Pitwall news

After almost a year of development the points update has been finished. First of all: a big thanks to everyone who has been testing the update on the beta site. It wouldn't have been possible to create this update without their help.

So what has changed? The initial plan was to just test a points update in the game, and then see how it impacted the game. Gradually as the new update was being worked on other features have been added, all with the aim of improving the playability of the game, decreasing the learning curve and to improve support offered to members. I believe that with this update the game offers players an easier to understand game which will allow them to get started quicker on. There has been a lot that has been changed, and it wouldn't be a good idea to go over it in one news update. So for now I will highlight the changes and come back on individual features later on. On top of all the changes listed below, many bugs have been fixed as well. Most notably the race script will now auto-restart after it has frozen.

Points
First the obvious: there are now 4 points categories: administrative, designer, mechanic and commercial points. Depending on many factors, you get a certain amount of points per hour update. These allow you to take actions on all of those 4 aspects in the game. This also means that there was no more a use for personnel (who you had to assign to deals etc.) in the game, so they have been removed. This should remove a big part of the micro-management in the game, which is something that has come up as annoying in the past.

Development
Before you had to start a project and wait for your personnel to finish the project. Each project now costs designer points. Once you have enough points, the project will be finished. You can still create projects when you don't have enough points, and once you have reached the number of designer points required the project will be finished. The ratings have also been made more transparent, and you can now see exactly how much percent your part is.
As a welcome improvement: you can now also produce parts at the same time as starting a new project.
Producing parts uses mechanic points and work in a similar way as the development projects. Once you have enough points they will be instantly finished and you can go test them on the track right away.

Suppliers
Supplier negotiations have been changed so that they can work with the points system as well. The previous system required you to choose a contract type before negotiations. This could lead to your team being without a contract when a rival team signed the supplier up before you could. This has been changed and you can now progress the negotiations by investing administrative points. You can sign a normal contract at 30%, a partner deal at 70% and a works deal at 100%.

Persons
Negotiating with persons is now based on administrative points. Once negotiations start with a person there's a chance to sign them instantly, but it won't always work. Big tier persons will require so many points that it will take some time before a team can sign them.

Sponsors
Sponsor negotiations work similarly to the person negotiations. The initial points that are required are very high and cool down to a more normal points requirement. There are also more sponsors available now, so there shouldn't be a sponsor shortage any more.

GUI update
During the update I had to change many things in the layout of the game, so I decided that it would be a good time to change the look of the game as well and to make it a more mobile friendly website. This has been accomplished with the new layout I believe. Virtually every page has been re-created, so a lot of effort has gone into this area. This change should make the game much more accessible to people playing from tablets and phones.
If the website looks strange, you should clear your cache and refresh the page.

Admin panel
Last but not least, there has been a lot of development in the admin panel. There was virtually no admin panel in the old game which required me to do every thing myself. Since I'm not a student at school any more with a lot of free time, it got impossible for me to handle everything. I will add admins soon to the game which should mean that the game will get much more organized again. The admin panel allows admins to handle a lot of tasks, and the panel will only improve a lot over the coming weeks as more requirements are added.

That's all for now. I will come back on more individual features later on. The upgraded was tested yesterday, and apart from a few small problems there were no major issues. I will try to fix any problems that there are as soon as possible.

To me this feels like a brand new Pitwall, and I really hope that all of you enjoy this new version!

Because of the issues with qualifying, the qualification session has been extended to 16h (4pm) Pitwall time. See the right top of the page to see the Pitwall time zone.
Apologies for these issues, I've been investigating a lot this morning, and found some of the (well hidden) reasons why we had some (week/race/...) update stalls lately.

I haven't been very active which is because all my time and effort go to the beta right now. The good news is that things have advanced quite a lot, and many bugs have already been fixed. Also good to know is that there is an admin panel that admins will be able to use. It will allow me to give admin powers to people again, and the admin panel is more advanced than ever (and will continue to be developed).

As some have noticed, I have started fixing the minimum races clause in the person contracts recently. To start of: this is not an implementation, more of a fix of something that was implemented but never worked as it should have and was promptly disabled in the background. But I will do a public test (probably tonight) before implementing this, as it heavily affect teams that's for certain. And it's also possible that I will postpone this to next season, but that depends on testing etc.

This clause (minimum races) in the person contract is used in two ways for persons: "unassigned races" and "races competed" (note competed does not mean completed even though there is a typo on the person page - competed means qualified). This clause also takes into account whether the person has been with the team for the entire season. If the person joined in the current season then the formula goes something like this: floor( ((13-week_joined)/13)*minimum_races ). So if a person joins in week 13 and requires 10 races, then the number of races will be 0 (as he could join after the week 13 race). If he joins in week 6 with 10 races required then he will require 5 races from the team.

The first way the clause is used for persons ("Unassigned races") is to prevent (rich) teams from hoarding staff from the market and keeping them unassigned. The races assigned parameter is raised by one every Sunday at 0:00 for each person that is assigned to a role. If a person is unassigned, then this parameter will not be raised for that week, no matter if he was assigned during the week (only Sunday 0:00 counts).
This parameter was not kept before (checking whether a person was assigned in a role) and has already been calculated for all previous and the current season based on the races stat in the history (so it has been more generous). From this Sunday on the system will do the checks already and they will be correct.
If the potential number of races (assigned races + races remaining in the season) is lower than this minimum races clause, then the person is set to "allowed to leave immediately" due to a breach of contract (this does not mean that the person will leave, but he can).

The second one ("Races competed") is to prevent inactive teams from having amazing persons and "locking" them away for a long time as the team is inactive and they're tied to their contracts. This parameter looks at the number of races that the team has competed.
If the potential number of races (races competed + races remaining in the season) is lower than this minimum races clause, then the person is set to "allowed to leave immediately" due to a breach of contract (this does not mean that the person will leave, but he can).

Once this is completed (and the long term join person bug fixed) I will do something similar for sponsors (but this info is already available so that shouldn't take long to implement).

If you have created a part but it didn't get finished instantenously, please let me know in the following topic: click here.
I will look at it and manually update the parts.

Please note that the instant part for development only works for the actual development part of the system. Both the research and the test bed phases do not work instantly.

Today the updated development system that was mentioned before has been released on the main game. This update allows everyone to finally start their season 9 development projects. As of course there is no time anymore to complete them all now, everyone receives an instant project per part for development. And also instant parts for production.
This system has been tested quite a bit on the alpha website. The alpha testers will notice that there are quite a few other changes (GUI and bug fixing related mainly). These changes were never pushed to the alpha website, so it's not the case that the alpha site has just been ported over. The main issues that were reported have been fixed.

What has changed in this development update? Quite a lot, here's all of it taken from the original specification document:
Split research
The pages need to become less crowded on Pitwall in general, and the research should therefore be split off the development page. With the changes that are coming for the research, it would be better any way.

Research to per season
Because research right now is focused too much on the current season we don't really simulate the trend in Formula 1 that sometimes the rules get thrown overboard and we get a new set of rules. This is not necessarily for the entire car, but it is regularly for one or more parts on the car.
As research will be split off from the development page, we can also allow a tab on the page to switch between the different seasons.

Rules maximum
The rules will now simply show the maximum value that a part can reach. Right now it says something vague like "very restricted". But from this change on the rules will simply show the maximum value that the part can reach.

Removal of rules limits
At this moment the development is limited by the rules, and also the value that a part has is relative to this limit. Parts won't be created relative to their limit anymore, and will have the real value. This also allows the teams to go over the limit with the parts, effectively running an illegal car.

Rules research
A new type of research that allows you to have your designers look into the rules and look for loopholes. Each rule set will have a real value, a potential value, and a multiplier which specifies how likely it is to find out the loophole. Not every rule will have a loophole each season (actually, only a few or no rules will have a loophole), which makes it exciting not knowing which loopholes have been found yet.

Development phases
Development will be split into several phases like we have now, but they will actually do something. The player will be able to cancel out certain phases or decide to make them shorter or longer.
1. Research
This phase starts the researching phase just like it can be done as a standalone. You will be able to state how high the research phase should go, but this won't be higher than the maximum research level.
2. Development
The actual development where the part is improved. It should be made clear to the player how long this phase should be as otherwise the player is in the unknown.
3. Test bed
This phase allows you to assess the performance of the part. This value can be different than the on track value.
4. QA testing
This phase is probably only useful for the gearbox as it allows you to see how long the part will last generally.

Part ratings
At this moment the part ratings are hidden until a number of kilometers is done. Since the test bed phase in the development is introduced, people will be able to know the rating of the part before it hits the track (unless they skip the phase). Instead of not knowing your own part rating, the system will be changed to trying to find out the other teams' ratings. Which makes sense, because you can always know everything from your own team, but need to look out where the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents are. Therefore over time the more kilometers your opponents do with their parts, you will get a better view of where they are with their parts. For now this will be kept the same for everyone (as in, there's no way to increase the rate of finding out how good another team is) as otherwise it will get too complex.

Better overview
Parts will be shown in such a way that it is clear which part evolved from which part. A hierarchical structure in which the first part is shown first and the other parts are followed by it.

Weight tweaking
Weight is still too much of a random factor. It can't be that a part all of a sudden is XX kg lighter. Especially for the heavier parts such as the chassis this is still a problem.

Project mechanics
The number of mechanics was set to a really low number, making it usually no different to have 2 or 5 mechanics assigned. This has been updated.

The careful reader will notice that the last two items (designer instructions & testing programs) did not make the cut. But these will be implemented later.

As I've noticed that there have been quite a few complaints about the morale/motivation, I've decided to reset that for all persons for now.

Next up I'll look into all the annoying bugs and/or features that are not working as correctly.

If irregularities occur, let me know and I will look into them as soon as possible. Have fun everyone!