Pitwall news

As announced earlier, and introduced a little later than originally intended, I've made some changes to the development system.

The research level was introduced to make the development less of a gamble, but it required a transition season to avoid too much of a sudden change.
I've applied the following changes with immediate effect.

Maximum research level shown
The maximum research level is the maximum level that the research level can reach. Once this level is reached, it's pointless to do further researching as the maximum has been reached.
This maximum is a calculation of the quality of your design team.

Team research level calculation
In the transition season the research level was only the skill set of the designer, now it's the entire team. In other words: the maximum level of the research level was the skill level of the designer, now it's of all designers in the design team (which can be assigned from the Personnel > Staff page).
This is very important, so please do read this before you post on the forum that there's a bug: This means that up until yesterday your research level was probably (unless you already have an amazing design team with multiple junior designers) higher than what is shown now. This is because the head designer is no longer responsible for the full 100% of the research level rating, but only for xx% (how much I keep a secret, but it's less than 75%). So we are in a similar situation as we were when the system was introduced, but now teams can do something about it: hire junior designers, add them to the design team and the maximum research level will increase. Any changes that are done in the design team will be reflected straight away in the maximum research level (so changes like who is the head designer, or adding/removing a junior designer are shown right away in the maximum research level).

Research level reduction
The research level reduces when a chassis or part is designed, but it was also applying this for upgrading a chassis or a part. I decided that this is a bit too much as the research level already took a hit originally and the potential was already calculated (reminder: the potential level of a part is based mainly on the research level, not the current level), and I've remove this. From now on the research level will no longer reduce when you upgrade a part or chassis.

For now the maximum research level is the same for each part, but as I mentioned in the introduction of the system, but in the future this will be changed by having designers who are more specialized in certain areas (such as gearboxes) than others.

There was a bit of confusion about the system since its introduction, and I think a large part was played by the fact that everyone was a bit over-inflated on their research level numbers.
As a general rule: it's pointless to do research if your current research level is higher than your maximum research level.

These changes are the first of a set of changes that I want to introduce to the game to make the game more transparent and fun to play.

Because of a mistake on my side when drawing up the calendar, the first two weeks of season 4 weren't marked as test weeks.
This meant that by the time that I noticed this error (this morning) it was already too late to undo what had gone wrong. Because of this I've restored the back up from last night before the season update, and manually launched all the updates, and fixed some season update bugs.
Right now the server is catching up on all the missed hour updates. Once this is completed, the weather will be generated and season 4 will be able to start.

This season will mark no big updates as I've been very busy with another project that is due to launch very soon.
Once this project is live, I will be introducing an update for the development section. The maximum value of the research will no longer be just based on the head designer, but will be calculated based on the total designer staff. This was announced when the research feature was introduced so that managers had time to adapt to this.
I will also make it more transparent so that you can see immediately how high this value will be. That way there's no guessing, and you'll know when you can stop your research project.
In the future I intend to make the game a bit more transparent (or just more "a game") in certain sections that are now too much hidden.

The development change that was announced in the season 3 changes has been put live. This changes how the part calculation (how good a part will be) is done, and thus is quite a big change. In the past the head developer his skills would have a direct impact on the rating of the part. This wasn't very realistic, because it would mean that a Newey would be able to make a Minardi a top team (parts wise) in a season.

To change this a new stat for every part has been introduced: research. Based on the skill of your designer and how many developers you have assigned to the research project, the level will slowly increase until it reaches the skill of the head designer. In the future it will change to the skill level of your design team (including junior's), but I want to give everyone the chance to set this design team up.
When a new part is created, this level is mainly used to calculate how good the part is. But of course the designer skill also still plays a role (to make use of the inventive and reproductive stats).
The research level will generally wear off slowly, but it will also drop whenever a new development project is started. The research level can only be improved by doing a research project or by doing laps (but it's a very low improvement) in any session.
I've decided to take it slow with the wearing off to make sure there are no developing dramas. After a season I'll evaluate how the average research levels are, and see if the drop in level should be stronger as initially intended.

The research projects are very similar to the development projects. They also take up a slot, you should also assign enough designers (generally less than a development project though), and they also cost money (half the price of the normal development projects). If you don't assign enough designers, then you will also get a sub optimal assigned designers warning message.
There have been a few other changes to the development process, so do consult the changelog to be aware of them.

Since this is a brand new system every team needs a starting value. I decided that the part rating of the best parts that were developed this season is the best indicator, and thus that value has been used. This is a very generous thing, and everyone is probably on a slightly higher level that they really should be.
With this change I hope to achieve something that I always wanted to prevent when creating PW2: avoid to get a game that is just brainless developing/clicking. This introduction increases realism and adds a few new strategies to the game.

And to end some other good news (that has been rightly so requested a few times): I'm going to be updating the development page to a tabbed page soon.

As announced in the news post of yesterday, the sponsors are now able to sign multiple teams (or still only 1, depending on the sponsor).

I activated this already now so that people can anticipate for the next season, because it wouldn't be fair that all of a sudden good sponsors are opened up to teams who hadn't signed up a sponsor yet.

My best advice is to keep your sponsor deals, but to cancel them just before reaching 100% so that you don't lose out on your current sponsor and be possibly beaten by another team. Also worth to note, you really have to cancel the old sponsor. A check has been added to prevent that teams sign up sponsors for the same section.

Another small change, but that should be liked by many, is that when a team signs up a sponsor the running negotiations will be changed so that the losing teams can still at least get the sponsor for a season (or something else that is possible). The system will automatically try to reduce the season in order to prevent to back out of the deal. If for example you are negotiating a season 2 to season 3 deal, and a team signs the same sponsor from season 3 to 4 then in the old system everything was canceled out. This change will prevent that. The system will in this example reduce the length from season 3 to a season 2 only deal (if the max teams has been reached for season 3, otherwise nothing changes).

As season 2 is nearing its grand finale next week, I wanted to let you know in advance about some of the changes that are coming up in season 3.

Persons
Following the changes of last week with the person negotiations, the minimum number of races is used for the persons. If persons are not getting enough races as agreed in their contract, they will be approachable to everyone and able to join another team at any point of their remaining contract.

Team
The staff levels are removed and replaced by short term focus. The percentages and being able to set a specific percentage per level is gone. Now you can only choose 1 level and the teams' focus will be on that one. Please note that this change is already live to allow people to change their main focus already. The main focus for teams has been set to their highest percentage that was set in the old system.

Development
Several changs coming up in this department. First of all, upgrading a chassis will be slightly faster compared to how it is right now. Secondly it will cost more money to upgrade parts. The more you upgrade a part, the slightly higher the costs will be.
Finally the biggest change will be a new statistic that will be added called "expertise" that will be added to each part. This statistic shows how much knowledge the design team have over each part. This statistic will be the one determining how good a part will be, and thus the part creation algorithm will be changed so that it looks at the expertise. This will make making parts more realistic and less random. The chances of having a crappy or amazing part will be slightly reduced as well, as the potential/rating of a part now has a level that it can rely on.
In the future designers will have a few parts that they're specialised in, but that won't be included yet in this system (one step at a time - but I thought I'd let you know already).
This also means that hiring a new designer who is amazing and making him responsible for the chassis on day 1 of his new job won't result in an instant improved chassis. It will take some time for your team to build up the expertise that the designer brings to the team for the various parts.
Please note that this functionality is still under development, and it might not make it on day 1 of season 3 but surely it will be released not much later.

Sponsors
I have disabled the posibility to add sponsors to the game recently and there's a reason for that. The functionality for sponsors to have multiple teams will be enabled as it was already implemented, but never tested. Because of this, I will give everyone the option to cancel their future sponsor deals for a limited time, in case they want to give it a go with another sponsor that might be better than any other that was available when they started negotiations with their current sponsors. Note that not all sponsors will allow multiple teams.

Session
Doing test laps will cost money again just like in the previous version of Pitwall. The price per lap is set at 3 000,- and is the same for every division.

Staff
The cost of firing personnel will be raised to 20 000,- per personnel that is fired. The reasoning behind this is to prevent teams with big cash to constantly hire and fire if they need a few more here or there.