So You Want to Make an Expansion Team?
From MLB Power Pros Wiki
Don't edit this guide. Unlike a regular wiki page, a guide can be full of strategies, ideas, voice, and basically information that is not 100% factual. Much of this piece is opinionated and offers ideas that work particularly well for the author. If you have a different idea, why not Private Message the author your suggestion or even create your own guide. If you see a factual piece of information that is wrong, then you are more then welcome to edit it. Other wise, please leave the guide to to original author (In this case, Cownip)
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So You Want to Make an Expansion Team?
So, You Want to Own an Expansion Team? You want to start fresh hang up the ol' spikes in favor of the GM sign. Ready to crush the competition and create the greatest team baseball has ever seen. Well hold on a second mate before your declare yourself the King of Baseball! It's not so easy to pilot your team to the top of baseball, much less win even one World Series! Being a GM and constructing a expansion team takes a lot of hard work and time, and you gotta make sure your in it for the long run before you make any commitments. Now don't worry, there are several different paths to making an expansion team, some much harder but ultimately funner and more satisfying then others. But before we worry about all that hogwash, let's start with the very basics.
Starting Out
Basics
The very first thing you want to do is decide your team name and theme. To show you an example for this and other steps, I will use my expansion the Las Vegas Devils and the steps I went through to create them. I will occasionally use other expansion teams as examples, but for the most part I will use mine. By the way, I suggest consulting the Arrange Mode page for specifics.
So this means you must decide where your team will be from (Honolulu or Vancouver), what there name will be (The Yankees or the Diamond Backs), and what type of icon and uniforms will they have (Is it a team based on water, or maybe one based on the forest).
Let's take say my Las Vegas Devils. Now what do you think when you hear Las Vegas Devils? Would you expect them to be dressed like a bunch of angels who live in the water? Of course not! You'd probably expect a bunch of rough lookin' players in uniforms of fiery red and black colors, like a devil from Las Vegas. Now of course there doesn't have to be a theme associated with the team. Do the players on the Cubs look like bears in there uniforms? Not the last time I checked. But sometimes themes can make things a little more fun depending on the player.
Here are but a few ideas for team names:
Alaska Sky Hawks
Alaska Wilderbeast
Charlotte Icecylces
Fuchio Sprinkles.
Fukishima Godzillas
Las Vegas Dragons (or Devils!)
Phoenix Sunbirds
Sendai Eagles
Sapporo Fishers
Tokyo Giants
Vancouver Golden Eagles
Vancouver Green
Yokohama Samurai
Uniforms, Logos and Stadiums
Uniforms
Logos
Stadium
The final step to customizing your team is choosing a stadium. While you can choose an already pre-occupied stadium to share with another team (Yankee Stadium for example), I always like choosing a new stadium. As of Power Pros 2008, there are 7 different new stadiums to choose from, each of which you must buy in the shop with points. Each have there own dimensions and styles that might affect what type of team you hit in.
Name: Rainbow Beach Stadium
Origin: Success Mode Stadium 2007
Dimensions: Left 309 FT Left-Center 372 FT Center 395 FT Right-center 372 FT right 309 FT
Location: Honolulu
Basic Description: A ball park filled with rainbow colored walls and designs and a beach complex in the background.
My Comments: Rainbow Beach Stadium is a great hitters park. You want to make sure to have some good power hitters as your team will probably rely on the long ball to bring in a good chunk of their runs in. Try to get ground-ball pitchers to avoid home-runs and a good solid bullpen. There's nothing worse then having a worn out bullpen in a hitters park and have your starter wear out early.
Name: Panpaka Park
Origin: Power Pros 2007
Dimensions: Left 338 FT Left-Center 423 FT Center 413 FT Right-Center 396 FT Right 338 FT
Location: Las Vegas
Basic Description: This is probably the only park that looks like a baseball stadium. It's full of flashing lights and giant crowds (unlike the other new stadiums) with a backdrop of a city. It's my favorite it terms of looks. It also has a big hole in the even bigger and taller left field wall called the Lucky Pocket. If you hit a ball in it, it's a Home-Run (and a ground rule double if it bounced in there).
My Comments: Without question, this is my favorite park. In this stadium, you want all your power-hitters to be lefties so they can hit homers over the shorter-right field wall. Everyone else on your team should be all about deep line-drives and speed. Triples are so common and homers so rare that you almost see as many triples as homers. I'd have 2-3 power hitters and everyone with D-C power, 2 and maybe 3 trajectory, and high contact. Pitchers should probably be fly-ball pitchers as they don't have to worry about homers but more about line-drives. Outfielders NEED to be very fast and have a great arm to make it across the huge outfield and to throw from the wall. Actual fielding ability doesn't matter in comparison.
Extras
Type of Expansion Team
Talk about different type of teams
Basic introduction to each with Pros and Cons before I go more in depth
From this point on, everything in this guide will be separated into sections for each style of play. The type of team you choose will probably have a huge affect on your style of your team, so I will address each separately. Occasionally, I will group different styles of teams together when the same strategy applies, but for the most part each will be discussed separately.
Most Basic
Dream Draft
Edited Players
Success Mode Players (Hardest)
Playing a season
Playing a Season with the Basic and Edited Teams
Playing a season with Dream Draft
Playing a season with Success Mode Players
Another section not yet named
Writing about your guide
Optional
Chance to show off work
Fun
Different types, stories like mine, just the facts/stats like ..., or combination like Smiley Face's with more indepth tables about the players personality and a short description about them.
Use the wiki
Stories
Links to newspaper
Just stats
Tables
Using the Wiki
Closing Notes
Obviously, at this point the guide is far from finished as you can see from my outline. But I hope to have this done in a few weeks, so the wait shouldn't be long. I hope to release this as a first in a string of guides. If you want any help in creating your own guide, have some questions, or even have some suggestions and ideas for this guide, please contact me by writing on my User Page Cownip or by Private Messaging Cownip on the forums. You can also always comment on the discussion page if you have an account. I hope what I have so far helped you and I hope I can get this all sorted out and written as soon as possible.
