How to become the greatest baseball game ever...

[eagle4]

I have played almost every baseball game on the planet, and I feel puresim is very close to being perfect and extinguishing the competition. There is only one area where other games, such as Diamond Mind, are clearly better...single season replays. Should puresim simply add a mode where the seasons can be replayed exactly as they wer in real life, it would dominate the competiton. This improvement, for all intents and purposes, is not far away. All puresim needs is a real life transaction log to switch the players from team to team as occured in the actual year it was played. For example, when my Braves play the 1993 season in puresim, they do it without Fred McGriff (who the obtained after the all star break.) Should this be added to puresim, I would never have need of diamond mind again...and all the costly season disks! I am not looking for game by game lineups...just the transactions (trades and injuries...mainly trades)

[pasternakski]

You can force trades through a "cheat."

Say you are managing team A in a replay of the year in which team A traded player X to team B for player Y. All you have to do is go to your GM screen, click on Trades, and bring up team B as the team you want to trade with. Trade player X for some worthless scrub. Now, go to the team B GM screen, and assign team B to human control (thus relinquishing control of team A for the moment). Trade player Y to team A for the same worthless scrub team A got for player X. Go back to the team A GM screen and re-assign control of team A to human, so that you are no longer in control of team B.

Obviously, you could use this "technique" to load your team up with the best players, but a good, ethical PureSimmer would never do that ... right? (I'm a lawyer, so I have no problem figuring out stuff like this, and certainly no reservations about using it to my advantage. Never forget the credo of the legal profession: "More is better")

[Amaroq]

pasternakski's trick is a good one, so long as the teams both have 'cap space' available.. if they're both right up against their budget, it doesn't work.

But I think what eagle4 is saying is 'I want the game to do this for me, and not to have to research and make every move on my own.' And that actually winds up being a lot of code change - tons of conditionals to pull the appropriate AI logic OUT and substitute this check against the real transactions. Not that it wouldn't be worth doing, just that its real work - and that's why Diamond Mind can charge so much for it.

Does Lahman even include actual dates of changes? Looking over the 5.2 spec (link: Read documentation for version 5.2) I don't see anything which would allow a game to pull that information. There's a 'stint' code, which allows you to figure out which team a player started the season on, but I don't think you'd be able to figure the actual date he transferred (unless you did something interpretive, such as "change the player at an apporpriate %% of his at-bats through the year", which would be quite error prone, and would cause problems with roster management, I suspect)...

Baseball-reference.com does have the appropriate data - for example, at the bottom of link:Harmon Killebrew's page, you can find that he was signed by the Senators on June 18, 1954, and then released on January 16, 1975, only to be signed by the Royals January 24, 1975. That would provide enough info, but I don't think its all contained in the Lahman DB - and it looks like we'd have to have a pay-database to support it.

[eagle4]

Thanks for replying. Amaroq is right, I do want the game to do this for me. It seems a future version of puresim could allow me to do this in sandbox mode. Obviously, I am not a computer programer, but it does seem like it would be easier to code a simple "trade player x on y date" than program AI routines that make the computer evaluate and pursue trades. I really think this addition would be worth the effort for puresim, because it would then become the only baseball game out there that can do both fantasy and historical replay. (I would not suggest puresim go overboard and tackle daily lineups, and right/left breakdowns like Diamond Mind. That is overkill...) Since I expect compiling the transactions would be a great deal of work (ie expense) to the game designers, I would suggest simply an applet that allowed we fans to input the information. If 100 fans took it upon themselves to look up the transactions for 1 year a piece, we could make our own database. Just make sure puresim can import the trades from a spreadsheet. Who wouldn't want to relive their favorite season...and see exactly how much a difference THEY could have made managing their favorite team!

[puresimmer]

Its funny I was thinking that "applet/user created transaction file" was the way to go as well.

Its a pretty big change, so I'll add it to the list of possibilities. It would be kind of fun in a way I guess.

Thanks for the feedback -- keep it coming!

[Amaroq]

Thanks for the reply, Shaun!

Obviously, I am not a computer programer, but it does seem like it would be easier to code a simple "trade player x on y date" than program AI routines that make the computer evaluate and pursue trades.

You're correct, it would certainly be easier to code that from the get-go...

...but once you have the AI routines, finding all of the entry points and wrapping them with conditionals would be a tough proposition - made worse when you consider the possible interactions:

What about injuries? Does the DB have to historically model all injuries? Do we disable injuries for the team? What about call-ups/send-down to the minors? Those interact, of course - if a player goes on the 15-day DL, the team needs to call up a player - and 'who to call up' is an AI routine...

Do we disable the user's trade UI? Or is that supplemental? What happens if the user trades for player A from Team X, and then Team X was supposed to trade player A to team Y for player B?

... not that it isn't achievable, it just has a lot of difficulties when we let it interact with all of the game's other features.

[eagle4]

I appreciate the reply Shaun! Please take my comments less as criticisms and more as brainstorming. As to Amaroq's comments, he brings up some great questions. As for myself, I would simply have an option to turn off trades, but allow the computer AI to continue making minor/major call ups and demotions. As for injuries, I enjoy playing with them (each player having an accurate injury rating) because it keeps some what ifs in the game (like real life). To play without injuries is often boring. Puresim is a fun game, not a simulator. Still, you could have a turn injuries off button for the hard core. I would also limit games played with the real life transactions to just a single season. Trying to carry it season to season like the "dynasty mode" would just be too difficult, and defeat the purpose of playing a historically acurate (to a point) season anyway. Thanks for the conversation folks!

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

pasternakski's trick is a good one, so long as the teams both have 'cap space' available.. if they're both right up against their budget, it doesn't work.

Well, you can still get it done by using a third team as a "straw man." Team A trades its highest-paid player to this new Team C in exchange for some guy getting paid ten bucks a year. Team B does the same. Then, Teams A and B complete their transaction as described above, and work the same "magic" on Team C to get the cosmos back into balance.

"If you can't get the great players to fit, you musta quit" - Connie Jockrun, sports agent par excellence.

[Amaroq]

Now you're just getting devious! [:D]

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

Now you're just getting devious! [:D]

Yeah, I should remember that lawyering is for fighting and PureSim is for fun.

It might be a good thing for the game to be able to make these trades in a strictly historical mode, but I doubt that I would ever use it. My preference at this point is to start at a given moment in baseball history (like, for example, the start of the 1956 season) and work my way forward retaining control over trades and leaving the vagaries of injuries to chance. It's been great so far to see Mickey Mantle perform without having torn himself up on that d@mned Yankee Stadium sprinkler head and watching Herb Score pitch without the effects of the fateful line drive. I'm managing the hated Yankees and doing pretty well, but I've got some plans in store for Bob Cerv and Billy Martin if they don't start producing.

That said, the trade model in the game involving AI clubs is impossible. You never get a decent offer from other teams (unless you use the cheat I have identified and described earlier, which I refuse to do, because it is nothing more than an unfair way to take advantage of the game - but please don't change it, Shaun, or there's no way out). There ought to be a "desperation" or "stupidity" factor built in that would allow you to seize on an opportunity that presents itself.

[Amaroq]

That said, the trade model in the game involving AI clubs is impossible.

???

I do get numerous offers for my top players, and never anything which I would accept, due to the one-for-one limitation in the AI's mind. I normally put any of my top players on whatever the 'don't bother me with trade offers' setting is (sorry, I forget the wording, but its on the Usage Options tab of the Player card.)

I find it very tough to 'take advantage of' the AI in a one-for-one trade: the only way to get it to make a trade I wouldn't have (personally) is trading value for a starting player for whom it has no quality reserve - e.g., if the team has only one quality catcher, you can pry it away from them for a higher-quality pitcher, leaving them with no catcher. Alternately, you can 'strip' a position, say, leaving the team with only one catcher by trading for their reserves.

In a multi-player trade, however, I used to find it easy to 'take advantage of' the AI: for example, in one association I constantly held my roster at or above the 'roster limit', so every spring I had to make 'cuts' to get down to the 'roster limit'. Rather than cutting, I would make between three to six 3-for-1 trades, occasionally going for something more like 5-for-2 or even 5-for-3 to acquire talented prospects from other teams in return for players I was going to cut anyways. This meant my minor-leagues were always inordinantly stocked, AND that the rest of the leagues' was inordinantly depleted... and though I couldn't get enough playing time to develop all of my prospects, at least they weren't turning into stars for my opposition.

By mid-season, however, you will see AI teams in a 'dump salary' mode, willing to trade you high-priced veterans in return for prospects, or willing to trade prospects in return for veterans to help them make the push, so I think the 'desperation' mode you talk about is already represented.

So, yeah, I think there is work which could be done to improve the trading AI, but I don't find it impossible.

[pasternakski]

Well, I'll take your word for it. I haven't really played long enough to come to a final judgment. When I said "impossible," I only meant that, so far for me, the only deal the AI considers "fair" is one that costs you significantly more than you get.

You're right. I'll wait until I get down to pennant race time before concluding that a fair trade with the AI is "impossible."

[Amaroq]

so far for me, the only deal the AI considers "fair" is one that costs you significantly more than you get.

For this sort of game, that IS quite a bit better than the opposite: people get disillusioned pretty quickly if they are able to trade dreck for quality, assembling a super-star team with little effort.