Operation Sports Forums - MLB '11 The Show: Tips and Work Arounds

Sorry I'm a little late this year....but as usual...no game is perfect.....so I'll be putting tips and work arounds that you guys find and come up with here and update it, in order to help the community get the most out of MLB'11

I'll update this first post with the items you guys post here in the thread.
Everything is up for discussion...all I ask is keep it civil.
This is aimed at being a thread solely dedicated to HELP the community.
Thanks!!:waytogo::waytogo:

-Problem: Free Agent problem in franchise mode?...Younger players not getting tendered offers?
-Solution: From Neolithic
-My 30 team workaround:

I use 30 team control (with 1 team having my profile, the others with dummy profiles with everything on auto) Your team can have it's stuff set however, you want everything on manual, go ahead, I used auto for the sims for the sake of speed. Play your season out like you would normally, if you want to inspect pending trades every day to make sure crazy things don't happen, by all means. That stuff is up to the player playing really. Budgets on or off don't seem to matter (I only did a couple years with budgets on, the only thing I saw was for whatever reason, a couple teams had 90/90 rosters as of the start of the offseason, I just went into their roster and released the lowest rated guy on the entire roster to open up a slot and make it 89/90)

Once the offseason hits I would do the following:

Handle your team however you like, tender, non-tender guys, offer arbitration, don't offer arbitration, it's your team, do what you like.

Make offers for FA's as per normal.

OPTIONAL STEP: stop the sim the day before you have to have all arbitration offers made and go through all teams and if you feel a team should offer a guy arbitration but have not, make an offer for arbitration for them. I haven't done this in my sims yet, but it's something I've considered due to people reporting arbitration offers vanishing.

Proceed as normal till Dec 2nd. On Dec 2nd go through every team, and make offers to every "contract renewable" player on a team. *** I haven't played around with offers much, I've been offering the default contract offer that shows up, I think you can change them all to lowball offers of 1yr/50k and it won't have any adverse effect. 8/10 guys don't take the default offer before Feb 28th anyways, but making all offers 1yr/50k will pretty much ensure all of them will not accept the offer by Feb 28th.*** The other thing that you can play with is having an age limit on your offers, say, anyone 30 years old and over even if they are renewable, do not offer a contract and let them fall off into FA and either rot or get signed on their own merits.

Once you have made the offers, proceed through the offseason as normal, and on Feb 28th, or 29th if it's a leap year, the CPU will renew everyone that hasn't accepted the offer you made them on or before Dec 2nd. You obviously have to manually renew the players are your team anytime after Feb 15th if you have your profile setting on manual for that stuff.

This is the basic workaround. Thus far it seems to work. Hopefully SCEA will have a patch that takes care of this soon!
Thanks to Neolithic for this work around.
(a note...many guys contributed to working on this...maddgunns......joshpsu...heroesandvillians and especially tabarnes19, who has been working on this and solutions...AND been in contact with the dev team in order to help resolve this.)

-30 Team Control and Profiles-- How does this work?...and How do I use it to control just one team as my own?
There has been a lot of questions surrounding 30 team control since it's introduction last year. Some people think that choosing to control all 30 teams means you must micro-manage every aspect of every club. You don't. Choosing this to start a franchise really just means that you ....at any point in your franchise...can step in and make changes to any club.
Here is how it works:
PROFILES
Profiles are what will determine what you control or have the CPU control for any team you choose when starting a franchise. If you want to run just ONE team...and have the CPU run the rest(identically)...you would simply need to create two profiles.
Go to USER SETTINGS.....and then CREATE...give it a name for you CPU teams...say CPU! Make the choices you want for your teams...by making them AUTO. The CPU will now handle any of those duties. Back out and click apply and make default.
Make another for YOUR team....say USER1 and toggle to MANUAL anything you want to run.
Now...
When you start a franchise....and get the chance to select the USER CONTROLLED ROSTER....you simply check off the teams you want to be able to either run yourself....or have the CPU run...but still be able to step in if you like. These will get the DEFAULT PROFILE you made named CPU...
Use the Rstick to change the team you want to USER1.
You then advance to the MODE ENTRY OPTIONS and make your choices there...this is a league wide options menu.
The CPU will now handle all the duties EXCEPT the two drafts. You must do these for it...If you hit SQUARE at the PICK PLAYER screen for the CPU teams in the amateur draft...it will show you it's choice.
The Rule V is up to you.
Remember that for lineups to stick you must set them AFTER SPRING TRAINING and have them set to MANUAL. The CPU will still sub for fatigue.
With this set up...you will be able to step in without changing any profile options for any team and make changes...

-I keep hearing of the "Jeter head" bug...what is it?
The Jeter bug is a product of using the Create-A-Player option and then exporting and importing that player into a roster. If the player is a real player....that is/was an SCEA player at some point, he will take on the appearance of that player when filling in the audio name. If it is NOT and SCEA player, he will take on the appearance of Derek Jeter. There are a few threads surrounding this....and how it can actually be beneficial for guys wanting historical players that were removed from this years game.
-How do I avoid the Jeter bug if I want to create a roster by importing players?
Simple....if you want to import players...you have to make sure that the person who created them, uses players that are fake generated players and not CAPS. Making players from the gen players on the default(or any) roster is essentially the same as making a CAP if you use an "A" potential player. Importing these players will keep the appearance of the edit and not transform into any other player. You can do this as many times as you like as well as there are no limits to exporting/importing.
-Creating/editing players and exporting and importing them in order to get the potentials I want on my roster takes up a lot of hard drive space and gets massive and confusing!...How can I avoid this?
What I do is this...I simply take one each of an A/B/C/D pitcher and position player and export them naming them A Pitcher...B Pitcher...C Pitcher ...etc. That's 8 players on the drive. Instead of editing the player(with potential I want) ON the roster then exporting and importing...I simply import one of the templates as stated and THEN edit the player. Like I said...you can import as many times as you like.....ANY potential as many times as you like.

I have LINEUPS set to MANUAL in my 30 team control franchise, but as soon as I finish Spring Training the lineups get reset by the CPU...how do I stop this?
Two ways...
One...is to wait until after Spring Training to set the lineups...If you do it on Day One of the season ...they will stay. The CPU will still sub for fatigue...so keep that in mind.
The other is to set the MLB rosters for each club on the last day of Spring Training.
If you go into each teams roster on that last day and demote the 15 players you don't want on the CPU teams(make sure those guys are not in a lineup/rotation!).....then the lineups will stay. It is when the CPU must demote/cut a player that this happens.
The same goes for rotations.

-How do I manually injure players?
Here is another thing that some guys seem to get a little turned around on.
You DO NOT need to have 30 team control to manually injure players. It can be in any franchise/season setup.
-First...you must have injuries set to MANUAL(not ON) in you USER SETTINGS ----GAMEPLAY options.
-then you simply go to the DISABLED LIST of the team you wish to injure/heal a player and hit the R1 button to get the roster screen. Hit X on a player...and give him the injury. The same applies for removing injuries for players.

The CPU keeps pulling the closer after a hit or run in the 9th...what can I do?!!!(just FYI...this was noted and is being worked on for patch #2.....so this is a temp fix)
There is a glitch in the A.I. that looks to the bullpen in the closer situations .....in what seems to have the logic as it does for "regular" RP.
When playing against a team that brings in it's closer....pause the game....switch controls to the other team.....go into it's bullpen....and sit down any relievers it is warming up. This seems to switch off the A.I. into wanting to change pitchers with the closer on the mound...

These are thoughts on the training area of the game.

1. Weight Room -> Power R/L ->All
2. Stretching -> Durability -> All
3. Sprints -> Speed -> All
4. Long-Distance Running -> Stamina -> Pitchers
5. Batting Cages -> Contact R/L -> All
6. Hitting Coach Session -> Clutch / Plate Visibility / Plate Discipline ->All
7. Bunting Drills -> Bunting ->All
8. Base Running Drills -> Base Running Ability / Aggression -> All
9. Long Toss -> Arm Strength -> All
10. Infield Drills -> Arm Accuracy / Fielding Ability ->All
11. Shagging Fly Balls -> Reaction -> All
12. Catcher Drills -> Plate Blocking -> Catchers
13. Pitch Simulated Game -> Pitching Clutch -> Pitchers
14. Pitching Coach Session -> H/9, HR/9, K/9, BB/9 ->Pitchers
15. Bullpen Session -> Velocity, Control, Break ->Pitchers

Regarding the pinch hit bug......and the scorebar/reliever glitch
Thanks to Amazien....
The can't-pinch-hit bug is still there, but for anyone having that problem, you can back out of the sub menu, pause, unpause, then go back in and it should let you do it. (That also applies to the scorebar-after-reliever problem... pause and it should return.)

HERE IS A WORK AROUND FOR THE "SAVE DATA CREATED BY ANOTHER USER" ERROR
Thanks to shigogouhou for this...

OK, I may have found a workaround for the "Save data created by another user" issue:
1) Boot up the game. As soon as you hit the menu screen, go over & save the default roster in a new file. Don't load anything beforehand; I tried this fix as soon as I got the error in my new RTTS & it wouldn't let me create a new roster file ("There is no file present" or something similar)
2) Once you've saved that roster in a new file, load whatever roster you want to use.
3) Save the roster you just loaded over the one you just created.

Now the roster you want is stored in a file created by you, so it's not going to get jammed up & it'll let you create RTTS/Franchise files with those rosters.

Here is a vid to show the steps...
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TC5nmah90fU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

POST PATCH FRANCHISE SETUP to alleviate later years in your franchise having the FA list getting filled with top talent that should be signed.
Thanks to tabarnes19 for this tip!...

There are essentially two solutions to the Free Agent issue that now occurs in 2015.

1.) One is to turn budgets off. This allows the cpu to sign players above the "salary cap."

From reading the description of budget off and some basic testing the only negative is the cpu will not take finances into effect when making trades and signings. This appears to be the only "fix" for single user franchises.

2.) The best solution that I have seen is to use 30 team control with training set to manual for ALL profiles. The key here is to make sure that NOTHING is checked in training for ALL teams. Easiest way is to set training to Manual on all profiles before starting a franchise since the cpu will not assign any training.

If you have already started a franchise--after switching all profiles to manual---go through each team and uncheck all training assignments.

From what I can see this seems to eliminate any issues with players until the 2016 offseason. At that point if you want to "step in" and make a low ball offer to a Big Name player or two the cpu seems to have cash and will sign them.

One thing that I would suggest and is optional is this....

Since patch the CPU seems to sign almost ALL Big name free agents before they hit open market in exclusive period. To allow some of those players to hit the market I have been using this work around...

When you start offseason..on all profiles..in User Settings..Mode Options...change contracts to manual...Then sim to day before exclusive period is over. So if period ends the 7th highlight the sixth and sim to date. A prompt will appear asking if you want to stop sim due to last day. Hit yes and go back to contracts and change back to auto for all teams except the one you are controlling. Offer to your team what you want, the cpu is doing the same. When you sim to next day you will notice that some players will be resigned by cpu on that last day before they hit the market. Others will hit the market but the cpu will still offer contracts to it's own free agents. Some will resign with the original team even after (think Jeter last year) and others will switch teams.

I see No reason not to use 30 team control now since it is an identical mode now with 1p. Strategies change for ALL teams and it allows you the ability to scroll through other teams lineups and rotations. You can step in as much or little as you would like. I usually never do, but like I said it allows that option of you so choose.

-For those that might need some tips on hitting and a new camera look to help you at the plate...thanks to spit_bubble for this tip...and to others for chiming in. Rather than pasting the thread....I have provided the link to it instead.....some good stuff in there!
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...et-inside.html

UNABLE TO SAVE SECONDARY FRANCHISE FILES..

-If you are receiving this message when trying to save your franchise file(not originally it looks like, but secondary saves)..."You have loaded data created by another user. When saving this data, only overwriting the current saved file will be permitted..." ....try this fix.
Load in franchise a slider set and it should allow you other saves...
Thanks to Apostle and rondoman for the fix tip!

-THIS IS THE GUIDE TO BUDGET INCREASES FOR YOUR TEAMS
Top 8 record = 1-2%
Finish > .500 = Even
.450-.499 = -1%
.420-.449 = -2%
.419-.378= -3%
.377-.363= -4%
.362 and below= -5%

Best record = 2%
World Series berth = 2%
World Series title = 3%
Make Championship Series= 1-3%
Worst record = -1%
Lowest Payroll = Unchanged

You also seem to get increase if you make the championship series. I didn't see any team get less than a 3 % increase if they made it that far
Thanks to mrs844224 for this tip..

Getting an error when trying to add a player to the playoff roster....
try this...
-Also, here is a way to circumvent the system, so to speak.

These first 3 must be done ON August 31st. (you can play all the games on this day, just DON'T skip ahead until after you do steps 1-3.

1. Turn Injuries to "manual"

2. Call up any minor league player you might want to add to the playoff roster.

3. Manually injure this player and then place on the 15 day D.L.

4. Sim past August 31st and up to Sept 1st. These "injured players" will now be playoff eligible.

5. Remove the injuries, and send them back down to the minors.

Finish out the rest of the regular season. These players will now be able to be added to the playoff roster, replacing anyone on the current roster.

This is helpful, as you can now add an extra hitter for the 5th starter, who likely won't see any action in the post season (or drop your long reliever for a position player, and make the 5th starter the long man).

Remember, if a player is injured in September, DO NOT put him on the D.L. If he is still injured when the post season begins, he can be replaced by any player currently on the 40 man roster.

Thanks to ktd1976 for this work around....

M.K.
Knight165