Online League - Trading with the CPU

[Giants44]

Put down the pitchforks, I understand the community answer to this is "trading with CPU is dumb in online and it ruins everything and blah, blah, blah"


Sure for MOST competitive leagues this is true. But our league is 12 owners, my kids, old friends, all but 2 brand new to OOTP. we have historical players, we have players from movies, some pay a lot of attention some barely check. this is LOW level fun to get some baseball friends to discover the game during shelter time. this league is NEVER going to open to the outside is never going to be more then a casual thing. I have zero interest in being a commissioner of a league like that. this is all about enjoyment for the 12 people involved and we would all love to allow trading with CPU. currently the "hide the answer" is preventing this. It would be great if eventually there was a toggle for that to not be hidden. the strength of OOTP has ALWAYS been the experience is almost completely customization to your own preference.

when in commish mode I can process a human-cpu trade

I can even "negotiate" and see the "answer" from the CPU team


but when switching to owner (non-commish) the one key piece of information disappears.

Since this information lets the owner know:
Yes - great easy, no problem
HELL NO - also good info
No, but lets talk about it - this is 95% of the answer and leads to what if I add this, that... until you come to an agreement or realize there is nothing you can agree on. we have all done this and can be done in 1 min or days. for many this is where the fun is.




would love it if someone knows a workaround, or if the development team would consider unhiding that one key piece of information.

[deadairwaves]

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution, but I'm experiencing the exact same issue you describe. Have you figured out a workaround here? I understand the need for the commish to process all of the trades, but it seems like there should be a way for the other owners to at least "negotiate" a trade with the CPU teams and then pass any accepted trade on to the commish for process.

[Giants44]

So I created and tested a workaround that now works. it isn’t perfect, but it is better than nothing.

I have setup 3 open trade windows per season
- End of season to 12/31
- 12/31 to start of preseason
- July 1-July 31

For each of those windows I backup the league and then create a new league that is a mirror of the real league
I load that league and do this:
- Uncheck the online league settings thus turning it into an offline league
- Delete the commish account - isnt necessary and is only “security by obscurity” but it is at least something

I then zip the files and put them on a cloud drive and send the link to the owners

They get the league, they unzip, load game, make sure they select manager to themselves and can then trade like normal. If they agree to a trade they screenshot and send to me. They can hit complete if they want, but it wont matter the league they have is just a mirror and has no connection to our real league

-If two owners both make a trade for the same player the one who sent to me first wins and gets the trade
- limit 3 trades per window
- awful fleecing deals can be challenged and then denied by 75% vote against. My hope is this doesn’t happen to often. I feel like 3 times a year IRL there will be a trade that would be considered unfair if it happened in OOTP

- I have not yet decided on what happens if someone gets an approved trade that then declines when I try to put it in the live game (for example parameters change slightly in game during the windows since they are across 2-4 sims, but I am not creating a new mirror file each sim, only at the start of each window) I am assuming there might be one now and again and I will be inclined to just force trade if it isn’t too egregious. I can also always check in my mirror file to make sure no one is playing around and photoshopping the screen shots)


I have tested and it works great, isn’t that much work and I am happy to do it for the 3 windows. Doing every sim would be a pain.

Just made it live today (our season ended Tuesday) so no idea yet how well it will work, but at least the framework gives us something to work with.

Most of the limits and all that can obviously be changed – I think it is just the basic structure of creating a mirror file and removing the parts that restrict the trades.

Maybe you have all owners vote on all trades, or make a bigger limit. You could also change the trade AI settings. Really a ton of ways to go but the mirror and setting change is the key.

[Giants44]

this is working perfectly for us and has led to some trades which is good

it is a bit of work on the commish end, but not too much - especially just in the trade windows

[Giants44]

so updating this as a reference for anyone else interested in this concept.

the work around has been working, well until my 2 mac owners pointed out it didnt work for them, which makes sense. My guess is the windows file wont work on the mac - so that limits this option.

I am currently testing setting up a Virtual Machine and mirroring this idea, but with owners simply logging into the VM - this would solve not only my Apple issue, but also my low tech owners who find the other work around beyond their scope of comfort.

working on it now. no idea if it will work, but I will report back for those interested.

also would love to hear from anyone who may have tried running OOTP in a VM enviornment and any tips or other info they may have.

[deadairwaves]

Thanks for the feedback. It's helpful to know how other leagues handle trades.

I decided to do things a little differently than you. It's a little easier to maintain, but it gives full commish access to all of the owners. It's not ideal, but it's just a league for friends/fun, so I don't really worry about people taking advantage of that.

I created a second commish account that the owners can switch to. Once switched, they can evaluate trades. Once they have an accepted trade, they send me screenshot of the deal. I process the trade and update the league file.

Like I said, it's not ideal to give all teams commish access, but the system is super easy to maintain and trades can happen at any time during the season.

[Giants44]

Originally Posted by deadairwaves

Thanks for the feedback. It's helpful to know how other leagues handle trades.

I decided to do things a little differently than you. It's a little easier to maintain, but it gives full commish access to all of the owners. It's not ideal, but it's just a league for friends/fun, so I don't really worry about people taking advantage of that.

I created a second commish account that the owners can switch to. Once switched, they can evaluate trades. Once they have an accepted trade, they send me screenshot of the deal. I process the trade and update the league file.

Like I said, it's not ideal to give all teams commish access, but the system is super easy to maintain and trades can happen at any time during the season.

I thought about trying that but didn't think it would work - but good to know that is an option too

[Giants44]

so the new workaround I have come up with and that we are currently using is to simply use the MTWNB (Make This Work Now Button) work as a proxy for CPU GM AI yes/no

Human team proposes trade and obviously the response feedback is hidden in online league (which is the entire problem - a patch that added a toggle to turn this on would be so welcome and solve everything)

but the workaround simply replaces the response with hitting the MTWNB and doing the following

if the responses is:
- no one makes this work - easy that is a hard NO
- this list of guys that returns a small list of good players means YES and any one of these guys
- a long list with several lowly rated guys means YES with any of these guys and MAYBE even without any of them

first 2 are easy

3rd and the human simply sends to commish wiht the simple directions

yes add in guy XYZ and the deal is done OR
yes IF they will do without adding anyone (which the human would see if we had the feedback, but they dont without it - the commish can see let the human know)

we just started this but my guess is even for 3rd option most people wont mind giving up so 25/28 low level prospect to get a deal done and will just submit with the low guys in - which will make everything easier.

[Giants44]

so my last plan of MTWNB workaround has worked perfectly.

every team made multiple trade and it has sparked a huge boost in league interest.

probably wont work for most leagues with experienced players, but our league where all but 3 owners had never played OOTP at all it has mad every guy super active. Are some of the trades one sided, sure. but not all. many are quite even and as the owners have started to understand the great detail of OOTP it has worked tremendously well for us.

[afail]

We keep it pretty simple:

When a human clicks Make this work now, we consider the trade to be good if there is a player listed with a potential rating of 30 or lower.

Then they send me a screenshot.

I really wish there was a way to have the AI make trade offers, allow my other owners to use the Shop a Player and let them see GM feedback

[Giants44]

Markus you Magnificent Bastard!!!!! You made it happen

todays update had a sneaky little line in it

- Online leagues: enabled option for trading with AI teams (manager submits trade with export, will be processed with the AI choosing the "best" trade for their team if multiple offers)

haven't tested it yet, but this seems to solve everything