After recent discussions about the Design system, spies and balancing within the new iGP Manager I’ve been thinking about how to address several fundamental points over the past week. I'm quite happy with this proposal, as it ties together several fundamental aspects of the game and brings meaning to facilities and staff which currently don't have serve a strong enough purpose, in my opinion.
Here are some of the things I believe the proposals I’m about to outline will achieve:
- Balance high and low level teams within a league without introducing convoluted sections or rules
- Give the Technical Director a significant role and differentiate impact by star-rating
- Provide a greater incentive to upgrade the Offices facility
- Provide a reason to level up the Manufacturing facility all the way to level 20 (it would previously just generate huge surplus of parts, and achieve nothing)
Proposed changes to Design system
- Technical Director automatically researches the technology of other teams, finding the best rival teams and researching their car to unlock bonus Design Points.
- The effectiveness of a Technical Director’s research will be based on their star-rating relative to your level cap. E.g. a 5-star TD will find the maximum possible gains, and a 2.5-star TD will only be able to unlock 50% of the gains of a 5-star TD. This means the full benefits will be obtainable to managers of all levels, significantly balancing leagues.
- After each race your Technical Director’s research will be mailed to you along with bonus Design Points to be assigned to your car, generated by the research. These points will be a bonus on top of the points from your Design facility.
- The gains from this research will also be based on how high a team’s morale is, making the Offices facility and morale essential factors in Design. If you get a 5-star TD but have terrible Offices or low morale throughout the team, then the research will be less effective.
- The highest level team will get insights in to other teams, but is unlikely to get bonus Design Points. They will instead need to rely on upgrading their Design facility to maintain an advantage
This system will automatically equalise leagues as the spy system did in the past, while requiring good team management to unlock its full potential. As one individual pointed out as well, spying is technically an illegal practice within motorsport whereas research is perfectly legal. That's semantics maybe, but I tried to cover all bases. :)
Proposed changes to Parts
The faster a car is, the faster its Parts wear. This is also a real phenomenon – both drivers and cars wear out more the faster they corner and accelerate due to the greater forces exerted on them at greater speeds. This will create an incentive to upgrade both the Reliability attribute and the Manufacturing facility to compensate for the additiona parts requirements.