Rejected

Fuel for stint

One of the marginal advantages some managers have over others is their knowledge of the FE design curve and the relationship between PL and fuel consumption.

IMHO, if the game were to give you precisely the correct fuel depending on the circuit, your prescribed stint length, FE design and advanced strategy would be another dumbing down of a management game.

IMHO the best idea is to adopt the same pit trigger that the new "no refuelling" rule uses, you specify a lap number and the car pits on this lap irrespective of how much fuel remains.

You would set the lap number and tyres in the strategy tab the same as now and the game would load sufficient fuel to do the stint at full PL5 at whatever FE you have. This would obviously be a conservative strategy resulting in a slow and heavy car but for less experienced managers it  would ensure the car does not run out of fuel before reaching the prescibed pitting lap.

You would then have the option to override the default fuel load by trimming it back. The optimum would be to reduce the fuel so that you have less than 1 litre remaining when the car pits. Trim it back too far and the car will be light and fast but won't have enough fuel to complete the stint and you will run out of fuel and DNF.

Tweaking the amount isn't easy as the exact amount per lap isn't fixed and for amounts quite on edge the system has to lean more towards running out, else we're back to the automatic pits ruining races by pitting one lap early.

In what way would it cause problems for expert managers?

Currently the trigger to tell the car to pit is low fuel.  In the strategy tab you set fuel in litres and the game estimates how many laps the car will do and displays this. It always errs on the side of caution which is what is confusing new managers because they adjust the fuel until they get the required laps... But this is too much and often results in the car doing an extra unplanned lap and usually runs out of fuel and coasts into the pits on this extra lap. Experienced managers know this so disregard the estimated laps that the game suggests.

The Devs have already had to remove the low fuel pitting trigger and replace it with "defined lap number" to allow for tyre changes in the "No Refuelling" leagues.

If in a "refuelling allowed" league it were also the lap number that you defined in the strategy tab, then providing the game offered a default fuel load that was more than enough for the stint length it would mean the car would ALWAYS pit on the lap that the manager set in the strategy. So no problems for the rookie manager finding his feet in the game.

The ability to trim fuel load down from the conservative value offered by the game would be what allows the more experienced managers to gain an edge by running a lighter and faster car.

Then we get into the risk/reward balance because if you go too low the car won't have enough fuel to reach the prescribed laps and will run out somewhere on track. If this happens, you can no longer blame the game for pitting on the wrong lap or giving you insufficient fuel, the fault would be entirely with the manager.

Personally I think this is much more intuitive and now the "no refuelling" rules are active means that the same logic and interface would be used regardless of whether the no refuelling rule is on or off.

Modifying this value risks the car stopping a lap earlier than planned which is actually more damaging to your race than coasting for a few corners because it means you end up doing an extra pit stop at the end of the race. This is how it used to be a few years ago and then everyone complained that cars were pitting when they had just enough fuel to make it to the pitlane on the next lap.

In summary, using the amount of fuel remaining to trigger a pit stop is, in my opinion, wrong. The best solution is to allow the manager to define what lap to pit on and then fuel accordingly.