Let's hear about your planned universes.

[PAR65]

I wish that the game would allow you to play games against teams from other leagues, affilliations, levels, associations, nations etc...

My thought was to create an all-time traveling team that plays only road games, playing other teams on their off days as exhibitions. The stats would be need to be kept so this may be a problem. I think it would be cool to have my team play a Japanese Professional team one day and then fly to China face an opponent there and then go to Ghana to play a Ghana AA club.

Of course there would be many matchups between the AAA and MLB teams.
I would like to have a 180 day season with about 80-90 games played to simulate traveling or to have the team play double headers as often as possible to have 160-200 games played. Kind of like the old Negro League teams before they became a little organized.

Well for now I can dream. I know that there is no way of doing this in 2007, but perhaps in future versions.

[akw4572]

I think I'm going to do a real major league up until the Giants, Dodgers and other teams move west............then I'm going fictional and leaving them where they originally were.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by PAR65

My thought was to create an all-time traveling team that plays only road games, playing other teams on their off days as exhibitions.

Something like that is on my suggestion list for OOTP2008.

Two areas in the schedules I'd like to see added:

1) In-season exhibition games between clubs within the same league (exhibition games were quite common in earlier MLB seasons, so it'd be nice if these could be inserted directly into a schedule file rather than added manually as exhibition games).

2) Exhibition schedules between clubs in different leagues. These would be just like the schedule files used for a single league, except it would be for interleague exhibition contests. The idea behind this is to allow for the recreating of something like the Negro Leagues, where clubs played league games on the weekend but exhibition games during the week against clubs in other leagues.

[Casimir]

Hi, long time listener, first time caller. Or 2nd. Or 3rd. Well, OK, whatever it is, I'm sure its in the single digits.

Anyhow, I think my first setup will be based upon an ability to use the expansion feature a few times. Count me among the many that are looking forward to that feature. And I'm much more a fictional player fan, although I have dabbled with the roster sets that have been assembled and offered up by a few of you (sort of semi-amused that in a sim using Rolen's set, Humberto Sanchez suffered a career ending injury just a few days after the real-life deal for Gary Sheffield).

So I've been plotting out a universe whereby I start with 20/24 major league teams (original franchises/cities plus 4 of the eventual expansions/relocation cities) and expand 4 at a time over time to 36 (current real life setup plus a few larger cities). Each major league team is going to have minor league teams at the AAA, AA, A, and rookie levels. The inaugural year will be 1973 (my birth year), and I'll grab control of the Detroit Tigers for my 18th birthday present to myself. Starting in 1973 gives me a little bit of history to work with once 1991 comes around, but I should also get to live through a lot of history as the league grows (career leaderboards still changing at a decent clip, expansion, etc). I'd actually prefer if the Tigers are a downtrodden team at the time I grab control as I like reclaimation projects in solo leagues.

Right now I'm debating the length of time between expansion cycles, and I just may end up playing that by ear. I may go with X amount of years, I may just wait and see how the last batch of expansion teams have fared and if they are no longer expansion by competitive terms.

I'm also toying with the idea of adding short A minors to each farm system or add a few independant teams to each level. I'd like to keep the universe to around 216 teams (36 organizations, 6 different levels), but want to add some teams for free agents of all levels to join and give a bit of an independant baseball feel to it. So I'm considering going with the AAA/AA/A/R farm systems and adding 4-8 indy teams to each level withing the "regular" minor leagues (IE, an 8 team Great Lakes League at the AA level is composed of 7 affiliated teams and 1 indy team).

Anyway, that's what I'm looking forward to starting once I get the new version.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by akw4572

I think I'm going to do a real major league up until the Giants, Dodgers and other teams move west............then I'm going fictional and leaving them where they originally were.

Reactionary! You going to have any expansion to the WestCoast at all?

[akw4572]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Reactionary! You going to have any expansion to the WestCoast at all?

Possibly, over time. By I'll make my way west. maybe go Texas,Omaha, KC, Salt Lake, Denver before I go to California.

[haveband]

You know, it surprises me that alot of people aren't playing with the traditional MLB setup. I used to think there was no way I could have fun playing a league other than the traditional setup. But I see some of the ideas you guys have got and its got me thinking about setting up my own league.

hb

[The Wolf]

A lot of us go straight traditional. But judging by the posts I think the hobbit/Ghana/women/alternate history/reactionary crowd has us outnumbered on this board pretty badly.

[BigCity]

"alternate history"

That's where I've always been. As a kid, I used to try and imagine what would have happened had different paths occurred in history. What if Washington wouldn't have been appointed to lead the Continental Army? What if Hitler would have defeated England before he attacked the Russians? What if the MLB and PCL would have merged in '56 instead of the Giants and Dodgers moving west in '57.

Neverending possibilities...

[Melo]

ramrod straight traditionalist here.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by BigCity

Neverending possibilities...

But only one of them ever actually happened.

[Magc8Ball]

Lesse... my planned single-player league. Feedback welcome regarding locations of teams and structure. This'll be a totally fictional world, though I'm not sure which baseball "era" I'm going to start it in. That'll help dictate the sort of backstory I put into it (I run a couple roleplaying games so coming up with fun backstories on the fly is simple. )

International Baseball Federation (basically the world "major league"):
Two conferences: American (western hemisphere), Eurasian (for lack of a better term). 24 teams in the Western, 18 in Eastern. 4 divisions in each conference (6/6/6/6 and 5/5/4/4). Probably no wild cards. If needed, I'm planning revenue sharing so that international teams can function well, though I don't know how financials work in 2007 compared to 6.5.

American conference has teams in traditional baseball cities (as much as is possible) with a bit of international expansion. Where two major cities were somewhat close, I'm going with the more "interesting" of the two (IE Vancouver instead of Seattle):

Pacific: San Francisco, LA, Vegas, Phoenix, Vancouver, Honolulu
Heartland: Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, Houston, OKC
Atlantic: NY, Boston, DC, Toronto, Philly, Montreal (?, maybe Pittsburgh)
Southern: Atlanta, Mexico City, Havana, Miami, NOLA, Caracas

The International conference includes representatives from asian nations, along with european capitals (story goes something like baseball expanding there to promote the game, blahblahblah). I'm planning to do some research and move teams closer to areas that actually have some burgeoning baseball tradition. These are mainly selected, though, for being interesting places, since it's totally fictitious that baseball could ever expand in Europe.

Asian: Tokyo, Sydney, Seoul, Taipei, Beijiing
Channel Division: London, Dublin, Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon
Rhine Division: Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Amsterdam
Med Division: Cairo, Athens, Tel Aviv, Istanbul (?)

Other leagues I'm probably going to work on to add to this universe:
*A "second-tier" American independent league with teams in, at the least, cities with current teams that got "left out" of the international expansion (Oakland, San Diego, Kansas City, etc). This will be a slightly-better-than AAA-level league, but it'll have to fight with the major system for agents, etc.

*Japanese, Korean, South American leagues in order to provide some international scouting/signing possibilities. Possibly, if I can work it, I'll add an independent league scattered across Europe to provide some localized players for the euro-teams to have an advantage towards.

I also think I'll be putting in a senior-level league like I've been seeing suggestions for here, and I'll be making an effort to get a college structure up that's really fun and interesting to watch.

With the excellent reporting built into OOTP, I'll definitely be putting this online; I may have to do up a dynasty report in the forum here.


EDIT:
Flipping through the dynasty reports system, I thought of a nice, easy background for the league, though it's probably been done before: I may go with a "1994 strike was never settled and the original Major League Baseball collapsed" bit. Something like...

"...the 1994 labor conflict ruined the major leagues, but 5 years later a group of international team management officials (from existing professional leagues in Japan, Latin America, and the more conscientious owners in the US) met and concocted a plan to save the professional game, if not the league, for the new millennium. Working with the IOC to make the sport a truly international game, the World Baseball Federation was launched across five nations: the US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Korea. It would eventually expand to Europe and to China, Venezuela, and Australia, and in order to make it a truly international league a team was placed in Cuba after Fidel Castro's 2008 death finally convinced the United States to lift their embargo." Blah blah blah back story... I may start it in, like, 2000, sim ten years to give it some heft (and to eradicate any remaining "real world" players, if I start from a 1995 database), and go from there.

[Magc8Ball]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

But only one of them ever actually happened.

But people like me tend to say "if I wanted to reproduce history... I'd just read a book".

[The Wolf]

And if I want fiction I'll read a novel. What's your point?

[akw4572]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

And if I want fiction I'll read a novel. What's your point?

I believe it is............to each his own.

[The Wolf]

Maybe. But that's not what he wrote.

[Curtis]

I'll try to port over my (fictional) Oriental universe, but I'm not feeling sanguine about the likelihood. Beyond that I have two other ideas:

2007 MLB fictional with six rounds of minors plus high school (12-17) and college (18-22) feeders.

1962 semi-historical with real players (Garlon professional debut DB, if I can get the thing to work) and probably five levels of minors. I'll move the teams around and make four divisions of five teams, using wildcards for a three-tiered playoff structure. Every decade I'll shift a couple of teams geographically, in order to keep the largest markets filled as demographics change. I'll probably freeze the League recalc in either 1968 or 69, and use a five year player recalc to smooth out the highs and lows a little. I don't intend to expand or use feeders in this one. I MIGHT even experiment with ghost players.

[Killebrew]

I'll try the historical Twins from 1961 forward, and the '69 historical Expos (except they won't move to Washington). Those universes worked fairly well in the preview already, though if there were some historical jersey templates available they would work even better. Then I'll try a small indie A level pro league set in 1950 or so, but with MLB running above the independent league. This did not work well in v2006, but I'm hoping it can work well with this version. I might also try a career starting with 2007 MLB if there some reputable real-world DB's with the current 2007 prospects available for download. Er, like I would actually have time for any of that .

[Hotwheelz]

Ive got a league going right now that is roughly based on the early 90's MLB. There are a few new teams, a few missing, etc. Ive had quite a bit of fun and at the moment I plan on importing that league to 2007.

[Kivlehan]

Starts in 1870. MLB gets historical player imports. Players from MLB can't leave MLB, but other leagues can have free player movement and trade with each other. Other leagues players can come into the MLB and then leave.

MLB - 32 teams, nfl style 4 division, 4 team format in each league. No wild card. Brooklyn Blue Sox and Portland Pioneers are the two teams added to the MLB's current 30 teams. There's AAA for the MLB, but that is the only minor league level. I tend to add some Canadian teams in AAA to represent Canada, including the Montreal Expos.

Far Eastern League - Features teams from Japan, both Koreas, China and Taiwan. All NPBL teams are included (but I use City names, not corporate sponsor names) plus a couple defunct ones revived (Kyoto Whales, Kobe Blue Wave). I select about 5 teams from South Korea and add a couple in Taiwan (again, city names, not corporate sponsor names). China and N. Korea are completely fictional teams. Total of 40 teams in the league. No minors. Subleagues are the Freedom League (Japan, S. Korea) and the Imperial League (China, N.Korea, Taiwan).

Irish League - 32 team league drawing from Ireland and Northern Ireland. 2 subleagues each with 2 divisions representing the 4 regions, with Ulster and Connacht in the Northern League and Leinster and Munster in the Southern League.

British League - One subleague is the English league, based on soccer Premiership/Championship teams (ie, Manchester Red Devils, Liverpool Reds, London Gunners, London Blues, etc) and the other subleague is the Celtic League, with teams from Scotland, Wales and places like the Island of Man/Jersey, etc. The Scottish division is somewhat based on the Scottish soccer league (Glasgow Celtics, Glasgow Rangers) and the Welsh teams in the Gaelic division are somewhat based on the Welsh rugby teams. 40/48 team league depending on how I feel.

European League - 64 team league featuring teams from continental Europe. Sometimes I do a First Division (AAA level) too but it tends to get to be more than my computer can handle. I try to base the team's nicknames on soccer teams wherever possible. Includes teams from Russia and former Soviet republics west of the Ural Mountains as well. The other former Soviet republics east of the Urals go in the Asian league.

Asian League - Arabian, Mesopotamian, Persian, Hindu Kush, Indian, Bengal, Soviet and Southeast Asian divisions with 5/6 teams each. Teams include the Manilla Gorillas, Mongolia Golden Horde, Kabul Bulls, Bangalore Bengals and Tehran Iron Sheiks.

Oceania League - 32 teams from Australia, New Zealand and nearby islands. Teams include the Tasmania Devils, Wellington Hobbits and Darwin Tortoises.

African League - 40 teams from all over Africa. Divisions include Egyptian, Mediterranean, Horn, West African, Mid-Central African, Lake Victorian, South-Central African and South African.

South American League - 32 teams, Northern subleague and Southern subleague, Northern includes divisions like Venezuelan, Incan (Ecuador/Peru), Colombian and North Brazilian. Southern includes South Brazilian, Chilean, Argentine and one for Paraguay/Uruguay/Bolivia.

Caribbean League - 40/48 teams from Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Central America and the various Islands. Teams based on actual baseball team names where possible.

Depending on what my computer can handle, I may setup very small feeder leagues in key countries to make sure the appropriate league is getting fed with players from the region. I could see Dutch, Italian, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Ukrainian, Nigerian, South African, Indian, Pakistani, Australian, Japanese, S. Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican, feeder leagues with 2/3/4 teams each just to populate the draft pools of the appropriate league.

I have tried setting this up with more smaller leagues, such as having individual English, Scottish and Welsh leagues instead of a British league, or individual Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, etc, leagues instead of a Euro league, but I end up adding a lot more teams and it gets to be too much for the computer.

It will be interesting to see what OOTP2007 lets me pull off versus the limitations I ran into based on the combo of OOTP2006 and my computer.