Number of draft rounds

[Syxx34]

I know this little diffrent the original topic but didnt want to make a whole new thread for such a short and stupid question. As my league structure is listed above; how many rounds should I have for this league structure? I was debating between 20 and 25 round. As I know the real life bigs do 30.

Gracias for everyone that has dealt with some of my stupid questions here or in other threads. Helps alot...first time modifying files but been with ootp since ootp5.

[Tony M]

I've moved this post from a Technical Support thread as it's more of a question. I'm sure the answer is generally 5 rounds per level, but whether that is now the perceived wisdom.

[1998 Yankees]

This is what I have:

Draft Rounds and Feeder System Size

There are a number of threads in the OOTP forums complaining about the ability of the game to manage the talent coming into leagues through feeder leagues. In a nutshell, the game seems to generate highly talented players as a more-or-less fixed percentage of all players generated. The more draft rounds and feeder teams that you have, the more players will be generated, and eventually the league will go through 'talent inflation'. That is, if you have a lot of draft rounds and a lot of feeder teams, you will sooner or later have a highly-talented league with a lot of free agents.

The accepted formula for draft rounds is (5 x number of minor-league affiliates), with a minimum of 5 rounds for a league with no minors because if you aren't using minors you still need to fill up your reserve roster. That ratio appears to keep talent in the league fairly consistent. Now that you can use ghost players, too many draft rounds is worse than having too few because with too many you end up throwing out too many 2nd and 3rd year players. That is, if you have a large draft and try to put new players on a team that is already full, that's where the draft and release "bug" comes in. Teams are already full and may have more than the 25 men on the lowest minor league team already. You then try to add a whole new set of players and the AI doesn't handle it right. It starts cutting players, sometimes the player who was just drafted. A smaller draft helps prevent this.

When the feeder system is used, the game generates players for the draft pool rather than the game merely creating a complete draft pool whose size you can fix before the draft. You can create a smaller feeder system and go with the Feeder + Additional Players strategy; any players needed to fill your draft above what the feeders provide will be created the "old fashioned" way -- that is, out of thin air just before the draft.

If you want your parent league’s first-year player draft to be fed completely by feeder leagues, you will need to do some math to determine how many feeder league teams you will need to fill out your draft class completely. So, using the default of a 5-year age range, we calculate as follows:

Feeder leagues with 5-year age ranges (18-22, for example) typically feed 6-9 players per team to the parent league each year. Smaller age-ranges result in more players entering the draft each year.

[Number of teams in your parent league] x [Number of rounds in your first-year player draft] = total # of players needed in first-year player draft

[total # of players needed for draft] / 6 (rounded up) = minimum # of feeder league teams required

For example, let’s say you have a 30-team major league, and a 20-round first-year player draft (AAA, AA, A, and Rookie = 4 minor league levels x 5 = 20 rounds). You need 30 x 20, or 600 players in your first-year player draft each year. We divide 600 by 6 and round up if necessary, getting 100. If you have 100 feeder league teams, you should get enough players from your feeder leagues to populate your first-year player draft entirely with feeder league players.

Also remember - after your league starts to set the player creation age for your league back to 18 for both max and min age (or whatever your freshman age is) - this way you only be creating incoming freshmen into you college feeder. This will help stabilize - in a year or two- the size of your draft class. It also seems to be the case that feeder leagues take a few seasons to get up to "full production."

IMPORTANT: A feeder league cannot be constructed separately and added later to a template or started game; the affiliation to the major league does not work as intended and it functions as a minor league instead of a feeder league. Instead, a feeder league has to be added to the major league using the Add League button, and saved with the major league as part of the template or game. The ways to check whether this has been done properly are: 1. There will be an option in the major league game setup under Amateur Draft rules called Draft Feeding Mode for how the draft pool should be populated, feeder system only or feeder system + additional players, and 2. The feeder league will show the important age minimums and maximums under its roster rules, while an affiliated minor league does not show these settings.