PenguinPack (A 2005 Quickstart) BETA Release 1 now available.

[cmdroverbite]

PenguinPack Beta Release #1

Download it HERE (10.6 MB from RapidShare) if you want to try it out. Read on if you want to find out what, exactly, the point is.

TAQ (Theoretically Asked Questions) about this thing:

Q: What is this?

A: This is a quickstart universe that begins on New Years' Day 2005. It includes a simplified MLB structure with minor leagues, a Japanese League (including the Ni-Gun level), the Mexican League, and three independent minor leagues (the American Association and the Atlantic and Golden Leagues). It's kind of geared towards people who sim a week or a month at a time.

Q: Are the team and player names real?

A: The MLB rosters are a straight import from the ARod/Garlon database, more or less. I also added the Top 50 prospects from the 2005 Baseball Prospectus Annual, and made a few corrections to some of the more blatant anomalies that arose from the database import process. (E.g., Mike Jacobs is not a Golden God in this quickstart, nor is Matt Murton.) The minor league rosters were filled out with randomly generated fictional low-level scrubs. All of the players in the non-MLB leagues are fictional. All team names are accurate, and I included all the logos I could find, which is most of them. Team colors are still inaccurate in most cases, but the major-league teams all look good. Manager names (and some GM names) are in there, but no effort has been made to give them accurate birthdates or to model their strategic tendencies. (If there's significant interest, this is a likely avenue for further development.)

Q: What do you mean by a simplified MLB structure?

A: Each team has four levels of minors: AAA, AA, A and R. The AAA and AA teams are the real-life PCL, IL, EL, TXL, and SL affiliates of the major league clubs. Each team's real-life "High A" affiliate is their A-Level team here. The "Low A" teams in real life (Midwest and Sally Leagues) are, in the PenguinPack universe, playing a full season at the Rookie level. There are no short season teams in the affiliated minors. I tried to accurately assign all 2005 affiliations whenever possible, though there may be some slips here and there.

The draft is only 15 rounds long, to accommodate the smaller number of organizational holes that must be filled.

Draft pick compensation is turned off, but draft pick trading is turned on, to give smaller teams an avenue for rebuilding.

Q: Why'd you do this?

A: I set this universe up for myself, and I'm sharing it with the community at large because I think that there are other people like me out there who are looking for a quick, playable universe that works reasonably well straight out of the box. My basic principles in creating it were:

1. Keep the universe small and simple enough that it runs quickly and that running a major league organization does not overwhelm you with busywork.
2. Concentrate on simulating things that OOTP deals with reasonably well, and forget about the other stuff (hence no effort to simulate college ball, short-season rookie leagues, winter leagues, etc.)
3. When Realism conflicts with Fun, Fun should win.
4. When Perfection conflicts with My Desire To Have A Life And Not Spend Hours Of Precious Free Time Doing Data Entry And Most Of All Not Piss Off My Girlfriend -- well, you can guess what wins that.

Further development of this quickstart will be guided by those principles.

Q: Why 2005 and not 2006?

A: Because the database I imported the stats from only goes through 2005.

Q: So the rosters are (for the most part) imported from someone else's database, and the logos were done by Truthserum -- is there any reason I can't just do this myself in a few hours?

A: Probably not, no. But I just saved you a few hours by doing it for you. And do I get a thank you for that? Of course not.

Q: So what's the point? Why this quickstart and not one of the other universes out there whose creators put, like, effort into researching and creating them?

A: A few reasons:

* Small farm systems that still simulate most steps of a player's development, for people who like having minor leagues but don't want to have to futz around with a bunch of no-hopers from the GCL and the Appalachian League and all that jazz. This is just my personal preference. Maybe it's yours too.
* In my (admittedly) limited experience, the computer does not make a lot of bonehead moves right at the start of the game, even if waivers and options are turned on right from the start.
* It still produces reasonably realistic results. (Though the Cubs did win the Series in one of my tests...hmm.)

Q: Sounds good. What are the downsides?

A: Well, my utter lack of the aforementioned research and effort means that you're stuck with a fair number of inaccuracies in the modeling of present-day players. No algorithm looking at a small number of raw stats can possibly model players as well as smart people who actually do research. That's why Diamond Mind season disks cost what they do, and that's why it took a lot longer than a few afternoons for the roster makers to do what they did.

My ratings of the Top 50 rookies and a few other players were mostly based on the PECOTA projections in the 2005 BP Annual, so the ratings of the rookies going forward are somewhat subject to the whims and biases of that system.

There are some other errors in there as well, some of which I already know about and some of which are only going to pop up when people start playing. I've run a few tests so far, and things have gone OK.

Q: Yeah, about that ... if I'm interested in helping perfect this quickstart, how should I go about that?

A: Download it and start playing! Let me know how it works for you. If there's things that need changing or attention, bring them up in this thread or send me an e-mail or PM. If enough people are interested, I'll keep releasing refinements to this quickstart. If the interest isn't there, then, hey, at least it's out there for whoever wants it.

Q: Can I take this and use it as the starting point for my own quickstart or roster pack?

A: Of course! If it helps you out a lot, it'd be nice if you gave me some credit, but I'm really not going to lose sleep if you don't. If you want to make a substantial contribution that is within the scope of the original project, contact me directly -- maybe we can work together.

Q: Can I host this on my OOTP mods page/site?

A: Yes, of course. The latest version will always be announced at the OOTP forums.

[bp_]

now available on http://www.ootpmodsquad.com/ under quickstarts

[tag01]

I'm not much of a computer geek, so I really don't know how this stuff works. I like your quick start, but i'd like to change some basic things. I want to get rid of trading draft picks, add the rule 5 draft, and bring back compensation picks. How exactly can I do this?

Would I just have to make a new quickstart? How exactly does that work?

[bp_]

Originally Posted by tag01

I'm not much of a computer geek, so I really don't know how this stuff works. I like your quick start, but i'd like to change some basic things. I want to get rid of trading draft picks, add the rule 5 draft, and bring back compensation picks. How exactly can I do this?

Would I just have to make a new quickstart? How exactly does that work?

You should be able to change these things in the league setup.

[No Pepper]

Thanks for making this available. I'm somewhat surprised not to see more of these made but I'm glad you did. Always good to have something for people who may not have the time or experience or know-how to set up their own leagues or would like something to work off of.

And great point about pissing off the girlfriend. Mine played softball in college but I'm sure she doesn't understand this stuff we do, to the point we can do it. If we dare Thanks again!