"House Rules" Revisited

[KG Erwin]

Again, this is primarily for the benefit of newer players. Many of us play out each game of our human-controlled team, as well as serving in the GM role for player moves. For me, personally, the house rule list is short & sweet:

Rule 1, for the GM: Each trade must be player for player. 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 is prohibited. This prevents the human from dumping a bunch of weed players on the AI for a legitimate star. I strongly urge using this rule.

Rule 2, for the in-game manager: The Hit & Run play cannot be employed more than twice per game. Some folks seem to think it offers an unnecessary advantage to the human player. That's debatable, but you seldom see it in real life anyway. The AI, of course, can do whatever it wants.

In either case, there's no need for the game code to establish restrictions. We play the game as "real" (or not) as we wish.

[motnahp]

What I feel the game needs is a defense against the AI calling for the H&R with 1st and 3rd. Pitchout seems to have no effect. In a real game, a pitchout could change things drastically.

Twice in the last 2 "weeks", I have lost games in the bottom of the final inning when the AI called for the H&R with one out and runners on the corners. Ground ball to the infield, fielder throws to FIRST, game over.



The previous time I did it to myself. With a runner on 3rd and one out, I intentionally walked the batter to set up the DP. Oops....what was I thinking. The AI thanked me for the favor and won in the exact same way.

As far as I can tell, there is really no option to counteract this H&R. I guess I could try bringing the infield IN, but that goes against all logic if there is a DP candidate at the plate. I suspect, though, that INFIELD IN would have as much affect on this as calling for a pitchout.....none at all. I could walk the batter and load the bases every time, but then I would run the risk of walking in the run.[:@]

Irregardless, I'm having a blast with managing. I DO need a "Hit Batter Deliberately" option, though. Milwaukee's Sixto Lezcano homered 4 times in a 3-game series against my A's. He needed at least one in the ribs[X(]

[Bustoff]

I like the "Hit Batter Deliberately" idea. Perhaps with a subset of choices like "Throw at Head", "Throw at Groin", etc. [;)]

I'd also like to see an "Argue the Call" option, with a chance that you, as Manager, will be thrown out of the game. In the real world, sometimes a manager ejection will fire up a team to play better...maybe such things can happen in the sim world as well.

[Nukester]

Agree on the even sides trades. At this point its about the only house rule I follow. I also try to mimick what the CPU AI does, so if I see some kind of pattern from the AI that I might be able to exploit, I usually do as the AI might do. For instance, in the XIBL MP league of XCom's (I dont know if its the same in single player because I really havent done much offseason stuff), we noticed that you could sign free agents for a high price, then at a certain time of the offseason offer that player a contract extension at a much lower asking price, and it will chnage all of the years to the lower salary. If I notice something like that Ill avoid doing it. Or for instance if I see during a draft that the CPU is taking all kinds of mediocre pitchers over top quality hitters (I dont know if PS's draft AI does that but Ive seen it in other games), Ill avoid loading up on the hitters until the CPU starts taking them also. Things like that keep it pretty well challenging