J Dre medal 5000 6 years 305 days ago
Hi all. I just finished my first ever rookie season and as it turns out I'm going to be promoted into the pro league. I'm feeling like it's going to be a slaughter and I'm getting thrown to the wolves very early.
Is there anything I can do to help me survive this early jump in a competitive league? Should I be focusing on accumulating something in my first season that can be put towards the following season to be competitive?
Just looking for some direction before it's too late
John Doe medal 5000 6 years 305 days ago
La patience...il y a rien à faire
J Dre medal 5000 6 years 305 days ago
No im in "US Grand Prix" and it is very active. Gustavo Heidens league, he said pro will be 100% active managers this season. Winning the championship is not in the cards haha.
But my biggest question is what all can i focus on accumulating from this first season in pro that can be carried over and used next season when I plan on being competitive?
Yunus Unia Blunion medal 5404 6 years 305 days ago
First thing, make sure your expectations are low. Come to terms you will be one of the worst performing teams.
There are some upsides to this. You can spend this season conserving resources such as replacing parts every other race and money by holding back on upgrading staff until the end of the season. As the start of the next season arrives, you can move towards being a viable mid-field contender with any parts you have managed to save up.
I estimate it will take three total seasons before you are competing at the top of the Pro tier.
Frank Thomas medal 4985 Moderator 6 years 305 days ago
Difficult. Usually I'd suggest something on the lines of Yunus post with the possible exception that it might be worth to put some resources into the CD to have a better car next season. But I do see a certain problem there. To have a second season in Pro as mid-field contender you first have to stay in Pro in the first place and as long as no teams are leaving late into the season that means beating at least 2 teams of which at least one has a 2-3 level advantage and most teams should start with a better car into the season as well.
So to me it looks like a choice to make:
-Saving up on resources like parts and money.
-Investing those for better results in this and a better car in the next season (CD) but at the risk to have that effort put to waste because you either would've made it anyway or it turns out you had no chance in the first place. Plus, this route can be a tight rope walk because if you're not carefull you overspend your resources and that quickly can lead into a situation in which you have to go on spending just to keep going but strangling your ability to improve in the process, up to the point of complete stagnation. Especially if not using parts for ads and/or bought token.
J Dre medal 5000 6 years 305 days ago
So assuming my expectations are very low this season (they are) and my focus is building for the future what am I to do? I spent alot upgrading my staff last season chasing the Rookie Championship and both of my drivers and staff are expensive. I was actually losing $1.1M each race taking 1st and 2nd place haha
Should I downgrade certain staff, keep a good CD?
What about my 2nd driver, should I sell him and get a cheap driver to keep profits up?
Season starts in 3 hours :P
Frank Thomas medal 4985 Moderator 6 years 305 days ago
Ouch, that's quite a loss. Sounds like you went for the most expensive engines and tyres as well, going for the cheapest options would be a quarter of a million less expenses for a mere 2 points less acceleration. I'm not in favour of short term replacing staff and drivers, you loose quite some money in fees usually so the total savings are somewhat diminished. I'd rather refrain from hiring more, get rid of any surplus reserve staff and wait what the next round of sponsors offers. I hope it's not the full 10 days still, though. iGP is rather easy in things managing because you can deal with that on a race by race base instead of having everything fixed for a whole season, so no need for haste.
J Dre medal 5000 6 years 305 days ago
Well I just downgraded all of my suppliers to the cheapest options. My secondary driver is up on Transfers with 11 Talent at 19 years old. Im not sure if selling off my staff for the cheapest option would be best tho. From what i understand "CD" helps for starting points in the following season. Doctor helps with training drivers and TD helps with design points. Maybe get rid of the TD?
Kevin Bissell medal 5000 Super Mod 6 years 304 days ago (edited 6 years 303 days ago)
As a short term strategy for this season to avoid relegation you could also consider not assigning your design points after each race. This will maximise the yield on research. Then towards the end of the season apply all of the DP you have banked which should make your cars competitive in the last four or five races.
J Dre medal 5000 6 years 303 days ago
Hey Kevin excuse my ignorance. What would be the benefit of doing this? Design points don't carry over if I'm not mistaken.
I sold my secondary drivers and replaced him with a cheap retiring driver. I'm not going to spend anything on the second car so it will probably end up breaking down every race haha (does that cost money?). I am going to focus on training my main driver and build facilities. Just unlocked technology and it's upgrading atm. On the plus side my real driver just took 5th place in Malaysia by himself outrunning higher level managers so his speed is good.
It's kinda fun racing with no expectations :)
Frank Thomas medal 4985 Moderator 6 years 303 days ago
What Yunus means is not trying to take the design points into next season but to maximise the quality of the car for the last few races in this season. If you don't spend design points you make your car worse in comparison to the best cars and thus you get more design points through research/spying. By doing this the right way for half a season, or even longer, you improve your car by quite a lot through spying alone and once you spend that half a season worth of design points you saved up it enables you to participate in those last races with a competitive car, maybe even a slightly superior car at the first race of your attack.
With your 5th place all of this sounds a bit academic though. I don't think that not finishing a race costs money but I didn't put that to a test.
J Dre medal 5000 6 years 303 days ago
Ok I see. I think I'm going to try and keep my #1 driver as competitive as possible and basically ignore my #2 car. I dont see a benefit to handicapping him as his progression isn't going to be hindered, at least I don't think it would be? Its not like I can train heavier because health only regenerates so fast anyways. I'm making about a 360k profit out of the races which isn't much but at least I'm not losing money. Also the staff have their benefits for team building so can't just dump them to save money that would defeat the purpose of this season.
All is good so far :)
Kevin Bissell medal 5000 Super Mod 6 years 303 days ago (edited 6 years 303 days ago)
It's exactly as Frank Thomas says (except for calling me Yunus LOL). But surely you can't be talking about your WS6 team, they're in no danger of relegation.
Frank Thomas medal 4985 Moderator 6 years 303 days ago (edited 6 years 303 days ago)
Sorry Kevin, seems I had more things on my mind as I posted and it was around 6 o'clock in the morning after doing a night shift. :-) Given the information I think it's this team:
Trans Am Racing by Drennan Rutherford
@J Dre: Any profit is doing very well in this game, a black zero is doing well and even a slight loss is absolutely OK later into the game because you should earn 3 token every race as well and those are also some kind of money and one way exchangeable into it.
The loss just shouldn't get out of hand especially early into the game because building up the HQ costs quite some money and takes already long enough without having to pause it to wait to collect some more funds. At the same time building up a base stock of token would be a good idea as well because hiring good staff and especially finding a good YA driver can cost quite some token and once you need to exchange token for money the bigger bags are the better deal but without a nice balance of token you can't get them and people end up taking the smaller, worse deal packages more often.
J Dre medal 5000 6 years 299 days ago
Thanks for the help guys. I changed my sponsors and I'm now making a nice profit each race. Just picked up a new CD that's higher level with Strength: Accel / Weakness: Reliability so I'm happy about that.
I'm expecting it to take a couple seasons before I'm challenging for wins. My headquarters are rookie/ beginner levels so it will take a bit. I notice a huge difference in things likevTechnology where the other cars seem to go so much faster.
@Frank that isn't the right account either, it is called Trans Am Racing tho. I don't know how to link it unfortunately :(
Frank Thomas medal 4985 Moderator 6 years 298 days ago (edited 6 years 298 days ago)
You're welcome, and that's about the best combination you can get for a CD, nice.
It can take a while but sometimes the first victory, or at least podiums, can come faster than expected, especially with weather involved. Technology can to be quite the handicap for a lower level team, more than 3 levels behind and DRS trains forming in the race are quite bad news if your car(s) is/are in it.
That's why I actually hope for races with rain because I often do pretty well there (but also failed horribly in developing a fitting strategy) and with the rain taking DRS out of the equation, and with it that technology gap, it's suddenly all pace and strategy that matters and the latter, and/or some luck, can fix the problem that the former isn't completely on par with the best cars in the field.
Weird, because even the CD change matches, maybe the link isn't working properly for everyone? Anyway, the easiest way to link to an own team would be posting with the account because the name is a direct link to the team. Else, if you use a browser: To post a link click on your team in the league table, with the now open manager window copy the web address and put it between [url] and [/url], or [url=address] link description [/url] for a text link. If you're on the App only then I don't know how to get the manager ID needed except for posting league, manager name and team name for someone else to find it.
Kevin Bissell medal 5000 Super Mod 6 years 298 days ago
Frank Thomas medal 4985 Moderator 6 years 297 days ago
Yes, that's the team I meant and get if I open my own link. I just noticed that this info box comes up with 3 different IDs which slightly differ in their number depending from where you open it. User-ID if you click on the name here in the forums, manager-ID if you click a team in the league list and the team-ID if I click on a team I searched.
J Dre medal 5000 6 years 296 days ago
Yeah that link is connected to the team in "purpose league. Which I'm not active on. League is called "US Grand Prix" I'm level 10 now I think, in pro class.
Frank Thomas medal 4985 Moderator 6 years 296 days ago
OK, that's weird. Both Kevins and my link do both show the team in "US Grand Prix" league for me and yes, the level is 10. The account you're posting with is linked to the team in "Purpose" league for me.