Universal free agency?

[HonusWagner]

Goal:

To organically grow tiered league system using feeders only.





Action:

I have successfully developed and stabilized a tiered feeder system, including high schools feeding colleges.

Now, I am adding a first independent league. I want the indy league (and any subsequent pro leagues) to draw from the universal pool of available players from feeders and from existing FAs who have exited feeder systems.





Problem:

The indy drafts do not "see" all FAs in the player universe. So the indy league gets filled with manufactured FAs. I have tried running the inaugural draft drawing from feeders only, from feeders and additional players, and with "disable automatic creation of FAs" checked. Regardless, the draft pool fills up with created FAs.

Have I missed a setting?





What is odd:


Is that the game does see the universal FA list elsewhere. For example, as a manager I can create shortlists of available FAs and can see every player since the beginning of time.

(which raises another question since it appears a human manager can sign players the AI managers can't access).

So it seems that once a player exits a feeder system they can only be signed by a human manager.

It would seem to be a somewhat simple thing, to make all non-signed players potentially available to a team's AI, since they are available elsewhere.

[HonusWagner]

In researching this, I found this:

https://manuals.ootpdevelopments.com...feeder-leagues



Specifically, it states

Feeder leagues have minimum and maximum age limits for players, and once players exceed their age maximum, the players go into the draft pool for their parent league.

This is not happening. It occurs for some that are draft eligible but I have hundreds of players who exited the feeder system that the AI ignores.

Does when the feeder connection is created between two leagues matter?

[HonusWagner]

From the manual (see link above) there is this troubling bit of information:

you cannot have a 'daisy chain' of feeder leagues. That is, you can't have a high school league that feeds into a college league that feeds into a professional league.

1. Why not?


2. This is what I have. Perhaps THIS is why my setup isn't working.


3. Why not??? So, I can't have college league with a feeder because the college won't feed into a higher league?

[Lawn Loaf]

Are your college leagues set up as feeder leagues or are they set up as independent leagues?

[Lawn Loaf]

The reason I ask is because I am setting up a league that has a hs feeder league only feeding MLB. My goal is to create a 40 round draft with 80 rounds of players available. In theory, all unsigned and undrafted players will hit the FA pool. From there I will have the colleges set up as indy leagues to sign these players as a substitution for recruiting that happens in real life. I was wondering if you had tried this idea or any others and what sort of success they have had.

[HonusWagner]

I just recommend trying it.

I haven't tried that.

I don't see a reason why it shouldn't work.

And I guess you can just circumvent the entire "feeder" template option entirely and make a bunch of independent leagues and designate them as college or high school. And get the "daisy chain" effect. And there is joy in mudville once again.

[HonusWagner]

So in implementing an indy league with high school status, the financial page is a thing.

Strange, because the page doesn't have the option box to disable financials for the league. But it does have "Minor leagues do not support financials"....


EDIT: I removed affiliation with college league and the check box to disable financials appeared. So financials are not a thing.

[HonusWagner]

And another thing I will sim to test it out is whether it is possible to "trick" the engine into seeing all players as potential agents. For example,

- having an indy "high school" league naturally create a bunch of players, who exit at age 18 into the universal pool.

- at which point they are draftable by all drafting leagues - college, indy, pros.

- the lowest drafted will go into college, the next best are drafted by indy, the best are drafted by pros.

Will report back with results.

[HonusWagner]

Ya, so I've run two indy hs leagues, creating sufficient FAs that have exited the hs system but are still in their 20s.

I set up an indy college league and set up an inaugural draft and... same thing.

The FAs remain in the system but are not accessible by any other league AIs. Yet, as I mentioned, it seems human managers can access any player ever created.

Since the data remain available and in play in the db how tough can it be to simply make all players available to the AI?

As it is, the only hs players that have actually gone through my hs "feeders" which can be seen by the college draft AI are 18 year olds. Those older the AI can't see.

* A footnote: I noticed the game developers have added a fake high school "career" for some generated players. Is this new? The effect is the generated player rates as having "high school stats", but.. you know, not really.... Unless the code is so far gone it is just impossible to change at this point, that addition of generated stats to make it seem sim'ed is a mis-step in my opinion.

[HonusWagner]

Ok, so I have sim'd about 10 to 15 seasons using two indy hs leagues. I have FAs ranging from 19 to 52 (having deleted leagues to start over the players were thrown back into the FA pool, hence wide age range.)

I have added an indy college league. true to form, the inaugural draft could see the all the FAs ranging from 18 - 21. To solve this I ran a free agent draft in place of the inaugural draft. Success! I short listed the FAs before the draft and glancing at rosters it appears that most of the FAs generated by the indy hs leagues were drafted.

It is odd though because the game appears to have generated a bunch of fake players for another FA draft - they have fake/generated "high school" stats and also ignore the age limitations I selected in league settings (max age 21). Many of them are over 21. I ran one pick to see if the game would select a player outside the age range and yes, the player's age was 22. My guess is all players selected that are of illegal age will be immediately released. Seems like something development should look at.

[HonusWagner]

.

[HonusWagner]

TOo bad. i posted a lengthy reply here on my results of all this and the forum sw couldnt process it and it was lost.


the short of it is that i got it all to work. it involves replacing inaugural drafts with fa drafts basically. makign sure to delete the scheduled ddrafts.

my hs leagues fed a college league and both generated players who were drafted by an indy league. due to age restrictions (minimum age) there was no competition between indy and college drafts, thouhg this could change as i add minor leagues, like a rookie league that uses hs draftees.

anyway, mabye will get back to writing out th process i used but am not writing it again now.

[HonusWagner]

If you want a more detailed description let me know. There are a few things to stickhandle around, which can screw things up if not careful.

[HonusWagner]

Basically, what I got was this:

For each draft (inaugural, amateur, first year etc) always delete whatever pool the game provides. Those are all generated players. The game complicates things by giving some generated players fake HS stats. Anyway, delete them all.

Go into league events list and delete whatever auto draft is scheduled. Then go into league settings and select FA draft. NOTE: DO NOT attempt to schedule the FA draft for later in the season in the league events. THe game will just give you an FA draft with generated players. Instead, immediately run the FA draft the same game day. This will ensure you have actual sim'ed FAs.

After the drafting league is first created, the game will populate your teams with players. Delete them. Delete them all.

You will notice your new league's FA pool is likely not substantial. Go into whatever HS leagues you have and view all players. Select show retired and, if you have been sim-ing substantially enough, you will have at least hundreds of players per HS league (see below for more on that).

Create a view filter and set the parameters to whatever your league's minimum age is and up (eg age is at least 22). Then select all the players in that view and select un-retire. Do that for each HS league and all those FAs will now show up in your new league's FA pool. NOTE: the unretired will also contain those that went through the college system, if any. Notice that the "daisy chain" effect works.

For each season afterward you will have to do the same thing - delete the amateur draft and all players generated in the draft pool, then run the FA draft. For this, you will likely need to have SUBSTANTIAL volume of teams sim-ing FAs. I have only tested with three seasons and appear to be running out of sim'ed FAs (am running a 4 team indy league drafting from FA pool created by two 4 team HS leagues and one 4 team college league. Likely there is a ratio of feeder teams to drafting teams. Plus, it would depend on the size of the rosters of the drafting teams PLUS any minor systems.

NOTE: I recommend deleting the scheduled drafts and pools first before running a FA draft. Also, be careful when running the first year amateur draft in the second full season. THe game showed 5 rounds (which is what I selected in the settings) but appears to have run a full 20 round draft. My rosters were set to unlimited reserve. TO solve this I set a limit to reserve rosters and the team AI released FAs back into the pool.

NOTE: the game FA views... if you get generated FAs mixed in with sim'ed FAs you can try separating them by looking at HS career stats and/or "best team". THe problem with the first method is that the game seems to ignore search settings and will continue to mix generated with sim'ed FAs. ALso, it will not populate stats columns of sim'ed players even though their stats show up when you mouseover the player name.

However, overall I am pleased with the results. The result is you get a nice mix of players after the inaugural draft which vary in ability, career performance age experience. In subsequent season's amateur drafts the game will draft a mix of FA's with league experience (depending on game settings, if player played previous season in league and was released) and new players from HS or college.

I am interested in testing further using competing drafting leagues with variances in individual league financials. The idea would be to create an indirect tiered effect based on league settings.

NOTE: I recommend when experimenting to try to break things. FOr example, I have sim'ed all leagues with injury and suspension settings maxed to see how the AI manages rosters. So far there havent been any glitches. I think this may be a significant improvement over last year, actually.

IN all of this I have had no feeders formally selected nor FAs automatically generated. But as i mentioned, I have run into a serious shortage of sim'ed FA for the third season draft.

Back of the napkin:

* 4 drafting teams, 30 round draft = 120 players for first FA draft

* age minimum 22 y o

* HS player creation 14 y o = 4 full seasons of data

you would need to sim a minimum of 9 HS seasons before generating players eligible for indy pro league (you could always lower the minimum age which would shorten necessary sim)

a 20 year HS sim would give you a range of players from whatever to mid-30s, providing a nice range of experience plus generating far more players to draft from for second season onward until the generating leagues can replenish. And you will likely need every sim'ed FA you can get.

for my testing, I had 12 teams generating players for 4 drafting teams. I had a range of players from 22 to early 50s (but I deleted leagues during the testing so those players would have been dumped back into the FA pool). Anyway, I would aim for quadruple figures for the FA pool before running the inaugural draft for the first season.

Wow. This is getting a bit long. Last thing - actually, i forgot, i meant to mention something..

I will suggest though, if you are new to ootp and ootp testing, to never name or logo anything. put 0 thought into team names etc. once you start naming things they tend to get harder to erase and or delete when it makes sense to. don't change more than one setting per sim, if testing things. all that good db stuff. and i will c/p this into notepad just to be sure...

NOTE: another thing - I wish the game developers would add options to export ANYTHING found in ANY player view. as mentioned, there are in-game sorting settings that seem to not be working. it would be nice to be able to export lists to a spreadsheet, clean up, and import back in. also, it would be nice to be able to import FAs into a draft pool. the work around is simply to delete the pool and the draft and run your own. but an import option would save a bunch of clicks.

I think people that go to the effort of sim-ing leagues and worlds should be given as much utility control as possible since they are likely to make the effort and would appreciate the depth of control. plus, it means less coding and code management for the developers to work with.

Good luck.

[HonusWagner]

I have noticed a development:

WHen you set a roster limit in your drafting league and the rosters are full the annual FA draft is pointless because the teams will not draft a FA with a full roster.

This is great news when you want to develop a substantial, 4 figure FA draft pool for new leagues.

I think it might create an issue in the top leagues. At most, it would seem it would preclude the necessity to run an annual draft. Players from HS and college leagues will just be populated into the FA pool and I guess they will be picked up. I have to do more testing on this.

[HonusWagner]

Re the potential for over accumulation based on maxed out rosters --

perhaps once you get to the point of having an accumulating surplus of sim'ed FAs which aren't being drafted year after year due to filled rosters you can then affiliate the HS league as a feeder. If this is possible and if it works (havent tried it yet) it would likely ensure the players are still filtering up through the system rather than languishing in FA purgatory or (havent checked this yet neither) are being quietly bought up. Still testing for that.

ANyway, a lot of reading so hopefully this is useful for some and a pain in the arse for others.

Oh, and a final tip - for testing (and just plain sim-ing over months and years) you owe it to yourself to go into start page settings and set auto-play display to simple dialog. Speeds things up.

[Lawn Loaf]

This is very informative, thanks for the info.
I am pretty new to this game, so I have to ask a few questions since I see you are a near 10 year vet.
As I explained earlier, do you know weather or not the college teams I have set as independents will sign the undrafted and unsigned draftees that are feeding into my MLB after the draft?
I have never played more than a handful of games, much less simulated out a season, as I have spent my time modding a pretty big league. Another question: I plan on having over 2600 HS feeder teams to imitate real life and add depth. Am I going too far with this adventure? Is that way too many teams? I also plan on having all d1, d2, d3, juco, as independent leagues that feed into MLB. That will be another 900 teams there. I will also have the other US indy leagues along with the international teams that come with the game. Is this overkill?
I figure I need a lot of feeder teams to fill all the MLB, minors, college and indy leagues.
With that many feeders will there be an overabundance of 5 star players, or by setting the PCM of each HS league lower help dilute that some?
When all is said and done I am trying to max out my machine as much as possible in order to simulate and create a real life league.
Am I just dreaming and do I need to settle for something more realistic?
I appreciate you info!

[HonusWagner]

Alas, Mr Loaf, my time here is short and my hour has dawned. Follow the guide I have provided and you won't go wrong. Build! Aim for the stars and you just may hit the moon! Good luck and god speed!

[Lawn Loaf]

Thank you sir! I may hit the moon or melt down my system. But damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead! A real life league needs to be attempted on this platform and I am the fool to forge! I will update sometime in the future with details of progress or the inadequacies of this noble adventure!

[Lawn Loaf]

And real quick, if you desire some custom up to real life standards for those HS leagues you have, may I direct you here: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=285409