Experimenting With League Settings

[thakfu]

So I guess this is just an observation I've had. I love playing historical games but putting twists on them. The game I'm running right now basically is a "what if" of if the 1901 Brewers stayed in Milwaukee. To achieve this you obviously need to turn off automatic expansion.

On top of this I was playing with historical minor leagues checked in the set-up options. Minor league players have been added yearly in my draft pool. At about 1907 I realized the free agent pool was rather massive on top of teams having rather large reserve player rosters. Now, I had believed from what I've read puttering around the forums (I spend half my free time playing OOTP, and the other half googling it) that creating fictional minors isn't a valid option because the game would basically delete them every year until the real minor leagues begin to generate (1920 I believe?).

I wondered what effect having auto expand off may have on this so I started up a second save in which I followed the exact same set up as my 01 Brewers game, with the exception that I created a AAA level minor league. I was surprised to find that the minor league I created did not go away AND the real historical minor leagues aren't added to my game even as I get into 1920! All the while the historical minor league players are STILL being added to my draft classes. Kind of cool actually.

So to confirm this. I decided to check the automatically expand option for 1921, which in turn brought up the option to maintain real minor leagues. At the end of the season the fictional AAA I had created became inactive and the real NNL, PCL and Texas league showed up. What was interesting in this, however, was that the game generated a great number of historical minor leaguers as well.

In going through the transaction logs for the leagues I noticed that some of these players were created with their real life stats recorded as game stats. This kind of bugged me a bit because these players had stats compiled that didn't actually happen in the game, yet league history records them as career stats. This made me wonder if certain minor leaguers weren't getting generated at draft time, because why would players with stats dating back to the 00s (including major league stats) be first generated at creation of the historical minor league team?

My guess is that these were players that never played and were thus deleted from the game at retirement. I do not have the "delete players who never reached the majors" checked however. I'm guessing the game will delete anyone who never plays a game on any level at retirement? I'm also guessing I'm just going to have to live with those phony stats then.

Sorry for the long ramble, just wanted to pass on the experiment and see if anyone has any thoughts or anything to add, or if I frankly somehow did something so stupid I ripped the very coding of the game apart. =]

[thehef]

Originally Posted by thakfu

On top of this I was playing with historical minor leagues checked in the set-up options. Minor league players have been added yearly in my draft pool. At about 1907 I realized the free agent pool was rather massive on top of teams having rather large reserve player rosters.

Right. This is a direct result of the minor-league players being made available (thanks to the incredible work of Spritze, and perhaps others?) but OOTP having no place to put them, beyond reserve lists and the free agent pool. (We desperately need OOTP to include at least the top levels of minors beginning in the very-early 1900's so many of these players would have a place to play.)

Originally Posted by thakfu

I had believed from what I've read puttering around the forums (I spend half my free time playing OOTP, and the other half googling it) that creating fictional minors isn't a valid option because the game would basically delete them every year until the real minor leagues begin to generate (1920 I believe?).

Actually, you CAN have fictional minor leagues in a historical game that includes minor-league players. See Tiger Fan's tutorial here: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=276256

Originally Posted by thakfu

I wondered what effect having auto expand off may have on this so I started up a second save in which I followed the exact same set up as my 01 Brewers game, with the exception that I created a AAA level minor league. I was surprised to find that the minor league I created did not go away AND the real historical minor leagues aren't added to my game even as I get into 1920! All the while the historical minor league players are STILL being added to my draft classes. Kind of cool actually.

This is very interesting. So, just so I understand, you are saying that if you create a historical league starting in 1901 and have auto-expansion off, historical minors on, and then you add your own minor league (AAA), that your manually-added minor league continues to exist past 1919 (when OOTP would add its first minor league, the Texas League), and the Texas League is not added by OOTP in 1919, and minor-leaguers continue to import? (And in this test, did OOTP also not add the Federal League in 1914?)

Originally Posted by thakfu

So to confirm this. I decided to check the automatically expand option for 1921, which in turn brought up the option to maintain real minor leagues. At the end of the season the fictional AAA I had created became inactive and the real NNL, PCL and Texas league showed up. What was interesting in this, however, was that the game generated a great number of historical minor leaguers as well.

Not sure I understand the part in bold. Are you saying that OOTP created fictional players? I don't think so, but you had indicated that the game was already importing historical minor-leaguers, so I'm not sure I understand the distinction... Please clarify

Originally Posted by thakfu

or if I frankly somehow did something so stupid I ripped the very coding of the game apart.

No, no. It's these kinds of experiments that help us figure out better ways to manipulate the game to accommodate our preferences

At any rate, please continue to post your findings with these tests. Very interesting!

[thakfu]

Originally Posted by thehef

This is very interesting. So, just so I understand, you are saying that if you create a historical league starting in 1901 and have auto-expansion off, historical minors on, and then you add your own minor league (AAA), that your manually-added minor league continues to exist past 1919 (when OOTP would add its first minor league, the Texas League), and the Texas League is not added by OOTP in 1919, and minor-leaguers continue to import? (And in this test, did OOTP also not add the Federal League in 1914?)

Correct! And no, I didn't get the Federal League. All the leagues were generated at the conclusion of the 1921 season.

Originally Posted by thehef

Not sure I understand the part in bold. Are you saying that OOTP created fictional players? I don't think so, but you had indicated that the game was already importing historical minor-leaguers, so I'm not sure I understand the distinction... Please clarify

I did word that a bit funny. What I'm saying is when the historical leagues and teams were created by the game, a number of HISTORICAL players were generated for a few of those teams. The reason I pointed this out is because they were generated with existing stats taken directly from their real life stat lines. Much like how if you started a new 1901 game, players like Cy Young would have their stats from the past century. My assumption is these players were originally created in their original draft year but were purged from the game for not having ever played a game on any level. (I have "delete players who never reach the majors" unchecked.) Being that the game checks for their existence when creating the new teams, it would then create any historical players for that team that weren't already in the current world. I assume... I think. lol

To me this was the one knock against this experiment. HOWEVER this would only ever occur in the instance you would start your replay with auto expand off and decide to turn it on later. It may not apply in most scenarios. Other than that I'm not sure anything else can be done about this.

Originally Posted by thehef

No, no. It's these kinds of experiments that help us figure out better ways to manipulate the game to accommodate our preferences

At any rate, please continue to post your findings with these tests. Very interesting!

This is what I was hoping to accomplish. Like I said, I spend a good deal of time searching the forum for ideas and instructions, so I was hoping someone could benefit from this. As you can see I barely ever post. I may start writing some dynasty reports with my crazy setups. =]

The thing that I most appreciate about this game, and wish was present in other sports sims, is how it is nearly limitless in how you can set up your world. I'm a programmer myself, so it's very inspiring to see a project like this and I use it as an example of what a sim game can be truly capable of.