I understand that James, I was suggesting a way to prevent players continually making iterations of old style parts that are rated too high. (Un)graceful Degradation should only affect those parts that were originally designed under the old style and exceed the level that a team can currently design.
They would improve James, yes, but at the same time the 2015 Ferrari F1 does not have parts from the 1975 Ferrari.
Things were learnt; and maybe parts evolved from it, but over time that original blueprint faded away and became irrelevant.
The trouble with the current system is you can design a superb part one year; and make 6 or 7 variations for the next year based on that same part and the chances are at least one will retain that superb value.
Repeat that 1,2,3,4,5... seasons down the line and you are effectively putting 1975 Ferrari parts in a 2015 Ferrari.
That's not right! There needs to be a point where that original blueprint is degraded. Maybe a 20% drop in absolute potential per season, meaning that design would be at maximum superb for a season or two; but drop its maximum to very good; good; unsure etc each season thereafter forcing you to keep making new parts.
When you do get a good part, it isn't instantly lost; you just have to keep at it.
Easy way to fix this would be to have a similar system to that of Pitwall 1.0. Where it was more based off the overall values of the top teams so that the bar was continuously moving based off the development of others.
This would make designs as soon as they finished realistically obsolete force continuous new design and the bench mark would always be moving force continuous development instead of developing 1975 Ferrari parts for the 2015 car; because in relative terms they would now be terrible.
This would also make the research aspect mean something as well!!
But another problem is if you get managers purposely blowing money to defunct a team raising the bar for one year with no longevity. This could ruin not one team, but the rest of the teams in that division whose parts are relative for the time after.
What happens if a team goes bust making a car miles better, and another team promotes with them up to, say, Div 2. Where do the relative part values sit? The second place promoter could have the best car than those in the division they go up to, but the division winner has also gone up, changes the relative bar up, but is now bust.
I imagine the relative part values would be across the whole game, not just one division. And the actual part value wouldn't change, just the comparative rating.
If a Superb car could do a lap in 1:30 and then someone develops a car that does it in 1:29 the first car is no slower, but you could no longer say it was 'Superb'
I've made some changes to the research level with immediate effect as mentioned here in the news post.
So please do read that before posting. It should answer many questions that were posted in here (there's too many for me to quote).
With regards to the basing on old superb parts. I honestly wasn't aware of that happening. So correct me if I'm wrong: some teams who had superb parts from the old system are still basing new parts on those?
If that's the case then I will implement something that will reduce the potential of those parts all the time, as it's only normal that the quality reduces over time (just like research reduces slowly over time).
Well, via a succession of evolutions from the original part over the last couple of seasons. No point 'developing new' when evolving the old part keeps the higher potential...
I thought that perhaps this may be dealt with by 'rule changes' between one season and the next. When the rules for a part change dramatically then developing a brand new part would give better results that evolving the old... Or even disallowing evolved parts for the next season if they're not legal due to rule changes...
Sort of mirroring real life, where a change in rules give opportunities for teams to exploit/work around the rule change to the best advantage
In real life a Superb potential part one season is only going to be a Very Good potential part the next season due to tech advances, i like Franks idea of potential decreasing over time.
