Some Cato questions

[McSweeny]

ok i've decided to give OOTP5 a whirl once again and this time i'm going to try using Cato's history dealie

So i've got it all set up. Figured out who to get the .cvs files and the html files and everything is working out ok. I ran a test before i started my league and everything worked as i expected it to considering there were no stats or anything. Now for my questions

Do i have to export .cvs files every year? If so do i export them right after the world series or after i push the button and progress to the off-season?

Same goes for the html files, do i export them as soon as the world series ends or do i do them at the begining of the offseason?

I think i read somewhere about having to manually assign free agents... is that true? is there any easy way to do that?

I think that is all the questions i have for now. Thanks for any help

[chrisj]

Originally posted by McSweeny
Do i have to export .cvs files every year? If so do i export them right after the world series or after i push the button and progress to the off-season?

Yes - you need to export the .csv files after each season, right after the world series.

Originally posted by McSweeny
Same goes for the html files, do i export them as soon as the world series ends or do i do them at the begining of the offseason?

Same as above - right after the season ends.

Originally posted by McSweeny
I think i read somewhere about having to manually assign free agents... is that true? is there any easy way to do that?

With the newer versions, no - Cato will assign them to their last team. The one exception, I believe, is with players who were released during the post-season.

[McSweeny]

awesome!

thanks for the quick reply

[AngelinOF]

Originally posted by McSweeny
Same goes for the html files, do i export them as soon as the world series ends or do i do them at the begining of the offseason?

Creating the HTML files can essentially be done at any time, as long as every other step if followed year to year. You also don't have to generate all the html files each time, usually at the end of each season I will generate the team/league, win shares, and leaderboard pages but only generate the player pages every 5-10 seasons. Generating the player pages becomes a time consuming process once the league is aged a few years and can take hours to process. For me waiting 5 seasons doesn't seem to add much to the process and I would much rather just spend 90 minutes every 5 seasons to generate the player pages as opposed to 60 minutes to do it each season. I tend to sim through seasons fairly fast so that works better for me.

I would suggest that you generate the league/team pages each season though because this can significally save some time. To do this after each season just takes me about 5 minutes but if I have to generate all the previous years' (about 45 currently) then it can take up to 2 1/1 hours.

[Hammer755]

Originally posted by AngelinOF
Creating the HTML files can essentially be done at any time, as long as every other step if followed year to year. You also don't have to generate all the html files each time, usually at the end of each season I will generate the team/league, win shares, and leaderboard pages but only generate the player pages every 5-10 seasons. Generating the player pages becomes a time consuming process once the league is aged a few years and can take hours to process. For me waiting 5 seasons doesn't seem to add much to the process and I would much rather just spend 90 minutes every 5 seasons to generate the player pages as opposed to 60 minutes to do it each season. I tend to sim through seasons fairly fast so that works better for me.

Personally, I think it is important to run the HTML and update the player pages every year. I believe this because I think it is the only way to capture split stats for players that were traded in mid-season. Cato also records any trades that were performed by a team in a given year. I think the only way to do that is to generate the HTML report, which provides the ltrans.html file, which is where trades are stored.

Here's a couple of examples of what I mean, one for a player and one for a team.

Ricky Gordon
1989 Alaska Pipeliners (Trade Register at Bottom Right of Page)

[chrisj]

The only files you need at all are:
ltrans.html (for trade splits, assigning released players)
lnews.html (for assigning award winners)
league.html (for assigning wins/losses, etc)

These must be done after every season (after the world series, since that's when awards are handed out).

[gmo]

Originally posted by Hammer755
Personally, I think it is important to run the HTML and update the player pages every year. I believe this because I think it is the only way to capture split stats for players that were traded in mid-season. Cato also records any trades that were performed by a team in a given year. I think the only way to do that is to generate the HTML report, which provides the ltrans.html file, which is where trades are stored.

Hmm, I was starting to do exactly what AngelinOF was describing in doing player pages infrequently to save a little time. It's just a solo league, and I think I can live with the splits of in-season traded players being off if the totals are fine. Are there any other known or suspected issues with not doing player html pages yearly?

[chrisj]

Ahh... I finally realized you guys were talking about generating the HTML files within Cato, not within OOTP itself. You don't need to generate the player pages within Cato every year at all... and you'll still get trade splits.

[Hammer755]

Originally posted by chrisj
Ahh... I finally realized you guys were talking about generating the HTML files within Cato, not within OOTP itself. You don't need to generate the player pages within Cato every year at all... and you'll still get trade splits.

Same here.