Nate and I have been conferring over the settings for the new league and have made some executive decisions. Here's the planned set-up after the rollover on the various options. The decisions are pretty final, but I suppose we'd listen if there were violent reactions against our plan. It's based in part on some testing I've done to try to keep the league stable after the conversion.
Scouting: In use, high accuracy
Coaching: In use
Enable suspensions, drug suspensions, and injuries
Injury frequency low
Player fatigue average
All ratings to be 1-100 (actual, potential, coaches, etc. - it's easy this way)
Don't show ratings over maximum
Use star ratings, based on position and not on all players
Top Prospect list dynamic rather than annual
Auto-save once a year
Save box scores, game logs, and replays from human leagues (i.e., not minors)
Don't keep news logs, injury logs, or transaction logs
Normal rate of player development
Create and maintain hidden players (for incomplete minor league rosters)
Show and use personality ratings and morale system
Keep career L/R splits, fielding stats, and postseason stats for major leagues only
Player pictures for major league players only, create pictures automatically
Pictures for coaches/scouts/managers
AI Options set to normal
Generate almanac annually
Full set of minors (AAA, AA, A, S A, R)
DH in minors, not in majors
Standard roster rules with exception of 10 day waiver period and 15 day DFA period (works better for 5-day in season sims)
Enable trading, with 7/31 deadline
Allow trading of recently drafted players and draft picks
Amateur draft on June 15 (See note below)
20 round amateur draft (OOTP recommends 4 rounds per minor league)
Generate amateur players for 21 rounds
Reveal amateur draft pool 45 days before draft
Financial settings mostly normal with following tweaks
Draft pick compensation for lost free agents enabled
Will make entire revenue available to GM (no computer AI team owner control)
No salary cap
No revenue sharing for now (Nate will post on this later)
Average media contract set to $40 million to match version 6.5 finances
Cash cap of $200M
Allow incomplete minor league rosters (ghost players)
Stats detail very high
Schedule spring training (although the first one will be in 2006)
Start major league schedule 4/1/05
Time start of rookie and short season A leagues to work with draft and match real MLB
162 games per team
Balanced schedule format (18 per team in division, 12 interleague)
Typically 3 game series
Allow interleague play
Hold All-Star game
Wild Card round
Both playoff series are seven games
Typical startegy and player creation settings
Minor league roster size limit of 35, except for rookie league where no limit
Mixed minor leagues
Notes:
1. I'll keep the existing names of the minor league affiliates for AAA, AA, and A. But, if you want to name your short season A teams and Rookie teams now, send me an email and I'll put it in. Otherwise, the game will automatically generate cities and team names. Also, if you want to make any changes to the names of your franchises or minor league affiliates for the 2005 season, now's the time to let me know and send me an email.
2. We are going to have a minor league draft June 15, 2005. Yes, a second draft this year. We'll keep the same draft order. We recognize this may be an unfair benefit to the teams who are picking high, but tough. It's a major pain in the ass to do it differently. For example, do we really want the game to be telling us that the "2005" draft is being held June 15, 2006? Look at it this way, it will help everyone stock those new minor league affiliates.
3. When we do run the draft, people will get to submit draft lists for the first four rounds at the start of the draft and the computer will do the last sixteen rounds of the draft (5-20). We want to have a midseason draft, but we don't want everything to grind to a halt. Hopefully, the game's draft list feature will automate this, but it may take some experimentation to make it work.
4. We're setting the injury setting to "low" rather than "average" to start with. It comes from my belief that injuries aren't really fun and nobody enjoys them. Low is enough to still have a fair number of injuries, but a couple of my tests showed a pretty rapacious rate of injuries. We're not going down to "very low" though either. If after a few years, people think there aren't enough injuries, we'll reconsider the setting.
5. I've found a couple of work arounds to get most of the league history into the version 9 database, but some things (minor league stats, for example) simply can't be brought over. I can't help that. But, we should be able to get complete league and major league player histories in.
6. We're setting scout accuracy to high. Most of you are aware of my feelings on this and I won't belabor the point.
7. For some reason, the game lets you enter in the GMs' birthdays. If you want it to be set to your actual birthday, you'll have to send it to me.
If you have questions, feel free to drop me an email or to post them in the comments.
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11 comments:
Everything looks great to me. Thanks for spelling all of this out for us so that we know where the league stands.
My only concern is with the drug suspensions, becasue it seems it is unfair for a random event like that to happen. At least with injuries you have a rating to show who is going to be more likley to end up with an injury and you can plan around that. With drug suspensions you really can't do that. With that said, I think it is a cool option and would not be against turning it on, even though I belive that Randy McGinn is using to extend his 38 year old career (32 HR last season...really) so we might see our first suspension real quick in the new league.
It's pretty understated. Here's the definition from the manual:
"Determines whether or not the league uses revenue sharing. Either there is no revenue sharing, or any cash in
a team's treasury above the Cash Maximum (see below) is shared between all teams. The revenue sharing
calculation takes place on the first day of the offseason.
Revenue sharing works as follows: At the end of the season, all profits that would put any team above the
Cash Maximum are put into a pool. This pool is then divided evenly among all teams that had a financial
loss."
Given that system and the high cash maximum we're putting in place it shouldn't bite often but in a few years it could.
Thanks guys, I'm sure figuring all this out and running the conversion is not an easy or quick thing, and you're efforts are much appreciated.
My only suggestion would be to have the draft order for the rookie draft this year (June) be based on a random draw, not last season's records. The worst teams last year already received the benefit, so to speak, of their performances draft-wise and it does not seem equitable to do it that way.
If doing the draft in June is easiest I'm all for that, so can we just have a random order drawn by lot?
One more comment on the draft -- we should not allow teams to trade picks from this "sandwich" draft. Whether the order goes by last year's record or random draw (as I propose, and not just for selfish reasons), it would be equally unfair to allow a team to trade the pick (by that I mean, the pick not the actual player taken down the line of course). Doing so would create even more of a windfall for whatever team picks first and second.
I agree with Jeremy and suggest eliminating the drug suspension option if that isn't too much work. It just seems random and unnecessary.
A second draft this year? Interesting. As the holder of the #3 pick, I won't really comment too greatly in favor of it or not.
Everything else looks fine by me. I, too, don't see the point in drug suspensions, but they could be a fun wrinkle to the game.
Nate and I are considering some form of NBA-style draft lottery for the second 2005 draft. Reactions?
Even though I'm currently slated to pick third, I like the idea of a lottery. I imagine it'd only be for the first round, though, and not for all 20-million of them?
Would the teams get more ping pong balls (so to speak) based on their original draft ranking? If so, can I ice my balls (the ping pong variety, thank you very much!) first?
Dang, one more 'wouldn't that be cold' joke shot down.
We are currently debating methods of doing the lottery system including using the NBA style. To date I've located three PhD's in mathematics and one EE with a physics doctorate to consult.
Should be fun. Though I'd expect it would apply for at least the first three or four rounds.
Mack frequently states that the NBA is "dead" to him, so I am surprised he is considering employing one of their practices.
Nate and I have tentatively agreed to a lottery system that is based in part on the 2004 standings, in part on the 2005 standings (to be simmed!) and in part giving an equal weight to each team.
We'll probably release more information on the 2005 supplemental draft plans sometime next week, as we test out how the game handles it.
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