Unresolved

Salary of academy drivers

Hello,

Recently I have been losing a significant amount of money per race, I've fired my doctor to hire a low-level one but that only saves about 220k. If I fail my objective, I'm still losing 700-800k per race.

I feel like a lot of this is linked to my drivers. I'd say on average I have the best drivers in the league I'm in (a L9 T20/STA 20 and a L9 T7 STA 17) but my car just isn't good enough to allow them to maximise their potential. I'm paying them both about 550k per race. I was considering selling the T7 driver, Lorenzi, to buy a low-ranked Level 2/Level 3 second driver. However, even at their lowest I'd still be paying them 120 to 150k, while suffering massively reduced performance in the other car.

Another strategy would be to hire a young driver from my academy. My academy is fairly high-level, and I can usually get one or two 12-15 talent drivers every rotation. The price is obviously steep in terms of tokens, but I've heard their salaries can be a decent amount cheaper than transfer market drivers. How much cheaper are they? I don't want to hire a young driver and only save 50-100k a race while still having to train them up.

Another question is, do young driver's salaries and other stats scale with talent like the purchase fees? For example, I would expect a Talent 14 young driver to have average stats that balance out their talent for a Level 8 or 9 rating. Would a 2 or 3 talent driver have stats that matched up to their 2 talent, meaning they'd be only Level 3 or Level 4, and therefore have a much cheaper salary? Or does the game boost their other stats to make them equivalent to a Level 8 or 9 driver anyway?

I'm just wondering if a low-talent academy driver would have a lower salary than a low-ranked driver on the transfer market. For example, would a 2 Talent academy driver (let's say Level 3) cost 60k a race, while a 2 Talent, Level 3 transfer driver would cost me 150k?

Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but the Academy screen doesn't let you see any of this. I don't want to spend several tokens on a blind guess and then go into financial ruin... 

A few things to say,

1.  Your drivers aren’t that expensive.  A lot of managers will be paying more than double what you are in salary
2. Keeping your salary low is a good idea and buying from the academy will result in a starting salary of 250k to 300k
3.  Salary increases each time you renew their contract.
4.Drivers on the transfer market are not only expensive, but their salaries are high (often 1m to 1.5m)
5.  Buying through the Academy actually works out a lot cheaper depending on your HQ level.  A level 20 driver could last you up to 20 seasons so the credit cost may seem high,  ut over the long run represents the best value
6. selling your Doctor is a false economy.  You need it so that training drivers is more efficient.  Only when you have maxed driver stats and you are level 20 is it worth doing this since you will have to regularly recruit as you move up the levels. Low level Doctors mean your health stats don’t recover as fast as they should meaning you won’t be able to train the drivers every day.
7.  Driver stats only improve through training.  It doesn’t matter what talent level they are.

You,say that your car lets you down so you must be doing something wrong.

Are you training your drivers?
Max stamina to 20 (anything below this will impact performance)
Get weight down to 51kg
Then max driver ability
The max mental ability

Always keep your CD and TD at same level or one above your manager level. Since you are a relatively new player this unfortunately means replacing them reasonably frequently.  Again buying through HQ is most effective, but until you are lvl 16 or higher you would be better to do so through transfer market.

Upgrade your facilities as often as you can especially Design which determines how many DP pts you earn owe race.  You need these for developing next seasons starting design. Other important facilities are Technology and Manufacturing. In fact everything is important now.

Are you upgrading your car design after each race?

Read the guide in the link below as a starter.  It is important to understand the principles it contains to gain a basic understanding of the game

https://igpmanager.com/forum-thread/45862

Also read this one as well
https://igpmanager.com/forum-thread/45546

The mobile interface is not best when we talk about the academy. The salary will depend on driver's level. 

The golden rule is highest talent possible, lowest level possible.

You are level 8 so any driver will be good. The expense will worth it. You will save at least 200k for each driver. You can save a little more if you don't renew your doctor's contract. The game will give you a 50k doctor.


Edit: I saw The Stig's reply and if you get cheaper drivers you won't need a cheap doctor.

A level 8 manager needs a good Doctor it impacts on Health recovery and ability to train.  Having a cheap Doctor only works where you don’t need to train your Drivers

I fully agree.


@Jeb Johnson: Till level 14 you will be able to find 5 stars staff in marketplace. Above level 14 you will find only 4.5 stars staff (except exceptional ultra rare exceptions) because the game forces you to buy staff from your headquarter (the only plausible explanation because I created an unanswered thread to discuss this aspect).

Are you talking about staff or Drivers?  I can go into transfer market now and see several CDs, TDs and Doctors with 5 stars.


For drivers there is no difference between 4.5 and 5 stars it is a long standing visual glitch.  If you really want a 5 star driver there is a easy fix.  When you train max all your stats, but leave 1 Mental Ability at 19 until you have experience pts at 20.  Then train the last ability to 20 and it will change to 5 stars, but will make no difference to performance as it is just a visual glitch.

I wrote staff not drivers. From level 14 to 19 you cannot find 5 stars staff unless someone has released a 5 stars academy staff member. I know that it works correctly on level 20. It was discussed in my thread but nobody told me if it was intentional or not. I guess yes.