[Garlon]

This has nothing to do with real transactions. I was pointing out that there is a use case in which the game needs to rate every player at every position for functionality. That instance is when you are using real lineups and transactions so that the players are not put into a position without a rating.

Again, if only using major leagues then there is no issue. When these players get extra experience from minor league stats then there are more possibilities for problems. Having the experience decay would cause more problems.

The game may need to be more conservative regarding how it evaluates minor league fielding. Perhaps it should ignore any position in which the player did not play at least 25% of their total games. That may resolve these problems entirely.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by Garlon

The game may need to be more conservative regarding how it evaluates minor league fielding. Perhaps it should ignore any position in which the player did not play at least 25% of their total games. That may resolve these problems entirely.

I like this in that not having it there is better than additional logic about what to do when a little is there.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Again, if only using major leagues then there is no issue.

Just say it Garlon. Everyone should play with MLB players only. Problem solved.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Garlon

The game may need to be more conservative regarding how it evaluates minor league fielding. Perhaps it should ignore any position in which the player did not play at least 25% of their total games. That may resolve these problems entirely.

But it's not restricted to minor leagues. Craig Biggio completely loses his ability to catch by about 1995 but will presumably retain all of his mlb experience at the position. He will be the world's worst catcher (all catcher ratings will be 0) for the last 12 or so years of his HOF career but will always have a non-zero position rating at C.

Will the AI start him at C based on that? Everything I've seen up to this point indicates that it might, given the right circumstances. Maybe if the team's C gets injured, but who knows? I certainly don't want to find out after the fact when it's too late to correct. I've already seen Hank Aaron spend a full season starting at 2B with no skills, so I see no reason to think that won't happen for other players -- especially if they are good hitters.

Not just Biggio. Lots of other stars transition from C, 3B or OF positions to play 1B exclusively at the end of their careers.