Amaroq
Posts: 1100
Joined: 8/3/2005
From: San Diego, California
Status: offline
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ORIGINAL: BrewerFan
Hi
Hi, and welcome to the boards.
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How much modding does it take to get a good historical league running?
It depends on your definition of 'good'. 
The association creation process will give you the exact team structure, schedule (if possible), and player distribution that the real world had for that year; its trivial.
Getting player photos up, and associating logos with teams, pretty quick, maybe 5-10 minutes.
Getting the ballpark dimensions correct with the default park image, another 5-15 minutes maybe. (You could speed that up by using the built-in versions of the park, say "The Polo Grounds", but if you want precision, park dimensions changed from year to year, and its pretty quick to get that info from the web)
The time-consuming thing is setting up the "PSPN-Cast" with old ballpark photos. So, if you find some photo of The Polo Grounds off the web, and you want to use that as your background, there is a lot of data involved to describe what the ball's motion on the park should look like. I typically find that takes about 2 hours for a 16-team association, and its slow going.
So, for your limited budget, I'd say skip it and use the default background image.
The good news is, if you want to start that 1930 association over a second time, you could do all the work (parks, PSPNcast, logos, etc) and then save off the association as a template - I'm hoping we-the-community will wind up with a library of templates which are 'correct' for certain starting years.
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I read somewhere else that ther is no longer expansion...so does that mean that if you started with a 16 team league it would be that way forever?
That is correct.
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Is there a way to allow a franchise to switch cities?
Trivial - there's a 'region editor', and you can move the city, rename the team, change the climate, etc.
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Is there a way to draft the players onto the original teams they played for or is it a random draft every time?
You can choose either mode on association startup. So, if you want 1930, you can have it seeded with the players either on the team that they spent the majority of 1930 with (e.g., if I spent 50 at bats on the Cubs and 30 at bats on the Giants, I'd show up on the Cubs roster - even if I started the season as a Giant), or available in one large 'fictional' draft.
AFTER that, in subsequent years, all the players are available in an amateur draft, so when Joe DiMaggio in the late thirties, he'll wind up on the worst team in your association, not the Yankees.
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Is the action "on the field" suspsenseful?
Yes - you can't tell when the ball leaves the bat if its an out or a hit. If you're familiar with baseball, you'll be able to read it - oh that should be a hit, oh that feels like a pop out - but until it actually lands you don't know if its going to drop in, or if there will be a fantastic diving catch, or what.
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Are there any funky things that occur that need workarounds in the historical replays?
You probably want to "turn finances off" if you want to play in the Reserve Clause era - that way you don't wind up with Free Agency.
If you go wayyy back, and import, say, 1901, there weren't enough 'real' players to fill out a 25-man roster (in PureSim 2005), so you'd wind up with ten-point "scrubs" filling out your roster. Unfortunately, you'd handle that better than the AI, which would go to the bullpen even though the tired starter was much better than the ten-point scrub on the bench. I think Shaun's fixed that pretty well for '07, by importing players who had only 1 or 2 at bats / innings pitched at the "minor league quality" - so at least you'll have a roster of real players.
The biggest downer at the moment is that the AI's pitcher usage model is still solidly based in 2005 - so even if you're playing in 1901, you won't see a ton of complete games. The AI is much more likely to pull the pitcher after six or seven innings, and even if he lasts eight with a 2-0 lead, you'll see the 'closer' come in, even though the 'closer' role is still fifty years in the future. There's not really a workaround for that - you just have to accept it.
The other odd thing is that, though you can pick a 60-man association with 'real' players, the game will start creating quality fictional players to fill out the system, and those fictional players will compete with playing time with the real players. So some fictional player might wind up setting your association's all-time home run record instead of the sluggers you were expecting. (This behavior does not occur with a 35-man association).
Finally, players are imported at their (dominant) position their 'freshman' year. So, if you have a player who debuted as an outfielder in 1943, but converted to a first baseman in 1944 and played first for twenty years, in your game he'll stay an outfielder. This is most noticeable with Babe Ruth - he stays a pitcher! (Most people work around that by deleting Babe-the-pitcher after the 1918 season, and importing the 1919-Babe to start his slugging outfield career.)
That also has trouble for 1901, where it was common to have a player who played significant games in the field, but was also one of your team's six pitchers. If the game decides he's an outfield player, he doesn't receive any pitching ability at all, and the if the game decides he's a pitcher, he receives 'ten point scrub' hitting ability. I don't think there's much of a workaround for it.
Shaun is pretty well aware of these issues - I'm sure getting them 'right' is 'on the list', but it hasn't been a priority yet. (He's typically very good at responding to community requests).
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