OOTP10 Suggestions: Game/League Setup Options

[Le Grande Orange]

SUGGESTION

Better logic for the creation of fictional leagues whereby the city teams chosen for the league reflect the typical real-world distribution of cities for a given level of league, and where cities are aligned into geographically sensible divisions.


REASON

Right now in OOTP there is not much rational to what cities get selected for a given level of league. That is, you can have a major league level league have expected big cities like Chicago or New York represented, but then much smaller places (below the real-world major league lower limit) such as Tulsa, Syracuse, or Savannah are also part of the league. This is not particular realistic. On top of that, the divisional alignments make no sense. Too often, cities on opposite coasts such as Boston and Los Angeles are placed into the same division. This is quite unrealistic.

A better system, one which constructs fictional leagues which better reflect the real-world characteristics of major and minor leagues, is much needed.

Such a system is possible. I've been working on a way to achieve this in a relatively simple way. It basically involves reworking the cities.txt file (or using a new file expressly for the purpose), and then following some simple steps based on the size of the league and number of minor league levels. I can present a detailed proposal if requested. This proposed system would result in much better and much more realistic looking major and minor league creation.


PRIORITY

High.

Why a high priority? Because the current system is inadequate and does not present a good impression upon new users of OOTP. Someone new to the game will see leagues created with odd selections of cities and teams seemingly randomly assigned to divisions, and they will wonder why such a simple thing as correct cities in correct divisions wasn't done. To them, it will likely appear sloppy.

Good fictional league creation falls into the "get the little details right" philosophy I've often mentioned. Folks expect a game to get the big details right (if a game can't get the big details right, then there's probably not much point in playing it); it's getting the little details right where a game excels. Getting those little details right is what shows the player that much attention and care was put into crafting the game. It's getting the little details right which makes a game feel truly polished.

Proper, realistic creation of fictional major and minor leagues is one of those important little details to get right. It can be done relatively simply. So there's no reason not to improve this part of the game.

[Syxx34]

Suggestion
Have an option to choose size of ballparks if creating a fictional league.

Reason
As in 1901 the fields were huge and now they have shrunk them. As now the game creates there default field size where center field is 575 feet. Thats insane and the poor commish has to go through all teams and edit them down to a reasonable size field.

Priority
High!!

[Le Grande Orange]

SUGGESTION

Separate waivers into their different types and allow each type to be enabled/disabled at the user's discretion.

REASON

Right now, OOTP does not differentiate between the different kinds of waivers, and basically mashes them together under one common name. This can be confusing to new users, since the different kinds of waivers have different uses and results, and it offers less fictional league flexibility and historical league authenticity since each type of waiver has not always been in use at the same time.

PRIORITY

Medium/High


The Suggestion in Detail

There are currently four types of waivers in use in MLB:

Unconditional release: used when releasing a player unconditionally.
Outright assignment: used when assigning a player outright to the minor leagues.
Optional assignment: used when assigning a player to the minors who still has options remaining but it has been three or more years since the player first appeared on the major league active roster.
Trade: used when trading players after the trade deadline.

In the past, there was also a fifth type of waiver:

Reacquisition: used when bringing back a player to the major league active roster who had been assigned outright to the minor leagues earlier that season.

[cephasjames]

Suggestion
League Associations

Reason
From previous posts on this subject:

Originally Posted by cephasjames

With the addition of add/delete league/subleague we're quite a leap closer to being able to accurately portray how leagues have existed. But one of my major issues still is how in order to have two 'leagues' (AL & NL) interact with each other they need to 'subleagues' within a 'league.'

But this is not how history has worked. For instance, until 2000 the AL and NL were actually two seperate leagues that just happen to associate themselves with each other. When the Federal League came into existence either the NL or the AL could have disassociated themsleves with the other to associate themsleves with the Federal League. Though this will be possible in 2007 with a bit of work (creating a second subleague for the Fedral League and moving the American League teams to into it, thus leaving the National League all alone) it doesn't really correctly save the American League's history and it just seems like a bit of a pain.

League Associations will allow each and every league to remain as its own entity but still allow it to interact with another league during the regular and post seasons. The AL could switch its association the FL for two years and then move back to being affiliated with the NL with ease.

This could also clear up the craziness of "what do you call a 'league' that has two subleagues that through history were actually 'leagues'?" In the game the association of the AL & NL is called Major League Baseball. Well, the Federal League is also Major. What about the IL & AA. They were associated until the AA folded. What do we call that association when they are associated? The Minor League Association? AAA Association? AAA League? Where does that leave the PCL? And when the AA folded do we then call that 'league' that used to be known as the AAA Association (or whatever) simply just the IL? It's crazy!

I don't know if I explained this very well (and I'm sure others can and will jump in and clarify my mess - as is always the case) but I think having League Associations (horizontal affiliations maybe?) would make running historical and fictional worlds so much better and easier.

Originally Posted by LGO

Guys, I've been on about this already in the beta forums for awhile now. Not in full campaign mode as yet, but more as gentle nudges that perhaps the current path is not the optimal one for recreating certain aspects of baseball history (most notably the major-minor relationship, but also including the MLB major league to major league relationship).

The main question about this sort of suggestion is whether there is something about the way the game is currently designed to handle leagues which prevents it or not. Markus hasn't said that's the case, so I'm presuming associating leagues is at least doable under the current design (though perhaps it may require a lot of work).

At some point I'll pull together a more detailed proposal, backed up by evidence as to why it's an important item to put into the game.

Offhand, as of right now, I can think of three levels of association that would be needed:

Major League Association. This would take two or more major leagues and put them under one umbrella organization, just like how the AL and NL were under the larger MLB grouping. By putting major leagues under the same association, it would allow the following to happen: 1) a post-season championship series between the champions of each individual league; 2)trading and selling players between the leagues; 3) a combined amateur draft; 4) interleague regular season games between the leagues; 5) interleague spring training games between the leagues.

Minor League Association. This would be similar to the Major League Association, but for minor leagues.

Major-Minor League Association. This would mimic the structure which governs the real-world relationship between the major and minor leagues. Putting a group of major and minor leagues together in this association would allow: 1) major league clubs to have working agreements with minor league clubs for player development; 2) major league clubs to outright own minor league clubs; 3) allow a Rule 5 type draft whereby the major league clubs can draft players from minor league clubs, and minor league clubs could draft players from other, lower classification minor league clubs; 4) allow players to be optioned to minor league clubs.

From this thread: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ociations.html

Priority
High

[CaptainObvious]

SUGGESTION
Leagues.csv(, Divisions.csv)


REASON
Importing from a Lahman-style DB is limited in league flexibility (limitted to AL, NL, etc.). Adding support for another table to define leagues (and possibly another table to define divisions) would make it easier to mod fictional leagues.


PRIORITY
Medium

[Tony M]

Suggestion

Allow a more controllable world setup

as per this post from a thread several months ago

This will probably be too late for 9, but maybe in 10.

The only problem with multinational leagues is that all players are created 'equal' - the league has an average level that players will be created around.

It would be nice if the world setup files (nations.txt, cities.txt, ethnicities.txt, etc) could be combined and allow for more realistic world-tinkering.

For example something like the following

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<world>
<baseratings>
<physical>
<height value="180" />
<weight value="200" />
</physical>
<batting>
<contact value="107" />
<gap value="127" />
<power value="96" />
<eye value="101" />
<strikeouts value="88" />
</batting>
<pitching>
<stuff value="93" />
<movement value="109" />
<control value="106" />
<endurance>
<starter value="145" />
<reliever value="35" />
<closer value="20" />
</endurance>
</pitching>
<fielding>
<pitcher value="123" />
<catcher value="154" />
<firstbase value="106" />
<secondbase value="123" />
<thirdbase value="117" />
<shortstop value="142" />
<leftfield value="146" />
<centrefield value="117" />
<rightfield value="148" />
</fielding>
<running>
<speed value="100" />
<baserunning value="100" />
<stealing value="100" />
</running>
</baseratings>

<worldregions>
<worldregion id="1" name="Africa" />
<worldregion id="2" name="Asia" />
<worldregion id="3" name="Europe" />
<worldregion id="4" name="North America" />
<worldregion id="5" name="Oceania" />
<worldregion id="6" name="South America" />
</worldregions>
<nations>
<nation id="1" name="Afghanistan" shortname="Afghanistan" abbreviation="AFG" nationality="Afghani">
<ethnicities>
<ethnicity set="Arabic" value="100" />
</ethnicities>
<worldregion id="2" />
<ratings type="mod" source="world">
<modifier type="batting" field="power" value="1.5" />
<modifier type="pitching" field="control" value="0.25" />
</ratings>
<regions>
<region name="Badakhshan">
<ethnicities>
<ethnicity set="Arabic" value="72" />
<ethnicity set="Indian" value="28" />
</ethnicities>
<ratings type="val" source="country">
<modifier type="batting" field="power" value="25" />
<modifier type="physical" field="weight" value="250" />
</ratings>
<city name="Eskasem" population="12120" latitude="36.72" longitude="71.56" />
<city name="Fayzabad" population="40276" latitude="37.13" longitude="70.58" />
<city name="Handud" population="5521" latitude="36.93" longitude="72.32" />
<city name="Jurm" population="12106" latitude="36.85" longitude="70.82" />
<city name="Qaleh-ye" population="9152" latitude="37.00" longitude="72.76" />
</region>
</regions>
</nation>
</nations>
</world>

probably looks naff in here, but each country can modifier the base ratings, as can each region if wanted, or a city...

These 'figures' would be used before the Player Creation Modifiers kick in, so in the example above Afghani players would on average have 50% more power but only 25% of the control of an average player, but those in Badakhshan have an average power of 25 due to them being slightly heavier (250lbs).

Ethnicities are also controllable at what ever level you want, currently it's only country wide...

Reason

It would add that extra level of realism to multinational leagues as you would then be able to have Japanese players for example having a differing average set to Americans.

Priority

High

[lt2cents]

SUGGESTION
In addition to, or as a substitute for, the modern five levels of minors, provide for user defined minor league levels and associated rules and settings. A league could then be assigned to the user defined level.


REASON
If you are modeling historical times you might want to define the hit and pitch ability level, roster limit, attendance, financial, etc. settings for, for instance, AA, A1, A, B, C, D levels. Now you have to set all these for each league individually when you may have 40/50 or so leagues. And trying to map 6 levels into 5 doesn't work well.


PRIORITY
Low.

[lt2cents]

SUGGESTION
Provide by historical year, a complete loadable major/minor league setup.

REASON
I think somewhere in the OOTP community such tables already exist and it would save reinventing for quasi historical players.

PRIORITY
Low.

[lt2cents]

SUGGESTION
Replace the financial coefficient with a realistic set of financial values for each historical year.

REASON
The single fraction misses it. The relations between attendance income, media, player salaries, etc. changes over time.


PRIORITY
High. Because you have something now that doesn't work well, and a small table with more realistic sets of financial values for 100 or so years can, I imagine, be readily provided by members of the community.

[lt2cents]

SUGGESTION
Provide a means to completely reset a league, delete players, delete history, set a new start year, etc. Enhance the fill teams/leagues with players function to optionally provide for reinitializing a league (or all leagues at once) with competitive level players rather than the filler level players.

REASON
There is no good way to do this now. The template does not provide this combination of functions, neither does the current delete all players, and fill teams with players. Each misses some part of the requirements needed when one wants to start a game over, but retain the leagues and some other settings, just start a new history with new players.


PRIORITY
High. Because one might reasonable expect this to not be hard to do.

[lt2cents]

SUGGESTION
Provide a way during setup to apply settings to all leagues, or all leagues at a level.

REASON
There are 3 tabs with dozens of settings that currently have to be manually entered when setting up a custom multi league scenario. If you are modeling 1950 for instance, with about 60 leagues, this kind of repetition could be avoided by having the program assign settings across all leagues at a level, some settings might apply to all leagues.

PRIORITY
Medium.

[lt2cents]

Suggestion
Clean up database handling during setup that results in data corruption and game crashes.

Reason
During custom setup by the player there are many operations on the database as a result of options chosen. If subsequently the player then goes with other options not all the results of the first option are cleaned up. Later the game may crash or produce other bad results.

Examples:
The player initializes a major league with no minors. The roster and reserve roster is filled with players. Later a minor league is added. The game does not assign the reserve roster players to the minor league. Instead they are locked in database limbo. They are inaccessible (unless the major teams are reset to have no affiliations, when they will magically reappear). The strange thing is the life that continues for these invisible players sometimes spills into the world with strange messages about contracts requests, retiring, etc. Not sure that they aren't being paid while they are in ghost mode.

If spring training is turned on and later the league schedule start date is changed, the spring training will not be synced with the schedule. Leaving either a bigger gap, or running over the regular schedule depending on whether the start date was set back or ahead.

Some of the mess is not all in the database so much as in abandoned files. Because the game insists on prefilling leagues with city names and creating corresponding graphic files, when the user modifies these names to those desired the graphic is wrong, and if it is rebuild, the old file is left. This is in addition to some vestigial database junk left with the original randomly picked names.

Prefilling new teams with staff / setting player and staff contracts which is then followed by the player making changes in financials leaves another mess.

And there are more examples of results of not cleaning up the database to properly reflect changes in settings.

Some of these need to be corrected by proper automation. Some should be left to the player, such as the timing of adding/deleting staff or players to a league, assigning contracts, etc.

Priority
High. Because this is really bug correction.

[Le Grande Orange]

The following is one of the most important and fundamental structural changes OOTP could make...


SUGGESTION

Make ALL leagues truly separate, unique leagues with their own rules, options, league totals, and settings. Leagues could then be grouped in associations (see the league association proposal). Subleagues would be retained but mainly for recreating conference structures in a league.


REASON

This would allow for maximum fictional flexibility and much better historical authenticity. No longer would one recreate MLB by having the AL and NL as subleagues in an MLB league and thus have to use averaged out league totals or rules as a result. Instead, the user would recreate MLB by creating an AL and an NL, and then making them a part of an association called MLB. Doing it this way allows each league to retain its own individuality in terms of league totals, rules, and so forth, while still operating under a common framework in regards to player movement, drafts, etc. Users can also adjust how each league or association interacts with all the other existing leagues/associations (with the options based upon the interactions which have existed in the real world).


PRIORITY

High.



There are certainly many aspects to this suggestion which would need to be carefully thought out, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about how this could be structured and researching the real-world models. I can present quite a bit more detail if requested.

[satchel]

Suggestion
A team should be able to be identified by its nickname only, and have no "location." For example, there could be a league with teams called the Pioneers, the Blackbirds, the Knickerbockers, etc., with no cities affiliated.

Reason
More flexible customization of fictional leagues.

Priority
Low.

[Tony M]

Suggestion

Convert files such as english.xml and injuries.txt to a dat format so that they are tied to leagues, and then allow re-importation.

Reason

At the moment english.xml and injuries.txt are global and any changes made to them affect any league on the computer. Having the ability to save the versions that are in use at the time of league creation allows the ability to have differing files for differing leagues without messing up other ones.

Priority

Medium

[Curtis]

SUGGESTION: List the parent club of minor affiliates by team nickname (preferably) or team abbreviation, not by city.

REASON: Most remotely historical leagues have multiple cities with two or more teams. When I setup games I frequently have to move and/or reassign minor affiliates. When they are affiliates of a team from a multi-team city, I have no idea which team they started out with OR which team I'm reassigning them to. Frequently it turns out to be the same team, which wastes time and effort. In addition, I worry about this botched reassigning, because you have to actually start the game to find out which parent club they're assigned to, and by that time they've already assigned minor leaguers to teams. When I reassign the teams, how do I know whether I'm also reassigning players away from the teams that held them historically. The whole thing is a mess.

PRIORITY: High, primarily because this should be a very easy fix, and I can think of no reason why it was done wrong to begin with.

[Curtis]

SUGGESTION: Add a 'no cash maximum' option to the Cash Maximum line in League Setup.

REASON: No matter how high a number you set, the game engine seems to pick its own arbitrary lower number, and that's not using 'let owner decide budget'.

PRIORITY: High, again because this would seem to be something easily fixed, and because it requires a lot of effort every January 1 to reset every teams' Cash and Budget numbers to what they should have been.

[flaquis010285]

Suggestion

National team baseball and championships (world, continental) for that teams

Reason

The coming up of this year World Baseball Classic makes necessary a separate level for the creation of national teams for every nation with "baseball level" from "poor" to "excellent", creating, if necessary, players for national team effects, for being scouted and/or signed by ballclubs ("organizations" according to OOTP jargon) or, at least, put in the free agent pool after his/her participation, suiting continental and world championships and (if wished) qualifiers for that competitions for every national team. For the case of continental tournaments (North American, South American, Asian, European, African and Oceanic) it's simple to put the correct countries, due to the continental affair in the game.

It's neccessary rules for national team eligibility for every NT, as minimum year of service in different NTs, and the another nationalities (apart of the main that) for every ballplayer colud be measured according to the foreign leagues/ballclubs played for that players. For example: a Japanese could be eligible for play for Japan, and also for the USA if he played previously in the major leagues, or for Mexico, PR, DR or Venezuela if played in any Winter League(s).

Priority

High for the OOTP gamers (like me) that have wished to simulate national team baseball, medium to low for every another case.

[Comedian2004]

Suggestion
For monthly and yearly CSV dumpes, set the 'default' not to include the fields with the word CAREER and HISTORY in it.

The regular dump should default to everything.

Reason
These items are not needed in monthly or yearly dumps and it will speed up the process by 10 percent. They contain the same information that is compiled in the 'anytime dump', so there is no advantage to having them save it each month or year. I do not suggest that they be removed, just be unchecked by default.

Priority
High. (since it is a simple mod to code)

[Comedian2004]

Suggestion
Teams.csv is not correct. It only contains the current teams in the league. So, when Washington becomes Minnesota, Minnesota takes over the team number of Washington.

Reason
It breaks the functionabilty of using the CSV files or the SQL files, since the teams.csv is no longer an accurate lookup table. Alternative would be to create a teams_history.csv file that would contain the team numbers and the year.


Priority
High.