Questions about Draft/Feeder Leagues

[Sano&Salcedo]

So I haven't played OOTP since 6.5 (mainly because that was the best one ), but I heard a lot of good things about 12 so I bought it. Anyways, I'm getting my solo league setup (downloaded the "fixed" rosters, getting pictures, etc), but after reading some online dynasties I have these questions about the draft:

Do I need these "feeder" leagues like the NCAA and High School? If I don't have these leagues, what are the players in the draft like? Are they still from colleges (real ones) and high schools? Do they have like 4 years of stats (or even 1)?

Just wondering if I should download the feeder leagues or not.

Thanks for your help!

[Biggio509]

It is personal preference now in legacy versions of OOTP only feeder players would have stat history and a background before the draft. Since 11, if you don't have feeders players come from a real high school or college and have stats when you draft them. From what I have seen in 11 but I have not really experimented with in 12, there is little difference in distribution or amount of quality between feeders and no feeder leagues. I think not having feeders might generating a few more almost AA ready prospects with big signing bonuses in the draft but I am not 100% sure.

Essentially now feeders are for immersion. If you want to look at players from their freshman year until the draft and monitor your high school and college leagues to start picking who might draft 4 years ahead of time then feeders are for you. If you just want to see some stats and have some history for the draftee it makes little difference.

The only other thing I would note is if you want to control what countries the majority of your players are from then feeders are useful. You can for instance set foreign % in feeders to 0 and have all teams in US, Can, and PR like the real draft. If you want to control the percentage of say South American players and introduce a few more Asian players you can set up feeders in the countries you want players from instead of just relying on hidden players to create all your young foreigners.

If you are concerned about where draft eligible guys are from and want to be able to draft a diversity to similar to modern MLB you can use feeders to do this. If you want game generated percentages of foreign players you can go with no feeders.

In the end, the number of draft rounds will have more effect on how many quality players you get each year than if you use feeders or not. Feeders allow immersion and some control over where the majority of foreign players come from. In 11 and 12 you get a place where the kid went to school and a set of stats regardless if you use feeders or not.

The last point is no feeders has some variance in ages in the draft. You will see high school draftees from 17 to 19 while if you use feeders all are 18, if you set the rules to 14 to 17. The same goes with college you get guys from 20 to 22 while if you use default settings for college feeders then all guys will play the year they are 21 and enter the draft at 22.

Personally I play with feeders but it is really out of habit. I started a league in 11 and played a few years with no feeders and it really did not seem to make a big difference. Probably the last thing to think about is the speed of your computer. If you run a 35 round draft with 30 teams you need 175 feeder teams to fill the draft. That can slow down an older machine. The formula for feeders leagues in the OOTP manual is unchanged. Feeder teams needed = (number of teams * number of draft rounds)/6 . That is because on average each feeder team will graduate 6 players to the draft.

[Sano&Salcedo]

Alrighty thanks a lot.

Another question then.. if I decide to not use feeder leagues right now, but decide a season or two later that I would like to use them, can I still use them in that save or will I have to start a new game?

[Biggio509]

You can add feeders during the offseason if you want to add them later.

[ike121212]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

You can add feeders during the offseason if you want to add them later.

If you use the recommended number of feeders, you'll get better talent than a generated draft. If you switch to feeders, this can cause some issues during the first few years.

[GMLoophole]

Biggio was very helpful when I was messing around with feeder leagues last year.

Originally Posted by Biggio509

Probably the last thing to think about is the speed of your computer. If you run a 35 round draft with 30 teams you need 175 feeder teams to fill the draft. That can slow down an older machine. The formula for feeders leagues in the OOTP manual is unchanged. Feeder teams needed = (number of teams * number of draft rounds)/6 . That is because on average each feeder team will graduate 6 players to the draft.

I have had problems with crashes and feeders and I assume it's because my PC is not the latest and greatest number-cruncher. I only used huge feeder leagues like that (I think my college setup had 160 teams) so adding that to all the MLB teams seemed to be asking for trouble. Not to discourage you at all, just sharing some information to recommend you test out a smaller league before investing tons of time (no I'm not bitter) customizing a huge feeder league and ending up with an unusable one.