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New generation drivers, Academy vs Legacy

I started doing some experiments early after the changeover from Classic IGP to the new version. I wanted to know if the newly generated drivers from the latest version of IGP were any different from the Legacy drivers. In this thread I will describe my process and findings.

I have to add a qualifier here. I only used three teams and six legacy drivers so my findings are Extrapolations from these few tests. That is, some of the things I say here are projections of what I THINK is the case from the examples I have used in the game.

First of all I can say with some certainty that a low level Legacy driver that has never had it's attributes reduced by the "leveling" system has the same capabilities and training capacity as a newly generated Academy driver. In that respect there are no differences between Legacy drivers and Academy drivers.

I used a level 3 team left over from something I tried in Classic IGP. My legacy drivers were talent 9 and talent 6 with experience 3. I had only raced them for four races in the old IGP. I raced them in a league until the team reached level seven and opened up the Academy. With a level 1 Academy I acquired a talent 8, experience 3 driver. I trained that Academy driver until it had the same stats as the talent 9 legacy driver. At that time the Academy and legacy driver were about the same speed in qualifying and practice. The talent level 9 legacy driver was slightly faster in race which I judged was due to it"s slightly higher talent and experience.

However, when it came to legacy drivers that had their attributes reduced to match the level of the team in the new IGP, I found that Academy drivers were able to be trained to be faster than red star legacy drivers.

To be continued.

slightly faster might not only be because of more experience but also height or weight or even the setup of the car. Equal drivers with everything the same apart from height and weight I have found the taller driver is better on more tracks than the shorter driver. Might have something to do with the servers being based in Germany, the perfect German solider was always said to be 6 foot tall blond hair and blue eyes lol

So then I had two teams that had two talent 20, experience 10 drivers each. All these legacy drivers had stamina of 20. The "leveling" system had reduced all my Driver Ability and Mental stats to my team level of 9 and had left the talent, experience, and stamina at their former levels of 20, 10, 20. These drivers were already in my teams when the switch to new IGP occurred. I judged the stat level reduction to be normal and assumed that other drivers that had been brought over from classic IGP would have been treated in approximately the same way.

I ran my tests using these "normally reduced" drivers and therefore did not have any direct comparison of Academy drivers with the "Anomalous Reduction" drivers which were not assigned to any team at the switch-over to new IGP. These Anomalous Reduction teams displayed one star level when being purchased and another higher level after being raced once. Thus many drivers now running show a six red star rating to their teams rather than the normal five red star maximum. However, contrary to what their stats may indicate, from my investigations these six red star drivers are not necessarily faster than their five red star counterparts on the same team. I came to this conclusion by examining teams that had both an Anomalous and a Normal Driver. In these cases it was rare that the Anomalous driver was consistently faster than the Normal driver.

Having said all of that, mostly to indicate that I took some care with my trials, I will move on to my conclusions and then later to what I believe to be the best way to train an Academy driver.

Frankly, Academy drivers are faster than normally reduced drivers that have superior talent and experience levels.

My first indicator was when a talent 10, experience 4, ten kilogram heavier Academy driver became faster than my legacy talent 20 drivers once he was trained to all elevens in Driver Ability and Mental versus all tens in my legacy talent 20, five red star drivers. This meant, because I could continue training him as I leveled up, he would always be faster than my legacy drivers even though his stats would not indicate that.

Further tests with the other team and three more Academy drivers confirmed that lower level talent Academy drivers could be trained to be consistently faster than normally reduced legacy drivers, and probably faster than most Anomalous reduction drivers.

My projected extrapolation is that a talent level 13 Academy driver can be trained to be faster than any legacy driver under experience level 12. And at most tracks in dry conditions that Academy driver will be faster than any other legacy driver.

The exceptions appear to be at all wet races and at Monaco and Singapore where high talent and experience seem to win out.