So then, a change has been made by Frank to the behind the scenes formulas so that a teams synergy now has more of an influence on the design process.
Up until now i have not been too bothered by synergy as i saw it as broken really. I didnt agree that moving drivers into different positions to test them (test weeks and/or testing periods) should impact the synergy of the team but sadly it did.
For example, during the tests weeks it is possible to hire guest drivers and test them against your own drivers in a bid to see if they are any better, in order to do this you need to assign the test drivers to one of the 3 main driver roles, 1st, 2nd, or test. Now if you are testing 3 new guest drivers it means you will have to switch out all positions and this impacts synergy when in reality i feel it shouldn't.
Or perhaps one race week during testing you want to promote a driver from your youth setup (they have to be over 16) into a race/test seat so they can get some laps under their belt and give you an idea of how close to your main drivers they are. This will negatively impact synergy at the moment from what i understand, a bit silly considering teams in actual F1 bring in other drivers for race testing every now and then and in off season testing you may not even see the 1st/2nd drivers at a test session.
I can understand that constantly changing staff positions would impact synergy in that set area, eg changing a scout would impact scouting and not design, but it seems that changing a scout has an overall impact on synergy which in turn will impact development speeds. That's just a bit silly too if that is the case, most people in a design team wouldn't have even met or know who the scout is.
As i mentioned in your news post Frank i believe if my understanding on how synergy is calculated is correct then the whole area needs to be thought through and revised, especially if it is now being used in the game calcs.
Anyone else got any other examples of where synergy is impacted when really it shouldnt be?
Also i will add that it 'seems' teams with good synergy dont have any sort of youth driver program... is that just coincidence or does a youth program impact synergy? It really shouldn't, it should be entirely separate from the main teams dealings...
In the test weeks you do not have to assign the driver to a seat, just to a car. so test weeks do not effect synergy. you just have to do that during race weeks,
the balance between drop and raise of synergy could be better, it drops extremely fast and I haven't seen it raise for my team. without changing major players, but I guess that is irrelevant.
last season I switched my young drivers between main and feeder seats to give them more practice. which worked out, both are now superb on experience. but my synergy is in the cellar though I did not change personal.
Also would changing youth driver seats impact synergy? I mean we have to change them as they get older... Is there a team with a full youth program that has a reasonable synergy?
Edit: Frank seems to have pretty good synergy so maybe youths dont impact it.
My synergy has dropped from 3/10 to 2/10 by assigning a new junior coach to a role. I'm pretty sure this is by design, but it does just seem far too hard to get that number higher...
Taken from Frank's response in the chat yesterday:
You can only drop once per day in synergy when making changes. So once you drop you can make as much changes as you like. Any time there's a change for role 1, 2 or one of the head roles it drops.
Youth drivers used to get affected but Frank dropped that a few seasons back which is probably why you do not see many teams with a youth programme with high synergy.
A once per day drop seems fairly unrealistic, you could swap in a whole new team and still maintain a high synergy.
Im concerned that changing people like coaches and scouts will impact synergy and in turn alter development speed, only changing a member of a design team would really do this.
Biggest problem is you cant get a scout report if the driver doesn't drive.
So you have to put them in a seat.
So its a double risk on those wanting to try them out.
Either the synergy loss needs to be removed for trying drivers out in the test session; or we need to allow drivers to be scouted without them driving actively.
Otherwise the market is going to be stale and prices inflated as we should be forced to have to hire known talent at big bucks; or sign long high cost deals on a driver with no skills revealed.
I had to pay 285k a week / one season deal to an unknown 30 year old just to reveal his skills. Madness.
