SOM ATG II vs Simnasium's Total Baseball

[JOSEPHBONK]

Greetings,

I was considering trying the ATG game and was wondering if anyone has experience with Simnasium's product can compare the products. I've been playing that and enjoy features such as the ability to watch games on a play by play basis. I realize there are some fundamental differences such as Simnasium being based on career data but am interested in what the users of the SOM product feel makes this a better game than the Total Baseball/Simnasium product. Simnasium is proud of their product and feel it better replicates the interaction between pitchers/hitters instead of the SOM concept of the pitchers card and the batters card. Any thoughts?

[djmacb]

I don't have any Simnasium experience, nor much TSN ATG experience, but I have lots of experience rolling dice and with the SOM Computer game. "Replicates the interaction between pitchers/hitters" is a great marketing strategy, but it doesn't mean anything. All simulation games are based on probabilites for different outcomes. All of the games factor together the batters statistics and the pitchers statistics. SOM does it explicitly with batters and pitchers cards, the other games may do it more subtly by generating a 1-1000 pick list. It all amounts to the same thing of weighting probabilities.

There is a good discussion of this on the SOM Web site. In fact, SOM makes a good point that with the list based games, there is no allowance for "gut" feelings, i.e. a better batter will outperform a poorer batter in every instance. However with the random placement of hits on the SOM cards, its very conceivable that a poorer hitter could come through when a better hitter would not.

[crackerjaxon]

Simnasium is horribly geeky. That's what the problem is.

[Treyomo]

Simnasium is a good game, but I prefer TSN. The search engine for players in Simnasium is still a bit clunky, but the main difference for me is the cards. I like seeing players cards, and not having to rely on CERA and ERA+ to determine who might be the best pitchers in a stadium with a 131 RH HR rating. Simnasium plays more like Whatifsports and the old DiamondMind.

[raslavens]

It uses DiamondMind as its game engine.

[JAMESBEESON]

The real genius of strat-o-matic is the individuality of each players card. You just never know,Mike Garman in one game, could strikeout Lou Gehrig with the bases loaded in the ninth, then in his next outing get shelled worst than Omaha Beach on D-Day, you just don't know and that's the secret.

[mridge01]

Simnamsium sucks in comparison. And that's coming from a guy that sucks at ATG.