Alright boyz, here we go (OOTP6 Thoughts!)

[Buccaneer]

1902 and you have Ruth in the league??? Try putting him in the right era instead of the Dead Ball Era. 65 HRs in that era would be more than decent, you know.

[Tekneek]

Originally Posted by Bearcat729

I'm trying to sim a league starting in 1902 but I'm running into a problem getting realistic HR totals out of Ruth. He imported with a 90 contact, 100 Power, and 100 eye, but so far he has 61 total HR and a .265 career avg in 4 seasons, and he hasn't had any injuries.

How is it I adjust the league totals to get some decent numbers out him?

I imagine you smoking a crack pipe while you're doing this. Am I right?

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Hammer755

Here's a list I found of drafted players who went straight to the majors since the draft was implemented in 1965.

Link

Draft Player Team Pos. School
2000 Xavier Nady Padres 3B University of California
1989 John Olerud Blue Jays 1B Washington State
1988 Jim Abbott Angels LHP University of Michigan
1985 Pete Incaviglia Rangers OF Oklahoma State
1978 Tim Conroy Athletics LHP Gateway HS (Pa.)
1978 Bob Horner Braves 3B Arizona State
1978 Brian Milner Blue Jays C Southwest HS (Tex.)
1978 Mike Morgan Athletics RHP Valley HS (Nev.)
1973 David Clyde Rangers LHP Westchester HS (Tex.)
1973 Dave Winfield Padres OF University of Minnesota
1973 Eddie Bane Twins LHP Arizona State
1973 Dick Ruthven Phillies RHP Fresno State
1972 Dave Roberts Padres 3B University of Oregon
1971 Pete Broberg Senators RHP Dartmouth College
1971 Rob Ellis Brewers OF Michigan State
1971 Burt Hooton Cubs RHP University of Texas
1969 Steve Dunning Indians RHP Stanford University
1967 Mike Adamson Orioles RHP Southern California

Ugh, sorry about the formatting

Thanks! The 70's had some players! Bob Horner? Who would have thought that? My dad used to call him Fat Butt Horner.


Todd

[kingnebwsu]

The OOTP boards make me wanna puke. Someone says something like "I think this could be implemented without much problem" then someone says "oh, so YOU know a lot about coding the game now? I didn't know it was so easy!!!" Then he gets backup from everyone and their brother which buries any decent suggestion that was made.

Why the fuck do I read internet forums these days?

[LionsFan10]

Yes, I agree. The OOTP forums are FULL of fanboys, it's really quite annoying to go over there ... if you dare suggest that something could be done better/fixed you will be pounced on. I myself do not visit there very often at all.

[MizzouRah]

I mostly skim the forums and post in the mods/logos section. I was really active there since v2, but since coming to FOFC, I don't post much anymore unless it's to ask a question.

There's no place like home, there's no place like home....


Todd

[Bearcat729]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

1902 and you have Ruth in the league??? Try putting him in the right era instead of the Dead Ball Era. 65 HRs in that era would be more than decent, you know.

Well that's what I get for not proof reading before posting.

I started in 1902, and am using Ankits career average database so Ruth comes in 1914 as a pitcher and again in 1918 as a batter. I'm actually at the start of the 1922 season.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Bearcat729

Well that's what I get for not proof reading before posting.

I started in 1902, and am using Ankits career average database so Ruth comes in 1914 as a pitcher and again in 1918 as a batter. I'm actually at the start of the 1922 season.

I just did this last night. I decided to go with him just being a hitter, so when he imported in 1914, I manually changed his talent ratings to let him develop as a hitter. His first year in the bigs, he had 290 ABs without a HR! I tweaked him some more, and he started hitting a few HRs, but he didn't really do much (max of 14 HRs). Then in 1918, when his clone imported, I took his 1918 ability and talent ratings and manually transferred them over to the 1914 Ruth, turning the 1918 Ruth into a no-name scrub. Since then, he's been much better, but he has still not hit more than 36 HRs (although he's hitting twice as many HRs as the next guy in either league).

That's fine with me. I'm playing an "alternate reality" type league anyway, so I'm not going for strict replay numbers. Ruth got drafted by the Indians in my league. Joe Jackson has been an absolute monster, hitting .400 3 times. Chief Bender ended up with 456 wins, just behind Cy Young (472). And some guy named Charlie Becker, who IRL pitched 2 unremarkable seasons with the Senators in 1911-12, stuck around in my league for 8 years as a no-name reliever, then suddenly became one of the most dominating starting pitchers of the early 20's. Pretty cool.

[rjolley]

Originally Posted by Bearcat729

Well that's what I get for not proof reading before posting.

I started in 1902, and am using Ankits career average database so Ruth comes in 1914 as a pitcher and again in 1918 as a batter. I'm actually at the start of the 1922 season.

Yeah, I had Ruth in my WhatIf League and he hit 421 career homeruns, with a season high of 35 using Ankit's database modified to add about 180 Negro League players. I don't remember Ruth ever hitting a ton of homeruns using Ankit's database. You may have to use Lahman's to get those kind of results.

[Tekneek]

Originally Posted by LionsFan10

Yes, I agree. The OOTP forums are FULL of fanboys, it's really quite annoying to go over there ... if you dare suggest that something could be done better/fixed you will be pounced on. I myself do not visit there very often at all.

I don't read the forums over there often enough to notice a lot of this. I do know it is true that a lot of people with little, or no, programming experience do say lots of things like "My idea seems very easy to implement", when in reality they have NO idea what kind of work it might take to work the new routines into the larger application.

[Tekneek]

Originally Posted by Bearcat729

Well that's what I get for not proof reading before posting.

I started in 1902, and am using Ankits career average database so Ruth comes in 1914 as a pitcher and again in 1918 as a batter. I'm actually at the start of the 1922 season.

Sorry for my comments up above.

60+ homers in a season is still more than I have ever seen in 1922. I don't think I've seen anybody get more than 40 around that time, and I think that was a rare achievement.

[Hammer755]

Ruth has had a pretty solid career in the dead-ball online league that I am in, the Boys of Summer. The commish of the league edits all of the players upon their entry in the draft. The league decided that Ruth would enter the league as a pitcher and could be used in the OF in a similar schedule as what he played in real life.

He became a full-time OF in 1918, put up modest numbers, and then from 1921 has had seasons of 48, 38, 37, and 40 HR.

Player Page

[Ksyrup]

For me, between 1920 and 1925, he's had seasons of 16 (in 300+ ABs), 32, 32, 35, 35, and 36. No one else has hit 20 yet.

[Suicane75]

Can someone explain to me the difference between Talent ratings and the regular ratings? I'm assuming that the talent ratings are the maximum highs for a player yet I have guys who are in their late 30's with high talent ratings but much lower regular ratings.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

Can someone explain to me the difference between Talent ratings and the regular ratings? I'm assuming that the talent ratings are the maximum highs for a player yet I have guys who are in their late 30's with high talent ratings but much lower regular ratings.

Think of it as real v. potential. Some guys never reach their potential.

Oddly, I've noticed a few of the other kind - higher actual ratings than talent ratings. That seems odd to me.

[hukarez]

I'm beginning to wonder which I should place more importance in: Pure Stuff, or Movement...in fact, I'm not quite so sure what roles those two play in the game. Anyone know?

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by hukarez

I'm beginning to wonder which I should place more importance in: Pure Stuff, or Movement...in fact, I'm not quite so sure what roles those two play in the game. Anyone know?

From the little anecdotal evidence I've seen, movement and control are much more important that stuff. I've seen great pitchers with low stuff but top-notch movement and control. And really, it makes some sense, because if you don't have good control, you can't be very effective even if you've got great stuff, and if you've got no movement but great stuff, you're still hittable.

That's the way I've seen it so far, just based on browsing through 100 years worth of simmed seasons.

[hukarez]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

From the little anecdotal evidence I've seen, movement and control are much more important that stuff. I've seen great pitchers with low stuff but top-notch movement and control. And really, it makes some sense, because if you don't have good control, you can't be very effective even if you've got great stuff, and if you've got no movement but great stuff, you're still hittable.

That's the way I've seen it so far, just based on browsing through 100 years worth of simmed seasons.

That would probably explain why my pitchers get hammered for homeruns and hits. Not to mention, my opponent's pitchers going 2 for 3 on me. Then again, it may be the roster set I'm using (CBL v2.0)

Blast! I've been building up my pitchers with Control and Pure Stuff. Time to start taking a different approach!

[Suicane75]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Think of it as real v. potential. Some guys never reach their potential.

Oddly, I've noticed a few of the other kind - higher actual ratings than talent ratings. That seems odd to me.

I went thru my whole first draft drafting guys based on talent, then I see their actual ratings and alot of my mid 30's guys are nowhere near their talent level. Too much toggling!!!!

[hukarez]

Was just browsing the OOTP forum, and found this from Henry:

Originally Posted by Henry

Here's the correct relationships....

Good Movement (Primary Rating) & Good Control = less Homeruns

Good Stuff (Primary Rating) & Good Velocity & Good Control = more Strikeouts

Good Control (Primary Rating) = less walks

About 20 pitchers in all of 90 years history exceed the results this system will give by no more than 1%

Henry

[kingnebwsu]

Good info to have. Bump because I've never seen this on the second page before

[Godzilla Blitz]

Late to the party, but downloaded yesterday and messed with it for a bit.

Some random reactions...

The last version I had was OOTP 3, and my first reaction was amazement at how much more fleshed out the game has become since then. The detail is incredible. No, that's not right. The detail is breathtaking. This game is a stat junkie's nirvana. Also, the ability to customize the game looks like it will add hours and hours of play to the game. There is simply so many different ways to play the game: manager mode, historical simming, career mode. Not to mention the other tweaks to modify play: turning ratings off, turning financials off, creating fantasy leagues, modifying player development, etc. There is a hell of a lot of game here for the money.

The interface is better than before, but unless I'm missing things (and I keep thinking I must be), there doesn't seem to be ways to do certain things on screens where you should be able to do them. For example, if you go to the "minors report" screen, you get notes added to the players' names if they should be dropped down a level in your organization. Well, it only makes sense that you should be able to do that from this screen, or at least from the player's card. But it appears that you have to close out of that screen, remember the names, then go to the transactions screen to move the players around. Also, it would be nice to cut players when you are looking at their cards, but instead, once again you have to go the transactions screen to do this. There are lots of awkward spots like these in the interface that create the need to hop around to different screens to get stuff done. Still, I haven't found the interface annoying (yet), and that was definitely the reaction I had to it before. I was able to create a 20-team World Baseball League in a relatively short time, and everything seems to have come out as intended.

As a simulator, the game has made tremendous strides. The game "feels" a lot more like baseball. The goofy ratings are gone, the stats seem on target, and on the whole, I feel like I'm watching a baseball game when I play out games. I didn't get that feeling at all from OOTP 3, which felt more like a number cruncher that spit out results that looked like baseball stats. Things on the whole now work as intended, and that "we have 100 new features, half of which work" feel of OOTP 3 is completely gone. The only place where I feel like I am having flashbacks to OOTP 3 is the financials, which still seem messed up. And judging by a long thread over at OOTP boards, the financials apparently are still messed up.

It's hard to get a feel for the AI improvements, but it's clear right from the start that the "I" in AI might be a misnomer for this game. I created a fictional league with fictional players, and rather than manually do a 60-round draft (I'm trying the game with all ratings off just for fun, so a long draft would be viciously tedious), I just had the computer run the draft for my team. I haven't spent a lot of time analyzing it, but you don't need to when you see stuff like this:

Round 1: We set the keystone of our franchise by selecting a 38-year old starting pitcher who promptly announces that he will retire at the end of the first season.
Round 4: We draft a talented third-baseman
Round 5: We draft a mediocre third-baseman
Round 6: We draft a good-fielding third-baseman
At the end of round six, our franchise consisted solely of one retiring pitcher, two outfielders, and three third basemen. Ye gads. I used to think the Bengals drafted poorly, but this AI makes them look like Quiksand.

I haven't played enough to comment on the AI that governs trading, roster management, and lineup moves, but the omens are not good based on the AI that stocked the teams.

Overall, though, I am ecstatic with the game so far. I wanted to go to bed about 11 last night, and stayed up till 3AM starting into my fictional league. Zonked today. The game really is a lot of fun, even as a solo game. My interest level, after 5 hours, is sky high. In the end, though, I think it may be the ability to customize the game that will make the solo game challenging: turning off the ability to see ratings makes things much more challenging; the financials looked like they can be tweaked to increase the difficulty; manager mode looks like it might make things more difficult;and there are enough ways to mess with things to make more house rules if needed. Whether this will make for a fun game remains to be seen, but the game creates so much information for your league that the "story-telling" aspect of your league is huge.

Oh, one other thing. The English is much better. Not "there" yet, but strides ahead of where it used to be in OOTP 3.

[Ben E Lou]

Bump

[jbmagic]

skydog so how u liking patch 6.01 so far....

what your take on everything so far....any updates...thanks

[Godzilla Blitz]

Is 6.02 out yet? I can't find it on their board.

Some more thoughts (on 6.01)...

Got a chance to run some seasons to test a few things with the financial engine. The financial system doesn't make sense and the economics still are broken in places, but I think the system can be edited (once, at the beginning of your league) well enough to create whatever kind of league you want. If you edit then extend the tv contracts for the teams you can create a balanced or unbalanced league that for the most part will hold up over time. I've made a new World Baseball League (restarted after learning more about the financial engine) and set up a handful of teams to be perennial powerhouses, a bunch of teams to sit in the middle, and a handful of teams to be constantly financially strapped, and everything seems to be working fairly well for now.

Last night I messed around with trading for an hour and was surprised to walk away very satisfied. I imagine more experienced players will know ways to stick it to the AI in trading, but so far so good. I set my AI trading to "hard", and the AI did a number of impressive things. One, it wouldn't take aging bums for untested youth. Two, it wouldn't take my overpaid players no matter what I did. Three, it seemed to extract a fair value for the players I offered. I get a sense you can still dupe it with "5 pennies for 1 dime" deals, but I set a 3-1 limit on my trades and that eliminates that problem. Also, I'm not sure the trading AI considers righty-lefty splits in evaluating players, so I think the human player can gain an edge there. Still, the one trade I finally made seemed to have excellent balance and being able to trade fairly makes a baseball sim so much better.

One other thing impressed me. I've taken one of the financially challenged teams in my league and am attempting to build them into a competitor. The first year I let the AI run a fantasy draft and ended up with a $65 million dollar payroll on a team that will make $40 million a year tops (the AI doesn't appear to consider revenue in its stocking drafts). So my first problem is to dump payroll. I had a good but overpaid 3B that I was trying to trade away, but could get no bites at all in the trade market because of the guy's salary/quality value. I then dumped him on waivers and got two bites, both from big market teams with lots of cash to spend. In the end I let him go to the friggin' Yankees for nothing. The progression made a lot of sense from quite a few perspectives, and was just the kind of thing I was trying to get when I set up the league. Kudos.

Overall, I've probably spent 15 hours with the game and interest level is still sky high.

[FBPro]

No 6.02 is not out yet.

[Ben E Lou]

I'm about 8 or 9 seasons in with 6.01, and so far I'm finding financials to my liking at the default settings ($10M max cash). There are no more than one or two solid starters available each year at each position, and there's usually a bidding war for those guys. If I want a quality FA, I've got to pay. Works for me.

[MizzouRah]

The game has been a blast for me. I'm really liking all the roster improvements. I'm also noticing teams are retaining their better players, when possible.


Todd

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

I'm about 8 or 9 seasons in with 6.01, and so far I'm finding financials to my liking at the default settings ($10M max cash). There are no more than one or two solid starters available each year at each position, and there's usually a bidding war for those guys. If I want a quality FA, I've got to pay. Works for me.

Mine's at $15 million. Not a big difference, but I bumped it up from $10 million to try to reduce just a bit the amount of revenue sharing from teams that have an unexpectedly good year and make a big profit.

I jacked max cash way up for a while during my test just to see what happens. Just like in OOTP 3, if the cash max is high, teams will horde cash instead of using it. Silly teams.

[LionsFan10]

Originally Posted by Godzilla Blitz

Mine's at $15 million. Not a big difference, but I bumped it up from $10 million to try to reduce just a bit the amount of revenue sharing from teams that have an unexpectedly good year and make a big profit.

I jacked max cash way up for a while during my test just to see what happens. Just like in OOTP 3, if the cash max is high, teams will horde cash instead of using it. Silly teams.

Hmm, so would you say the $50m limit that the OOTP boards are suggesting is just a little bit high? Damn, I hope I don't have to re-start my career.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

I'm about 8 or 9 seasons in with 6.01, and so far I'm finding financials to my liking at the default settings ($10M max cash). There are no more than one or two solid starters available each year at each position, and there's usually a bidding war for those guys. If I want a quality FA, I've got to pay. Works for me.

Great to hear.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally Posted by LionsFan10

Hmm, so would you say the $50m limit that the OOTP boards are suggesting is just a little bit high? Damn, I hope I don't have to re-start my career.

I haven't played enough to give you a good answer on that one. I noticed that a lot of the people on the OOTP boards play with $50m as a limit, and they seem to know what they are doing. When I jacked mine up, I set it at $500 million just to see what teams would do. Within two or three years teams were bankrolling more than $80 million and there was no end in sight.

My guess is that teams are coded to spend on free agents when they are up against their cash max, otherwise, they tend to save the cash. I think the biggest effect of higher max cash values is that they tend to bring the payrolls of the rich teams down to the level of those of the middle tier of teams until the rich teams reach their max cash, at which time you should see them try to increase payroll. Of course if a lot of teams reach their cash max at the same time, not everyone can spend on the limited free agents, and so the cash gets dumped back into revenue sharing and the poor teams get more money to work with.

The nice thing about a $50million cash max league is you could save cash as a small market team then try to make a run at the championship. With a small max cash that is impossible to do.

Someone over at OOTP claims that the problem with the default financial figures is that the tv contract system creates a situation where too many teams are making a profit. I think this makes a hell of a lot of sense. This would tend to stagnate the free agent market and balance out the quality of the teams in the league because many teams can afford to resign their best players, and the rich teams don't have many free agents available to sign. Ultimately, I think it's important to get the total league revenue at just the right amount so that you're happy with the amounts of free agents each year, the ability of teams to resign players, and the overall parity in a league.

By the way, you can change the cash max on the fly. It might be better to bring it down in small increments, but I don't think I'd start over just because you're not happy with your cash max value.

[jbmagic]

for team cash max in league options ? what do you guys recommend?

and for national tv contract what amount u recommend in league options?


thanks

[Buccaneer]

I've been too busy to get into OOTP6 because I have been playing FBCB. I plan on starting this summer. One big question I have relates to financials. In the past 2 versions, I have always played with a team cap (and no league cap for the AI teams). In other words, I purposely keep myself as a small- to mid-market team so I have to work at bidding on FAs and to keep my roster from being overpaid. I have had a blast doing that (within the context of historical leagues, of course). The question is, can I expect to play without a team cap with OOTP6 or should I still have to limit myself somewhat?

By the way, how is the AI doing on signing/releasing/rinse/repeat players during the season?

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

for team cash max in league options ? what do you guys recommend?

and for national tv contract what amount u recommend in league options?


thanks

Settings
I set it up my 20-team fictional league as follows:

Salary cap: $200m
Cash Maximum: $15m
National TV Contract: 0 (100 years)
All teams receive minimum national contract.
Local TV contracts (100 years) as follows:
4 teams with $80m
3 teams with $60m
2 teams with $55m
1 team with $40m
7 teams with $35m
1 team with $20m
1 team with $15m
1 team with $10m
Lastly, I edited the market size and fan loyalty ratings. I gave the rich teams the big markets and loyal fans, and gave the poor teams the small markets and crappy fan base.

After I ran the initial draft, I did NOT adjust market sizes to reflect payroll.

My idea is to create a league with four perennial powerhouses (Yankee-type teams), a few teams that regularly have the potential to beat them (Red Sox-type teams), teams in the middle that can make occasionally make a good run, and three teams that are perennial doghouses (Expos). Since attendance/merchandising revenue runs on average from $20million to $45 million, my biggest teams should be able to finance payrolls of $100-125 million ($80 million tv contract revenue + $20-$45 million attendance/merchandising revenue). My poorest teams should be able to finance $30-$55 million payrolls. Everyone else should be somewhere in between.

I will keep a close eye on the free agent market, and then adjust team revenue (through tv contracts) to get a good movement of free agents from the poorer teams to the richer ones.

That's the plan, anyway. There're some assumptions in here about how the game engine works, and I could be off in a few places with the team tv contract numbers. Rather than test things forever, though, I want to start playing. I'll adjust on the way to get things straigtened out.

Hope this helps!

[kingnebwsu]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

By the way, how is the AI doing on signing/releasing/rinse/repeat players during the season?

Not good. Many times when I trade a decent/mediocre player to another team, he'll be released by them within a week or two. This has happened many times and irks me, but I'll continue to trade away the guys as long as the AI keeps taking them...

[Ben E Lou]

The one tweak that I made that works well is adjust trade AI to "hard" and have the AI favor prospects. I've been getting great trade offers, etc. with those settings.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

The one tweak that I made that works well is adjust trade AI to "hard" and have the AI favor prospects. I've been getting great trade offers, etc. with those settings.

I've used the same settings since Markus changing the drafting module in v5. It works very well and adds challenge as well.


Todd

[jbmagic]

with trade on hard and favor prospect... do you guys just wait only for offers from cpu teams when playing your solo league...or do you guys ask cpu teams for trade too?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

with trade on hard and favor prospect... do you guys just wait only for offers from cpu teams when playing your solo league...or do you guys ask cpu teams for trade too?

Both. The offers I get are *great*, too.

[Ksyrup]

Does this affect AI logic in AI-AI trades, or only when the AI proposed or receives human trades?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Does this affect AI logic in AI-AI trades, or only when the AI proposed or receives human trades?

Haven't checked. Don't know.

[MizzouRah]

I think it only affects human - CPU trades. I try both, but it's hard to get a trade that works in your favor.


Todd

[Ben E Lou]

When using Catobase, can I do it in the following order:

1. Get to end of world series.
2. Run in-game HTML reports from "League Setup" screen
3. Import Stats for Catobase
4. Start new season with OOTP6
5. Run Catobase HTML

Specifically, I'm wondering if I can do #4 in that order, so that I can continue playing the game while Catobase is doing HTML. I'm thinking that it gets its HTML from the OOTP HTML and its own database, not from OOTP. Let me know.

--Ben

[Ksyrup]

Yes, you can Ben. That's what I'm doing right now. I sim a bunch of seasons, import the stats every year, and then after 15-20, I run the html, which runs independently from the game. You can proceed to the next season while doing the html.

I'm in 1984 of a league that began in 1918. The html sessions are all-nighters at this point. But man are they worth it!

[Ben E Lou]

Haven't really gotten a chance to play with 6.02, but will have some time this weekend. What's the word?

[korme]

Wait for another patch..

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Shorty3281

Wait for another patch..

Details?

[Ragone]

Well skydog.. now teams will waive their 5 star prospects to make room for 1 star veterans they sign in free agency (ai teams).. the trade ai is still suspect.. among other things

[Ragone]

I'm not really sure the financial coefficents work right either bucc.. so i dunno how realistic it would turn out... i just cannot get into a historical resim to present day when players like ty cobb are making 4.6 mill a year