Anyone play OOTP?

[dracnal]

Good advice, houston-nat. Sounds a bit like 'Jump in and screw up until you start to figure it out,' which I'm okay with. That's how I learned most of what I know with computers.

I don't think I'm anywhere close to ready to try multiplayer. I will end up trying a few seasons offline before that.

[houston-nat]

Good advice, houston-nat. Sounds a bit like 'Jump in and screw up until you start to figure it out,' which I'm okay with. That's how I learned most of what I know with computers.

I don't think I'm anywhere close to ready to try multiplayer. I will end up trying a few seasons offline before that.

Wise. My team is just pulling out of the slump of being at the end of a run + me learning the game.

[dracnal]

Wise. My team is just pulling out of the slump of being at the end of a run + me learning the game.

I did some more digging online and came up with my plan to learn - I'm going to create a fictional 8 league system with one level of minors and a 5 round draft.  Kill the Rule 5 draft and international signings and just learn the basics of development, scouting, etc. Once I've got a handle on the core of that, I'll be willing to get a bit more ambitious.

[houston-nat]

I did some more digging online and came up with my plan to learn - I'm going to create a fictional 8 league system with one level of minors and a 5 round draft.  Kill the Rule 5 draft and international signings and just learn the basics of development, scouting, etc. Once I've got a handle on the core of that, I'll be willing to get a bit more ambitious.

[HattoriHanzo]

The GM end of things looks complex as hell. Any pointers on where to get started/tips/guides on how to be effective and not just rely on auto-pilot?

After a few weeks or a month or so of running a sim, check your batting splits. Some players will only hit well in one or two spots in the batting order. After every week, keep checking and adjusting the batting order until most of your lineup is raking consistently.

When drafting, check the BNN page for work ethic and intelligence. If they are high in both categories, that prospect will likely develop faster and will less likely bust. Low work ethic and low intelligence players has a higher chance to bust so don't always just draft the highest potential player.

[dracnal]

After a few weeks or a month or so of running a sim, check your batting splits. Some players will only hit well in one or two spots in the batting order. After every week, keep checking and adjusting the batting order until most of your lineup is raking consistently.

When drafting, check the BNN page for work ethic and intelligence. If they are high in both categories, that prospect will likely develop faster and will less likely bust. Low work ethic and low intelligence players has a higher chance to bust so don't always just draft the highest potential player.

Good tips. I didn't realize the connection between intelligence and bust chance. Did figure out that guys with a poor work ethic or no focus need to go like the chemistry cancer they are.

[houston-nat]

Good tips. I didn't realize the connection between intelligence and bust chance. Did figure out that guys with a poor work ethic or no focus need to go like the chemistry cancer they are.

Yeah. In the online league I'm in, there have been some guys who have achieved big success despite being slow or stupid, but when the draft gets to round 5 or 6, I start sorting by work ethic and looking for decent potential guys who might grind their way up to the next level. So far the strategy is looking pretty good.

[Lintyfresh85]

Played OOTP in an online league for 30 seasons. Was a ton of fun. Best 7-8 years of my gaming life. Unfortunately our 2nd commissioner was rigging the game on the back end by tweaking ratings. We found out by accident when we sent a file to Markus to look at and he pointed it out. We moved on to commissioner #3 but I had lost some interest in the league and eventually fizzled out.

I suggest fictional teams and players... that way you have no preconceived notions on how a player should perform.

[dracnal]

For an interesting exercise, I started an historical league - Washington Nationals 2005 GM/Manager. Brutally hard to say the least. Zero money for extensions or free agents. Budget dropped to 40M in the 2006 season with projections to go to 35M in 2007.  Can't get rid of Jose Guillen's insane contract to save my life and it's taking more than 25% of my entire budget.

Painful.

[houston-nat]

Played OOTP in an online league for 30 seasons. Was a ton of fun. Best 7-8 years of my gaming life. Unfortunately our 2nd commissioner was rigging the game on the back end by tweaking ratings. We found out by accident when we sent a file to Markus to look at and he pointed it out. We moved on to commissioner #3 but I had lost some interest in the league and eventually fizzled out.

I suggest fictional teams and players... that way you have no preconceived notions on how a player should perform.

Join a league with whytev, GuyfromCO, and me! It's not rigged!

[NJ Ave]

Can't get rid of Jose Guillen's insane contract to save my life and it's taking more than 25% of my entire budget.

If you're the 2005 Nats GM, maybe you should stop asking the other team's for their top 3 prospects in return and then wondering why they hung up on you.

[dracnal]

If you're the 2005 Nats GM, maybe you should stop asking the other team's for their top 3 prospects in return and then wondering why they hung up on you.

That's pretty much the way it's going.  I dumped all the contracts I could at 2005 July trade deadline to win now teams with lots of money. Got to the point where I was only 3 million over budget. The response from the owner was to slash my budget by 50%.  It's just brutal. Kind of makes me feel a bit sorry for Jim Bowden. Almost.

[GuyFromCO]

Join a league with whytev, GuyfromCO, and me! It's not rigged!

Yes!! Do it, Lint!

[NJ Ave]

Yes!! Do it, Lint!

I kind of want to play this game. What kind of time commitment does it take?

[GuyFromCO]

I kind of want to play this game. What kind of time commitment does it take?

Mine is a couple mins. a day (a few more when exploring trades or hunting FAs). It's more of a social thing now, TBH. We share mostly non-OOTP things in the group, and that makes it fun too.

[NJ Ave]

Mine is a couple mins. a day (a few more when exploring trades or hunting FAs). It's more of a social thing now, TBH. We share mostly non-OOTP things in the group, and that makes it fun too.

Jeez, a couple of minutes?

[houston-nat]

Jeez, a couple of minutes?

I'd say more than that. But then, I tend to nerd out and do things like sign 35 minor league free agents while watching the Nats game. Downloading the league file takes 5-7 minutes, during which I let the computer sit. Then in season it's just setting roster, managing DL, panicking about the guy who's batting .100. In the offseason it can take a bit more effort to research & make offers.

[GuyFromCO]

Jeez, a couple of minutes?

Not much more on seasonal sims really. If there's no injuries, there's not much to do, and I don't like to tinker.

[Kevrock]

5 minutes a day, baby.

[GuyFromCO]

5 minutes a day, baby.

I won this year, so...

[dracnal]

Offline, it can take a LOT more time than that. I've sunk a good chunk of my free time into it this past week. As for my historical experiment playing the 2005 Nats, budget went from 105M in 2004 to 54M in 2005. Primary goal: get the finances out of red ink. Secondary goal: Win.

By 2007, I manged to shed the horrible free agent contracts, get the team in the black, had Giancarlo Stanton and Buster Posey raking in the majors and had the Nats 59 win 2008 season a year early. I was fired.

Giants picked me up and in two years I've got the club really turned around. Only major issue was my scouting director was a pretty big fan of the crack pipe so my number one draft pick in 2008 was a phenomenal bust.

Question for the long timers - do players in the development leagues ever suddenly get massive spikes in quality? I've got Tanner Roark in my system projected as a 1/2 star ability, 1 star potential guy who has had zero development in three years.  Is there any chance he'll blossom into what the real life one is, or am I basically sitting on a piece of junk?

[houston-nat]

Question for the long timers - do players in the development leagues ever suddenly get massive spikes in quality? I've got Tanner Roark in my system projected as a 1/2 star ability, 1 star potential guy who has had zero development in three years.  Is there any chance he'll blossom into what the real life one is, or am I basically sitting on a piece of junk?

Yeah, the game system can randomly decide that some prospects "blow up" the way Roark did and some fizzle the way, say, every Nats prospect before Desmond did. And it can happen to pretty much anyone. I had a big money international free agent signing ($7M) who looked like the next Harper at age 16, and now at age 20 he looks like a 4th OF and his hitting tool is still deteriorating. Meanwhile some mediocre filler 3B in my system got called up and put in a 6.7 WAR rookie season (led the league in WAR) totally out of nowhere.

Having fictional players helps in this regard because you don't have the idea of what they "should" be. Like, if your guy named Tanner Roark was named Blanner Bloark, you would not be hanging on to him. On the other hand, his skills might still blow up one season...

[MarquisDeSade]

The IFAs are the biggest lottery tickets out there.  In the league Kevrock and I are in I've traded away my next five 1st rounders for pitching help and invested my draft money in IFAs.  Over the past four years I've probably spent $70M on IFAs and have one of the better farm systems in our league (we can only spend over $4M every two years).  A couple of them have "popped" from "good potential" to "great potential" but I find most "great potential" IFAs turn out to be "not so great" by the time they hit AA, especially outfielders.  I have had a couple of catcher IFA prospects turn out great but those guys also had good ceilings and didn't get hurt (something that plagues our IFA pitching prospects).

The OOTP17 engine had some really quirky development arcs for "black swan" players.  I had a LHP that had 55 stuff potential at 21 jump up to 80 stuff in a single season and added a pitch.  Of course, that only happened after I traded him for a #4 starter but it happens a lot, especially with pitchers.  I don't remember that happening in OOTP16 or even OOTP15 but in OOTP17 it happened quite a bit in our league.  There aren't many position players that had ratings jumps like that in our league but apparently it's a thing with pitchers.  The guys in our drafts have almost never had any kind of insane ratings bumps like the ones with pitchers though I did have a guy with 55 power potential suddenly jump up to 80 after a sim.  He hasn't lived up to it (they rarely do) but he's not my problem now.

[dracnal]

Thanks - those are both helpful answers. I'm starting to pay a lot more attention to my minor league rosters, though I'm thinking about throwing away the current game and starting fresh, using entirely fictional players. That way my expectations aren't set in the way Houstoun Nat points out.

[whytev]

Thanks - those are both helpful answers. I'm starting to pay a lot more attention to my minor league rosters, though I'm thinking about throwing away the current game and starting fresh, using entirely fictional players. That way my expectations aren't set in the way Houstoun Nat points out.

Just join our league. It's 2071 and everyone we watch now is dead.