The FOOLHome Kit Quickstart

[Young Drachma]

After trying for a while now to get into a solo league, I realized it just might not happen right now. My fast-sim online league was taking over my life. I was more concerned with Rich Lang's career than I was about some guy in some league I hadn't created yet. I wondered who the next stars of the future would be and what people the game would generate. Best of all, I wanted to just do it over and over again.

The Front Office Offseason League, now entering it's 11th season, is giving you a chance to do the next best thing to playing in the league, but to get to run your very own FOOL fantasy team. It'll make lurking in the FOOL forum that much more interesting, because you'll now have your own FOOL stories to tell! Be an armchair GM and everything. Turn injuries on for a new twist! So much more!


Unveiling the FOOL Home Kit!




It contains the 16 teams of the Front Office Offseason League and it's dated January 1971. All of the players have been released and now you get the chance to draft your own team and play away!

Quickstart

1. Load up any saved game in OOTP.
2. Go to Game Menu | Add-ons Central.
3. Click "Add Server", and in the box, paste in the following path: http://silomile.com/downloads/fool.xml
4. You will see the FOOL Home Kit file with a "download" link next to it. Download it.
5. After downloading is completed, the "download" will change to "install." Install it.
6. You should now be able to do a "New Quickstart game" and see the 'FOOL Home Kit.'

The league settings are modeled after SkyDog's league totals for OOTP9. The development settings for the Quickstart are actually lower than Ronco's settings. The development and aging settings for this quickstart are set to .500 across the board, so your players have nice long careers, but the development settings are the same as Ronco's.

Injuries are off by default. FOOL is an online league that plays an entire season with the offseason during the week and the season simmed on weekends. As a result, having the season condensed into one day, means that injuries would slow things down. So we don't use 'em, but for your solo league, you probably could, as it'd be an interesting twist to things.

The rosters are set right now to 40-man because it's the offseason, but in FOOL, we use a 25-man roster all season. Set it to your preference, after all. It's your solo league!


Here are the teams:

CONTINENTAL LEAGUE (no-DH)
Atlanta Firecrackers
Baltimore Terrapins
Brooklyn Brownstones
New York Highalnders
Rio Grande Roadrunners
Texas Copperheads
Toronto Atlantics
Valdosta Peanuts

REPUBLIC LEAGUE (DH)
Ann Arbor Wolverines
Boston Settlers
Colorado Rancheros
Compton Brothers
El Paso Alligators
Hartford Harpooners
Quad City Thunderstorms
Seattle Armada

The two leagues are evenly matched and play a 154-game schedule with no-interleague play. The two teams that win their leagues, play in a best-of-nine game FOOL Classic at the end of the year. The all-star game is set to the end of the season before the playoffs.

Here are just some of the jerseys:



There are jerseys, team logos and uniforms all complete with this. The minor league teams are named so you'll know which team they correspond with in their team IDs. There is also an independent league called the Vulture League comprised of international players who eventually become free agents and get bid on by FOOL teams.

What a twist!

Best of all, it's not a large league, so it doesn't run slow even with box scores on and the like.

Download it and let me know what you think!

[Young Drachma]

Jerseys didn't seem to upload. I'm gonna add to the add-on to let you do it in-game, but for more expedient purposes, here they are:

Dynasty_DC/FOOL Uniforms - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Or you can download this .tar file. Untar all of these jerseys into your FOOL home kit league's jerseys folder.

[Young Drachma]

The wackiest thing about this, is knowing the players and coming up with a draft strategy. It's a lot like playing with MLB players for me, because after a decade in a league and following this league more closely than I follow MLB these days, these guys are the people whose names I know and all of that.

So I'm trying to balance a strategy of trying to "win now" with getting prospects and in a league that's as talent laden as this is, that's a proposition that you really have to make a mark at.

What's also interesting is, I started off drafting for my actual FOOL team, but as I think about it, I might give that team up and go to one of the AI drafted teams instead. I moved a few (big surprise) teams around from real FOOL to make things more interesting for me. I put Texas in Los Angeles and moved Colorado to New York. And did the real life FOOL move of Seattle to Columbus, OH that happened this off-season.

But it's a lot of fun and I can't wait to get started playing in my solo FOOL league tonight.

[Young Drachma]

If a few years in, the game crashes for you or won't load the database, delete the faces.dat file and then reload the game and the league file. It'll work fine after that.

[muns]

DC, I followed instructions but "in game" its saying that there is "no add on found with your server.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by muns

DC, I followed instructions but "in game" its saying that there is "no add on found with your server.

Umm...I have no idea what you could've did. lol

[Cringer]

Cool deal DC. If I wasn't in the league I would try this out.

[muns]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

Umm...I have no idea what you could've did. lol

I left the origional xxxp thing that the game puts up. I had to delete that first then copy your link..... Itd DLing now

[Young Drachma]

I'm playing this now, but instead of keeping the same FOOL teams, I decided to move all of them to different cities AND to create divisions in each league, that way...it makes it more interesting for me.

I might even add four new teams, I dunno yet.

Front Office Solo League