Vanilla Balance Mod Beta - Testers Wanted

[TheFlamingRed]

http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/motorsport-manager-balance-mod-part-1.12965/

Make sure you down load all the parts!​

This mod has now been released. All the changes are listed in the above link. If a Forum Admin is reading this, if you could remove the "Testers Wanted" and change it to "Development Discussion" thread, it would be appreciated.

UPDATED TO WORK WITH 1.3​

Note: In attempts to fix the interviews and dilemmas, I have temporarily removed all non English languages from those two files. I hope to reinsert them into a later version (but when I do, they'll still be the vanilla text as I am unable to translate in any other language).

 

[Beynasuh]

I hope we can get your new mod soon too. Can't wait to play it.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

FIrst impressions of the new DLCs and patch are really good.

Lots of improvements to the game, and how they've integrated the series into single saves are great (I was expecting GT and F1 to be completely seperate save files needed, but you can apply to go from one to the other).

Being able to view the AI's chassis choise is something amazing! It'll help be balance that out.

AND most importantly, the DEVS have reduced the Driver impact from 8s a lap down to 3 (which I use in my mod) so performance is once again more important then a driver (not as extreme as I go as I change lots of other things - but really good steps in the right direction).

Let's see whats game breaking over the weekend, and if the answer is nothing, I'll begin updating the mod.

It's likely that I will only be releasing an "ALL DLC" version of the mod.... I don't know if it will work without any/all of the DLCs - but basically anyone who is enjoing the 'difficult gameplay' this mod provides is almost certainty going to have these dlcs.

Finance is basically unchanged - if you own the team you just get up front money instead of per race installments - so its the same finiance per year, just handled slightly differently.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

So....

• Modding the difficulty of GT to how I modded the F1 difficulty will be simple.
• Finance is basically the same, so I can keep my old system of boosting development costs and giving the AI free reign on money for development
• There are now upto 5 crashed be default - near identical to my system. So I don't need to deal with that anymore.

What I need information on is:

• How good is the AI at using their ERS system
  
• How are you finding the new interview system.... I find it odd now as I've only ever had 1 question interviews, totally not related to race results (in a small sample of 3 races). Which i guess feels more off as the old system I got working, What kind of interviews are you now all having?
• Is Fanbase Fixed?

 

[TheFlamingRed]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a log for me to think aloud the ideas for the update: Note that SS refers to the Single Seater Series. KERS will refer to the ElectRS system so not to confuse it with the EruoRacingSeries
Blue means planned but not yet implemented.
Red means feature removed
Yellow means advice sought from testers
Green means its implemented in the WIP build.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​

1. CAR PERFORMANCE MATTERS

​

The Devs have actually massively reduced the driver impact in vanilla (which in extreme cases, was 8 seconds difference between quick and slow driver). Their driver impact actually matches mine from the previous version. This actually means that the vanilla game will be more difficult than it has been to date - which is a move I greatly expect will satisfy the average user's desire for a touch more difficulty. However, this mod was designed to be the "Long War" of the Motorsport Manager World, I'll still be making sure that Car Performance Matters more so then normal.

However - I made it so that "Critical Parts" were the most important aspect of the car performance (creating 90% of the performance gap) - while the devs use an average part performance number (and critical parts are almost neglegable). I'll be keeping my preference of the performance gap via critical parts in this mod - as this prevents the very best teams (player or AI) from running away too far.

GT will also be balanced to have a similar level of difficulty.

The KERS system needs to be adjusted to match this performance level. I need testers to determine

• 
  
• How powerful KERS is in both Fuel Save and Overtake modes
  
• How effective the AI use their KERS system

2. DEVELOPMENT COSTS

​

There was lots of talk in the patch notes about finance being overhauled somewhat - and it has, but not too any effect. If you create your own team, then you have all the up front payments (you would have got in part, each race, from the chairman) from your investors. You end up with the same income each year - just it comes in that different format. Secondly, GT has less chairman income then its SS counterpart - but also has less expenses (only 5 parts to develop, of which 3 are significantly cheaper then their SS parts).

As such, increased development costs in APSC (x1.2) and WMC (x1.6) will be maintained
As will the AI have their development costs reduced by 80% over all series (so they can spend money elsewhere).
I expect I will wish to increase the costs of development in IGT by x1.4. I however have not done a full IGT season yet, so please report back if you see this figure being too high.

3. CHASSIS OVERHAUL

​

This core feature will not see any change and will be used for both SS and GT

• 
  
• Tyre Wear to become "Component Wear"
  
• Heat Management to become "Vehicle Stability"
  
• Fuel Efficiency is to become "Performance Efficiency"
  
• Improvability becomes "Improvability"
  
• The Component Improvement based from Designer Stats has been increased by x3 making a good designer very important.
  
• These new stats will be renamed and described in the appropriate sections
• The Battery part of the chassis will not have any alternative function outside of its initial design - as it is a separate feature only used in a few rules.

4. TECH BOOST and DECAY

​

I am going to tone down the AI Boost to -20 for the player. With the AI's improved finance, the development battle is already quite good - and I don't want people to get too burned out playing far too many seasons in the bottom tiers of the game, now that there are 5 series (3 tiers and 2 tiers respectively) for players to explore.

5. DIFFICULTY LEVELS

​

I intend to keep the difficulties increasing between 0-10% tech decay per season. However, for intiial release, only one difficulty will be made available as I test and tweak the mod.

I have not tested it... but we may be able to deliver "championship position decay" - where the decay is greater depending on the championship position... this is in the theoretical stage ATM.

6. OTHER MISC CHANGES

​

• Increased the impact of Drivers personality traits. Likely going to be adding in Brain's new ones.
  
• Adding a Progress vs Reliability problem where each component slot used on a new part creates a +10 Redzone to the part.(excludes Risky parts, designer parts, parts which already modify redzone or reliability). Also have these communicated to the player in the game.
• Increase the upper bound of number of crashes available. (this has been included by the devs)
• Increase the duration of Safety Cars, Virtual Saftey Cars and Yellow Flag events.
  
• Increased reserve driver stat boosts.
  
• Increase the number of topics to vote on per season. (I intend to reduce this from the previous version from 8 down to 6... as the player can now suggest a change too. I intend to increase the cost of this change from £1M to £3M).
  
• Reduce the amount of scouting slots available.
  
• Reduce the amount of forecast you can see.
• Interviews now work! The Devs altered how they worked.... Let me know how they play out and if they need... "tweaking"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

Assets
Buildings
(1) - Decided to let the Road Car Factory be unlocked at Design Level 3 (instead of 4). Means the upper tier AI can build it sooner and have better finances. Especially useful if you are a tier 3 team, as Tier 1 teams will begin to work on this far sooner then you can, and as such, will create more of a cap to the player once he reaches tier 3. Looks like the Devs did this.
(1) -The Telemetry Centre and Simulator now depend on the Staff Housing level 2 (instead of just design and factory) - Encourages Players to build this building, as it otherwise only used for stat improvement of drivers - nearly useless in the vanilla game.Staff Housing has been renamed as Staff Centre.

Championship
(1) Changed prizemoney to 100, 200, 400 (from 125,250,500) for each tier. There was always a bit too much spare money floating around - the better teams won't be too effected by this change because... Completely unneeded now.
Will consider giving WMC the 3pt Qualifying and KERS and HYBRID.
Will consider giving ERS the Last Place Bonus and Promotion Payments.

Interviews
Let me know how these stand.

Rules
(1) - I changed the Merit Payments to be more severe. (e.g., Tier 3 equal 1st/10th = 10M/10M - Standard 1st/10th = 12M/8M, High 1st/10th = 14M/6M, Very High 1st/10th =16M/4M..... Originally 12M/8M was Very High) This means the better teams are in much better shape then lower teams based on the rule. This means that players who are stuck with lower teams will struggle more financially then those better teams - unless the rules favor the lower teams.
(2) - Pit lane speeds 40 (from 50) and 80 (from 70) for the low / high pitlane split. - as so far I hadn't even notice this rule changed anything. Even now, it isn't very noticable
(3) - Changed the top 5 points from 8,6,4,3,2 to 6,4,3,2,1 - because that seems far more normal! This really didn't need to be changed
(4) - Changed the 12 allocated tyres option to now only have 9. There is a new rule... which means we can have 15, 12 or 9 tyres available.... And Given some other changes, including 3pt qualifying and adjustments to the long race weekend, 9 should be pushing it...

Parts
(1) Increased the cost of newly designed parts in APSC by 1.2x and in WMC by 1.6x.
(2) Increased the cost of newly designed parts in IGT by 1.4x

Simulation Settings
(1) Changed Short Qualify from 8 minutes to 5 minutes to make it a one shot qualifying. Change Medium Qualifying from 10 minutes to 12 minutes. Changed Long Qualifying from 12 Minutes to 18 minutes, to ensure that all cars can get in a good lap.

Personality Traits
(1) Increased the Duration of (many) temporary effects. Times have now been randomised between a minimum and maximum.
(2) Increased the Buff / Debuff stength of many effects. This makes the characters more impactful. Now if a driver has a bad neck, it will last longer and the stats are far worse - meaning that it's a real debate to leave him driving or bring in a reserve. Additionally, Relationship / Moral debuffs will now really unsettle a driver, whereas before, they were minor inconviences. In short, the drivers now have more 'life'

Car Part Components
(1) Added a default +10 Redzone area to all design 'slots' of a part (excluding the Desgner only slots, Exluding Risky Parts. This added redzone is NOT mentioned on the slot themselves but are defiantly included on the display on the RHS). This is only added to parts that do NOT specify any Redzone change or reliability change as part of their original form. This means, the more you develop a part in a season, the larger the redzone will be, and thus, the more variance of unreliability it will have. Teams that do not produce many upgrades will have better reliability as their redzone will be at the standard 20% - but will not be advancing their technology. Teams pushing the development of their new parts will be making technological progress in the long term, but will suffer from higher reliability problems during the current season.

Dilemmas
(1) Decreased the pre-season chassis dilemmas from a +1 Star to a +0.5 star, as this was overpowered in regards to cost efficiency.
Are there any massively misbalanced New Dilemmas?

Part Supplies
(1) Increased a large number of chassis 'discounts' for certain teams from certain chassis manufactors.
(2) Change the maximum base stat for engines to be equal per tier, so some years the Steinman is the best engine, other years the Hammer may be. The minimum values have not been changed.
Do Battery Supplies need to be considered for alterations?
I am also considering changing how suppliers work - instead of Fuel being a Major Boost to Fuel Eff and Slight Boost to Improvabilitu and Engine being the opposite, a Major Boost to Improvability and Slight Boost to Fuel Eff - I am considering an EITHER OR option. I.e.,
Engine choices are "Slight boost to both/ Big Boost to Fuel Eff / Big Boost to Improvability"
Fuel Supplier being "Slight boost to both/ Big Boost to Fuel Eff / Big Boost to Improvability"
This means teams can really specialize one stat over the other - instead of just getting the best chassis which has great values to both areas!

Player Default
Lowered initial player Race Management, Loyalty and Finance stats from 10, 10, 10 to 2, 2, 2.
None of you realised that there was a bug with this! This only happened for MALE characters... female characters got the original 10,10,10 ever since I made this change.Fixed

SingSeaterDesignData
(1) Decreased the performance gap for all parts. This makes Average Car Performance Parts have less impact so neither the AI or Player can run away having the best car.
(2) Increased Critical Part performance spread. This is to increase the importance of car performance, spreading the gaps between poor, average and good cars. . This should make it that even Rodrigues will not be able to win every race in poor cars.
(3) decreased wear of Push and Attack, and also increasing the speed bonus of Push and Attack, all for the AI's benefit - the AI use these too much originally, destroying their tyres too much for it to be of benefit. This allows them some forgiveness and allows the player to also benefit from pushing and attacking more. (reintroduced in 1.2e-f)
(4) Increased the change setup time delay to prevent players from continually coming in on their outlap to refine the setup quickly. Now it's better to run a stint and take note of the radio messages. Feedback is now more important too to make up for this increased setup delay.
Massively considering remocing the "smily faces" from telling you how good or bad a setup is.... making the player rely on radio messages.

Assembly

AIBlueFlagBehaviours - set the Blue flag to trigger when the car behind is 0.7s behind instead of 3s.

AIRacingBehaviour - Decreased Comfort Zone to 0.2 - 0.85 from 0.5 - 0.85 so cars behind car run closer to cars in front.

Crash Director - Increased the chances of (race ending) crashes occurring from the vanilla upper bound of 2. It will now be possible to have up to 5 crashes per race (though it's a low chance). This is now in the vanilla game.

Car Opinion- Increase the effect of negative moral a driver gets when he is unhappy with the car / his car compared to his teammate

GameStatsConstants - Reduced Lower Funds Bound from -5,000,000 to -1,000,000. Reduced Scrutineering Chance from 15% to 5%. Reduced Promotion Parts Stats from x1 to x0.8

GameStatsConstants - Reduced initial reliability for newly created parts to 20%. Increased initial redzone for newly created parts to 30%. This is to accompany changes found in the Assembly.

GameStatsConstants - ncreased the costs of Refueling and Pitcrew to £50,000 when applicable. Increase the cost of Performance tyres from 10,000 to 100,000 and Endurance tyres from 8500 to 10,000. Increased the costs of the tye Tyres from 5000 - 25,000 to 50,000 - 250,000 to add some rule diversity.

Player - ChangedRaceManagementStatMaxChange to 0.2 from 0.5 to slow down the statistic change. Decreased Loyalty and Finance Stat growth from 0.05 per week to 0.025 per week. (I can confirm the stat increases from these have been fixed, where it was once bugged in previous versions)

Mechanic - Changed weekly increase relationships from 2% to 0.5%, and Good Race Relationship from 15% to 2.5%

UIWeatherDropdownBarEntry - Reduced visibility of weather down to 1/20th of race distance when no forecast center is built. Visibility is then set to 5/20, 10/20 and 15/20 of the race for each level of the forecast center.

GameTime - Changed the race play speeds to 1.5x, 5x ,10x

ScoutingManager - Changed the Base Scouting Slots from 3 to 1.

Political System - Changed the number of GMA proposed rule changes has been increased from 4 to 8.

SessionStrategy - Implemented Hudson's fix for the AI retirement. Now included as a vanilla part of the game (word for word)
Team - Fixed the fanbase reducing when drivers exceed expectation. IT IS BELIEVED THIS HAS BEEN LOOKED AT AGAIN! SOMEONE PLEASE TEST
PersonalityTraitsSpecialCase - Fixed an issue where chaser was being activated when in P1 instead of P2. Fix now included in vanilla.

Driver - changed it so the moraleMaxSessionChange from 20 to 5
Person - Improved reserve driver bonusImprovementAmount from 2 to 4
Race Director - changed yellow flag duration to 30-120s.
Crash Director - changed VSC time from 15-45s to 45s - 120s
AISafetyCarBehaviour - changed duration of the safety car to be between 1-4 laps.
GameStatConstants - increased the retirement rate of 0% condition of non-aerodynamic parts to 90% from 50%
GameStatConstants - Increased the amount you can spend on a chassis, even if it puts you into the red. Don't think this is needed anymore.

CarPartDesign - See the above section for major game mechanics changes:


Additional areas:
MARKETABILITY OVERHAUL.
GRIP LEVEL OVERHAUL assembly - weatrherimpact.
SAFETY CAR % CORRECTION - locations asset

I won't be working on this until Sunday Night as I am working Friday.Saturday. If anyone has any other observations or ideas, please let me know.

 

[Sudey]

And be real names of pilots and teams? Thank you.

 

[raja1234]

I literally stopped playing MM as I get bored after just 3 seasons. Just stumbled on to your Mod. Man...you have everything in this Mod to ensure it does not lack its luster.

My bad luck! I could not make 1.2 version of ur Mod work with the latest patch release. Looks like I have to wait till early next week to get your update.

Between, is there anything I sud/cud do to make ur mod work with the latest patch update? (ignore if its a dumb question, I'm new to this Modding...)

Overall, great work!

 

[TheFlamingRed]

And be real names of pilots and teams? Thank you.

No. There's already plenty of mods which do that.

I literally stopped playing MM as I get bored after just 3 seasons. Just stumbled on to your Mod. Man...you have everything in this Mod to ensure it does not lack its luster.

My bad luck! I could not make 1.2 version of ur Mod work with the latest patch release. Looks like I have to wait till early next week to get your update.

Between, is there anything I sud/cud do to make ur mod work with the latest patch update? (ignore if its a dumb question, I'm new to this Modding...)

Overall, great work!

You're best bet is waiting.

 

[Sudey]

No. There's already plenty of mods which do that.

OK. All the same, I do himself the names of the pilots and teams.

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

Will it be possible, that i use this mod when its released, and then use a mod with the workshop with it??

 

[Sudey]

do it please GameStatsConstants -2 500 000$.

 

[Pharazon]

The list reads really good and i cant wait to play-test it. Just a couple of thoughts after playing a few races.

- The tiremanagement of the AI looks good, so i wouldnt chance that much to it.

- If the AI uses ERS just as if the player does, when its turned on to auto-use, then the whole system is definitly worth improving. For overtaking it looks fine, but not great. Futhermore at times where drivers had clean air it doesnt use any of it. In reality at least you would use it here and there to get out of corners faster. And then at times it feels like, it does use batterycharge, because it got to a certain level and then it burns back to a certain degree, without looking where it would be best.

- If its for me, i would not like to play without the smiley system. And the reason for this is simple. Again, in reality, you get telemetry data from your car and you would be able to see, where it got faster or loses time. Yeah, you get feedback from your driver, but if you have one with really bad feedback, then you would suffer twice, because it takes more time, to get some feedback. Im assuming this with the thought in mind, that you put the increased time for changes on the setup in again. And then it would be really really hard to get your car to a degree, where it is even a bit competentive

- The interview system looks changed totaly. Had four or five so far. The first time it asked me, what i think about, that my bad brakes would held the team back.. and i lost for an honest answer 10 marketiblity. An other was, what part i think is the most we as a team have to improve. I said the car, and then my mechanics lost some chemistrypoints. The third one was, i used teamorders in the race, and i had to explain myself for doing so. And other one was, they ask me about a driver from an other team, that did have a bad result and my opinion, i responded with, that he will bounce back and now that driver is open to listen to an offer from my team.

- It seems like having a higher trim level either for race or qualifing now is really impactful - maybe a bit to much. In my first season with a newly founded GT team and the worst car (the drivers are fairly decent - 2 1/2 stars), you can get top 10 results rather easy, depending if the track at least suits your car.

 

[calvg]

Hey TFR might need to add this to the mod

http://steamcommunity.com/app/415200/discussions/0/133258092238314881/#c133258092239204261

GT fuel weight seems to be over penalising

 

[BrianUK]

Hey TFR might need to add this to the mod

http://steamcommunity.com/app/415200/discussions/0/133258092238314881/#c133258092239204261

GT fuel weight seems to be over penalising

Looks like the players found the issue, apparently it's a misplaced 0.

 

[Beynasuh]

An insignificant '0' causes so much problem. Unbelievable.

 

[raja1234]

Would be great to have race commentary added to the game. similar to the one we have for Football manager 17....

 

[Sudey]

Sorry to rush you, and when it will be ready to mod? Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday?

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Hey TFR might need to add this to the mod

http://steamcommunity.com/app/415200/discussions/0/133258092238314881/#c133258092239204261

GT fuel weight seems to be over penalising

Looks like the players found the issue, apparently it's a misplaced 0.

An insignificant '0' causes so much problem. Unbelievable.

Thanks for this. I did spot it the other day but wondered if it was some sort of stint rebalance. Nice to see it wasn't.

Will it be possible, that i use this mod when its released, and then use a mod with the workshop with it??

Yes

The list reads really good and i cant wait to play-test it. Just a couple of thoughts after playing a few races.

- The tiremanagement of the AI looks good, so i wouldnt chance that much to it.

- If the AI uses ERS just as if the player does, when its turned on to auto-use, then the whole system is definitly worth improving. For overtaking it looks fine, but not great. Futhermore at times where drivers had clean air it doesnt use any of it. In reality at least you would use it here and there to get out of corners faster. And then at times it feels like, it does use batterycharge, because it got to a certain level and then it burns back to a certain degree, without looking where it would be best.

- If its for me, i would not like to play without the smiley system. And the reason for this is simple. Again, in reality, you get telemetry data from your car and you would be able to see, where it got faster or loses time. Yeah, you get feedback from your driver, but if you have one with really bad feedback, then you would suffer twice, because it takes more time, to get some feedback. Im assuming this with the thought in mind, that you put the increased time for changes on the setup in again. And then it would be really really hard to get your car to a degree, where it is even a bit competentive

- The interview system looks changed totaly. Had four or five so far. The first time it asked me, what i think about, that my bad brakes would held the team back.. and i lost for an honest answer 10 marketiblity. An other was, what part i think is the most we as a team have to improve. I said the car, and then my mechanics lost some chemistrypoints. The third one was, i used teamorders in the race, and i had to explain myself for doing so. And other one was, they ask me about a driver from an other team, that did have a bad result and my opinion, i responded with, that he will bounce back and now that driver is open to listen to an offer from my team.

- It seems like having a higher trim level either for race or qualifing now is really impactful - maybe a bit to much. In my first season with a newly founded GT team and the worst car (the drivers are fairly decent - 2 1/2 stars), you can get top 10 results rather easy, depending if the track at least suits your car.

Thanks for this. How many questions do you get per interview? Do any of the old questions occur?

I'll look at ERS a bit and decide what's best for it, lots of perameters can be changed,

The top ten finish in a bad team will probably not be possible once I get my performance gap in it but does GT racing have less gaps then SS? Could a back marker get a decent top 10? That's something I don't know if I should adjust in the mod, having never seen a gt race.

do it please GameStatsConstants -2 500 000$.

Would be great to have race commentary added to the game. similar to the one we have for Football manager 17....

Sorry to rush you, and when it will be ready to mod? Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday?

Yeah, none of those are happening and the mod will come out when I'm ready

 

[IGame23]

I've been playing the game quite a lot since the update and it seems like they messed up the AI in wet weather. The AI stays way too long on slicks or inters, even if it is obviously time for another compound. That's why i won 4 races so far (I got the 6. best car). I dont know how the AI is behaving in the single seater series since i only played the gt cars. Hope you can fix it

 

[TheFlamingRed]

I've been playing the game quite a lot since the update and it seems like they messed up the AI in wet weather. The AI stays way too long on slicks or inters, even if it is obviously time for another compound. That's why i won 4 races so far (I got the 6. best car). I dont know how the AI is behaving in the single seater series since i only played the gt cars. Hope you can fix it

hmmm, can you try Brian's mod SS file? He has modified the tyre crossover point I think. May be interesting what the ai foes in intermediayrs

 

[Beynasuh]

Hi FlamingRed, I saw this post at steam. It says that you changed the zoom level in the race. Is that true?

Zoom Mod