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Old 07-23-2006, 07:06 PM   #21
Curtis
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I realize this is completely off topic, so feel free to ignore me, but ya'll have got me to reminiscing.

Does anyone remember the old Longball card/board game? It was a contemporary of APBA and Stratomatic but, at least back in the 70s, was superior to both. The fault it had in common with Stratomatic was that, since it was 50/50 whether the results would come from the pitcher's or hitter's card, people who did very little of something (allow homers or walks as a pitcher, or strike out or gdp as a hitter) couldn't be accurately simmed.

Statis-Pro had one neat feature, in that the incidence of when the results came off the pitcher's card varied from 5 in 12 to 10 in 12, depending on how dominant the pitcher was. That accounted for pitchers who did very little of something (and in the most extreme cases, like Bob Gibson's 1.02 ERA year) made the hitters almost irrelevant. In other respects the game was a step down from Longball/Stratomatic. And it made the 'batter's extreme low' situation even worse.

There was a game I saw advertised for a few years (again in the early 70s), but never found for sale, that seemed interesting because you could physically position the fielders. I don't remember what it was called, but as far as I know it was the first game to have park effects.

This is probably the wrong place to post this, but a set of features I'd like to see in OOTP involves more particular placement of fielders. I'd like to be able to shift and guard lines with the outfielders, like you can with the infield. I'd also like the option of playing with five infielders if my pitcher's G/F ratio is 75%, or four outfielders if it's 40%

Apologies to rwd59 for hijacking his thread.
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Old 07-23-2006, 07:13 PM   #22
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Longball in 1978 was really the first game that I had where I was interested in playing out careers and seasons. It also planted the seed for what would become a super stat geek in myself. Id played the Superstar Baseball (SI I think) once in awhile with a friend (I was only 9 years old he was 12) but it was only one game at a time and we didnt keep track of anything. Longball was awesome, but I can honestly say that Ive never talked to anyone that has ever heard of it. Most talk about APBA or Strat-o-Matic (which I graduated up to after Longball).

Last edited by Nukester; 07-23-2006 at 07:15 PM.
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Old 07-23-2006, 09:48 PM   #23
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Longball was the game that me a stat geek, too. We kept track of everything, including fielding percentage.

The game was highly customizable, too. We made adjustments to the error charts to make more of a difference between, say a '2' and a '5' fielder. We toned down the hit-and-run charts so it was still worthwhile, but not a run producing machine. (My Phillies were set up to generate three to six runs in a big inning doing nothing but the hit and run.) We came up with fatigue ratings for pitchers based on batters faced vs. their S/MR/R rating.

When I say it was superior to Stratomatic, I mean after we were done tinkering with it. The only real problems were lack of ballpark effects, no righty/lefty interaction and no position player fatigue. That last meant that Manny Mota, who was a .400 pinch hitter, played outfield for me every day and led off. (Just to punish me, he barely hit .300 in our league.)

One of the best things about it was that we could play twelve games in six hours (there were three of us, and whoever wasn't playing would keep score), and that included the time neccesary to beg for a double zero, deliberate substitutions, do the "Kong" chant for Dave Kingman, scream at Kingman for striking out again, run around the table when a home run was hit, kiss Tug McGraw when he closed out another one, etc.

Good times. We each ran four teams, and if you wanted to trade between your own clubs you needed the permission of one of the other two players. My Phillies, who won the regular season and playoff championships in 77 and 78, were well balanced, with great pitching, great defense, high on base percentage and excellent hit-and-run abilities. My Dodgers, who finished third and fourth and went out in the first round of the playoffs both years, were solid pitching with extreme power and speed. My Rangers just managed to nose above .500 both years and didn't make the playoffs. They were scrappy and relied on a catcher with a '10' arm, Nolan Ryan and a relief staff that was accustomed to making its appearance in the first inning. The Royals finished eighth or ninth each year, and I have no clear memory of them.

Uhm. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread. (Oops!)
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Old 07-23-2006, 10:38 PM   #24
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APBA did it for me. My first interest came in 1977 when i bought the football game, then the baseball game in 1978. I had seasons from 1978-1991 when i stopped playing it. By 1991 i did manage to get my hands on roughly 20 great seasons from the past, ones of great value i might add Where's it all now ? Sold on e-bay sadly i needed the cash. Favorite season to play was 1956 incl. the mighty Milwaukee Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Yankees; in fact i still have the score sheets from that season lol. Anyway thanks for the memory !
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Old 07-25-2006, 02:47 AM   #25
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rwd59
So here are some questions: Are pitchers still becoming pretty much useless after they turn 30? Does the Lahman import process seem to work properly and give proper ratings? Can you change the reserve roster to hold more than 10 players? Are there any areas that are weak for the historical player? What is the biggest improvement for the historical player? I have owned every version of OOTP since the '99 version and have bought them all as soon as they came out up until this version. I want to continue supporting this series as it has provided me with thousands of hours of enjoyment. Will I get the same enjoyment out of this version?
I've imported the Lahman DB (as well as the Arod23 DB, Gambo DB, etc.). Here's what I've noticed so far:

Pitching Rotation - I've seen too many solid SPs relegated to MR status. Because of their age (30+), maybe? So, I'll see one pitcher made a MR, even though he started 38 games the previous year and won 19. In his place will be a SP who pitched in 37 games the previous year, but only started 4 of them.

Lineups - I think the AI for lineups has gotten better. Sometimes, I'll see something unusual with the batting order. More often, though, I'll see players assigned to unusual positions. Hank Aaron, for example, will play 2B against RHP, and CF against LHP, even though his primary position is RF.

Defensive Ratings - Often, these ratings baffle me. They seem randomly assigned in some cases.

Speed/Baserunning Ratings - Again, I don't understand these ratings. Eddie Mathews averaged 4 SB per year. He is assigned a 74 rating for base stealing. As a result, he will steal 10-15 bases in a simmed season.

If I were to play through one of these seasons, I think I'd have to manually adjust the rotation, lineups, defensive position, defensive ratings, speed ratings, etc., before I got started. That's a lot of work. I suppose I could also adjust the managerial strategies for each team, not to mention some of the strategies for individual players. Is anyone obsessive-compulsive enough to do that?

One other observation: I see fewer problems when I import a "career average" database. That kind of database has its disadvantages, of course, too.
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Old 07-25-2006, 09:11 AM   #26
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I appreciate threads like these, I too only play historical sims, always starting in deadball, and have held off buying 2006 because of the posted shortcomings. I have purchased every OOTP since version 2 and commish the longest running online league in OOTP history (MLBC) but from what I have read here it just isnt worth it to me (yet).

Puresim 2007 question??? Do you still have to go to a different screen to make strategic moves like stealing and hit and run??? This was a major problem for me in playing deadball Puresim. Not having a keystroke command from the main game screen for ingame strategy really made deadball play tedious.
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Old 07-25-2006, 11:35 AM   #27
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Would love to use full minors but I am sick of Illegal player messages, I used to like the ghost players which allowed you to not to have to use fictional players in the minors, the reserve roster is ok but I used to like seeing the minor league stats. I am so tired of filling the minors with fictional players every year and yes the problem still exists, since the last patch I got a message that said that there were an illegal amount of players on my active roster and I swear i could not find the error any where. It seems that this new version has one big problem, a lack of any support for historical simmers, a lack of any one at SI that wants to take care of the large core of historical simmers. There are so many problems that still exist after the new patch and yes it is getting better but all we keep hearing is that there may not be another patch and that we just may have to wait till the next version. Every patch that has come out seems to address all the problems with fictional leagues and online leagues and the historical simmer gets put on the back burner. I wish there was a poll that could tell them how many historical simmers there are out there. I have given kudos to Markus many times and am a stong supporter of this game which has been far and away the best baseball sim on the market. I played Diamond Mind before it became a computer game and was called Persue the Pennant and used Fast Action Cards, played Strat-O-Matic when it was a board game, Tried Pure Sim when it first came out, played APBA with friends, Never liked Baseball Mogul. Then came OOTP1 and it was over for me. I bought every version of OOTP up to 6.5 and now own this version and will still wait because Markus has always fixed the game

Markus, please pay more attention to us historical simmers, we are out here and we are stong
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Old 07-25-2006, 11:53 AM   #28
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Targy, you will get your answer soon enough:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=128359
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Old 07-25-2006, 12:09 PM   #29
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I, too, continually run into the error of not enough players on minor league rosters. It's incredibly frustrating that something this simple hasn't been addressed.

A similar issue also has popped up in a 'major' league I'm running that has a 3-man rotation and a 17 person roster. Somehow the game doesn't realize it needs to keep at least 2 pitchers on the roster. It winds up with 1 pitcher and 16 position players. Brilliant.

I have no idea if this is fixed in the final version of the 1.02 patch or not.

Last edited by Kelric; 07-25-2006 at 12:14 PM.
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Old 07-25-2006, 12:09 PM   #30
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Thanks, the score is 3-3 tie game. Again thank you for setting up the poll, now it is off to play my sim with reserve rosters, no weather, bad pbp and news reports, illegal player messages. But again i will keep playing this game because i know they will get it right, they always do
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Old 07-25-2006, 05:30 PM   #31
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Quote:
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I, too, continually run into the error of not enough players on minor league rosters. It's incredibly frustrating that something this simple hasn't been addressed.
Well, if it was a simple fix, it would have been corrected already. So obviously the problem is not simple to resolve.
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Old 07-25-2006, 05:43 PM   #32
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Well, if it was a simple fix, it would have been corrected already. So obviously the problem is not simple to resolve.
Keep your filthy logic away from my posts!
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Old 07-26-2006, 02:39 AM   #33
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Strat-O-Matic is still the gold standard for statistical accuracy, but having to pay so much money for season disks and not having career progression are where Puresim and OOTP have passed it by.
You're kidding right? Strat-O-Matic is still based on a dice game with separate batter and pitcher cards. I've got a Bill James article from the 80s that's more sophisticated than that.

The best historical replay sim I know is DM. The best career sim for historical accuracy is the most recent patch of Mogul -- with 6.51 in second place. PureSim and 2006 have too many wacky results to even be close.
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Old 07-26-2006, 05:46 AM   #34
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This is for fictionals, I know, but it *should* translate to OOTP... if you go into the engine file in the config folder, you can edit the frequency of errors, double plays, wild pitches, and passed balls. I've found that for errors at least you can get *really* realistic totals just by dividing the error rate (1 minus FA) by the 2005 error rate and applying that to the game. I've been doing this with both throwing and catching errors, and they mostly look good. Too many errors by 1Bmen, maybe too few for some middle infielders, the right amount for catchers (though they'll look like way too much - keep in mind that Monte Ward broke the century mark IRL).

It's a bit of extra work, unfortunately, but still less than what I had to do to get 6.51 to work right (even then, fielding was horrible).
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Old 07-30-2006, 08:48 PM   #35
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Quote:
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I'm a little confused. Why hasn't anybody mentioned Stratomatic Baseball? .

Strat (i use to play) & APBA (Im still in a few leagues...some since 1976) both only play a season at a time (unless strat has changed).

Each player will perform somewhat like he did during the season. No chance for change. If he leaves baseball (injury/retirement) he's out of the set. No 15 year career for Mark Fidrych. Maybe you want Dale Murphy to be a catcher, and Pete Rose at 2nd, but in those games, only what they did during the season you're playing is used.

I enjoy having Geroge Ruth getting 200+ wins & Babe Ruth hitting 400+ homeruns.
Nothing is finer then Joe DiMaggio & Ted Williams playing without military interuption.
I dont even mind, losing Norm Cash after 2 years to Injury. (The next replay he could make the Hall of Fame)


For recreating seasons i'd rather use ReplayBB (a card & dice game). It's slow but on target with stats.

I am still loving OOTP5 (and 6.5 too) with Catobase & the latest (or any) Arod/Garlon DB (with 30 or so Japan All Stars thrown in)
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Old 07-30-2006, 11:19 PM   #36
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I think the first game to have park effects was Sher-Co, which I believe was a late seventies game.

The first baseball sim I ever played was "Be a Manager" probably in the mid seventies.
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Old 08-02-2006, 03:46 AM   #37
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Each player will perform somewhat like he did during the season. No chance for change. If he leaves baseball (injury/retirement) he's out of the set. No 15 year career for Mark Fidrych. Maybe you want Dale Murphy to be a catcher, and Pete Rose at 2nd, but in those games, only what they did during the season you're playing is used.
Ah, I can see that. Of course, house rules can compensate for some of that. In our Stratomatic league we allowed players who changed position to play at their previous position(s) for three years after after they made the switch in real life. We had a formula based on real life likelihoods of errors at different positions to convert a (say) range 1 error 23 guy at short back into a third baseman.

We mostly used this for guys like Edgardo Alfonso who used to be utility players but settled into one spot later in their careers. (Edgardo was my supersub for six seasons, filling in at third, short or second as needed.) It worked equally well when the Braves converted Chipper Jones into an outfielder and old what's-his-name moved from short to third for the Orioles.
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Old 08-03-2006, 05:01 PM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jestre
Puresim 2007 question??? Do you still have to go to a different screen to make strategic moves like stealing and hit and run??? This was a major problem for me in playing deadball Puresim. Not having a keystroke command from the main game screen for ingame strategy really made deadball play tedious.
There are now keystroke commands for all the basic strategic options. Download and try the demo. It's free.

As for OOTP2006, I elected not to purchase the game after reading about several issues that really disappointed me. Reading this topic has only discouraged me further. It sounds like OOTP has taken a major step backwards in historical replay. I would really love to have a baseball sim that would provide statistically accurate and realistic historical replays, especially with the online league capabilities that you see with OOTP.

But every game seems to have a fatal flaw. Diamond Mind requires expensive season disks and does not have career mode. The same can be said for Strat-O-Matic. The current version of OOTP sounds like absolute crap for historical replays, and PureSim still lacks the most basic features, like requiring pitchers to be warmed up in the bullpen and online league functionality.

Is there any hope for me in any product on the market? Or is there a complete lack of a game that combines accurate historical replay, the Lahman database, full strategic options, and online league functionality?
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Old 08-03-2006, 05:47 PM   #39
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Quote:
Originally Posted by glenmere14
I think the first game to have park effects was Sher-Co, which I believe was a late seventies game.

The first baseball sim I ever played was "Be a Manager" probably in the mid seventies.

Wow! I don't think I've ever seen anyone else mention "Be a Manager." It was the first game I ever owned too. It was 1972, I think, and I had the '71 season. I was 11. My buddy had Strat, and I loved it, but for some reason the first game I bought was Be a Manager. I don't remember why, probably because it was cheaper.

I can't remember much about game play, only that it was more complicated and frustrating than Strat because you had to read the three dice off a chart then go to the player cards. I think you may have even had to roll twice, once for the pitcher and once for the batter, but I may be confusing it with Sports Illustrated.

One thing I do remember vividly, however, was Willie Stargell striking out in a key situation and being so pissed off (I was a Pirates fan) that I scrawled "dick" across his card in big dark letters with my scoresheet pencil, and always referred to him as "K-gell" from that point on.

Hard to believe I'm playing baseball games 35 years later....
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Old 08-05-2006, 02:46 PM   #40
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hmm..fond memories of diamond Mind. easily the best of the dice-based baseball sims. I remember my brother and I doing player progression (we had some randomized algorithims) and rookie generation. Good times!

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