Gonna make a superteam (OOTP18)
 

The recent "who are the golden state warriors" of baseball discussion coupled wth my evergreen desire to get immersed into my existing league (Currently at 428 seasons) has led me to want to basically create a super team with star players and see how dominant they can be for a while. It'll give me some names to remember, help me notice who else is good and spend a decade trying to power through a dynasty of sorts, or at least, that'd be the idea if it works.

I found a bug where OOTP wasn't generating a player register of older players from teams, so they fixed it, but the game still won't generate more than 4000 players if a franchise had them, some of mine have, so I've had to slowly start retiring old teams and replacing them with either new versions of themselves or entirely new clubs.

I haven't decided whether I want to take over one of these legacy teams or start a new team again, but I think I am likely to take over an older franchise and see if they can't dominant in the new era.

More to come.

2227 TEAM LINEUP
 

The Bethlehem Meteors aren't a true expansion team, they replaced the Philadelphia Baseball Club which existed since the first season of this league, but was another one of those clubs with such a massive history that the game wasn't even generating an accurate win-loss record for them anymore.

I started to put a new team in Philly, but my thing lately has been avoiding putting as many teams in real-life big league cities, so I opted for somewhere else in PA.

We'll see if it sticks, but so it goes.

Saratoga Springs is a club that spent its first three years in Austin, Texas.
Columbus (OH) moved from Chicago where they were the Wind Sox for three years.

I've decided to go ahead and start rebooting the franchises that are super old so the game doesn't screw up their histories anymore on the standings page. I could just rebuild the league tbh, but it wouldn't work and I'd prefer to keep the records/history as-is.

Migrating teams is tedious as hell though, so it won't all be done at once.

I haven't figured out what team we're taking over yet to build our super team, but it'd be easier to use a team with no players or few of them rather than a team with existing talent, but that'd preclude using a legacy team. Aah, the dilemmas.

Here's an example of what OOTP does to teams that have been around for too long, their win/loss records get borked beyond comprehension. For a while, I just ignored it, but whatever they did now to "fix" the team player registers just breaks the history on these team entirely. Rather than complaining, I just figure it's time to rebuild those teams or decide whether to fold them entirely.

Here are the teams that currently are affected by this issue, because they're just too old (all pre-1850 teams)

Victoria Cougars (the only team that have never moved and have never changed names in their history dating back to 1800.)

Toronto Blue Collars (1800)
Georgia Peanuts (1800)
Arizona Wrens (1800)
Brooklyn Originals (1812)
Colorado Gold Sox (1812)

It doesn't affect the Eau Claire Paws (1812) for some reason. I already recreated the Washington Maroons (1812) who were also afflicted by the issue, but their safe in their current name/city. The biggest hassle for some of these recreations is having to recreate all of their retired numbers. I like the history, so I like to keep it going.

Right now, I'm tempted to permanently fold Victoria Cougars. The team hasn't made sense in a long time, despite a long history, they haven't ever had many breakout stars, they've just been around forever and have won 15 titles since 1800. Also, I added a team in Vancouver in the past decade, so there's less reason for two B.C. based teams at all, but I didn't want to ever move the Cougars. Instead, it might be time to retire the Cougars history/records and create a new team to replace them.

Other teams above will all remain in the league -- the Peanuts, Blue Collars, Wrens, Originals and Gold Sox have distinctive teams to me and I can't imagine the league without them.

So maybe our super team will be the ashes of whatever the Victoria Cougars become. Now it'll be a question of finding the right logo/city to match where to put them. I'm thinking it might be time for a 4th California team again.

The Peanuts didn't stay in Georgia, I'm going to move them back to San Francisco where they were for the bulk of their 400+ year history and the team will attempt to bring the name back to glory as a super team. I think it makes the most sense for the storyline of the league to have the Peanuts try to mount this kind of assault and it gets me another team in California which is what I wanted.



Meanwhile, Saratoga Springs will become the Georgia Peaches and replace the Peanuts franchise without ever playing a game in Saratoga. They might be back someday, I like the name. Just doesn't make sense right this second.

Current league is 34 teams. Playoff format has 12 teams in the post-season.

ELIMINATION SERIES (BEST OF 3) worst division champ & 3 wild cards duke it out to make the division series
DIVISION SERIES (BEST OF 5)
LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP (BEST OF 7)
KEROUAC CUP SERIES (BEST OF 9)

12 seems to be the sweet spot on playoffs, that you get to nuke fluke teams that win weak divisions, but not so open that there's no consequence for finishing 3rd or something and then getting lucky all the way to a title.

Type Storage Minimum Value Maximum Value
(Bytes) (Signed/Unsigned) (Signed/Unsigned)
TINYINT 1 -128 127
0 255
SMALLINT 2 -32768 32767
0 65535

Wonder why wins would be unsigned. *shurg*

Two years into our superteam experiment and the results were how I wanted. The Peanuts have won back-to-back titles.

At first, the culprit seemed they played in a pitcher's park, but San Francisco's weather turns EVERY stadium into a pitcher's park. If you use OOTP Park Gen to create a stadium, even when it's a hitter's park, San Francisco's wind turns it into something else. So that adds a challenge, but I think what we have now works because it's a retractable roof park.

Anyway, the most recent playoff tree.


Chad Hatcher of the Peanuts won the NL Pitcher of the Year award.



We'll truly see how this team performs next year with a full year in the more hitter-friendly stadium.

How much does a super team cost? About how much you'd expect.


Though last year, Florida Rockets had a payroll over $250m, but yeah...no one else really close.

Highest paid players prior to the start of free agency in 2229. Ricky Aguinaga played for Brooklyn, then got traded to us for the post-season run. I traded him to Las Vegas the day after the playoffs ended. He's old and really got a huge contract on the strength of one huge season in Vancouver about six years ago and hasn't played anything close to it since.

I've decided to make a 2nd super team in the other league. I'm going to move the Bethlehem Meteors someplace else and then that team is going to go on a massive spending spree and we'll see whether the team clubs end up duking it out ever for ultimate supremacy or if nothing like that happens at all.

Mostly because of the OOTP history bug, I've gone ahead and recreated new versions of most of the oldest clubs in the league. The Victoria Cougars and Eau Claire Paws will last one more season and then be retired for good, though. The Vancouver club will end up being moved back to Canada (Right now, I have them in Vancouver, WA) and then I'll figure out what the Eau Claire club will become.

I haven't done anything with the Meteors yet, mostly because I always spell their name wrong, but I just don't know where/what to do with them. I try to avoid putting teams in major league markets if I can help it, but things might have skewed too far in the smaller direction and it might be time to do that with these next few clubs. I just don't want to move them, so where I put them has to make sense in my head so I don't have to.

After over 400 seasons, the Eau Claire Paws are no more. They made 116 playoff appearances and won 11 titles during their time. The Iowa Chops took over all of their players and farm system.

The Victoria Cougars, the only team never to change its name or move in the entirety of this dynasty have been folded too. They're replaced by the San Antonio Phantoms (who have existed before).

With some deft realignment, currently 19 of the 34 teams in the league are teams playing in existing MLB markets. Seems about right.