There are too many options for me :(

[thevaliantx]

Guys, I just want to have a fictional league with the following, but I don't know what to do:

* 50 years history built into it

* game style of the 1980's when there were seemingly (from what I think I remember) lots of steals, and starting pitchers went deeper into games

* all minor league teams with full rosters.

* no financials

* 162 game seasons

I did try to make a league, but had the following issues:

* took a job with a R level team, and couldn't even make full lineups because the team had hardly any players

* had a difficult time pulling up past statistics for players

* league schedule defaulted to 68 games or something, had to change it to 162 games. (maybe that was my fault)

I would appreciate any feedback on how to do this.

[kq76]

I'll let others chime in on the rest, but for this:

Originally Posted by thevaliantx

* game style of the 1980's when there were seemingly (from what I think I remember) lots of steals, and starting pitchers went deeper into games

Go to the Stats & AI screen and for the pull-down labeled "Select Year" select 1987.
Adjust what you want on the rest of that side of the screen, like setting stealing bases to very often.

And, if you want, also (this is what I do):

Go to the League Totals side of the screen and enter (these are similar to 1987, but tweaked so that 2Bs and 3Bs and HBP are a bit higher while HR are a bit lower):

AB 144095
H 37890
2B 7578
3B 985
HR 4210
BB 14314
HBP 1137
SO 25260

If you haven't run one yet, run Inaugural Draft. - otherwise you can't do the following
Press "Auto-Calc Modifiers" button. - this makes your league play more like a league that would have the totals to the left
Adjust SB modifiers (multiply OOTP's SBA/G by 1.097 and SB% by 1.070) - 1987 had the highest SB stats, but this will bump them a bit higher even
Check the Lock League Total Stats checkbox. - if you don't want the totals you inputted to change
Uncheck the automatically adjust league totals modifiers for historical accuracy checkbox. - if you don't want your settings to auto-adjust downward from there

It should be pointed out, however, that depending on how picky you want to be (I'm very picky when it comes to some of my leagues) you may want to do a lot of trial and error testing to see what gets you what you want, especially if you're playing a fictional league. At the very least I recommend making a backup of your league before you sim any days, then run at least a season to see if there's anything you'd change. Dive as deep as you can, make notes of what you would change, but at the very least check to see if the league totals and ratios from the sim are to your liking. Then go back to your backup folder, make another backup, tweak what you want to change, and run another test sim. Keep doing this until you're pretty happy with the results. And then play out your league. I run anywhere from 20 to 30 test sims some times. Fictional leagues can be awesome, but that extra reward also often requires extra effort. I think it's worth it.

[thevaliantx]

You are very kind to spend the time posting all that, but I'm afraid it's too deep for me. I simply want to be a manager who just worries about setting lineups and making substitutions, while playing 1980's style baseball, in a fictional league and not worry about (or even see) contracts.

This is something that I feel OOTP could improve upon, some more quick-start options, with a drill-down process to guide quick-start players toward creating something that fits their style.

The game itself is so, so much fun for me, but it's the complexity of setting things up that is turning me away

[kq76]

Like I said, you could just do this part:

Go to the Stats & AI screen and for the pull-down labeled "Select Year" select 1987.
Adjust what you want on the rest of that side of the screen, like setting stealing bases to very often.

That's a mere 2 selections to fix that issue. Easy!

Simulating 50 years of history is pretty easy to do too. Only question is should you delete anything so your file isn't too big as a result. I'm sure someone's posted their detailed thoughts on this somewhere here.

I'm sure filling minor league rosters is easy. There's a function button on the functions screen labeled "Fill Teams with Fictional Players". It says "all teams" so I'm thinking that includes all minors.

I'm not sure if no financials is possible as I've never done it, but there might be a function somewhere to turn them off. At the very least you could disable as many of the fin'l settings as you want.

I'm thinking your 68 game schedule problem was simply because you took a job in a rookie league. Different minor leagues have different season lengths. Take a job in a different league instead. My guess is the higher up you go, the more likely they play 162.

[thevaliantx]

Maybe it's a bug in my game, but when I ran through a number of years for playing style, it seems like everyone of them had "rarely" as the default option for stealing bases. What era should I be selecting where stolen bases is "normal"?

Are there some folks here who are in tune with what the game was actually like in various eras?

[kq76]

Yeah, that's a bug. That's why I said change it.

I like to think I know the eras well, but that's only because I downloaded the lahman db and ran some formulas on it.

These are 1987's exact stats:

AB - H - 2B - 3B - HR - BB - SO - SB - CS - HBP
144095 - 37895 - 6793 - 896 - 4458 - 14389 - 25099 - 3585 - 1529 - 842

The reason why I reference 1987 is because it had the most SB/G ever with 0.852.

And I don't know what you would describe as normal. SB/G have fluctuated quite a bit over baseball's history. 0.530 is the average since 1920 (I don't count pre-1920 in my averages as it was a very different game back then). 2003 comes extremely close at 0.529, but that's far too low for my tastes.

[Rain King]

Rookie leagues traditionally do not start until after the June draft, which is where they get a majority of their players.

I know you said you do not like the options, but your league request is super specific and not typical. It is doable specifically because of all of the options, but you are likely going to need to learn them to get things set up the way you like.

For example, there are options that will allow you to change the Rookie league to have longer seasons and start in April but you will need to go in and make those adjustments.

[kq76]

Found it! You can still disable financials. You have to be in the pre-season, then on the financials screen, scroll down the left side until you see a checkbox labeled "Enable Financial System". Uncheck that box.

[BirdWatcher]

Originally Posted by Rain King

Rookie leagues traditionally do not start until after the June draft, which is where they get a majority of their players.

I know you said you do not like the options, but your league request is super specific and not typical. It is doable specifically because of all of the options, but you are likely going to need to learn them to get things set up the way you like.

For example, there are options that will allow you to change the Rookie league to have longer seasons and start in April but you will need to go in and make those adjustments.

Yes, my first thought when reading the original post in this thread was that the best thing to do when starting to play the game and finding it to be overly complex is to keep your approach simple.
For instance, starting as a manager for a rookie league team is actually not a great way to keep it simple. Taking over a big league team (whatever the major league is in your fictional setup) as either GM only or manager only is far less tricky.

I can understand people having very particular visions in mind when playing the game, but to try to get the perfect (and atypical) setup going as a relative newbie to the game is bound to lead to frustration and failure, unless you are willing to do a great deal of careful research and testing.
Individually much of what the OP is looking to do here isn't necessarily all that difficult, but my advice always is to start simple and get to know the game better before trying to create your dream universe.
Then again, maybe like me, you will find out that your very first fictional league, basic and simple though it may be, becomes your dream universe.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by thevaliantx

Are there some folks here who are in tune with what the game was actually like in various eras?

I uploaded and converted my historical MLB data spreadsheet to a Google Sheet.

Someone may just want to take a look at the yearly ratios to get an idea of what baseball was like in a certain year or era, but if you want to use it to test your own league, first make a copy of it (file > make a copy), and follow the directions I already posted.