There's supposed to be a help section inside beta but it hasn't been completed yet.
I'll explain, without getting far too much into details, what I think are the biggest changes for somebody coming back from a hiatus.
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The old design system's been replaced by a new one.
How does the old design system work? If a team has a 100% car design, the only other teams that can be competitive are the teams with cars almost or are at 100% design.
Under the new system, the aspects of design developed determines which circuits a team's cars perform strong at. For example, a car with superior Acceleration design is likely to have a good time at Monza versus a car designed for Handling and Downforce at circuits with corners.
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How new drivers and employees are hired has changed.
Currently, a player simply find any suitable or desired talent 20 drivers or 20 experience employee that gets you where you need to be. You message them an offer and they reply back in 15 minutes.
Under the new system, all new employees available for hire are listed on the Transfers page. There is only one list for viewing Drivers and only one list for viewing Chief Designers, Technical Directors, and Doctors. The reason there is only one list for each is because it is to depict a more realistic hunt and creating a competitive search for drivers and staff amongst all players in the game at different manager levels.
All drivers and staff have stars as their rating indicator for ease of viewing. To see their numbered rating, simply click on their name and you will see it under their name.
What these stars mean are how close these employees are in line with your managerial level. If you are a level 6 manager and see an employee with 3 yellow stars, that may indicate their rating is 4. If they have 4 yellow stars, their rating is more likely 4 or 5. If they have 4 1/2 yellow stars or 5 yellow stars, their rating is 5. If they have 5 red stars, the highest on the scale, they are as close as possible to your manager level, which in my example is level 6.
Hiring new staff is no longer as simple as searching for their stats. Now you have to actually dive into their attributes by clicking on their name. You'll notice that all the staff have an auction tab with a timer counting down. This is where the competitive side of finding desirable employees may come in. You can bid or buy an employee's contract. If you bid on them, you have begun an auction. If somebody else wants the same person, they can bid as well, initiating a bidding war until one stops. Or, for a higher price, you can buy the employee's contract outright to ensure they are hired to your team. Bidding and buying requires cash AND tokens. Tokens will be touched on later below.
Drivers and Staff are generated by the system based on demand.
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Training has changed as well.
Currently, you only train drivers and staff once before every race (or after every race, depending on how you look at it).
In the new version of the game, you can train 3 areas, Driving Ability, Mental, or Physical. Many useless attributes in old iGP have disappeared from beta. Also, drivers health degradation during a race passes over to post-race. A driver who finishes a race at 73% health will be 73% health on the website as well. Health regenerates 5% per 2 hours.
Active drivers no longer atrophy, or in clearer terms, their attributes do not drop down by a decimal point after each race like they do right now. Only reserve drivers atrophy now. Younger drivers are fast and quick to make progress when training, older drivers on the other hand become difficult to improve. Training a driver once consumes 10% of their health (but remember it regenerates).
A driver's attributes cannot be trained higher than your manager level. A level 17 manager cannot train his drivers to have attributes higher than 17 until he is level 18.
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Facilities have become more essential now.
In the new iGP, facilities can be leveled all the way up to 20. Some facilities have disappeared, rightfully so.
I'm not sure this needs much explanation. I can touch on it in a different post later if you have any questions.
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Finances
Gone are the days of relationship ratings! That includes the ones with employees too.
Now, only two sponsors appear on a team's cars. On the Finances page, you'll see the Sponsors tab. I think you can figure out that the best Primary sponsor is H2O2 and the best Secondary sponsor is Outel Outside.
Sponsors are always signed for 10 races and this cannot be changed. If this will be changed, we do not know yet.
The primary sponsor's function is to give you an income in the form of tokens.
Tokens help speed up the development of facilities, healing drivers, purchasing parts or engines (if one runs out), assists in bidding and buying employees, and even replenishing your cash. This may sound like a pay-to-win strategy, but Jack addresses players' concerns about that
in the beta forums.
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Anything else? Let me know!
The beta forums may help with anything you may have questions about.
I made the 41000th post, yay.
CEO & CTO