How does one win in this game?

[Thegman0492]

I have OOTP 17 and ever since then, I have always started as an expansion team out of Bridgeport, CT. However, I am always losing. It was not until like 2030, in OOTP 24, that I started winning. I had many great seasons and then I had to trade away players because I was over budget. I still have a lot to learn about this game. In the past, I denied this. No longer. I need tips on how to turn a team, specifically my expansion team, around. Create a dynasty. I feel like my players are always in a bad mood because of their performance and I do not know how to make them happy. What am I missing? Teach me your ways!

[Canary85]

crank your development and scouting budgets as high as possible. hire the best highly favors tools scout available. don't request scouting reports because a very good scout and high scouting budget will automatically get reports on the whole league p quickly.

for SS and CF start someone with at least 65 range. get a catcher with at least 65 catcher ability. having average or better defense at these three positions will do wonders for your pitchers.

turn your strategy sliders to favor L/R hitting and pitching matchups as high as possible to get optimal pinch hitting and bullpen changes.

make sure you have good staff cohesion if it is on. i would avoid hiring a controlling or temperamental coach as they can have worse relationships with players. for team chemistry, make sure you never draft anyone with low work ethic or acquire anyone who is a disruptive personality.

priorities for pitching should be stuff > movement > control. priorities for hitting should be contact/eye > power > gap > avoid k. order your lineup from best wrc+ to worst wrc+. for pitching, i would set limits like 90 pitches or 21 batters faced so that you aren't getting hammered by third time through the order penalties. have your two best relievers be stoppers and do not use setup or closer roles.

make sure you edit the default stat row to include FIP, FIP-, BsR, wRC+. FIP and FIP- are good predictors for future performance of your pitchers. BsR is to monitor baserunning to make sure someone isn't too aggressive on basepaths or getting caught stealing too often. wRC+ is the best hitting stat.

for drafting i prefer to focus on high floor college players in early rounds. always make sure to check a draftee's relative ratings to your lowest minor league level to make sure they won't play poorly and ruin their morale/potential. i also try to focus on up the middle players in early rounds like P, SS, CF, C. corner bats are easier to replace. and obviously do not draft for need, just take the best player.

i tend to start everyone off at one of the two lowest levels. i'll monitor them around all star week, roster expansion, end of the year, beginning of the year to see who needs to be promoted. NEVER demote anyone. for hitters i focus on contact, eye, and avoid k when promoting. i'd rather obp first before power. for pitchers i focus on control because without that they will be useless anyway. and make sure you edit league settings to have age limits so the AI isn't playing 27 year olds in rookie ball to pummel your rookies.

as far as money goes i tend to only extend those up the middle players i mentioned, and only if they are regularly all-star level. i almost never extend a 1B, LF, RF unless they are absolutely one of the five best players in the game due to their bat being that good.

to be clear i play on low injuries which is a huge handicap. i do turn up trading difficulty a ton and turn off scouting discoveries and IAFA tho, so i can only build through the draft basically. but this is how i play solo and i am consistently winning whether expansion team, rebuilding, big budget, whatever.

[Thegman0492]

Originally Posted by Canary85

crank your development and scouting budgets as high as possible. hire the best highly favors tools scout available. don't request scouting reports because a very good scout and high scouting budget will automatically get reports on the whole league p quickly.

for SS and CF start someone with at least 65 range. get a catcher with at least 65 catcher ability. having average or better defense at these three positions will do wonders for your pitchers.

turn your strategy sliders to favor L/R hitting and pitching matchups as high as possible to get optimal pinch hitting and bullpen changes.

make sure you have good staff cohesion if it is on. i would avoid hiring a controlling or temperamental coach as they can have worse relationships with players. for team chemistry, make sure you never draft anyone with low work ethic or acquire anyone who is a disruptive personality.

priorities for pitching should be stuff > movement > control. priorities for hitting should be contact/eye > power > gap > avoid k. order your lineup from best wrc+ to worst wrc+. for pitching, i would set limits like 90 pitches or 21 batters faced so that you aren't getting hammered by third time through the order penalties. have your two best relievers be stoppers and do not use setup or closer roles.

make sure you edit the default stat row to include FIP, FIP-, BsR, wRC+. FIP and FIP- are good predictors for future performance of your pitchers. BsR is to monitor baserunning to make sure someone isn't too aggressive on basepaths or getting caught stealing too often. wRC+ is the best hitting stat.

for drafting i prefer to focus on high floor college players in early rounds. always make sure to check a draftee's relative ratings to your lowest minor league level to make sure they won't play poorly and ruin their morale/potential. i also try to focus on up the middle players in early rounds like P, SS, CF, C. corner bats are easier to replace. and obviously do not draft for need, just take the best player.

i tend to start everyone off at one of the two lowest levels. i'll monitor them around all star week, roster expansion, end of the year, beginning of the year to see who needs to be promoted. NEVER demote anyone. for hitters i focus on contact, eye, and avoid k when promoting. i'd rather obp first before power. for pitchers i focus on control because without that they will be useless anyway. and make sure you edit league settings to have age limits so the AI isn't playing 27 year olds in rookie ball to pummel your rookies.

as far as money goes i tend to only extend those up the middle players i mentioned, and only if they are regularly all-star level. i almost never extend a 1B, LF, RF unless they are absolutely one of the five best players in the game due to their bat being that good.

to be clear i play on low injuries which is a huge handicap. i do turn up trading difficulty a ton and turn off scouting discoveries and IAFA tho, so i can only build through the draft basically. but this is how i play solo and i am consistently winning whether expansion team, rebuilding, big budget, whatever.

My biggest problem is that players get mad about their performance, even before the season starts and then they play horribly. Then the team gets upset because we are losing and I have no idea why the player or players are upset about their performance or how to remedy this. What do you think?

[Brad K]

Its a BS feature. Turn it off.

[Thegman0492]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Its a BS feature. Turn it off.

Where do you turn it off?

[Canary85]

Originally Posted by Thegman0492

My biggest problem is that players get mad about their performance, even before the season starts and then they play horribly. Then the team gets upset because we are losing and I have no idea why the player or players are upset about their performance or how to remedy this. What do you think?

their morale should correct as the season goes on. i've seen plenty of guys with sour attitudes that change because the team just keeps winning.


just make sure you have a few good personalities on the team. captain, leader, sparkplug, prankster, etc. they will keep team chemistry/morale high. and like i said, having a very high development budget is important. it should keep players' ratings pretty sticky instead of them regressing, so their performance should meet or exceed their ratings. also double check staff cohesion and coach/player relationships bc those are v important.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Thegman0492

Where do you turn it off?

Don't recall exactly. Go to the MLB tab then settings. Suggest you look at every page as there may be other things you want to change.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Thegman0492

Where do you turn it off?

Under Game Settings, Players & Team

It's the Player Personality Settings

[NoOne]

Consitently winning cures all morale problems, in my experience. When you have a choice to keep 1 of 2 guys that are simiar talents, get rid of the malcontent personality. As long as your team isn't full of such players, talent is far more important than personality.

Check out an old post of mine in prior version of ootp19 forum - new to the game. it's stickied at the top. The gist still applies.

sounds like you need to better udnerstand your long-term financial decisions. Your market and pricing strategies will dictate your max budget... you may be able to circumvent that in short-term, but teh bill comes due eventually.

Use the screen that shows entire 40-man roster and contracts for 10 years out. You should be able to avoid easily predictable financial bottlenecks.. just takes hard decisions.

maximize playoff roster above all else. Be realistic about your bench.. they are mostly trash players and a AAA/AAAA'er is often as good or nearly as good and 1/3rd - 1/5th the price and possibly free until they actually get called up to MLB.

Market size will dictate how large that "elite" core is... some smaller markets may need some down years to maximize better years, but larger markets can field a 100win team every year barring catastrophe large enough that any playoff-likely team would be sunk by it.

sometimes you have an inordinate number of club-controlled contracts in that core... but that is a short term thing -- the type of thing a small market team has to shoot for to consistently win WS, which is why a down year or two to draft high can be worth it for those poorer teams..

Take advantage of that context, but be realistic about the window and escaping the bill that comes due when everyone wants more money in a small time frame... lol... better to not have forced decisions and take better opportunities that present themsevels, even if you lose a prime year or two from a player.

the guide even has an easy way to maintain high morale in MiL ... basically the fillwer players sandbag slightly and only promote real prospects mid-season (filler should only move midseason to account for real prospects moving around).

So you get slightly better everyday players at each level and your prospects are typically the weaker links on those teams except near the end of their tenure at that MiL level... They will win more and that keeps players happy. When you draft well and only promote the filler due to attrittion, your entire system should be at least near the top of the standings each year.

Money is king.. the more efficiently you spend it and avoid spending on needless fat, the more talent you can concistently field at ML level.

scouting and dev i like to spend on,but context matters. You don't need a huge ML scouting budget to be accurate with a good scout. Overspending on draft scouting helps reduce false positives, but still a ton of them. mil scouting you canskimp on and it more impacts teh yougner guys than AAA/AA level guys who are fairly well-known quantities. Dev doesn't have to be high if all you ahve is bench player prospects, lol.

[Thegman0492]

Originally Posted by Canary85

their morale should correct as the season goes on. i've seen plenty of guys with sour attitudes that change because the team just keeps winning.


just make sure you have a few good personalities on the team. captain, leader, sparkplug, prankster, etc. they will keep team chemistry/morale high. and like i said, having a very high development budget is important. it should keep players' ratings pretty sticky instead of them regressing, so their performance should meet or exceed their ratings. also double check staff cohesion and coach/player relationships bc those are v important.

How would you set up the budgeting and do spring training games really matter? You said that development and scouting should be the highest, so what is the order?

[Thegman0492]

Also will any of these strategies change when OOTP 25 comes out?

[NoOne]

not much.. the things that do change won't be familiar to you anyway.. but you generally have to adapt slightly each revision.. in some shape or form. E.G. median ratings are different than median ratings 10 years ago... major shift 3-4 years ago? basically the everyday regulars that aren't anything special but make up the bulk of 25-man rostes are a bit lower ratings than before, which is good... we needed the extra stratification from excellent to median for the superstars to put up superstar numbers more consistently, imo. Results were too evenly spread out in the past. .. it's probably similar proportions of each quality/tier of talent, but greater range from top to middle... creates greater increases in share of results for the .1% elite guys and others near the top.

ST does matter.. "Rust" is an effect in the game. if injured or due to offseason, rust is a real effect they code into the game. Longer off, the more it takes to knock rust off.

ST is also a good place to force a new position on a player so they gain experience when it doesn't matter.

could argue that the rust would be the same for all and that it'd be perfectly fair to skip ST... up to you. Probably increased volatility those first 4-5 weeks, i'd wager, but would average out, more or less. You'd find out if a batter or SP has any advantage if it consistently sways one way year after year.

budgeting -- should adapt to current state of organization. If you are winnning WS and drafting low, you can spend less on scouting and dev to add an extra player or to eke out one more WS-caliber team etc.. Be smart enough to get out from under that imminent financial collapse, though. You can see it coming in the 10-year contract screen.

i'd still keep some minimum development and scouting.. like i said above, you don't need to spend much on ML-level scouting as these players are well-known commodities for the most part. Adding more to prospects scouting is going to reduce number of false positives, but still a tone of them (you can see this by comparing numbers under the hood with high and low budgets.. it's an overtly obvious impact.. significantly fewer 70-80 prospects seen)

mil scouting is important when trading and restocking your future.

This used to work but not 100% it does not -- ticket prices in good years should be slowly increased as much as possible throughout the year. every 1-2 months put the toe in the water and test a higher price... maintain that 97-100% attendance (you can see the tiers it'll break down into as far as what price equates to what attendance along with day of week.. can charge 1-2 more on fri-sat and opening day.)

you might get 5-6 dollars higher per ticket by end of year compared to game #2 (opening day is a price-gouging day).

in any case.. season ticket prices in good years -- price them up.. don't try to maximize attendance here, that math is not in your favor. Price it high.. get about 20-33% attendance numbers at a much higher price... then as you start the season with a more modest price you actually average a higher overall price.. this will not impact daily attendance nor the ticket price required to get near 100% attendance.

could you get even more money at 90%? not certain.. never delved that deeply, but if oyu do thisyou can easily add 10-20M more revenue.. and if your team is stacke dand winning 120+ games, you can add 50M more, lol.

Price playoff games higher too.. you can increase these as you get deeper in to playoffs too... vs game 1 of playoff's price.

a few years of success may allow better pricing during regular season -- test and pull back to learn how it ebbs and flows.

you can do it without cheating or you can 'start' a game, look at attendance on pre-game screen, then exit before you actually start playing the game. change ticket price, check attendance - rinse and repeat till its that 97-100% tier or whatever your target is.

it's really not cheating - once learned never do it again.. just speeding up a learning curve as the game wil behave in predictable ways in this regard. It's an advantage you'd gain from many sim years of experience one way or another. I used to have it all mapped out 5-6 years ago but not a reliable memory at the moment for exact details... i'd have to do what i'm telling you - keep testing upper limits of pricing each game.. opening day, playoffs.. then over the years see how continued success impacts those initial findings, because it will.

If you go on a huge winn streak early, this has a far greater impacat on max price you can raise your tickets throughout year than a win-streak late.

you win a few WS and you can start at 40/ticket day one.. and 50/ticket for opening day and start of playoffs.. but can't do that year 2 after winning WS. I'd price my season tickets at high-water mark from previous season and that worked well. start at 50 and see how that goes.

it's a "haute" ticket... need to pay a premium to guarantee a seat and avoid the walk-up crowd!

[Samueltbaum]

OOTP 24 I won the world series with Oakland on challenge mode in the second season, and non challenge mode 1st season without adjust any settings.

Its always my first quest when I buy any baseball game, including 3 previous versions of OOTP. I don't mess with any of the settings, personally on this quest.

The strategy I always use is I make sure to initially get great coaches, scouting is most important for how I play since I spend hours and hours making a ton of trades, every day of the season until I have a solid team to play .500ish ball. Even when I'm at .500, I still load up continue to make trades to load up on prospects. Once you have great prospects you can develop them (I made sure all of my minor league coaches have great excellent-legendary development, and preferably close to that with mechanics), if you intend to play more than a couple seasons, or trade them to get stars if you try to win quick. I try to have at least one Leader/work ethic players on my team.

This has worked for me with every OOTP I've played so far including 24.

Good luck!

[Canary85]

Originally Posted by Thegman0492

How would you set up the budgeting and do spring training games really matter? You said that development and scouting should be the highest, so what is the order?

i would increase development over scouting if you had to pick only one to increase.


spring training does matter. as someone else said, there is a rust factor. i typically only play my starters in the final week of ST to hide them from possible injuries. other than that i usually just use ST to teach new positions to prospects or guys near the bottom of the 40 man roster

[Thegman0492]

Originally Posted by Canary85

i would increase development over scouting if you had to pick only one to increase.


spring training does matter. as someone else said, there is a rust factor. i typically only play my starters in the final week of ST to hide them from possible injuries. other than that i usually just use ST to teach new positions to prospects or guys near the bottom of the 40 man roster

so just to clarify, what should be the order for budgeting. Development first, then what is the rest?

[Samueltbaum]

Originally Posted by Thegman0492

so just to clarify, what should be the order for budgeting. Development first, then what is the rest?

This one I don't know. I didn't mess with development budget until year 4 when I had already won the world series 4 times.

I would however make sure all my managers had the best development they could for the job,

I'd completely wipe out all managers 1st day of the first season, then hire managers with great Development, Pitching/hitting coaches with great Pitching or hitting. 1B/3B coaches that teach OF/IN/C/running, with decent in game running. Scouting with great Scouting. All of these you want to make sure you've go for the best rating you can get in the things I listed.

The most important part was being active, and making a lot of trades to build up farm system, then using that farm system to get great MLB players.

Others may disagree with this, but I have never played an OOTP game, where this strategy did not work to turn the worst team in the game into the best team in the game and win the world series in the first year.

[Samueltbaum]

Originally Posted by Samueltbaum

This one I don't know. I didn't mess with development budget until year 4 when I had already won the world series 4 times.

I would however make sure all my managers had the best development they could for the job,

I'd completely wipe out all managers 1st day of the first season, then hire managers with great Development, Pitching/hitting coaches with great Pitching or hitting. 1B/3B coaches that teach OF/IN/C/running, with decent in game running. Scouting with great Scouting. All of these you want to make sure you've go for the best rating you can get in the things I listed.

The most important part was being active, and making a lot of trades to build up farm system, then using that farm system to get great MLB players.

Others may disagree with this, but I have never played an OOTP game, where this strategy did not work to turn the worst team in the game into the best team in the game and win the world series in the first year.

You get 5 shop players a day. Utilize this, as sometimes you can find hidden gems to help your team. Sometimes teams throw away 70+ rated players.

I always find bullpen to be very important, you can load back end of bullpen with players under 2.00 era, for little $$$$, and it isn't as hard to get them than other players.

[progen]

Originally Posted by Thegman0492

I have OOTP 17 and ever since then, I have always started as an expansion team out of Bridgeport, CT. However, I am always losing. It was not until like 2030, in OOTP 24, that I started winning. I had many great seasons and then I had to trade away players because I was over budget. I still have a lot to learn about this game. In the past, I denied this. No longer. I need tips on how to turn a team, specifically my expansion team, around. Create a dynasty. I feel like my players are always in a bad mood because of their performance and I do not know how to make them happy. What am I missing? Teach me your ways!

Everybody has different ways to being successful. I find myself going back and reviewing this from time to time for developing my players in the minor leagues. It's a good read!

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=316759

[Thegman0492]

Does anyone know if there are going to be any big changes from OOTP 24 to OOTP 25 when it comes to just being a GM?

[Samueltbaum]

https://www.ootpdevelopments.com/out...-home-buy-now/

The main thing I saw was the ability to train players to develop the rating you want them to.