Beginners guide

How to start in Pitwall
Congratulations, you started your career in Pitwall


Basics
There are different goals and approaches which influences the way you will play. A common goal is to win division 1 and be the team to beat. You also can try to become the richest team, the team with the most fans, the manager with the most shares of other teams, .... and many more. At the start you have little money and no infrastructure. To improve your team you have to invest money and points. Points are the equivalent to time spend by your staff and are needed for all tasks your staff is involved with.
E.g. you want to present your team - you need money and time from your administrative crew - therefor administrative points.

First steps
The first big decision you can make is to found a new team or to take over a division 3 team.
The benefit of taking over a team can be that the team already has some infrastructure - team head quarter better than the basic one, some staff and drivers, maybe even a car for the ongoing season.
On the downside the team may lack on money, might be public (share sold) or the staff, drivers are terribly overpaid. Check the team carefully in case you want to take over.

A new team has the benefit that you can decide more. You can give the team a name, define the location of the home base. You have a welcome start package of 10 millions and many points to spend on infrastructure. But be careful with spending those points because at the start is is hard to gain points.
When you set a team name there is no elegant way of changing it. There is one way, which some managers see as loophole, which has some down sides and may mess with long term strategies. So it is recommendable to set the team name wright at the first place. Same goes for the team location.

You might want to look at the division you want to enter before you enter. Are there active managers? Are there junior teams (more about junior teams later)?
The more active competition the harder it will get to make points or win races, but the more you will learn in your first season.

Team presentation
The team presentation raises the attention of sponsors for your team, but also cost more money and points which take away opportunities at the begin. You might have less points available to negotiate with a decent commercial chief who would be needed to make excellent sponsor contracts. The consideration should be - invest here and make compromise on other places? You also can postpone the decision for after building the basic infrastructure, getting the suppliers you need and see how much you can invest once your team is ready for take off.

Head quarter
There are 5 types of head quarters- from 1 start to 5 stars.
The decision at the start is very easy. You need a 1 star! Why? Because it is for free and it is the only one you can start with immediately. All others take a long time to be build and cost much more money. You need to start a 1 star first and later upgrade. When you start with another one you pay first and get no refund when you change your mind and cancel the project. That can eliminate your team with just a few clicks.

Points
A brief overview what points are needed for to get an idea where to look who much you need to avoid to run out of points before your team is build. More details can be found in the sections.

Administrative
Needed for:
Team presentation
Start negotiations with persons and make offers (every update of the offer cost points)
Negotiations with suppliers (engines, brakes, fuel, tires)
Improving team discipline and moral
Improving moral of team members

Designer:
Create designs

Mechanic:
Build parts from designs
Improve pit stops
Get data for races from simulator (only available from Monday to Wednesday on race weeks)

Commercial:
Improve relations with sponsors
Negotiations with sponsors
Investment at sponsor contract negotiations

In the history you can see how many points you spend on single tasks.

Job market
The place where you can hire staff and drivers.
The rule is simple as that the better the person the better the person.
You will need at least one designer, mechanic and commercial to run a team. At the start you can hire 5 staff members which you can use for either better design department, mechanics, commercials or to additionally hire a scout and a coach.
The designer is needed to do research and design a car.
The mechanic is responsible to build the parts designed by the designer and to do the pit-stops.
The commercial is needed for getting sponsors to fund your team.
The scout is needed to get detailed knowledge of persons. (optional)
The coach is needed to run a youth academy. (optional)

Two or more designers can produce better designs than one. Two awesome designer can build a top car. Two terrible designer can build a terrible car. One decent designer can build a better car than 2 bad ones... and so on.
Same goes for all staff members, but remember - you have only 5 slots at the beginning and limited administrative points.
Points you need to start the negotiation and to make offers.
I recommend to not use the filter "no team" because recently release free persons may not appear in the list though they have no contract.

The values
Global rating
Global potential
Talent
Experience
are generic for all persons - the better they are ranked the better they are - and most likely the more expensive the are. Unknown persons do not have Global rating, Global potential and Talent set - so the values are irrelevant.
Experience is important, but an experienced fool is still a fool ^^

//tbd some explanation what those values are and what they are needed for... after x years I still don't know
Fitness
Fatigue
Loyalty
Professionalism
Intelligence
Charisma
Ambitious

Morale
Motivation
Base morale
Role
Schedule
Team discipline
Feelings


When you approach a person the person will give an initial statement.
[Person] is not yet interested in talking about a new contract. means the person will not sign a contract
[Person] should be open for contract discussions - the person might sign
...
check out for persons who are interesting in signing contracts - otherwise they will ask for new demands, will not sign and will make you waste a lot of admin points.

Designer
Reproductive - how good can he reproduce the previous designs, helps to reduce the risk of failing upgrades.

Inventive - improves the initial quality of the design

Mechanic
Pitstops - how good the person can manage pit stops
Discipline - I guess this is the parameter for improving the quality of the produced part

Commercial
Contacts - improves the velocity in contract negotiations at the start
Persuade - improves the capability to get better terms on the negotiations

Scout
Determine - improves the quality of feedback
Professionalism - improves the quality of feedback

Coach
Coaching - improves the velocity of juniors improving
Judge ability - improves the quality of feedback about juniors (I guess so...)

Driver
The person who gives her or his best to get most out of all the effort.
The better the driver, the better the result - vice versa...

Suppliers
A car need an engine, tires, fuel and brakes to drive. The better the quality of the parts the better they work, but the more you will have to pay for, money and points.
As long you do not have those parts your car can not participate on any session. Be careful with spending points. Long term contracts need much more points. Decent contracts need much more points. When you are out of points you can not sign contracts and ...
Better contracts give you an advantage over your competitors and can compensate bad designs a bit, but in case your gearbox brakes, the suspension fails the state of the art engine wont bring you any points for the championship.

No money no honey
A team needs money to survive. You need to pay for everything - from personal to designs, parts, doing laps during testing, suppliers, even the manager (you) gets a wage (can be set on the private life page)
The ways to get money are through sponsors, fans, results, loans and investments (for public teams only, see public team section)

Sponsors

There are 5 sections for sponsors. The more stars the better the sponsor pays.
Some sponsors are willing to overpay, some don't. Some ask for short contracts, some for long. Some can sign with more than 1 team, some are restricted to 1 team...

The title sponsor is the one who pays most - up to 4.2 millions/week, maybe more, but needs most attention and most points to get a contract with. A beginner team can be run with less than 3 millions per week so the title sponsor alone can finance the whole team. It can take 3-5 weeks to get such a contract and while you are negotiating another team can snatch that contract and you find yourself with no deal and many many points wasted (no refund on failed or canceled negotiations)

Section 4 sponsors
Pay less, but can be signed faster

and so on.. section 5 sponsors bring very little money to your team, but who cares what sponsor sticker is on the truck of the team?

Fans
When you finish races fans will notice your team and pay a subscription price. They pay once in their life time. When you ask for little money you will get more fans paying less as an individual, when you ask for more money less fans will subscribe but pay more - the total of the income is fans*price. Set a subscription fee and see if you find paying fans. If you have good results and no one pays the price might be to high - when many pay but your income is low you might charge to little. Winning races in div 3 can generate very much money when the subscription fee is optimized.

Running out of money?
When you hit 5 millions dept your team will stop designing parts.
One fast way to get up to 10 millions is by taking a loan from a loan shark - you can have one loan at the time with a run time of 13, 26 or 39 weeks. The interests are .. well I hope you would never consider such a loan in real life cause the business plan you need to make enough money to make profit with such a loan would be kick ass. However, with pitwall it is possible to make a lot of money after a couple of weeks so it work here. It gives your new team some air for a couple of weeks.

Last option - go public (at least in my opinion)
Team page
At the bottom of the page there is the section "Shares" - you can go public and sell ALL shares of your team. Depending on the division your team is and your team value you will get a price tag. Selling the shares in irreversible! Once public always public!
You will get some money (0-300.000.000 or more) - team not in a division yet - division 1 team.
A shareholder can do some investments with negative interests - you pay back less than you got... In case you find a shareholder who is willing to do so.

The downside:
You can not regulate the wage of the manager (you) - that can get expensive once you are successful - more than 1 million/week,
Shareholder can fire you.
It is irreversible!

How to build a car
There are several values which leads to an awesome car. Starting with research.
To build something awesome your designer need to have the knowledge to do so. Therefor they need to do research - even star designer have to renew their knowledge.
There is the "Research limit" and the "Potential research limit". The "Research limit" reflects were the designers are at the moment while the "Potential research level" reflects where the can be.
The rule is simple as that - the higher the better because the higher the potential is the higher the research limit can get and the current limit is the higher the properbility to great a fast and light car. It takes alot of time until the current research limit raises, or falls. It can get better - highly motivated designers, new star designer hired - or get worse - low motivation or moral and or loss of good staff can cause a brain drain, or loss of potential and in a longer term, current research limits.
At the start you do not have to worry much about when building your first car, because it takes many weeks until those values change. On the midterm run you should try to get the best available designers to be able to create better parts.
Reseach can be done by designing a part or as a research task alone.
There are maximum levels for parts for the season as well, not all are always displayed. In theory it is possible to create parts that are "to good" to be legal - but that is an advanced issue.

Design:
When you start a design you can do research, see previous chapter, define what specifications are important to you, test bed -> unreavel ratings, cost design points and is not mandatoriliy needed, testing does not make the part better, and you can build the parts once designed - in one step - and you can give the part an awesome name.

Many parts are needed to build a car, on Pitwall they are reduced to 12 - the thing to start with is:
Chassis: the attributes are weight, grip and aerodynamic (and finetune, but I do not care about finetune) - the lighter the better, weight is alot in Pitwall and the biggest influence on the overall performance - the heavier a part is the more important this value is for the particular part - and the chassis is by far the heaviest part of the car - it must have at least 400kg (value can change through season rulebook changes)
Gearbox: a cruicial part which tends to fails very easy for new starters, therefore reliabilty is a big factor, besides weight and performane -> shift time.
Suspension: can break and finish race prematurly.
and others, they are important but not as critical //tbd other parts

Upgrades, once you have done many many kilometers you will get the ratings of the parts. Chassis take most kilometers to have the ratings.
There are two ratings per parameter - the current and the potential. Once the potential is unreaveld you can upgrade the part.
NEVER UPGRADE A PART THOSE POTENTIAL RATINGS ARE UNKNOWN - that will cause worse upgrades than the part it is build on.


Production:
You can see how good your mechanics can build parts - Production quality as well as the pitstop quality
The better the better, as usual.
your car need a part of each, each car - so 2 cars need 2 parts of each - production cost money and points - pretty straigth forward. just a tip, dont create to many gearboxes you will upgrade your initial design later - you can build the and have them delivered to the race track in no time (literally, one click and it is in the garage)
The rating of the part is relative to the design, not to the rules the design based on - so a 70% rated part can look like it is better than the 50% design and maybe "illegal", but it is not - it states that the mechanics were not able to produce the part 100%. The better the mechanics are, and the more knowledge they have how to produce the better the part will be. It even makes sense to build a part weeks after the design is done to have improved parts.

Testing, Qualifying, Race
The core part of the game, at last it is still a race manager game, and what would that be without RACING!

There are two types of weeks known on the schedule for pitwall
Testing weeks - off season and mid season - week 1,2 and 8
In those weeks you can hire up to 3 guest drivers per week from 16 - not dead yet, even a 80 year old retired designer can be hired as guest driver.
You can evaluate those driver, but should keep in mind that they are most likely not at top of fitness, morale and motivation and loose more than 2 seconds because of..
You can run unlimited laps in week 1 and 2 but should consider that every lap cost 2000 - or what ever the price is at the moment.

Race weeks:
Mondays and Tuesdays are for junior drivers who will do their races. You need a chief coach assigned and junior drivers (assigned) to let them drive - that's all - the car and pit crew is provided.

Preparations:
You can order your driver some training and you can do car setup preparations. This reduces the laps you need to do during testing to get the best setup. This is not reflected until your driver has done one lap.
On this page you also can train the pit stop crew by spending mechanic points. A well trained crew can save valuable time on pit stops!


Testing:
Wednesday and Thursday - time to find the perfect setup. Get data on fuel usage on several set ups and tire degradation. You also can test pit stops to get knowledge of the delta time you loose on pitstops. You need those data later for your race strategy.
On the car page you assemble your cars and assign the driver. You buy the engines, tires and brakes there, but also keep an eye on season regulations like limited amount of engines you are allowed to buy, amount of tires you can use in one week. Once you reached your limits you can buy more engines for money and championship points - not recommendable!
When you burn to many tires in qualifying you will have none left for racing. Also check the weather!
Slicks (soft/medium/hard) are used for dry tracks.
Soft are super fast, but are terrible in duration.
Medium have less performance but better duration.
Hard are worse in performance but have most times better duration than medium (but not always)
You can only test when ALL parts are on the car and a driver is assigned.
On the test page you can set the amount of laps the driver should do (up to 99), the driver order - save the car to risk a lot, the engine mapping, program, fuel load and when the stint should be done (immediately or later).
Intermediate - not dry not full wet
Wet - full wet conditions

Sometimes the track condition is border line - than it might happen that a slick is a better than an intermediate, a intermediate than a full wet.
E.g. the track status "Little bit of water on track" can mean inter or slick
"Water on track" can be wet or inter

The driver order defines how much the driver pushes on the stint. The more the driver pushes the more he uses the tires, the more fuel he needs and the higher the risk that the driver makes an mistake or even crashes.

The engine management defines how much energy is converted via the engine - fuel usage increases, and the engine wear is higher with higher modes. Check how many laps the race is and how much fuel you can load (in seasons with no refueling during the race)

Program - performance or tire management. Focus on the set up for those parameters. In is not possible to have a setup that optimized both. Depending on the track you will have to find the optimum.

Car setup - after the driver has done one lap you can alter that value setting the focus of the car set up.


Qualifying:
Friday, Saturday
Your driver may need a new engine, best tires and new brakes.
There are seasons where you can let the driver do multiple laps, some seasons allow only 1 lap per driver.
Check the rule book and give the driver the best possible car.
There is no parc ferme regulation- so the driver can drive in the same car (not at the same time), can alter parts after the qualifying is done. e.g. use a smaller tank for the qualifying which is lighter, or an excellent gearbox that has not much run time left but is still lighter...

Set the values to max - or less when your driver spins to much when he is under pressure..
check the fuel usage - drivers get very annoyed when they run out of fuel in the qualifying (or race) - send the driver out and keep your fingers crossed.

Strategy:
Once your driver qualified (no worries, no 107% regulation) you can set the strategy - FIRST check the weather on the strategy page, then buy tires - never the other way around!
Depending on the seasons rules you may or may not refuel during the race. So check the rule book, then the fuel use and then set the fuel needed. In case the fuel tanks do not have the size needed to run risk a lot and max engine power you need to reduce the settings to make it to the end of the race. To finish first you need to finish first.
Check how long the tires last and how bad the lap times get with old tires (on the test page after you did tests)
Set the pit stops.
Assign tires to the stops - best practice the exact tire, not the type.
Check if you accidentally assigned a tire twice - that can cause catastrophic results, even retiring, e.g when the desired tire is assigned to the other car as well.
Check again - fuel usage, tire consumption, tire assignment.


Race:
Sunday - check the start time of the race - it can be very early depending on where the race is and your local time. The car MUST be ready when the race starts or your driver retires!
During the race you can modify the strategy, but you must consider that there is a lag between race and viewer - therefore you must plan changes 2 laps ahead to be safe! Last minute changes, next lap changes can cause catastrophic events!
Enjoy the race and the community during race, BS talk during race is welcome ;)

Debrief drivers:
After the race you can see the ratings of your drivers here.

Championship:
Should be clear ... one detail - the average ranking desicdes who is up in case 2 or more team have no, or equal points. Unlike F1 where the better position decides - e.g. one 11th place is better than 9 12th places

Propose article update