Baseball Mogul 2006 Preview Thread (Yes, Virginia, there ARE lefties and righties!)

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

EaglesFan,

Which bugs are the ones bothering you? I've found that there are just small quirks left in playing fictional leagues from 2005 forward, but nothing remotely show-stopping. It is clear as a bell to me (though I have no idea why) that historical play and 2005-forward play are very, very different. Some of the guys that report bugs over there don't do a good job of saying what settings they're using--and that's apparently *very* important with this game. Now, if you're looking to play historical, it would appear that there are still some significant issues.

I'm looking to play a historical league where I sim at least 80 years of history and then take over in 2004 or 2005. From what I've heard over there (and that is all I'm going by), there are several significant issues with historical play still.

[CHEMICAL SOLDIER]

I'll wait a few more patches and updates before buying.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

I'm looking to play a historical league where I sim at least 80 years of history and then take over in 2004 or 2005. From what I've heard over there (and that is all I'm going by), there are several significant issues with historical play still.

Yeah. Sounds like it. Blame it partially on me. Once I realized that Clay was serious about his "squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease" thing, I decided to bombard him with fictional play-forward stuff (the only way I play), and he's fixed that portion of the game pretty well overall, but left what would appear to be some pretty gaping holes in historical play. My understanding is that he's now updating BMO before coming back to Mogul '06.

[jbmagic]

skydog

Do you have to change the 2005stats.txt every year and rename it 2006stats.txt, 2007stats.txt, etc for each year?

Will be kind of a hassle if we have to stop the sim each season and change it. especially if you sim a lot of years for history first.

[Galaril]

This thread kind of died. Well, Clay has released a patch 8.21 which fixes the fictional rookies being to strong in historical replays. It also set the default injury to a more realistic level.

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...threadid=73763

[Ben E Lou]

Unofficial patch 8.22 is in da hizouse...

• Contact Ratings boosted for rookies
• Fixed slowdown due to Latitude/Longitude errors
• Scouting: Team Name filled on fly if Minor League team names are empty
• Some Bad Amateur Fielding data fixed (e.g. 4313 innings at 1B in only 32 G)
• Opening Day crash fixed (during schedule creation in some leagues)
• Bad "Game Times" fixed (e.g. negative numbers on Calendar Screen)
• Historical Rookie Batters no longer created as pitchers (e.g. Mark Grace in January 1983)
• Finance Page: Payroll Budget instantly updates to reflect Ticket, Concessions and Expense changes
• Simming enabled while Free Agents Dialog is open

[VPI97]

Did he ever fix that problem with generated players striking out 300-400 times in a season?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by VPI97

Did he ever fix that problem with generated players striking out 300-400 times in a season?

Pretty sure this was tackled in a recent patch.

[jbmagic]

Patch 8.23 is out now.

Unofficial Patch: Version 8.23

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...threadid=74443

* Fixed problem with low-contact players like Rob Deer were winning batting titles
* Fixed some bugs with High School stats and Amateur Draft talent levels

[JasonC23]

So, is this game, like, good now, and stuff?

[JonInMiddleGA]

but left what would appear to be some pretty gaping holes in historical play.

And that was ultimately what kept me from what-the-hell buying this for play this past weekend. (Not your comment, just the pretty obvious problems in that area that were easy to find by checking the forums over there).

Playing from, say, 1945 forward would be something I could be entertained with, just to see the names & stars rise & fall over time. Knowing how many weirdass things happen with historical play would have easily been enough to kill it for me.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JasonC23

So, is this game, like, good now, and stuff?

I think that may still depend on how you play, although some of the historical issues have been addressed in patches this week. Three ways to play, ultimately:

1. Historical Play--has had some issues. Some addressed in patches this week. I don't play historical (seems silly to me), so I can't help you here.

2. 2005-and-Forward Play (fictional rosters)--pretty solid right now

3. 2005-and-Forward Play (real rosters)--This works well eventually, as long as you're able to deal with the fact that some AI teams will have to do major salary dumps of known players come July 2005. The Great July 2K5 Salary Dump is pretty much a one-time thing; once teams "right-size" their salaries to match up with what they can handle in Mogul, you don't see that sort of thing happening.

[JasonC23]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

I think that may still depend on how you play, although some of the historical issues have been addressed in patches this week. Three ways to play, ultimately:

3. 2005-and-Forward Play (real rosters)--This works well eventually, as long as you're able to deal with the fact that some AI teams will have to do major salary dumps of known players come July 2005. The Great July 2K5 Salary Dump is pretty much a one-time thing; once teams "right-size" their salaries to match up with what they can handle in Mogul, you don't see that sort of thing happening.

Seeing as how this is how I would play, is there any way to avoid this?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JasonC23

Seeing as how this is how I would play, is there any way to avoid this?

There's a "calculate salaries" button under advanced tools. I've never tried it, but perhaps it would right-size salaries a bit more. Also, there's a slider to raise the overall league revenue. I'd imagine that would help, too. Another way would be to start your career with the players put on random rosters, and equalize cities.

The problem is this: The real-life Yankees have a $200M+ payroll. Mogul uses real-life salaries. In beta versions of the game, the Yankees were able to handle this $200M+ payroll, and therefore didn't do all the salary dumping in year 1. The problem with this? People complained vigorously, because that $200M-a-year payroll they were carrying was getting them 50-75 World Series titles out of 100 years, and whole decades where they won 110+ games every year, etc. The result was that Clay reduced the amount of salary that the Yankees could carry. In so doing, it made the 2005 salary dump inevitablem at least using default settings. Considering that this is a career sim where several seasons a night can easily be played, I think he made the right decision here. This only impacts one season.

[JasonC23]

How bad is the salary dump? What do the virtual Yankees usually end up doing?

[rjolley]

Are there any HTML reports available from Baseball Mogul? Would it be possible to create csv files from the data that is exportable so that they could be used by utilities already out there, say Catobase?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JasonC23

How bad is the salary dump? What do the virtual Yankees usually end up doing?

I believe they dump around $25-$30M at default settings, but I just thought of an idea of how to avoid this in a way that I would think would be relatively painless.

First off, if you're using the settings I recommended a few posts back, the Yankees will eventually end up carrying around $150M in salary. The game starts out with them carrying $189.2M, so that is 26.13% too high. I'd try taking care of that 26.13% thusly:

1. Before 2005 season, adjust population and average income in NYC upwards 26.13%. Write down your original population and average income. I would assume this would cause no salary-dump trades in 2005.
2. After the 2005 World Series, but before the contract extension and free agency periods start, adjust pop and average income downward by 2.61% of the original amounts. This should lower the payroll budget by that amount before any FA decisions are made.
3. Repeat step two at the end of each of the first 10 seasons. At the end of 2014, the Yanks should be down around $150M, and most of that without having done salary dump trades.

NOTE: I'm not 100% certain that raising pop and income by 26.13% will correspond exactly to 26.13% more revenue, so some experimentation may be necessary to figure out the correct increases in those two numbers. Once the correct increases are determined, just lower it by 10% of the delta each year.

I'm not 100% certain this would work, but I have a strong suspicion that it would do the job quite well.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by rjolley

Are there any HTML reports available from Baseball Mogul? Would it be possible to create csv files from the data that is exportable so that they could be used by utilities already out there, say Catobase?

You can easily create a csv of the entire league's stats--hitting or pitching--with whatever fields you want, in whatever order you choose. The Team-->Rosters screen does this very well. I don't know the catobase input format, but if someone can tell me the exact order of all the fields it requires, I could give this a try. In my opinion, the weakest part of Mogul right now is the lack of serious HTML exporting options. You can choose to export to HTML rather than CSV from the Team-->Rosters screen, but nothing is linked or anything like that; you just get raw data.

[henry296]

Ben,

I looked at the NewGameStadiums.csv that you posted. It still shows Coors field with a HR rating of 187. Is that right?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by henry296

Ben,

I looked at the NewGameStadiums.csv that you posted. It still shows Coors field with a HR rating of 187. Is that right?

Look more carefully. For 2005, it is listed as 122, I think. The game uses the 2005 settings from then on out.

[henry296]

Sorry missed that. But if I want to start a career in 1995, it will use the 1995 stadium settings, right?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by henry296

Sorry missed that. But if I want to start a career in 1995, it will use the 1995 stadium settings, right?

I haven't tested it, but I'd think that's a safe assumption.

[jbmagic]

patch 8.24 is out

but no fix list.

[Jeff Olsen]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

There's a "calculate salaries" button under advanced tools. I've never tried it, but perhaps it would right-size salaries a bit more.

It should but you'd probably have to move the salary demand slider to the negative side beforehand.

[Ben E Lou]

Some potentially-good news....

AI Minor Leage Madness At this point I'm sure everyone has noticed the seemingly random minor league assignments from the AI. Some personal favorites of mine include when the AI sent Willy Mays down to Rookie ball after a hall of fame career, or signing Carl Yastremski after him not having played for 3 years and sending him straight to A ball. The thing of it is that the logic the AI uses is pretty bewildering. 18 YO Players rated 44 in current ability are sent to AAA, while 34 year olds with 8-10 years of Major league service are sent to AA. The problem is the way the assigments are made. The AI ranks players and seemingly factors in other elements beside age and overall current ability in making minor league assignments, and then tries to evenly distribute the players amongst the 4 levels. IE if you have 16 position players, all of whom a human would logically place in AA or AAA, the AI will still try to assign 4 to R, a to A, 4 to AA, and 4 to AAA. If the same team has 8 pitchers, all of which are freshly drafted and should go to Rookie ball, the AI will AGAIN try to spread them out evenly. Keep in mind that position never seems to weigh in as to who goes where (so you could end up with 4 Cathers in AAA, and 2 RF in Rookie, depending on where they were ranked). Every time a player is added or subtracted, the AI will re-rate all the players and move them around again, which is whyu you see players playing at 3 or 4 levels every year. IMO, that is the *biggest* flaw in the system, in that it tries to keep everything balanced. Since BBM does not attempt to recreate whole minor league teams, with the filler and bench players and true career minor leaguers and busts (ie guy's who retire after 2 years of Rookie ball), it actually makes sense for the organizations to be "top heavy", with many more guy's in AAA than Rookie Ball. The solution to this, and the only way to atleast give the illusion that the AI is gradually developing players and calling them up, is to institute a rigid schedule so players on AI teams appear to be "coming up through the system". Also the AI should simply not be concerned with "evening out the teams" if there are 15 AAA caliber players, and only 3 AA, then that's where they should play. I have posted the scheme before, but here is is again. I truly believe that the minor league stats situation would be infinitely better with this kind of system. Attached is also an example of the crazy player development and assignment s we see in BBM. Age 17 or below. Overall rating <= 75 go to R Overall rating > 75 go to A Age 18 Overall rating <= 70 go to R Overall rating > 70 OR <= 80 go to A Overall rating > 80 go to AA Age 19 Overall rating <= 65 go to R Overall rating > 65 OR <= 75 go to A Overall rating > 75 go to AA Age 20 Overall rating <= 60 go to R Overall rating > 60 OR <= 70 go to A Overall rating > 70 OR <= 80 go to AA Overall rating > 80 go to AAA Age 21-22 Overall rating <= 50 go to R Overall rating > 50 OR <= 60 go to A Overall rating > 60 OR <= 70 go to AA Overall rating > 70 go to AAA Age 23-24 Overall rating <= 50 go to A Overall rating > 50 OR <= 60 go to AA Overall rating > 60 go to AAA Age 25-27 Overall rating <= 60 go to AA Overall rating > 60 go to AAA Age 28+ All players 28+ should go to AAA dolfanar has attached this image: Last edited by dolfanar on 05-24-2005 at 04:35 PM Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged 04-27-2005 02:52 PM

Clay Dreslough Mr. Blog Registered: Jun 2001 Location: Ashford, Connecticut Posts: 2230 This is a good idea. I'm redoing the minor league AI along these lines for the next patch. Clay __________________ Clay Dreslough Sports Mogul Inc.

[MizzouRah]

I'm glad to see Clay is still patching away.

Looking foward to the minors rework.


Todd

[Ben E Lou]

8.25 is out, with the minor league improvements. Check the bottom of this thread:
http://www.mogulsports.com/vbulletin...threadid=73235

[Eaglesfan27]

Have any of the last few patches fixed the problems with historical play?

[Bee]

Has anyone else noticed issues with the computer AI expenses during a career/season?

I started a new career and set my scouting, farm system and medical to #1. This was costing me $8 million each to be #1. In the second season, I noticed I had dropped to around #15-17 in all 3 categories...so I had to revise the expenses to get back to #1. I ended up having to go all the way to $18 M - $22 M to get back to #1 in all categories. The third season, I checked again and I was still #1, but I checked to see if I could drop the costs. I was able to drop them to around $10-$12 M and maintain the #1 ranking. This has me wondering why the computer AI is adjusting their numbers that drastically.

This was using SkyDog's settings, fictional league started in 2005 and quick simmed to 2025 (my 3 seasons were 2026, 2027 and 2028). So I don't think this was a result of early game financial adjustments (like the salary dump with default settings).

[21C]

Congrats to Ben for ( finally ) winning 1st prize in the Sports Mogul Publicity Competition. The $150 is nothing to be sneezed at but next year go for a commission as well - I'm sure that most new buyers came from this thread.

And did Joe Stallings ( Joe S. ) win a free game?

http://www.sportsmogul.com/corp/publ...st_winners.htm

SPORTS MOGUL ANNOUNCES CONTEST WINNERS

Sports Mogul is happy to announce the conclusion of the Baseball Mogul 2006 Publicity Contest, designed to reward Baseball Mogul fans who did the best job of getting the word out about the newest version of Baseball Mogul.

First prize ($150.00) goes to Ben Lewis, for starting an extremely popular thread at GameSpy's Front Office Football forum.

Second prize ($75.00) goes to "Joe B." for plugging Baseball Mogul 2006 at six different sites (ranging from www.mvpmods.com to www.theperfectgame.com).

Five runners up (Richard C., Bill W., Dan M., Damon R. and Joe S.) will be receiving free copies of Baseball Mogul in thanks for their efforts.

Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word about the new Baseball Mogul!

Clay

Clay Dreslough
President, Sports Mogul Inc.

[JasonC23]

Wait a minute...Ben did all of this research for the money????

His work is tainted, I say!

[st.cronin]

If HA were here he'd point out that Ben is now likely to go crazy and move to South Africa or something.

[dawgfan]

When this contest was first announced, I figured it was just a race for 2nd place - I mean, how could SkyDog have not won it...?

[CraigSca]

Originally Posted by 21C

And did Joe Stallings ( Joe S. ) win a free game?

I thought exactly the same thing!

[Young Drachma]

I thinking of buying this...after I go through this thread once more.

[jbmagic]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

I thinking of buying this...after I go through this thread once more.

go thru Baseball Mogul Forum too.

[johneh]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

I thinking of buying this...after I go through this thread once more.

BB Mogul 2010 will be out by the time you are done reading this whole thread.

[henry296]

New patch 8.28 posted by Clay:

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...threadid=75774

There was good discussion on minor league progression on the Sports Mogul board. That is the major fix in this patch.

[Raven]

As an impulse, I was about to buy this game 2 or 3 days ago. Entered my CC number and info in and then (luckily) thought I should check out the demo first instead.

Played one season with the Orioles and am glad I didn't purchase. I couldn't sim a whole week without someone getting injured. The same players were repeatedly injured. Tejada, Rodrigo Lopez and Bruce Chen each spent several stints on the DL. All in all, I probably had 35 seperate injuries, all of which stopped gameplay.

Every time I tried to sim "until so and so was healthy" i'd get interrupted with another injury just a few days later. When that wasn't happening, I'd get a crapload of trade offers for Tejada and Mora for some scrub MR from the other teams. I can't tell you how annoying it was.

Maybe this was an old build of the game (it says 8.14), but the demo should be updated anyway.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by Raven

As an impulse, I was about to buy this game 2 or 3 days ago. Entered my CC number and info in and then (luckily) thought I should check out the demo first instead.

Played one season with the Orioles and am glad I didn't purchase. I couldn't sim a whole week without someone getting injured. The same players were repeatedly injured. Tejada, Rodrigo Lopez and Bruce Chen each spent several stints on the DL. All in all, I probably had 35 seperate injuries, all of which stopped gameplay.

Every time I tried to sim "until so and so was healthy" i'd get interrupted with another injury just a few days later. When that wasn't happening, I'd get a crapload of trade offers for Tejada and Mora for some scrub MR from the other teams. I can't tell you how annoying it was.

Maybe this was an old build of the game (it says 8.14), but the demo should be updated anyway.

The injuries have definitely been ramped down in later versions. However, I would never play with stop for all injuries because just like in the real world, some one is always dinged up. There are so few players that play 162 games that it isn't surpising that someone always is limping. You should also watch the health ratings as they are pretty good indicators of who is likely to get hurt (if I remember right, Chen has a really low health rating).

As for the trades, they can be annoying, but as far as I know they only occur when you are losing money. Teams try to see if you just want to make salary dump trades. They could be better offers, but they aren't wholly unrealistic in terms of the economics. I don't think I ever see bad offers when I'm making money.

The game isn't near perfect, but the injuries and trade offers don't really bother me, for what that is worth.

[jbmagic]

Originally Posted by Raven

As an impulse, I was about to buy this game 2 or 3 days ago. Entered my CC number and info in and then (luckily) thought I should check out the demo first instead.

Played one season with the Orioles and am glad I didn't purchase. I couldn't sim a whole week without someone getting injured. The same players were repeatedly injured. Tejada, Rodrigo Lopez and Bruce Chen each spent several stints on the DL. All in all, I probably had 35 seperate injuries, all of which stopped gameplay.

Every time I tried to sim "until so and so was healthy" i'd get interrupted with another injury just a few days later. When that wasn't happening, I'd get a crapload of trade offers for Tejada and Mora for some scrub MR from the other teams. I can't tell you how annoying it was.

Maybe this was an old build of the game (it says 8.14), but the demo should be updated anyway.

there an injury slider

[CraigSca]

It may not be "fun" but injuries like that are a reality. Just look at the real-life Orioles...Brian Roberts will be getting an MRI tomorrow.

[Bee]

Didn't the Nationals also have like 10 guys on IR just the other day? This early in the season and 10 guys on IR...I think there's a bug.

Anyway, like jbmagic said, you can adjust the injury slider. I'd suggest trying around -20% or -30%.

[amdaily]

8.28 is unplayable. The AI puts 98% of their minor leaguers into AAA. Since only 1 position player plays in the minors at each position, they have all their prospects just riding the bench and losing potential skill

As a patch whose main fuction was to look at minor league assignments, I honestly have no idea how this could have gotten released, unofficial or otherwise.

[jbmagic]

Version 8.30 is out

Changes since 8.28:

Negative numbers prevented in Minor League and Amateur stats
Free releases allowed for players earning MINIMUM_SALARY or less
WINS and LOSSES awarded to correct reliever for walk-off hit or homer
Runner advancement fixed on force outs at first
"INJURY SEVERITY" added to League Editor
Double Play logic improved
Double Play scoring now shown in PBP (e.g. 6-4-3)
More PBP variety (text)

I still have some bugs in the Double Play code. For example, the following should probably be 5-4-3

Code:

Todd Helton singled to center field. <--1> Todd Greene grounded to third for a double play (5-5-3). <--->



SO, please post any bugs like the above that you find and I'll keep fixing them.

(I may also have some bugs with runner advancement on double plays -- so I'd like you to post those if you find them)

Thanks!

Clay

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...ad.php?t=77622

[dawgfan]

Finally got my new laptop to replace the ancient one my dad lent me, so I think I'm ready to finally take the plunge and pick this up. Any reports so far on how the 8.30 patch addresses the minor league distribution issues caused by the 8.28 patch?

[amdaily]

8.31 just went up and addresses a number of outstanding bugs. Really looking forward to testing this one out as it looks like alto of big problems may have been solved.

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...ad.php?t=78065

// 8.31 6/05 Improved personality variety; Personality added to IDC_EDIT_PLAYER
// Fixed PBP crash from 8.30 (missing comma in stHomerStrings)
// Spring Training injuries for pitchers fixed; EQUALIZE_CITIES now includes STADIUM_FAN_BASE
// Minor League AI (reduced # of players put in AAA); reduced position conflicts
// Bug fix: '1' and '-1' ABs in Playoff YBY lines with NO team abbr (Purge_Invalid_YBY_Lines)
// Historical teams now given default (1000) fan loyalty (not 0)
// Service time eliminated for September callups (only given to 25-man roster, as specified by MLB)

[jbmagic]

Patch: Version 8.32

* Overlapping Amateur/Minor league stats fixed ('scrub' players)
* Improved Minor League simulation
* Improved Simulation Speed

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...ad.php?t=78628

[jbmagic]

Patch Version 8.33 is out

1. Enabled 'Clear Minors YBY' button in Player Editor
2. Current year Minor League stats cleared on new game
3. AAA PROMOTION, AA PROMOTION, A PROMOTION added to League Editor
4. Improved Minor League simulation and speed
5. Leader Boards adjusted for Minor League stats
6. Fan Base added to Stadium Editor

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...ad.php?t=78781

[jbmagic]

Also

Clay Dreslough is working on a final patch forBB2k6 before he starts working on BB2k7.

" Working on "Final Patch"
FYI, I'm working on releasing the "Final Patch" for BB2K6 in July. I know there are a lot of areas you'd still like us to work on, but we need to get to work on BB2K7 if we're going to add a lot of features. Once we start BB2K7, we will be breaking more things than we fix and won't be able to release any more patches."

Clay

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...ad.php?t=78732