Hi everyone,
It has been a while since Pitwall has seen an update, but there's a good reason for that. I have been working on a major update which focusses on some parts of the game where I felt that managers were kind of blocked and couldn't do much to change their situation, but also some nice fixes which improve the quality of life.
Automation
The first major change is "Automation". It only takes you a couple of weeks in a deserted division to know that the game is not fun when there are no competitors. Because of that I've worked on introducing automation in the game. This means that teams are starting to be able to take care of themselves. It will definitely be far from perfect, but at least they will be able to research, develop and create cars, participate in testing/qualification/race sessions, sign drivers and staff, sign suppliers and sponsors, etc.
When teams have been inactive for 2 weeks, the automation will automatically kick in to prevent the teams from becoming deserted. On top of that, old teams who used to be active in the game will join empty divisions until at least 8 teams have been reached.
Scouting
Another major change is in "Scouting". Before we've already had some changes which made the reveal of skills more interesting. This upgrade builds on top of those changes. The reason why I want to build on top of this, is because I feel that most of the interesting profiles have not been discovered in the game yet. We are seemingly stuck with the same persons in the game.
To improve this situation, the following changes have been made. The scout grading system has been entirely removed and has been replaced by actual values. This means that the persons who have been scouted are no longer sorted by the grade that scouts gave the person, but by their actual values.
Next to those changes, roaming is re-introduced. When the maximum of the scouting points have been reached, the scout will do a scout report at the next day update. The manager is able to choose which type of person to scout, and whether those need to be available (without team).
Another new features is "Academy". Managers can choose to invest in different types of persons. Once per week a person can be promoted from the academy. The highest the quality, which is influenced by investment, the more chance a good person is created. All these persons are created "fresh". It does not mean that they are exclusively available to you, the game just generates them and delivers a 100% scout report. Because managers will be the first to see them, this gives them the chance to sign a new talent.
Finally, once per week you can also train your staff. This improves one skill from 1 to 5 skill points, but it's not a guarantee so it could be 0 as well. Whether it improves greatly depends on the motivation of the person. Morale has also been tweaked, so it will be harder to keep your persons happy.
Person negotiations
The last major changes is in "Person negotiations". Getting to know a person through scouting is one thing, but I felt that some teams were sitting on talents with others unable to get them. To spice it up I'm re-introducing something which I thought I would never re-introduced after Pitwall 1.0, "driver transfers". The system works completely different from the previous system as this system is much more railroaded. The allow talk clause has been replaced by a buy out clause. There are 5 options when negotiating a contract: no buy out, which is the system as we have it today, and which will also be the case for all "old" contracts. The non buy out clauses gradually increase from low to high, with high being a buy out cost of 5 times the annual salary, while low is 0.25 times the cost of the annual salary. Persons will not be very lenient on this, but they won't always block what you are offering them.
In negotiations you will now always see all the teams that are in negotiations, and you will also see in some cases who is winning. This is done to add some more competition to get the signature of the person. Similarly as before, there are different scenarios with some persons prefering not to share any details, while others are 100% transparant.
Finally, the number of persons who get the opportunity to think about whether they want to negotiate has been increased since there was a huge backlog in the hour update. But on top of that, managers are now able to try to convince persons that they should talk to them. This greatly depends on the motivation of the person. If he's demotivated he'll be more likely to be willing to negotiate.
All these changes should spice the market a bit up, a market that I've felt was too stale for some time now.
When this update will go live is not certain yet, as I want to do another round of bug fixing especially in the automation. Once some more changes are ready this will go live.
I will post the full changelog so far in the comments in the forum, and also what is still planned before release. Go check it out, because there are many more changes in other sections of the game that have not been mentioned. If you want to see the changes for yourself, go to beta.pitwall.org to see it live in action.
