The Best Way To Set Up Random Debut In OOTP
Tips on turning on both recalc and player development
The Best Way To Set Up Random Debut in OOTP
I had a strange experience the other day.
I came across a thread on the OOTP subreddit. Somebody noted that Cy Young was still pitching at age 48 in his save, and that Ed Delahanty was 48 years old and still going strong.
I asked him what his setting were. He told me that he had the 3 year recalculation engine on, but had the development system turned off.
I told him that this was probably a problem according to the OOTP forums. I mentioned that most posters seemed to prefer turning on both recalc and the development engine at the same time. Turning off the development engine seems to cause strange results.
Somebody else interjected, telling me that I was completely wrong, and that you should never have recalc and the development engine turned on at the same time.
I was puzzled. And so I decided to do a few tests.
What Does Any Of This Mean?
I know that I’ve already confused most of you. Let me slow down a bit.
As you might already know, OOTP is not like other games. It’s player ratings are not necessarily based on a single season performance — though you can set the game up that way if you desire. The game engine is geared towards player development over time. As I’ve said before, it’s chiefly a general manager sim — not a replay engine like many of us are used to.
OOTP comes with two systems that influence how players develop.
The first is called the “recalc” system. “Recalc” is short for recalculation. With this turned on, player ratings are recalculated at the beginning of each season to reflect how they performed in real life during that season.
This helps account for players who develop strangely. Among other things, this system helps ensure that Babe Ruth doesn’t remain a pitcher for his entire career.
You can base the recalc system on a 1 year, 3 year, or 5 year basis, and have the option to put double the amount of weight on the current (or most recent) year.
However, the recalc engine itself does not force players to retire, as we will soon see.
The second system is the player development engine. This engine is based on real life major league baseball development, and allows for players to change over time.
I don’t know too much about how this system actually works — other than to say that it feels a bit too cut and dry to me when used on its own. You can change a setting called “talent change randomness” to add more chaos into player development, which is fun if you don’t mind Mario Mendoza turning into a batting champion.
The controversy lies over whether we can have both systems turned on at once. If you start a random debut save in OOTP, it will default to having only the development engine turned on. You can turn the recalc system on as well, though you need to do this by hand.
I ran 3 automatic random debut leagues for 122 seasons using 3 different options:
The default settings
The development engine off and recalc on
Both development and recalc turned on
I set the game to autoplay each version of this season, from 1901 through the end of the 2022 season. I used default settings, which meant league expansion and all of that jazz. The default eras were used, as well as default ballparks. It was basically an out-of-the-box project.
For each replay, I followed the careers of 10 players who I thought would be interesting to look into. These 10 players all had somewhat unusual careers. I figured we would be able to easily see the impact of these settings by looking at their careers. These players are:
Barry Bonds
Tony Conigliaro
Dizzy Dean
Ed Delahanty
Mark Fidrych
Lou Gehrig
Sandy Koufax
Babe Ruth
Ed Walsh
Ted Williams
Default Settings
The default settings generally produced results that were in line with what I expected:
Note that Ed Delahanty’s career was ended suddenly by an injury:
This isn’t as spectacular as falling into Niagra Falls while drunk.
Overall, all 10 of these players performed pretty much as I expected, though I thought Fidrych was a disappointment.
The league records were also pretty much in line with what I expected:
Babe Ruth hitting 1,052 home runs was a little bit much, but everything else here seems believable. Mike Schmidt’s 83 home run season must have been fun to watch.
Recalc Only
Those of you familiar with OOTP know what this is going to look like. All I can say is that I’ve learned my lesson.
These careers were so strange that I looked deeper.
The problem with recalc only is so heavy that it basically breaks the game. Check out Albert Pujols’ career:
He played until age… 78?!
Moises Alou also never grew old:
The records were bizarre:
It doesn’t look that bad at first glance — but you know something is off when Xander Bogaerts almost hits .500.
I took a look at the 1972 Chicago White Sox, who set the record for most wins in a season. Check this out:
I think what happened here is that players kept playing indefinitely, causing the computer manager to stick certain players on the reserve roster until there was finally a slot for them in the regular team. With players essentially immune to aging, this took decades in some cases.
Now, if you’re curious, I discovered after the fact that I actually had “Retire According To History” turned on:
In theory, turning this setting on when recalc is on is supposed to prevent this problem from happening. However, random debut apparently overrides this setting.
I don’t know how it works, and, frankly, I don’t care that much. I’m not playing with recalc only ever again.
Recalc And Development
Finally, we get to the thing that isn’t supposed to work. I was told that turning both of these settings on would “jack up” my save.
This was a lot better than I thought it would be, and wound up being a lot more interesting than I was warned.
Here are the records, in case you’re curious:
Seeing Ted Williams hit .444 one season is a bit disturbing. He also wound up leading in all time home runs, though 848 is not a ridiculous figure.
Conclusion
What did we learn from this?
Using the development engine and recalc together will not destroy your save. Stop telling people that.
The default settings are just fine.
Using recalc only breaks the game.
I keep reading things about how something fundamentally has changed in OOTP 25. I don’t see any evidence of that here. These results look exactly like what others have reported elsewhere.
Now, there are a few other things I would change before embarking on a serious random debut project. I’d kill off expansion, would stay away from some of the more extreme ballparks, would choose eras carefully, and would probably mess around with the financial system to promote more parity.
But that’s a topic for another day.
If you’re interested, I’ve uploaded backup versions of all 3 databases. You can find them in the Members Area.