Forum topic: Moral Drop

Hi Frank.
I understand the new system has built in that a driver has more idea on "self worth" and can potentially ask for more money.
I dont find a lot wrong with this, its probably a good thing to an extent.

I am how ever concerned about driver moral.

Now I have been one of those people who ended up making a lot more money than i should have and that is changing. which will make an interesting challenge. I have also put a lot of money into development etc and have had some success with 1 championship and fighting for a second. So i have taken advantage of the old system but havent completely taken the piss.
I have how ever signed some drivers and staff on very little money

Now in real life when a person signs a contract they "generally" honor it and normally once they have signed they realize that its done and dusted and they can concentrate on racing until they need to sign again. Generally the only thing that will drop moral is poor performance, being bored, bad press etc. And the only times we see people re negotiating contract is either when a new one is due or their role changes. e.g 1st driver to test driver.

If say one of my current drivers decides he isnt happy with what his contract is he gets the shits his/her moral drops until he gets what he wants. making him slower
I from here have the choice of making my driver honor his contract as he signed which will make him slower with a moral drop.
Or i can RESIGN him and make him happier which will drop my moral lol.

I guess what im saying is a agree there needed to be changes. I just don't like the idea that the old contracts other than the length are now worthless.

Can the moral drop be staggered over the next say three season so next season their moral wont really drop much then season 4 drop by a little more then 5 drop a little more, than 6 full swing into moral drop if they aren't being treated well.

Looking into the future when this system has been running there wont be much of a issue but I will be annoyed if one of my drivers who was say on $400,000 a year with a 4 year contract decided one year in he was worth a lot more cause he came second in a season and im strong armed into paying him more when we have a legitimate contract.

Another idea that could potentially work that may give you the same outcome without hurting the speed of drivers is have a likely to
re-sign(or sign) stat.
If they are getting underpaid now the stat will drop and we could if we choose to fix that but the driver will still give 100% effort either way.
And the opposite could happen
It could work in a similar way to sponsors. We could potentially have some staff designated the going out and improving relations(re-sign or sign) with staff then when contract time comes around we are in a better position.
Then the loyalty stats can effect how quickly they change their mind on resigning. More loyalty equals a slower drop and faster rise.

This way we can keep moral to things that happen race to race and are more likely to effect a drivers speed and the re-sign stat a bigger picture item. It will also mean we have the time to plan ahead and fight for the staff we want to keep in our teams long term.

I think this system is a fairer way of not screwing people who had used the old system but will still end up with the same long term fix of having staff paid more realistically.

Just a further thought with it all I guess my overall concern is that the drivers/staff have all of the power now when in real life its the other way around. We are now in a spot where we pretty much have to bow down to our staff to keep them happy.
I may be overeating but i get the feeling its a bit like this

I agree with most of what you said tim but as someone else stated it's not about the staff being happy but you being happy with what they sign for. This means signing short deals with staff members so that they morale drops don't effect your team but rather the next team that they move onto.

I also gave this some thought and it doesn't change the fact that teams that want to save money by cheap contracts can still sign staff cheap; it simply means they won't have good staff members for a few season allowing sandbagging still to happen just not allowing teams to improve quickly while saving a load of cash!!

I still find that the Moral drop for already signed and agreed contracts is a bit much and i agree the system needs to change. I dont think a moral drop is the way to go though. It kind of punishes teams for doing what we were allowed to do. And isnt very realistic for staff to want a new contract for their already signed contract terms
Thats why i think that if you decide to keep your staff on at their current contract amount and they are less likely to re-sign then you are taking some punishment long term but we're not being hit by following the previous rules. Its also more realistic for staff to have in the back of their mind they wont resign if they dont get what they want
It will then make for a controlled transition into how it should be

I think we all need to switch to the newer more realistic contracts, if drivers are unhappy with the measly contracts we offered them previously then it makes sense their moral will drop. They will offer the team a chance to give them a new contract so we should just offer them what we feel is fair and see what they do. We are all in the sam boat so im not really sure there is any need for transistion, lets just get on with how it is now.

My scout is demanding a new contract. He's currently on 125,000/week, and he's calling my 175,000/week offer a joke.

I think he's a joke.

we have to adapt - but there are alot of things i don't like. I'm on the verge of abandoning my youth program. In real life if a driver wants more money they need to demonstrate it with good results - not get pissed of and start underperforming. - as long as morale doesn't have too much of an impact on performance it will be ok

Your scout is rated at number 48 though James and your team number 77, i can see why he might think he wants more.

What i am doing is offering them what i think they are worth and then seeing what happens. They will probably reject but over time their power position will drop and so will their demands.

If their power position is a lot lower then they will sign for a much more reasonable amount i think.

First of all, thanks for the constructive feedback! I really appreciate it if the feedback has good reasoning.

#1 by Tim Watts
Now in real life when a person signs a contract they "generally" honor it and normally once they have signed they realize that its done and dusted and they can concentrate on racing until they need to sign again. Generally the only thing that will drop moral is poor performance, being bored, bad press etc. And the only times we see people re negotiating contract is either when a new one is due or their role changes. e.g 1st driver to test driver.

If say one of my current drivers decides he isnt happy with what his contract is he gets the shits his/her moral drops until he gets what he wants. making him slower
I from here have the choice of making my driver honor his contract as he signed which will make him slower with a moral drop.
Or i can RESIGN him and make him happier which will drop my moral lol.

#4 by Tim Watts
I still find that the Moral drop for already signed and agreed contracts is a bit much and i agree the system needs to change. I dont think a moral drop is the way to go though. It kind of punishes teams for doing what we were allowed to do. And isnt very realistic for staff to want a new contract for their already signed contract terms

First of all: breaking open contracts and replacing them with a new contract happens all the time in the sporting world. Not just in football, also in F1 (Hamilton this season, Vettel back in 2013 until 2015, etc.).

If a driver wants to break open a contract, they feel they either want to extend their deal with the team because they're happy or they feel they're massively underpaid. It's not a coincidence that Lewis Hamilton didn't want to delay his contract talks last season before clinching the championship title. It massively improved his negotiation position (or power position in Pitwall terms), and it improved his new contract by 9m pounds a year if I remember correctly.

Now imagine you're in the Pitwall world. Due to reasons people used to accept everything, even a salary of 1,- if you were an unknown but amazing driver. You've done 2 seasons and you've earned a whopping 25,- in the past 25 weeks. Of course you're going to be unhappy when the system allows you to be unhappy over it.
You might think okay yeah, but the 1,- is exceptional. That's true and not true. It's not exceptional that persons were massively underpaid. Salaries are supposed to be the number one cost of a team, as it's probably the most important asset of a team. Whereas the number one driver has the biggest salary. Now this hasn't been the case.
I normally don't do this, but to give you all an idea I will exceptionally share some economical details. The average bank balance (which equals to money that is sitting in a bank, as a reserve) of all teams currently is 25 million. Not negative 25 million, but positive 25 million. And of all teams there are 15 teams that have a bank balance of more than 100 million. Agreed, some are due to selling shares, but most of these teams have done so by acquiring millions per week, in only 25 weeks (!). If this situation continued then there would've been a massive balancing issue (if there isn't already one) with teams who were able to use a sort of exploit that was tolerated (no offense to them, I like it how people try different sorts of ways to get a winning way; I just had to close that way as that was never intended to be there) to get a winning team.
Not that I want to sound like a big jackass/showoff, but: I've got quite some experience in managing a game like this, I have a master degree in economics, I know what I'm doing. This was a no-brainer in regards of how fast this one should be closed.

#1 by Tim Watts
Can the moral drop be staggered over the next say three season so next season their moral wont really drop much then season 4 drop by a little more then 5 drop a little more, than 6 full swing into moral drop if they aren't being treated well.

Looking into the future when this system has been running there wont be much of a issue but I will be annoyed if one of my drivers who was say on $400,000 a year with a 4 year contract decided one year in he was worth a lot more cause he came second in a season and im strong armed into paying him more when we have a legitimate contract.

This is actually sort of the case. When a person is unhappy there are several ways of being unhappy. The real algorithm is a bit more complex than this so this is a more straightforward example and I'm not using the real numbers, just examples.
He is paid: 5 000, he rates himself 7 000: 5000/7000 => He is only paid at 71%. He might complain, but probably not.
He is paid: 300 000, he rates himself 210 000: 300000/210000=> He is only paid at 143%. He is going to stay dancing on the table silently.
He is paid: 100, he rates himself 125 000: 100/125000 => He is only paid at 0.08%. I'm going to guess he's going to the most extreme unhappy in the game as you can be. This means his morale will drop massively.
He is paid: 50 000, he rates himself 125 000: 50000/125000 => He is only paid at 40%. He's going to be unhappy (ie. lose morale) on a medium scale let's say.

#1 by Tim Watts
Another idea that could potentially work that may give you the same outcome without hurting the speed of drivers is have a likely to
re-sign(or sign) stat.
If they are getting underpaid now the stat will drop and we could if we choose to fix that but the driver will still give 100% effort either way.

I think there are many examples of people who become unhappy and start performing their sport in a less good way. An extra stat which basically does nothing will not make people upgrade their contracts.

My first youth driver that wanted a new contract signed today, with 2 more soon on the way. He's got an increase from 100 to 5000 per week (Yes, I was one of those people paying some staff a whopping 0- per week, and I expected more of them to have a fit by now).

I see people saying that their staff want 500k per week, which to me is stupid money. Back in Pitwall 1.0 when I first joined, I was lucky enough to sign the 5th best driver at the time right away, and I payed him about 350k per week. It near killed me to do that. These staff and drivers are greedy, and while they may rate themselves as being worth more money, I'm certain that they will still sign for less.

And if they won't accept less, then they are going to find themselves on that unemployment line very fast, where they will all earn 0- per week.

It would be nice to know what kind of ballpark figures Frank has set for what staff/drivers will rate themselves at, but that's not something he's likely to just give out, it's something we'll have to figure out. This is one area of the game now where Frank has a slight advantage over us, but then frank misses races here and there, and I don't think he's actually playing to win