Womens leagues

[Skadan]

This request has come up with pretty much every version of OOTP so there's obviously an interest in it. (And it seems like there's always an obligatory group of folks who seem to get their panties in a bunch over it every time it's brought up, I'm not sure why that is.) No one can really know what percentage of people would be interested in it any more than people can know what percentage of players want to simulate the Korean league so there's no point even speculating. Ultimately it comes down to what the designer thinks is important to include and what isn't, and given that this suggestion HAS been around a long time I'm guessing this one is squarely on the "not important" list in his mind and I can live with that.

Sports simulation in my opinion, though, has it's foundation in the "what if" scenario, so I can't understand why "what if there were female players" is any more or less valid than "what if Reggie Jackson played in 1909" or "what if there was a salary cap." I've messed around with jimmying female players into the game and here's what experience has taught me:

- The first name file replacement is straightforward, if you're doing an "all female" universe. That's all I've done thusfar, however I think there are some options if you'd like to do it differently. More on that below. There's a name file floating around out there somewhere, I certainly didn't create my own.

- Facegen... never gonna work, obviously. There's a female picture pak floating around out there as well.

- Height and weight... can't fix it. But if it's any consolation, that's a problem for parts of the game that ARE implemented. Japanese players don't have the same height/weight averages as U.S. players but the game doesn't account for that difference so it's something you just have to live with. The same should apply to the "development curve" observation above. (Correct me if I'm wrong and the game DOES account for this, I'm under the impression that ethnicity only affects player naming.)

- Differing physical characteristics... speculate about women's potential performance to your heart's content. You can adjust HR power, speed... whatever you want. Not a problem here.

- The text based play by play is, indeed, a problem. You can't do a simple find/replace on "he/she," "his/her..." that kind of stuff because of all the formatting codes surrounding the text. Apart from that, the hard coded stuff is still there and ironically, I've found the occasional "he" when most of the PbP was "she" to be even more jarring than just accepting that all of it is wrong and just learning to live with it. It's a fairly tedious process, and I've done it... only to have all my hard work invalidated by the next patch which revamped the PbP file. Actually, this is kind of a problem with ANY modification of that file for whatever reason... if it's extensive you're going to lose that work if they update it.


I'm considering starting again and trying to run a women's league parallel to modern day MLB... with the possibilty of players from the women's league acutally being drafted into the MLB system by computer managers. My thoughts are this:

Make a new nation, "US - Female." Make a new ethnicity... female, make your new nation 100% female, tie a new group in names file to that ethnicity, and there you go... you've got a different name file for U.S. men and U.S. women. I've not done new nations yet so I'm guessing it will probably take editing the city file as well... copying all the cities and putting them in my new nation as well. So technically, there'd be two Pittsburghs. With the same longitude and lattitude values I'm assuming the game would treat them the same when it came to considerations about players playing near home and such. With your new nation you could also set your "baseball level" to whatever you think it should be if you want to muck around with how viable women would be in "real" baseball leagues.

I've seen some hinting around about multi-national leagues in OOTP 9 so it may even be possible to set up co-ed leagues using this method down the road.

So that's my thoughts on it given that I have personal doubts about whether gender will ever be officially implemented. I hope it helps anyone who's interested. As a final parting shot to the guys who don't like women in their fantasy universes all I can say is this: if you can't tell the difference between a woman and a hobbit, you need to spend less time at the computer

Have fun.

[Bobbuttons]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

I think one of the announced features for OOTP 9 is better 19th century support.

I hope so, that would be good to see.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Skadan

This request has come up with pretty much every version of OOTP so there's obviously an interest in it. (And it seems like there's always an obligatory group of folks who seem to get their panties in a bunch over it every time it's brought up, I'm not sure why that is.) No one can really know what percentage of people would be interested in it any more than people can know what percentage of players want to simulate the Korean league so there's no point even speculating. Ultimately it comes down to what the designer thinks is important to include and what isn't, and given that this suggestion HAS been around a long time I'm guessing this one is squarely on the "not important" list in his mind and I can live with that.

Sports simulation in my opinion, though, has it's foundation in the "what if" scenario, so I can't understand why "what if there were female players" is any more or less valid than "what if Reggie Jackson played in 1909" or "what if there was a salary cap." I've messed around with jimmying female players into the game and here's what experience has taught me:

- The first name file replacement is straightforward, if you're doing an "all female" universe. That's all I've done thusfar, however I think there are some options if you'd like to do it differently. More on that below. There's a name file floating around out there somewhere, I certainly didn't create my own.

- Facegen... never gonna work, obviously. There's a female picture pak floating around out there as well.

- Height and weight... can't fix it. But if it's any consolation, that's a problem for parts of the game that ARE implemented. Japanese players don't have the same height/weight averages as U.S. players but the game doesn't account for that difference so it's something you just have to live with. The same should apply to the "development curve" observation above. (Correct me if I'm wrong and the game DOES account for this, I'm under the impression that ethnicity only affects player naming.)

- Differing physical characteristics... speculate about women's potential performance to your heart's content. You can adjust HR power, speed... whatever you want. Not a problem here.

- The text based play by play is, indeed, a problem. You can't do a simple find/replace on "he/she," "his/her..." that kind of stuff because of all the formatting codes surrounding the text. Apart from that, the hard coded stuff is still there and ironically, I've found the occasional "he" when most of the PbP was "she" to be even more jarring than just accepting that all of it is wrong and just learning to live with it. It's a fairly tedious process, and I've done it... only to have all my hard work invalidated by the next patch which revamped the PbP file. Actually, this is kind of a problem with ANY modification of that file for whatever reason... if it's extensive you're going to lose that work if they update it.


I'm considering starting again and trying to run a women's league parallel to modern day MLB... with the possibilty of players from the women's league acutally being drafted into the MLB system by computer managers. My thoughts are this:

Make a new nation, "US - Female." Make a new ethnicity... female, make your new nation 100% female, tie a new group in names file to that ethnicity, and there you go... you've got a different name file for U.S. men and U.S. women. I've not done new nations yet so I'm guessing it will probably take editing the city file as well... copying all the cities and putting them in my new nation as well. So technically, there'd be two Pittsburghs. With the same longitude and lattitude values I'm assuming the game would treat them the same when it came to considerations about players playing near home and such. With your new nation you could also set your "baseball level" to whatever you think it should be if you want to muck around with how viable women would be in "real" baseball leagues.

I've seen some hinting around about multi-national leagues in OOTP 9 so it may even be possible to set up co-ed leagues using this method down the road.

Clever idea. I may have to try that. I have made my own women's first name file (advice, don't try it).

So that's my thoughts on it given that I have personal doubts about whether gender will ever be officially implemented. I hope it helps anyone who's interested.

I think it could be officially implemented, but probably not till OOTP 11 or 12.

As a final parting shot to the guys who don't like women in their fantasy universes all I can say is this: if you can't tell the difference between a woman and a hobbit, you need to spend less time at the computer

Haha, indeed.

[Syd Thrift]

Women are the ones with hairy feet, right?

[Left-handed Badger]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Women are the ones with hairy feet, right?

*Slips Syd a nudie magazine, so he can learn the truth*

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Skadan

Sports simulation in my opinion, though, has it's foundation in the "what if" scenario, so I can't understand why "what if there were female players" is any more or less valid than "what if Reggie Jackson played in 1909" or "what if there was a salary cap."

(snip) Differing physical characteristics... speculate about women's potential performance to your heart's content. You can adjust HR power, speed... whatever you want. Not a problem here.

(snip) With your new nation you could also set your "baseball level" to whatever you think it should be if you want to muck around with how viable women would be in "real" baseball leagues.

Overall an excellant post. My favorite is the first paragraph quoted.

I had forgotten that nations are ranked by 'level' in OOTP. I was thinking in terms of a development cap, such as AA, which seems reasonable to me.

The differing physical abilities seem to me to be the crux of the matter. What baselines do you choose? Arm .73? (roughly approximates javelin throws, which use a similar motion) Speed .93? (ratios for 50, 60 and 100 meter dashes) Range same as speed, or .97? (since anticipation would be gender independant and relexes would be in the women's favor) Power .33? .50? Gap .67? Who knows? And how do you translate any of this to pitching?

Many of the skill abilities (base running, base stealing) would be gender independent, and some of them might even slant toward the women. I wouldn't be at all surprised if women made fewer fielding errors, drew more walks (better eye and a smaller strike zone) and made more contact than men.

Or maybe not more contact. They wouldn't be trying to go yard, so they could choke up and have more bat control. Could they come around fast enough on a fast ball? No proof either way, but the 17 year old girl who ran the batting cages here in Watertown had no problems pulling a 90mph pitch. And there's that reflex thing again. A women can sit longer on a pitch before committing to a swing. On the other hand, they probably couldn't check swing to save their lives.

One important difference would be injuries. Women are much more prone to sports injuries (especially knees, elbows and shoulders) due to lack of muscle on either side of the joints, but they tend to recover a little more quickly due to their tendons and ligaments being a little more stretchy. And women have better endurance, so they wouldn't tire as much over the course of a season.

Women would also have higher ratings for intangibles such as coachability (work ethic) and team spirit (loyalty), and a lower rating for greed (women are accustomed to being paid 75-80% of what men make in most jobs, and more like 10% in sports).

As this thread goes on it's getting more thought provoking. Thank you.