There used to be a holiday takeover feature in Pitwall 1 but that hasn't been made in Pitwall 2. You have to do quali and race yourself. It's what cost me the title in Season 1.
Yes, The holiday feature was nice since you could assign a person from time to time to look after your team when needed.
This should be brought back.
As for the structure of divisions; I think that is correct at the moment with 12 teams and points scored for top 10 teams. It brings on the battles more. If concerned about teams not showing up staying in a higher division then average finishing position should be used. Which it isn't currently being used looking at division 1.
Just checked the current situation and looks like there's ~92 active teams at the moment.
I would do this:
- Keep the point system the same. Everything which reminds about real F1 is good for the game.
- Make the divisions a bit smaller, from 12 to 10 teams. Then there would be less teams hitting zero points.
- Only 2 would relegate and 1 would promote per Division.
- Divisions 2.1 and 2.2 would be merged together, dropping worst teams to create new active Division 3.
- Divisions 2.3 and 2.4 would be merged together, dropping worst teams to create new active Division 3.
So, divisions 1 and 2 would consist on 30 top teams.
- Division 3 would be also split on one quarter by merging divisions.
- Merge them together by creating 4 different division 3's, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 with 10 teams in each.
- Just like Diviision 2, 1 team would promote and 2 would relegate.
At this point we would have 10 teams in Division 1, 20 teams at Division 2, and 40 teams at Division 3.
This leaves 22 weakest teams to Division 4.
Plan A, split them to 4 divisions, like division 3. 5-6 teams per division. 2 would promote per year. Another Plan B -option is 8 divisions with 2-3 teams per divisions. Only one team would then promote.
Every division level should become active, fun and competitive after this kind of major change.
Major overhaul to the game with that change but I also agree with it as you really have two options in my opinion: 1. Either decrease the amount of teams per division down to 10 creating a tougher fight for points but more likely to take place with other changes (Longer Season)
Or
2. Increase the amount in each division creating more competition throughout the field.
That being said driving in division 2.2 for the first time this season, we are all very close together with at least eight of the top 12 teams within a second of the leading team but this still has created huge division among the list group. The leader ran away with championship in the end, followed by group 2 made up of teams 2-4 then another points battle group made up of 5-7 and then regulation battle made up of 8-12.
So using our division as an example: Increasing the amount of teams without changing the point payed-out per race would create a lot of team to fight for nothing all season.
By dropping to 10 teams then you would still have two teams trying to avoid regulation without much hope since they are clearly not in a point scoring position but you could also put one of the three teams 5-7 at risk of dropping down a division with a very good car that is within a second of the leader of the division.
That being said I would like to think of a way to increase in season development to allow teams to be able to catch the front running teams a bit more. This season I tried under the new development regulations to develop my car is season and I found it nearly impossible to develop major components; which is some what fair but not if you are looking for smaller gains.
So either the development in season needs to be sped up to encourage more in season development without effecting next season development or we simple require more time to develop in season this longer season.
So I also suggest with decreasing the amount of teams per division a longer season with 20 - 22 races either over 26 weeks but development weeks also really currently don't factor into the game other then the first two weeks while everyone is scrambling to get two cars ready for the start of the season.
I would also like to see a development aspect come back to practice weeks for drivers, suppliers and the teams. How I am not fully sure but maybe increase development from the drivers aka youth drivers, amount of laps completed = X amount of gain for the suppliers and increase reliability and understanding aka base set-up level for testing your cars.
Reliability could work where all cars are given a base level of reliability say 50% then every X amount of laps completed would increase this level by 1% up to the max 99% through the season with new part decreasing this value by set amount of %. This would force/ give us reasons to test the car to improve the reliability of the car.
Base set-up is simple X amount of laps will give a better understanding of the car to the drivers, mechanics and designers thus ability to set the car up correctly each week thus reducing the amount of practice laps required to reach an superb set-up during a race week. It would increase to say a max of Very Good so that teams would still need to run practice laps during race weekends.
This would also bring in different testing aspects to the game where you could be running laps to improve set-up of the cars then you could also be running laps to improve reliability of the cars, tire testing to learn the difference between tire compounds (more accurate data), Supplier test (engine increase, Brake tests etc...)
