Official

Reviving 2-car Leagues

2 Car has been struggling for a long time now. Ever since the levels update and the introduction of driver abilities really.

The Fundamental issue is that it costs more to play 2 car than it does 1 car. So even if it's a players preferred format. A lot of them have moved away.

The factors that unbalance 2 car compared to 1 car:

• You require an extra driver, which out of academy with a legendary ability will be 270 tokens.


• You then have to pay a second drivers salary also. Which gets expensive over time. Even more so now that people can't control salary by releasing their driver and rehiring them.


• You require double the number of parts compared to 1 car


• If you change engines every race, you need double the number of engines again (you also receive double the number of engines, but this does not fully close the gap. 1 car you receive 10 every 20 races. (10 extra required). 2 Car you receive 20 every 20 races (20 extra required)


• You do not gain any additional income in 2 car to help offset these costs.

From a game balance perspective, it's probably the case that 1 car and 2 car need to come and meet in the middle somehow. Choice of format should be a choice of personal preference and not a financial decision.

But the problem with enhancing 2 car rewards, or reducing costs, to balance it out with 1 car. Is that it opens up more abuses of the system to accrue resources at a greater rate. Maybe by not repairing cars and so on. So checks and balances will be required on that front.

On the parts issue.

It is hard to judge right now, and more information is required. In a 75% 2 car league it seems close to how parts consumption was before the levels update. There were no problems back then, you just had to stop and think a little bit on how to manage everything.

My main concern is for 100% leagues, If I remember correctly parts consumption scales with race distance. If so they could be seeing 40-50 parts a race being consumed which would be too high I fully agree.

At 75%, I'm using about 36 per race currently, I believe I can sustain that without many problems.

If the cap for parts storage were to be made MUCH lower it would help remove the exploit of people farming parts in 1 car for a few seasons then moving back to 2 car. The cap for 2 car needs to be lowered and 1 car should be half of 2 car. The current cap for parts storage with a L30 Manufacturing facility is 1200 parts. The ability to stockpile this number of parts is ridiculous. I know it won't be a popular suggestion but I would be happy to see the cap reduced dramatically even though this would personally hurt my accounts.

This is a management game, managing resources shouldn't be easy whatever race format you choose. But I appreciate the difficulty the Devs face in trying to reach a workable solution when we have so many permutations of race format and season length, all of which affect the resource requirement:

All these affect the balance

• 1 car or 2 car leagues (the biggest factor)


• 100%, 75%, 50% and 25% race distance.


• Season lengths anywhere between 15 and 22 races long.

If my math is correct that's 64 permutations you need to cater for. All this before you account for the fact that managers at lower levels have additional challenges because they're frequently needing to spend game cash and tokens to develop their HQ facilities. 

Even worse, to remain competitive, lower level managers constantly need to replace staff because they become ineffective as the manager levels up and, unlike drivers, they can't be trained.

Chris

Yes I didn't explain that very well.

There are a number of newer, lower level managers, in 2 car leagues who created their accounts after the L30 update when the balance between parts wear rate and manufacturing rate wasn't scaled correctly to the new levels. As a result they haven't developed their Manufacturing Facilities in line with their team level because there was no need to, neither do they have a huge parts stockpile.

After the iGP2005 update the parts wear has increased so they are now operating with a big parts deficit per race. Build time for HQs also takes significantly longer. These people "need" to spend tokens, either to accelerate the development of their Manufacturing HQ or to buy parts to fill the gap. Unfortunately, there is no option to partly repair your car, so they either spend tokens or DNF until such time as they have developed their HQ to the same level as the team.

I appreciate it's a short term issue with HQs and has been brought about by the low parts usage in the period between the L30 update and the iGP2005 update.

Your question/theory about scaling of parts wear is very interesting. FYI
I race in a 50% league and use 18 parts per car per race
I am informed by someone who races in 75% that his wear rate is 16 parts
You report a wear rate of 14 parts per race at 100%
All the above at Level 30

Thanks for the observation, I've fed this back on the volunteer server.

Chris

Yes, I meant iGP2025.

Where did I mention competitiveness? I agree a low level team shouldn't expect to beat established high level Elite teams.

This thread is about balancing the one and two car formats of the game.

The costs of 2-car became way higher when the Level 30 update and driver abilities were introduced. Two T30 drivers with Legendary abilities cost 540 tokens, added to this you have double the salary and a higher engine requirements in 2 car racing. 

Since L30 a number of well established daily 2 car leagues have disappeared because managers abandoned the format due to cost. The increased parts usage that was introduced with the latest update, has further highlighted the imbalance.

One car / two car cost imbalance is a fact, it is not a case of "bad management" on the part of two car players. Season length plays a part, as does race length. Players in leagues that only race once or twice a week will have a much easier time than those who race daily and long term players will likely have built a stockpile of tokens, game cash and parts. I am one of these fortunate players who isn't greatly affected. I'm concerned about newer players who won't have the opportunity to enjoy 2 car racing unless something is done to balance costs.