Rules

The rules are divided into four main sections:

  1. Game Setup
  2. Finances
  3. Roster Moves & Rules
  4. New Owners

These rules can be amended by vote of a majority of the non-abstaining owners. Notice that a plurality (say 8 guys for, zero guys against) isn’t sufficient. That said, I will maintain the integrity of the league. If you’re about to do something where you’re not sure it’s OK or not – please ask.

Game Setup

FORT runs on the latest version and patch of OOTP (currently 25), with the commissioner running it under Linux. I will always run the most up-to-date PATCH, and will update versions in the season after the new version is released.

The league is set up as 2 leagues of ten teams (like real-life 1968), with division winners and three wild-card teams per league going to the playoffs. All rounds are best of 7. Players are historical, with random debut years. They’ve been imported using ‘career totals’ for potential, endurance and defense. We have no plans to expand. Seasons consist of 162 games, with balanced schedules and interleague games allowed. Both leagues have a DH.

  • Ratings and potential are on a 1-10 scale. Ratings > Max are shown.
  • All Player creation modifiers are 1.0
  • We import rookies randomly from 1920 – current day.
  • League total modifiers will be pulled in every year.
  • League strategies will be pulled in every year. That being said, we will always have a 5 man rotation with normal endurance.
  • Coaches and scouts are disabled.
  • Injury frequency is low for both short- and long-term injuries.
  • Players have personalities, and morale, and this contributes to Team Chemistry. This is all shown.
  • Aging speed is suppressed to 0.75.
  • Dev speed is boosted to 1.25.
  • Talent change randomness is 175
  • Eval weight is 50% on ratings, 30% on last year’s stats, and 10% each on the years prior.
  • Drafts are 6 rounds, 4 rounds of which will be run in Statsplus.

Finances

We have some house rules.

  • Finances are capped at $150M every season. This is a cap on BOTH expenses, and on salary.
  • If you go over on salary, I will ask you to come back in line one sim later.
  • If you finish a season at under $150M, you can use the difference to buy down misc. expenses you’ve accumulated in future years (through cutting players).
  • If you go over on expenses at the end of the season, I will think of some nasty financial penalty for you to pay in the upcoming season.
  • Trading FAs you signed. If the total value of the contract exceeds 6M, you cannot trade that player until the All-Star Game.
  • All market sizes and loyalties are set to average, and will be edited to remain that way.

You can choose to spend money on stadium mods. This will create a $20m misc. expense for the coming season, and can only be done in the offseason. All of the park factors work like advertised – e.g. AVG LHB increases the hits per at bat for left handed batters.

Roster Moves & Rules

  • All park factors must remain between 0.8 to 1.2, but AVG is limited to 0.9-1.1.
  • There are crazy parasitic effects which are hard to describe. Upping HR’s often decreases batting average, for example.

We play with a 27 man roster in the majors and a 30 man roster in the minor leagues (just AAA). The purpose of these rules is for your roster to not be an embarrassment. These are not meant to address tanking – you could have an 80 win team that’s an embarrassment by September.

  • (Majors) Position player starters and backups have to be rated at the position they’re at <– you cannot teach anyone a position during the regular season in the majors.
  • (Majors and AAA) You cannot play someone at catcher unless they have a catcher arm rating of 2 or higher.
  • (Majors and AAA) Your backup scheme cannot be so broken that players need to play tired all the time.
  • (Majors and AAA) Your pitching staff cannot be so undermanned that position players end up needing to pitch.

Service Time:

  1. We follow most of the service time rules of MLB
  2. Attempts to manipulate major league service time for guys who are 3 star or higher players will only be tolerated to a limited extent. Players who are still on auto-renew contracts (between 0 – 3 years of service time) can be sent to the minors as you see fit. As a house rule, I will not allow you to manipulate the service time of a player once they are in arbitration by sending them to the minors.

Free Agency & Extensions: The pre-season and in-season Free Agency periods are done completely in-game. Salaries can change per-year – they are not required to be ‘flat’ year-on-year. No clauses are allowed – player opt-outs, etc. No bonuses are allowed – playing time, or performance. No options are allowed – player, team, or performance triggered. You cannot offer a no-trade clause either. You can, however, guarantee a starting role. Note that you can offer guys minor league contracts with major league riders, and you can offer guys minor league contracts with signing bonuses up to 550k. You cannot trade any newly signed FA whose contract exceeds 6M in total value until July 1. For FA, if I need to edit a contract to be legal, as a penalty, I will increase the value of the contract by 50% per year, up to a maximum of +5M/yr. Starting in 1987, the penalty for an illegal extension is that it is canceled, and no penalty is applied.

Trades: All trades confirmed by both parties involved are processed at the beginning of the sim. Trades cannot be multi-part. No PTBNL, no stringing together multiple drafts, etc. Some trades will be split up if they involve too many players. You cannot make trades which are bets. The simplest example is two teams simply exchanging the same round of pick in the same draft before the draft positions are known, with nothing else of consequence changing hands. Finally, the commissioner’s office holds the right to reject trades. I will not reject trades based on them being unfair, but rather because something egregious is going on.

Ammy draft: The 6-round amateur draft is run via Statsplus during the offseason. There is no time limit on 1st round picks, but I will get really itchy after 24 hours. You will have 3 hours to make a pick in rounds 2, 2 in round 3 and 1 in round 4 before you get auto’d. You’re allowed to submit lists in StatsPlus for the remainder, but those picks have a few second fuse on them, so you will want to have a list going in round 4.

The top 5 picks will be determined by a lottery starting. To be eligible for the lottery, you must cannot lose 110 games or more. If you do lose 110 games or more, you can do no better than the 6th pick.

New Owners

If you’re a new owner (to a team, not the league), you get a few breaks. One, your fan interest can be set to 75, if you’d like. Two, you have until the next spring training to cut any player that was on your team at the time you took over, with no financial repercussions.