Anyone with tips for setting up a game with one of the Negro Leagues?

[Antonin]

I have not played historical since OOTP5. For OOTP25 I wanted to set up a game with only the Negro National League of 1934 enabled, so I could play the Pittsburgh Crawfords.

I followed the steps in the creation wizard, but I'm not sure I did things correctly. The game has the Negro National League, along with MLB, the American Association, the East Dixie League and several other leagues.

Is there a way to have only the Negro National League in the game? It seems pointless to have other leagues, because no players from the Negro National League will be going to MLB or any other league. And anyway, I am only going to run the Pittsburgh Crawfords.

I would appreciate any tips on setting up and playing a Negro League game.

[thehef]

Here's what I would try:

NOTE: These steps have been updated since originally posted to indicate that you need to start your OOTP game one year (or more) prior to the year where you only want Negro Leagues to appear. Basically, #'s 3, 4, and 7 are new information. IOW, significant details that I wasn't thinking about when I originally posted... Had anyone tried this with the original steps, it would've worked fine, but the rest of the minor leagues would not have disappeared from OOTP until the following season (1935).

1) Make a copy of the milbleagues.csv file as backup.
2) Edit the file to remove all minor leagues except for the 1934 NeL (or, since you are only playing 1934, you could leave everything else in there but only remove the other minor leagues for 1934; but if you plan to advance to 1935, you'd want to remove the other minor leagues at some point prior to advancing to the '34-35 offseason).
3) Start a new historical game, with minors, starting with any year prior to 1934; this is important because when you create your game, OOTP does not reference the milbleagues.csv file. That file is used for subsequent seasons, but when OOTP creates your league structures, it has those hard-coded in its game-creation program.
4) At this point, let's say you have started your game with the 1933 season and you don't care about it - you just want to get to 1934. You would have the full minor leagues that OOTP includes for 1933. Next step: Advance your game to the 1933-34 offseason.
5) You should then have the majors (AL & NL) and the NeL as your only minor league (the other minor leagues will have "folded" into the dustbin of your OOTP league history). You'll have a boatload-and-a-half of minor league free agents, but you can ignore them or delete them, I'd think...
6) At this point your choices would be to a) ignore the majors and just concentrate on your Negro League and your Crawfords, or b) attempt to delete the majors from your game... a) ought to work fine. With b) I'm not so sure...
7) Because of the need to start OOTP prior to your target year of 1934, you'll need to tweak the Crawford's 1934 roster so it matches history, if that's important to you.
8) Approach initially as a test. Don't immerse yourself in something like the above until you've tested it out to where you're satisfied that it's working as intended...

[pstrickert]

4) I've deleted all leagues including the majors, leaving only the Negro League. It worked just fine for me. In my case, I first imported the league and included minors. Then, on the league structure screen, I deleted each league one by one.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

4) I've deleted all leagues including the majors, leaving only the Negro League. It worked just fine for me. In my case, I first imported the league and included minors. Then, on the league structure screen, I deleted each league one by one.

Cool. Have you tried this for a more-than-one-season game? If so, how did you approach it? Manually deletions each year?

[pstrickert]

No, I didn't advance a year.

[pstrickert]

And I may have left the major league level alone, now that I think about it.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

And I may have left the major league level alone, now that I think about it.

Ya, albeit without testing it I'm thinking that if you delete the majors you may or may not make it to the end of the season without significant issues. And if you try to move forward to the next season, the game is likely to either crash or will just add the majors back... Unlike with minor leagues, for the majors there is no leagues csv file to edit (and remove MLB).

So the recommendation here would be to remove all the other minor leagues as described above, let MLB basically just run in the background, and focus on the Negro League

[Antonin]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys! I will try them and see what happens.

I was hoping there would be a simpler way to have one of the Negro Leagues active and play only that league. I seem to remember in the creation wizard that you can limit your league to historical transactions only. This would of course prevent players from being traded between a Negro League and another league.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Antonin

I was hoping there would be a simpler way to have one of the Negro Leagues active and play only that league.

If you did a one-time edit of the milbleagues.csv file to remove all minor leagues except the NeL (steps 1 and 2 above), then that file would be all set for you for any time you wanted to play a NeL-only game (with the recommendation being to leave MLB in your game but just ignore it). And that one-time edit would probably take no more than 10 minutes if you're familiar with Excel. At that point, the process becomes no more complex than creating a basic OOTP game that includes minors; in your game, it will only include the NeL (and MLB). Piece o' Cake!

Originally Posted by Antonin

I seem to remember in the creation wizard that you can limit your league to historical transactions only.

Not sure if you'd need to disable Historical Transactions (Historical Wizard - Step Two; only appears if you select Default or Replay Mode), but if you do, this will turn off Trading and some of other stuff (see the NOT RECOMMENDED blurb that appears once you select both Use Real Transactions and Import Real Negro and Minor Leagues; for your purposes you can safely ignore the warning). Regardless of if you disable trading by selecting Historical Txns or if you simply disable/do not enable trading (League Settings > Rules), then the only roster churn you should have - besides rookies coming in and retirements - would be comings and goings from the free agent list (releases & signings).

Originally Posted by Antonin

This would of course prevent players from being traded between a Negro League and another league.

I would think that a) the Color Barrier (League Settings > Rules) and b) the fact that there are no other minor leagues would keep players from being traded between a NeL and another minor league.

Disabling trading would go further in that it would prevent players from being traded between NeL teams. Not sure if that's what you want, but the option would be there.

[thehef]

Here's a milbleagues.csv file that only includes NeL's...

[italyprof]

Originally Posted by thehef

Here's a milbleagues.csv file that only includes NeL's...

This is great the Hef. Where do we save it - in stats, or database?

[congokurtz]

Are you going to be playing with a 1 year recal setting? My advice then is to edit player ratings because even after the latest patch update, many NeL players seem underrated. So in the case of playing with the Crawfords in 34, Josh Gibson according to Seamheads online database had 276 PAs hit 15 HRs, .320 avg, .396 OBP, .619 SLG. His OOTP ratings on a 20/80 scale, when starting a SIM in that season, is 45 contact, 65 gap, 55 power, 45 eye. In his editor batting ratings page his resulting stats line is a .236 avg, .291 OBP, .393 SLG, 15 HRs in 592 PAs. When I ran the SIM, he ended up hitting .245 with 8 HRS in 411 PAs, .307 OBP and .383 SLG. Way off from his 34 real life performance. And this is the case with many NeL players.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by italyprof

This is great the Hef. Where do we save it - in stats, or database?

This goes in stats... as in C:\.....Out of the Park Baseball 25\data\stats

Don't forget to make a copy of the original file

Please report back to let us know how it all worked out!

[congokurtz]

Originally Posted by thehef

This goes in stats... as in C:\.....Out of the Park Baseball 25\data\stats

Don't forget to make a copy of the original file

Please report back to let us know how it all worked out!

thehef,

just making sure here, but I assume the file you provided you have to delete the part of the file name that has the words "negro only?"

Thanks for providing the file!

[KurtBevacqua]

That file just crashes my game when I try to create a game with it.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by KurtBevacqua

That file just crashes my game when I try to create a game with it.

If you are referring to the file I posted in post #10, I just tested that file out & it worked fine: I started a game in 1918 and then moved to 1919 and - as expected & intended the Texas League was not there. By 1920 - as expected & intended - the NeLg appeared as the only minor league... and so forth...

Please provide details as to what your steps were

[thehef]

FYI, the steps in post #2 have been udpated.

[KurtBevacqua]

Originally Posted by thehef

If you are referring to the file I posted in post #10, I just tested that file out & it worked fine: I started a game in 1918 and then moved to 1919 and - as expected & intended the Texas League was not there. By 1920 - as expected & intended - the NeLg appeared as the only minor league... and so forth...

Please provide details as to what your steps were

Doesn't matter for what I wanna do anyways. I want to play the Negro League with financials on and don't see any way for the game to allow it. Obviously I could just edit the teams into a major league, but how do you handle the evolution of the league and bringing in Negro League players only going forward? I believe once upon a time someone set up a Negro League only database, but not sure that would work with this version of the game or if it's even available anymore.

[congokurtz]

Originally Posted by thehef

Here's a milbleagues.csv file that only includes NeL's...

I tried using this file with a 1920 start and when ti rolled over to 1921 all minor leagues were still there: PCL and Texas League

Any ideas?

[thehef]

Originally Posted by congokurtz

I tried using this file with a 1920 start and when ti rolled over to 1921 all minor leagues were still there: PCL and Texas League

Any ideas?

Were you sure to rename the attached file so it becomes the milbleagues.csv file? (As opposed to just dropping the milbleagues - negro only.csv file into the .../stats folder?

Just to be sure, open up your milbleagues.csv file and see if you see only NeLgs or if other leagues are present, too.