Recommended settings for OOTP historical saves

[@robbieg416]

I know this is an older video, but I really appreciate your suggestions. Thanks a lot!

[@baseballdreamland]

I appreciate the kind words. Glad it was helpful!

[@tpyro1396]

Good to see someone playing OOTP as close to real baseball as possible. I watched a lot of youtubers not take this game as serious as I do so glad i found your channel.

[@baseballdreamland]

Appreciate that!

[@stanleyrosella7042]

Long time gone, but I got some issues in playing historical sims. The biggest weird thing is how cup-of-coffee players often ends up with ratings as supermen at their positions in the defense ratings. Mind the scout system I took a look at several of them after they played 4-5 years in the majors with some 30-60 games. Example Dave Rohde is maxed out on 2B,3B,SS and his number ratings (in the editor is 240 on rangr and arm, that's better than Cal Ripken Jr). I started in early 1980s so over some 20 years I have seen these part timers easily ousting out top quality players. I use Recalc after each year and have 3y set (tested 1y but no chance), double weight on current year. The Develop is unticked, so they should stay as in history. Also based on Real Stats with fielding ratings set as Current season. That Fielding ratings should change these players in my mind every year, but not so. It looks weird with bars up in blue maxed out on so many of these fill-in players. Their batting skils looks to work OK, but they turn into defensive monsters. So have you played out several season in one or many version of OOTP and checked these players ?. My sim has been running for many versions but they all have showed the same results. When I once started this sim I had the oppertunity to see and change Adjust Hitter Op and same for pitcher but I let it go default. When the sim is going this option is not changeable anymore. One can change those recalc option and everything else. Sadly an issue not easily found in talks in OOTP forums.

[@baseballdreamland]

Hi there! I’ve mainly played with recalc off and the development engine on, but not experienced what you’re seeing at scale. In my save, there are a few players like Chili Davis and Danny Tartabull who turned into beasts defensively at positions they only played irl in the minors. But there weren’t very many examples of this, and it didn’t have this problem with new draft classes either. My guess is it’s something to do with the recalc. Do you use the setting that nerfs rating for players with less than X plate appearances? Wondering if it’s a small sample size phenomenon.

[@THEWMGUY99]

Awesome Thanks For The Video

[@baseballdreamland]

Hope it helped!

[@CampVogel]

That part about negotiating an extension with a player in his secondary position reminded me of another trade rule. It's a rare case but an obvious exploit: don't trade for players who are on the wrong end of their eventual position change. In a 1989 game, you can get Cincinnati to throw in Trevor Hoffman with any trade, because he's a SS prospect with zero offensive potential. Then you can switch him to pitcher and have a #1 prospect for free.

[@baseballdreamland]

Good one. I haven’t run into a blatant situation like that before.

[@Rspenesmit]

Hello I'm new to OOTP, planning to order 24 if things work out, my Questions is, 1 thing I would like to do is if I can do it in the game, Can I choose my own Superstar team, or teams and have them play each other, or take my Superstar picked team from history, like Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax, Johnny Bench all on the same team and have them play in any given year, alone against all the teams from that season or put together a whole small league of all -stars and or pick some all time great teams like the 27 Yankees to this league, like a mix and match thing, I've looked all over and can't seem to find an answer to this, any help would be appreciated.

[@baseballdreamland]

Hi there. Yes, you can do all that. Assembling teams of players from different teams/seasons is a bit tedious as you have to import them one by one. But you options are vast in this game.

[@kasdcomoa5567]

Great video! I want to do a simulation from 1903-2022 but I want it to be as close to real life as possible. I won't control anything I just want to sim and watch games. What are the most important settings to do this so that league leaders and such are accurate? Thanks for the video

[@baseballdreamland]

Glad you liked it! If you’re going purely for accuracy, the two aspects are player ratings and playing time. For player ratings, you want the development engine off and ratings recalculation on. Each player will inherit new ratings each season based on their real-life performance for that season, no matter what happens in your save. For playing time, turn on real life transactions and daily lineups. This causes each game to mimic the real life rosters, lineups, and starting pitchers from that day in real life. Good luck!

[@kasdcomoa5567]

@@baseballdreamland Thanks for the reply! One last question if you don't mind. You went over the coaching system option very briefly in the video and after looking more into it online I'm still unsure how much a of an effect it will have in my case of trying to have an "authentic" simulation. Do you have any recommendation on if I should turn this off or leave it be? I'm also wondering if I should turn off the player personality and morale options too?

[@baseballdreamland]

@@kasdcomoa5567 No problem. I don’t have any data on the impact of coaching. My guess is OOTP doesn’t have historical coaches built in for a great deal of accuracy. I’d turn off what you can. Guessing you can’t completely turn off coaches as they impact strategy settings like how aggressive their baserunners are and how often they use substitutions. Personality and morale also make sense to turn off.

[@tpyro1396]

I think 19 is a good minimum age for debuts in the majors. Bryce harper, Mike trout made their debut at age 19.

[@baseballdreamland]

Normally I agree, but it seemed like the AI was calling up 19 years olds by the bushel, including players with no minor league experience above A ball. Some were ready for MLB and some weren’t. If it were just calling up the special cases, I would have been fine with it.

[@baseballdreamland]

I do recognize I’m shortening the careers of a few players who do deserve a call-up at 19. Unfortunate side of the tradeoff.

[@guthrien]

Hopefully this is still a place to question... what is your experience with Minor Leagues playing historically? I want to use the development system, and playing long term doesn't make sense without minor leagues. I accept the appearance of fictional players and in my experience, they come frequently. Especially to pitchers. I had to block fictional players from arriving to the league year 1 because fictional pitchers took over all the rotations. But after that, things seemed to normalize, but it never felt quite normal playing a single team. Besides setting team sizes which you show, are there any other tips about integrating that part of the game?

[@baseballdreamland]

Hi guthrien. My experience playing with minors in 1980+ has been good. I have never had to introduce a fictional player to my save. The draft classes are more than big enough for a traditional 40 round draft. I do experience a fair number of random guys becoming viable big league pitchers through TCR. It somewhat makes sense as pitching talent and development is more volatile even in real life. Only tip that comes to mind is do NOT use age limits during the off-season. It stops younger players from entering the draft. Other than that, I don’t have anything specific because the game handles most of it. What era are you playing in and how big have your draft classes been?

[@guthrien]

@@baseballdreamland I started the sim in 1985, just slowly enjoying and observing every year until 2021 where I jumped in to play in this alternate universe. I think the problem may be then that I left the draft at it's default settings of 20 rounds. Where I often adjust the draft in 'modern' play, I simply left that default, and unchecked block fictional players from reaching majors. At the same time, I used all 5 minor league levels. So, setting your draft to 40 rounds, you have completely full rosters at all levels of the minors and MLB, without any fictional players? If so, I will redo that though I didn't mind them. It was more when I took over as a full GM, the player pool felt more constrained than playing a 'normal' 2022 season.

[@guthrien]

@@baseballdreamland also, yes the TCR and how it has affected the career trajectories of players was so entertaining. Doc Gooden is the far better Nolan Ryan of my world, of endless examples. Love it.

[@baseballdreamland]

@@guthrien correct my full minors is completely stocked with real players. If memory serves, minor league rosters weren’t completely filled when the save started, but it didn’t take long to happen through free agents and drafts. I also have the “allow ghost players” checked which will help in the low minors on occasion.

[@baseballdreamland]

@@guthrien Doc Gooden? He was a bum in my save. :)

[@tpyro1396]

I think 45 ratings and 40 current year stats 10 previous year and 5 2years ago stats works the best. The AI will value the ratings first just like most of us who play OOTP do then it will look at stats for the current year, but if that player has had a bad past two season like in real baseball they would be trying to trade that player .I've tested those ratings each and every way possible and this the closet to realism you can get it.

[@baseballdreamland]

Looking at my trade decisions this season, I might nudge my settings toward yours a bit. Maybe 60-25-10-5.

[@tpyro1396]

I got this game on steam is there a way in can get those custom sounds in my game. If you can do a video on how to do it that would be awesome.

[@baseballdreamland]

Sure, I can do something like this for my next video. I don’t play OOTP through Steam, but I have done FM22 and you can easily apply mods, so I don’t think OOTP will be much different. Might be a week or two before I can come out with this video. In the meantime, this is the best thread I’ve seen. forums.ootpdevelopments.com/showthread.php?t=325745