Out of the Park Baseball 18 Road to Release: Promotion and Relegation

[Chico Guilbault]

Yes!

Road to Release 3: Promotion/Relegation

[Caporegime]

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we've finally started the RTR stretch run. However, why is it being posted over at Operation Sports first and not here?

[Caporegime]

BTW...that looks awesome! I can't wait to monkey around with P/R.

[Caporegime]

dola x2,

I'm delighted the author gave some well-deserved props to Chuck Hildebrandt (aka Chucksabr) for creating his endlessly engrossing English Baseball League a few of years ago. For those who missed it, check it out below.

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=237949

[cavebutter]

I have a feeling that I'm going to spend a lot of time monkeying around with this. I've wanted it for years! A list of things I am curious about:

* Finances. This is going to be very tricky for a number of reasons. First, stadium size. Ticket prices are the main source of revenue for clubs in OOTP. As teams are promoted, will it be on the GM to expand the stadium to keep up with the salary levels in their new league? When teams are relegated, will they have to reduce ticket price to stay in line with their new lower league? I imagine that media contracts and merchandising will self-correct because those are set at the league level rather than team.
Second, Contracts. If a top-league team is demoted and suddenly finds their revenue reduced drastically by whatever happens with gate money and media contracts, what options will they have to manage their top-tier payroll? I imagine that they will have to operate at a loss until they can shed salary through trades and attrition...

*Reputation. I don't see a problem here necessarily, but curious how we will steer top talent to the top league. Say the Yankees get relegated (a guy can dream...), and say they don't go into a budget death spiral because they have a big stadium and some operating reserves. Will they be able to sign a big name free agent to help them in their push to get back to the bigs? Like I said, not a problem necessarily, just curious as to how this will work.

*Farm Systems. The easiest way for a pro/rel league to run would be with a reserve system in place. That way, your whole organization is on the same team at the same level. But that's not what baseball is about, these days. I'm assuming that that farm systems and minor leagues in general will exist completely outside the pro/rel system. That is, regardless of whether the Yankees are in the Premier League or the Bush League, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre will always be in the International League as the Yanks' AAA team.
However, is it realistic to assume that all leagues in the pro/rel chain have the same levels of minors? I really don't think so. If the Yankees drop all the way to the bottom of the chain (please!), who will their AAA team play against? Will their farm system stay in the same leagues as their former Premier League counterparts? My first pro/rel universe will probably be reserve-only until I can figure out how to make minors work.

All that said, I can't wait for this feature!!

[Chico Guilbault]

Great questions...I am also wondering if I need to change the existing playoff systems in my leagues or be required to manually promote. I am fine with the worst record team getting relegated, but would like the playoff champion of each lower league be the team that gets promoted. It seems like that would have to be done manually. I wonder though if the automatic promotion would just ignore the playoff winner and just promote the team with best record. That might be a cool way to do it...hmmm.

[daveawrit]

cavebutter, thanks for your post. I am really excited for this, as I know nothing about soccer in reality, but love the Football Manager games due to the fun of promotion/relegation (but man do they take a lot of time to play).... the Farm System question is probably my biggest one when it comes to P/R in the OOTP universe.

[Coltrane]

Same here. I read this R2R yesterday and the farm question kept me up until around 1 am.
I would imagine it'll be set up with reserves only but you never know.

[AirmenSmith]

Originally Posted by Caporegime

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we've finally started the RTR stretch run. However, why is it being posted over at Operation Sports first and not here?

I am wondering the same thing. I didn't even know if these were official or not. They are not pinned to the top of the forum which sucks.

[JaBurns]

Originally Posted by cavebutter

I have a feeling that I'm going to spend a lot of time monkeying around with this. I've wanted it for years! A list of things I am curious about:

* Finances. This is going to be very tricky for a number of reasons. First, stadium size. Ticket prices are the main source of revenue for clubs in OOTP. As teams are promoted, will it be on the GM to expand the stadium to keep up with the salary levels in their new league? When teams are relegated, will they have to reduce ticket price to stay in line with their new lower league? I imagine that media contracts and merchandising will self-correct because those are set at the league level rather than team.
Second, Contracts. If a top-league team is demoted and suddenly finds their revenue reduced drastically by whatever happens with gate money and media contracts, what options will they have to manage their top-tier payroll? I imagine that they will have to operate at a loss until they can shed salary through trades and attrition...

*Reputation. I don't see a problem here necessarily, but curious how we will steer top talent to the top league. Say the Yankees get relegated (a guy can dream...), and say they don't go into a budget death spiral because they have a big stadium and some operating reserves. Will they be able to sign a big name free agent to help them in their push to get back to the bigs? Like I said, not a problem necessarily, just curious as to how this will work.

*Farm Systems. The easiest way for a pro/rel league to run would be with a reserve system in place. That way, your whole organization is on the same team at the same level. But that's not what baseball is about, these days. I'm assuming that that farm systems and minor leagues in general will exist completely outside the pro/rel system. That is, regardless of whether the Yankees are in the Premier League or the Bush League, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre will always be in the International League as the Yanks' AAA team.
However, is it realistic to assume that all leagues in the pro/rel chain have the same levels of minors? I really don't think so. If the Yankees drop all the way to the bottom of the chain (please!), who will their AAA team play against? Will their farm system stay in the same leagues as their former Premier League counterparts? My first pro/rel universe will probably be reserve-only until I can figure out how to make minors work.

All that said, I can't wait for this feature!!

Thanks for this post; I am also looking forward to promotion relegation. I hope OOTP will take care of financials and reputation (but I am not sure how!).
With the farm system, I am thinking every team should have a reserve roster (15 players?) but not sure how to get the reserves any action unless you make a league with only reserve players. That would get complicated really fast...
To start I think I am going go with a 3 tiered league of 16 teams each playing 150 game schedule in the top 2 tiers and 120 games in the lowest level. Hope there are schedules in the mods section I can use for this setup.
Looking forward to yours and everyone else's suggestions in this forum.
Good luck to everyone.

[lionden_56]

European Football clubs don't have farm teams, per se, so there is no direct analogy, but the bigger ones at least do have reserve teams (See Barcelona B or Bayern Munich II). The countries have different rules about how those are handled, but Barcelona B plays in the second division of Spanish football, but can't play in the same league as the parent club. So they can never be promoted to La Liga, and should hell freeze and Barca ever get relegated, they would also automatically be relegated to the next level down. So it is possible the farm teams could be in the same pro/rel hierarchy, but I doubt it.

I highly doubt the initial rollout of this will have that sort of logic. Also, this set up becomes a problem if literally every team has a farm team/system (which baseball does), because the bottom leagues become very bloated very quickly. So the simplest solution is to have the farm teams outside the pro/rel setup.

Personally, for the set up I'm planning, all 32 club's farm teams will just play in the same leagues, while the 16/16 split happens at the major league level (Divided into premier and challenger). As is pointed out above, this might become messy if you have like 4 levels of promotion and relegation, but at that point you probably don't want to have a ton of levels of a farm system anyway, as that's a lot of leagues and teams to deal with.

Just judging by the screenshots in the article, it doesn't look like there's any actual logic built into the game for how to handle the farm systems, so I'm going on the assumption that minor leagues will continue to function how they do now, regardless of what league the parent team is in.

[spleen1015]

I may be speaking too soon, but i doubt it.

If there is going to be a promotion/relegation quick start that comes with the game at release, that quick start should have good logos & unis. To not have something other than the crappy generic stuff is just lazy.

[spleen1015]

Really looking forward to this feature though. Already planning a league around it.

[slugger922cubs]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

I may be speaking too soon, but i doubt it.

If there is going to be a promotion/relegation quick start that comes with the game at release, that quick start should have good logos & unis. To not have something other than the crappy generic stuff is just lazy.

If you load up the 5000+ logo pack mod before creating the game it should load logos that match team names automatically.

[ludosc]

I have a question that I haven't seen answered yet regarding promotion/relegation. As a example, if I were to replicate the English soccer system into a baseball league, could I have multiple leagues on the same level and promote from both into one league?

Example from the English soccer system

Level 1: Premier League
Level 2: Championship
Level 3: League One
Level 4: League Two
Level 5: National League
Level 6: National League North & National League South

so my question is related to level's 5 and 6 and if that sort of system would work.

[Huckleberry]

ludosc!!!

The answer I think is no, and I've wondered the same thing. There is a brief mention that if you have subdivisions in your pro/rel setup that you have to promote the same number from each subdivision. But even if you could make the automatic promotion work it seems like there would still be a lot of manual effort involved with handling the relegation correctly (or reorganizing the lower league based on the new teams and their geographic locations).

So it seems like the easiest option would be maintaining the North/South split as subdivisions all the way up and down the ladder.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by slugger922cubs

If you load up the 5000+ logo pack mod before creating the game it should load logos that match team names automatically.

I know that, but that is not the point.

[andyhdz]

Originally Posted by cavebutter

*Farm Systems. The easiest way for a pro/rel league to run would be with a reserve system in place. That way, your whole organization is on the same team at the same level. But that's not what baseball is about, these days. I'm assuming that that farm systems and minor leagues in general will exist completely outside the pro/rel system. That is, regardless of whether the Yankees are in the Premier League or the Bush League, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre will always be in the International League as the Yanks' AAA team.
However, is it realistic to assume that all leagues in the pro/rel chain have the same levels of minors? I really don't think so. If the Yankees drop all the way to the bottom of the chain (please!), who will their AAA team play against? Will their farm system stay in the same leagues as their former Premier League counterparts? My first pro/rel universe will probably be reserve-only until I can figure out how to make minors work.

All that said, I can't wait for this feature!!

I'm wondering about that too now. I have a minor system for my Dutch and Euro leagues in my large world I wonder how that will work when I use relegation/promotion on them. If I have to change it to a reserve system I'm sorta ok with that I just never liked the fact that the players on the reserves just seem to languish as reserves and don't get any playing time at all that shows up on their stats even though I know they are still suppose to develop.

Another thing how would drafting work? Would you have a draft for your premier league and one for your division 2 or one large one??

[tlowe77]

I would like it if you could make the reserve roster less then 15, something like 5 would be prefect for injuries etc in a promotion/relegation system.

[Mancandy]

Originally Posted by AirmenSmith

I am wondering the same thing. I didn't even know if these were official or not. They are not pinned to the top of the forum which sucks.

They're not being emailed either, like they have in years past. I had no idea they were even happening until just now, because I happened to visit the forum at the right time.

Not cool. Not cool at all.