Pitwall news

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.

Persons have always been very lenient in Pitwall during contract negotiations. During the negotiations they were very hard on their demands, but when the time to take a decision was there they would basically accept even extremely low offers.
This lead to some teams being able to sign people up for a very low salary (a salary of a whopping 1,- per week for example), which in result has lead to these teams to be able to receive extra money on the money that they didn't have had to spend on person contracts. With an update that I've just released that contains a lot of changes and tweaks to the person negotiation process this problem is something of the past. On the pages not a lot changed, but I've spend a lot of time tweaking and making improvements to the code that judges the offer. There have been many changes, and I really recommend to look at the changelog (from the Game info > Status page).

This update also incorporates the roles that were introduced very recently. For those who missed it: the roles allow the team to set up a staff structure where there are heads and juniors. Based on your facilities you can add more roles to this structure allowing to get more work done and test out new, promising staff members. These changes are now also included in the contract negotiations as you can now offer head and junior roles to staff members.
Because we already had contracts signed I've updated all the signed contracts to set head roles to those who are assigned in a head position, and junior to all other staff.

Also, because these are major back end changes I've had to cancel all current negotiations. Apologies about that, but there was no other way unfortunately.

To sum up, these are the most major changes:
- Roles are included in the negotiations.
- Persons are now approachable at any time during their contract. There's no more hardcoded block.
- Persons are much tougher when deciding which offer to choose. If they don't like any offer, they will reject. Making it possible to approach them earlier doesn't mean that they will sign a contract the moment they're approachable.
- Whether a person is approachable depends on whether you're approaching as their current manager, or as a manager from another team.
- Re-worked feedback system gives much clearer feedback.
- Money offers (wage, bonuses) now don't necessarily are blocked if they're below the minimum. It's possible to give much more in another money offer to make up for the lack in the other offer (with limits).
- There's a minimum number of races now included in contract negotiations. If this number is not achieved through enough races competed (for drivers) or not being set in a role (for staff) then the driver is approachable and can leave straight away. This was also introduced to make all the staff available who are stuck in abandoned teams. The minimum races has remained at 0 for current contracts.
- Persons in the top 100 will have some public skills (on top of the scout and coach reports), with the higher they are the more public.
- Persons now also check up on their contract from time to time. If they feel they're underpaid they will let you know, and this causes a negative feeling impacting their morale/motivation.

This morning the website was down due to a network upgrade in the data center. Around 10:30 the problems were solved and the website was available again. The hourupdates need to be caught up, and that what will be done this morning.

A rather significant change is coming to Pitwall this week. The persons contracts negotiations system is something that is quite important to the game, and it's something that I feel is not developed enough yet, mainly due to seeing many teams being able to offer 0,- salaries and fees to drivers. This is something I intend to change, and since it wasn't something that was clearly intended to be like this the change will be immediate.

In the negotiations phase there will be more flexibility whereas the person demands rely more on their power position (similarly as to how the sponsors negotiate). A minimum number of races clause will be added to the negotiations, to prevent persons being stuck in an inactive team. Finally in the negotiations process the feedback will also be changed so that it makes much more sense. This means that there will be less, but more relevant feedback.

Right now we're in a system where the head staff is the leader, and you're able to hire additional persons and employ them. This will change as well by introducing a tier structure that allows the creation of junior positions (for example: 1 head designer, and 2 junior designers). In the facilities page you might have seen "staff space", this is the total number of persons you can assign in a staff position. Every team will have a minimum of 5 staff spaces as that comes with HQ1. Every upgrade to a higher HQ tier gives 2 additional spaces. The staff module also gives an additional 2 staff spaces. Every staff space allows a person to work, and all those persons that can't be assigned to a position will not be able to be employed in any development/production/negotiations. Needless to say, this will have an effect on their morale.

Finally an important change is that in real life it happens very often that prima donna sport stars feel they're underpaid. This will also be introduced in Pitwall. Persons who feel they're underpaid will complain, and the more they feel they're underpaid the unhappier they will be. Persons in your own team will allow negotiations at any time, unless they want to leave the team. So contracts can be improved generally at any time.

These changes are planned to be introduced this week, and it should result in a more structured and more fair contracts system.