Pro / Rel League Tips Needed Please

[luckymann]

So I am finally putting together plans for a promotion / relegation league after wanting to do so for some time.

My plan is to have 3 levels, each with 12 teams, and have one (or, if advised, two) go up and down each season. These 36 teams will be comprised of the 30 MLB clubs plus 6 others, ranked initially by current IRL payroll (with the six non-MLB teams all in Division 3 and given appropriate financials. The reputations would be 10-9-8.

I plan to set this is the modern day and manually import historical minor league players for each year's Draft, using dev rather than recalc.

Rather than full minors, I was thinking of having one Indy League with a reputation of 5 or maybe 6 set up in a more traditional way with no pro / rel, with one team for each of the 36 "Major League" clubs.

Of course, these are all subject to change depending on the comments I get back here. If you see problems with them I'd love to hear your insights.

I guess my main blind spot is how best to apply the financials moving forward, especially when clubs move up or down a level. I'm happy to manage this side of it manually but would love some pointers from the experiences of others. Also how best to go about the Draft each year.

Anyone who knows about this sort of save and feels the inclination, please fire through whatever thoughts / tips / warnings you have. Thanking you in advance.

G

[Lucky_Will]

Some gotchas in this thread from Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OOTP/commen...tm_name=iossmf

Big things that have helped me out: Pro/Rel doesn’t work well using minor leagues as your lower levels. Instead of making Toledo a AAA team, make them a major league team but adjust league reputation, finances, and player creation modifiers for the lower leagues accordingly.

For my tier 2 teams, I used a reputation of like 7, financials of 50%, and PCM of like .7.

For tier 3, 5, 25%, .5.

For tier 4, 3, 10%, .25.

The pro/rel financials seem to do an okay job adjusting year to year. Follow the comments in the Reddit as much as they apply to your situation and hopefully it works. I’ve had good luck with a mix of promoted clubs being one-and-done, and clubs that stay up a season or two. Same goes with relegated clubs coming back up.

I’ve never done it with historical players, I’ve only done it with pure fictional leagues. So I’m not sure if you’ll see anything crazy. But the comments in that Reddit helped a ton for what I was trying to do.

Now all I need is someone to fix/explain the CSV color_settings document and I can explore my own pro/rel setup to the fullest!!

Good luck, I hope that helps.

[luckymann]

Thanks so much Will, I'll add all of this to my notes and see where it takes me.

Appreciate the reply.

G

[bwiese3908]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Thanks so much Will, I'll add all of this to my notes and see where it takes me.

Appreciate the reply.

G

If you getting it up and running to your liking, could you possibly create a quick start? would love to try it out


Edit - One thing i would recommend is to not allow expanded rosters (especially September) all the teams should be using their best players to AVOID relegation.

[BBGiovanni]

Sorry if any of this is redundant to things I've said in other threads

Originally Posted by luckymann

My plan is to have 3 levels, each with 12 teams, and have one (or, if advised, two) go up and down each season. These 36 teams will be comprised of the 30 MLB clubs plus 6 others, ranked initially by current IRL payroll (with the six non-MLB teams all in Division 3 and given appropriate financials. The reputations would be 10-9-8.

I have 25% turnover in my leagues, 16 teams with 2 promoted and 2 relegated each year. I think that's a fun percentage, and having more than one relegation slot makes a more fun anti-pennant chase at the bottom. It does seem to make the last place team kind of give up if they fall way behind the next-to-last team, but it makes sense they'd try to build up their roster for the next year.


Also this came up in another P/R thread recently but I think the reputations are relative, so if you set them at 10-8-6 or 9-7-5 they'd have the same effect as to those three leagues.

Originally Posted by luckymann

I plan to set this is the modern day and manually import historical minor league players for each year's Draft, using dev rather than recalc.

I barely play historical, that sentence doesn't mean much to me so I'll leave you to other brains

Originally Posted by luckymann

Rather than full minors, I was thinking of having one Indy League with a reputation of 5 or maybe 6 set up in a more traditional way with no pro / rel, with one team for each of the 36 "Major League" clubs.

I'm not sure why you'd call them "independent" leagues rather than "minor leagues"? I guess you can affiliate any kind of league to any other but I don't get the effect. I have two levels of minors for my top two tiers and one level of minors for the others. I've not seen any problems with that setup and have had too many frustrations with reserve rosters in other games so I want to avoid them for sure.

Originally Posted by luckymann

I guess my main blind spot is how best to apply the financials moving forward, especially when clubs move up or down a level. I'm happy to manage this side of it manually but would love some pointers from the experiences of others.

As I said the other day, I play out all my games so I only have two seasons in the can so far, and my middle tiers have crazy big budgets. I used the automatic tool to adjust them when I started. I left the settings for the top tier at whatever the default was, then I used the automatic adjustment tool to turn each level one notch down (whatever the percentages were in v.21).

Originally Posted by luckymann

Also how best to go about the Draft each year.

I've read too many problems about association drafts, if that's what you're asking about, and I didn't associate my leagues at all because I didn't care about having an all-league playoff and there are basically no other features in an association. It re-sets all your roster rules, or always did when I used it in v.21 so I didn't want to have to fix all my settings 8 times again for nothing.

I've always intended to set up some kind of postseason interleague tournament but I haven't tried yet.

As to the draft specifically, I have my leagues set up so that their opening days are a day or two apart, with the Premier League starting first. I do the same with the drafts. To help avoid free agent pool bloat I have only the Premier League set to create extra players, I think I have 10 draft rounds and create players for 12 or something but I can check if it matters to you. Each league has its own draft pool with its own PCMs that cascade down so that the lowest tier is about like rookie ball.

I turned off all the independent/amateur FA creation things in the US league again to avoid player bloat. I have international leagues too so I do have some players created in those for the countries in the world tournament I have.

I didn't make it all the way through that reddit thread but I disagree with some of the approaches/observations, like leaving cash max off. There was a thread recently about a revenue sharing bug, but I've had problems with 2nd-3rd tier teams splashing out for big name FA that IMO would never consider signing below their station and the mid-tier teams just have too much cash splashing around and I haven't figured out why. I may do some manual tinkering in this offseason but I like my league too much to ditch it and start over (which is kind of the story of all my OOTP play anyway). I also have zero interest in creating the real-life balance problems of the Premier/"superleague" so I don't want the top teams to be 800 pound gorillas. The PCMs and the talent pool in general gives higher tier teams plenty of advantage as it is.

Anyway, I'll be reading along, especially on the finances if somebody has better intel/advice. Keep in mind I only recently realized I should have been doing recalc every year and haven't

[Lucky_Will]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Sorry if any of this is redundant to things I've said in other threads

Also this came up in another P/R thread recently but I think the reputations are relative, so if you set them at 10-8-6 or 9-7-5 they'd have the same effect as to those three leagues.

—-

I've read too many problems about association drafts, if that's what you're asking about, and I didn't associate my leagues at all because I didn't care about having an all-league playoff and there are basically no other features in an association. It re-sets all your roster rules, or always did when I used it in v.21 so I didn't want to have to fix all my settings 8 times again for nothing…

As to the draft specifically, I have my leagues set up so that their opening days are a day or two apart, with the Premier League starting first. I do the same with the drafts. To help avoid free agent pool bloat I have only the Premier League set to create extra players, I think I have 10 draft rounds and create players for 12 or something but I can check if it matters to you. Each league has its own draft pool with its own PCMs that cascade down so that the lowest tier is about like rookie ball.

—-

I didn't make it all the way through that reddit thread but I disagree with some of the approaches/observations, like leaving cash max off. There was a thread recently about a revenue sharing bug, but I've had problems with 2nd-3rd tier teams splashing out for big name FA that IMO would never consider signing below their station and the mid-tier teams just have too much cash splashing around and I haven't figured out why. I may do some manual tinkering in this offseason but I like my league too much to ditch it and start over (which is kind of the story of all my OOTP play anyway). I also have zero interest in creating the real-life balance problems of the Premier/"superleague" so I don't want the top teams to be 800 pound gorillas. The PCMs and the talent pool in general gives higher tier teams plenty of advantage as it is.

Good inputs thanks for weighing in! Pro/rel is a fun feature and there’s enough variability that there seem to be lots of solutions for making it work.

Some quotes for your quotes from my perspective.

1. There’s also a setting under manager settings that says something like “Make all ratings relative to” and then you should select your top league. That will make sure that reputation and player ratings are set relative to the top level.

2. I have amateur drafts for my top level leagues only, like you said. I generate fewer rounds than the Reddit comment says because I generate for several leagues and that seems to work out. I don’t have a draft for tiers 2+.

3. I leave the salary cap off but I definitely agree with you that OP super clubs are no fun. I don’t want two or three clubs running away with it every year. I have had pretty reasonable success with the top of the table varying a bit from year to year, despite the lack of a salary cap, although it’s been a while since I’ve run a long sim, and never in 23. But obv your mileage may vary. I’m less concerned with having a big 5-6 than you are, but I totally understand your sentiment. Having Man City Baseball Club win every year wouldn’t be much fun.

[luckymann]

Guys, thanks for the feedback. I'm compiling it all and will come back with any specific questions that might crop up. I take my sweet time with this part of the process, so it might be a while!

G

[luckymann]

Guys, what happens to the minor league team(s) when the parent club is promoted or relegated?

[Rain King]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Guys, what happens to the minor league team(s) when the parent club is promoted or relegated?

Nothing. If you would like them to move, you will need to do so manually.

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by Rain King

Nothing. If you would like them to move, you will need to do so manually.

This, although I think it's interesting to have different tiers with different minor systems. So a team relegated from the 2nd tier to the 3rd leaves their rookie level team behind and the newly-promoted team picks it up.

I suppose one could leave the minor teams and assign them to new promoted/relegated teams, but that kind of defeats the point of having development teams in the first place rather than reserve rosters.

[luckymann]

OK that's what I thought. I've got no problems with that - the minors are mainly there to get guys experience and develop them for the bigs.

The biggest issue I am concerned about here is the Draft.

Because I want to use my own pool of historical players, which are ungraded / unsorted by quality, what I was hoping to be able to do was have one combined Pool and have the Top Tier draft on Dec 1, the Middle Tier draft on Dec 2 from the players undrafted by the Top Tier, and then the Bottom Tier draft on Dec 3 from the players remaining. That way, a hierarchy is established with the best players going to the best teams.

Am I to believe that the only way for this to be possible is to Associate the three? If I do that, what settings get messed about with?

[luckymann]

OK so I have this pretty much at the stage where I can now go do some testing and see if everything holds up. I've incorporated some of the ideas from that Reddit, but mainly I have just tried to apply logic to the finances etc and we'll just have to see how it goes.

I have the 30 current MLB clubs in 3 divs of 10 with just a AAA franchise for minors. I'm going with just one pro / rel each season, with only 10 clubs I think that'll be enough but will keep an open mind about it.

I have ended up Associating the three. You guys all seem to just be using fictional players, which allows the game to do all of the hierarchy stuff for PCMs and Drafts for you, but because I want to use my own player pool that won't work for me. So I have set a joint Draft but separate Rule 5s, and will be editing the selection order myself in a way that benefits top-to-bottom a bit more than the defaults.

ROUND 1: Tier 1 only = 3 picks (3)
ROUND 2: Tier 1 2 picks (5), Tier 2 1 pick (1)
ROUND 3: Tier 1 1 pick (6), Tier 2 2 picks (3)
ROUND 4: Tier 2 2 picks (5), Tier 3 1 pick (1)
ROUND 5: Tier 2 1 pick (6), Tier 3 2 picks (3)
ROUND 6: Tier 3 only = 3 picks (6)

That's the plan, anyhoo.

I have a few key questions please:

Service time reset between leagues? I would think no, but what is the consensus?

Also, when negotiating contracts, do players seek the opt-out if relegated clause often? And, if so, have you had any problems eventuate from them doing so?

Originally Posted by Lucky_Will

1. There’s also a setting under manager settings that says something like “Make all ratings relative to” and then you should select your top league. That will make sure that reputation and player ratings are set relative to the top level.

For some reason, whenever I exit and go back into the save, this automatically resets to the bottom tier instead of the top - any idea how I can get that to stop?

TIA

G

[Rain King]

You definitely do not want to reset service time between leagues (basically consider all your leagues part of the same overall association). Otherwise, if a player leaves a league and comes back they will be at 0 or a veteran that goes down a league may be considered a rookie, etc.

The player opt-outs for relegation work well IMO. The player decisions generally make sense (if they are on shorter term deals they are likely to opt-out, if they are on longer deals it is less likely but depends on their situation). Basically, it feels like they assess their market and make an educated decision based on that. It probably also takes their personality into account when making the decision also.

[Lucky_Will]

For some reason, whenever I exit and go back into the save, this automatically resets to the bottom tier instead of the top - any idea how I can get that to stop?

TIA

G

I had this happen a couple of times but the only answer I can give you is that it sorted itself out somehow.

I think the thing that did was setting it in the game setup screen, instead of the manager options screen. (I think in that case it’s something like “Show ratings relative to currently selected league” or something like that.)

In my save game I haven’t noticed it resetting since but that’s not very concrete as far advice goes.

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Lucky_Will

I had this happen a couple of times but the only answer I can give you is that it sorted itself out somehow.

I think the thing that did was setting it in the game setup screen, instead of the manager options screen. (I think in that case it’s something like “Show ratings relative to currently selected league” or something like that.)

In my save game I haven’t noticed it resetting since but that’s not very concrete as far advice goes.

Yep, it fixes itself as soon as I advance a day.

First test run was a mess.

Rather than the Draft process I mentioned above, once I realised that the Draft Pool was shared I decided to do three separate Drafts a couple of days after each other, top to bottom.

That didn't work, with undrafted players disappearing (they return the following year for another turn) and therefore leaving the lower levels without enough players in the pool. Then I tried doing them one after the other on the same day - same deal.

Very frustrating indeed.

It leaves me with two choices - I can let fictionals in for the lower levels or I can just do a Tier 1 Draft like you guys suggested and let the lower levels fill up on FA. But to me the latter seems counter-intuitive. Aren't you increasing the payrolls of the less wealthy clubs in this way by making all of their acquisitions FAs, while the rich clubs get some nice cheap drafted rookies? If anything, it seems more sensible to only give the lowest level a short Draft and then just dump the remainder of players in as FAs. But neither sound ideal.

There is a third option, which is the methodology I explained in my previous post, in which the Draft is a shared one. But there's a lot of finicky work required with that so I'm gonna need to think on it some more and do a bit of testing.

[Rain King]

Depending on how much manual work you are willing to do, you can do one draft and adjust the team at each draft position to mimic the order you are looking for (but you are going to have to change essentially every pick).

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Rain King

Depending on how much manual work you are willing to do, you can do one draft and adjust the team at each draft position to mimic the order you are looking for (but you are going to have to change essentially every pick).

Yeah, making it a combined Draft and using that setup for picks I have mentioned above is I think the fairest way of getting new players dispersed in a way that respects the tiered hierarchy and doesn't mess unduly with financials. But it means a lot of tinkering is required every season, and also rules out giving clubs the ability to trade Picks because then you can't just use the standings as the basis for the Draft Order. Then again, I don't really think this feature works in a pro-rel environment given all the moving about and the fact that the picks being traded may never come to fruition. So I think I'll exclude this feature anyway. I reckon I can create an Excel spreadsheet that will make this process a lot easier on a yearly basis. That's on my to-do list for the weekend ahead.

On that, one other annoying feature I have noticed is the way promoted / relegated teams are treated in the Draft Order. It seems that they are slotted in depending on their W-L record relative to the clubs in their new level, which isn't really fair on anyone given they achieved that record in a completely different environment.

I can see how much fun this type of save could be, but it is another half-baked feature in the game that really could do with some tightening up, isn't it?

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Rain King

You definitely do not want to reset service time between leagues (basically consider all your leagues part of the same overall association). Otherwise, if a player leaves a league and comes back they will be at 0 or a veteran that goes down a league may be considered a rookie, etc.

The player opt-outs for relegation work well IMO. The player decisions generally make sense (if they are on shorter term deals they are likely to opt-out, if they are on longer deals it is less likely but depends on their situation). Basically, it feels like they assess their market and make an educated decision based on that. It probably also takes their personality into account when making the decision also.

Great thanks bud - important feedback indeed.

[luckymann]

OK, so while finicky, the Draft Pool manual setup works a treat. Only thing I ran up against was compensatory Draft Picks, so I changed that setting to the *** cash method.

Almost everything seems in order after 6 simmed seasons. One main issue still to be resolved is how quickly the budgets escalate. EG In 1980, the Phillies were at $60m and just six seasons later that has jumped to $168m.

I think a few setting changes should take care of that.

First of all, I'm going to start all clubs' fan interest and loyalty at a fixed level - probably 50. Let their subsequent performance take effect from there.

I had inflation set to +1-4%, which I think is too high to begin with, so I will lower it to -/+2%.

Finally, I'm going to reduce the ticket price baseline and lower the media contracts, staggering both from top to bottom.

I plan to sim four more seasons under these new settings to see if that settles things down a bit.

Back with more results soon.

G

[BBGiovanni]

Thanks for the report!

I'm not sure where those budget balloons come from but they takd off fast