A manager whose car is the best car at the start of the season has a car that is developed equally in various areas. When their car is spied on, design points are 'found' in which the car can be improved from.
The problem arises from these points being assigned to acceleration, braking, handling, and downforce. This gives way to another problem in how certain design attributes (fuel economy, cooling, reliability, and tyre economy) do not improve performance significantly enough.
For simplicity, I'll call the best 4 design attributes the Big 4 and their weaker counterparts the Little 4. Car #1 with the Big 4 at 100 and the Little 4 at 1 is superior to Car #2 with the Little 4 at 100 and the Big 4 at 1. This applies even if Car #2 with the Little 4 at 100 takes advantage of a different race strategy and different stint lengths due to vastly improved fuel economy and tyre economy.
As another example, the best car may be lacking in braking. A team that finds 168 design points from the best car can take the design points they found from spying and assign them anywhere. For my example, the team has assigned 100 points to braking. This doesn't make sense if the car they've spied on only has 22 design points assigned to braking.
There's a few ideas I have of my own to help find a solution to improve spying.
- The best car will still be spied on automatically each race. The design points found from spying will be assigned automatically in proportion to the best car's design points allocation across all attributes. The downside to this is it resembles the old iGP design progress of trying to get to 100% car design.
OR
- The best car will still be spied on automatically each race. The manager simply chooses what design attribute to spy on. If they spy on an attribute with poor development, the amount of design points found will be dismal as well (or if their own car has better design in that area, none at all). If the spied attribute is developed well, they will find more design points. The design points found from spying will be assigned automatically to their own car's design attribute. A percentage of sorts that varies the design points found with the CD and TD star rating.
OR
- The manager chooses which car and which attribute to spy on. The points found from spying will be assigned automatically to their own car's design attribute, except if their own car has better design in that area, then they find nothing at all.
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- Delay how soon design upgrades from spying are ready to be applied to the car. Design points found from spying may take one race to become available, or whatever increment is best suited to this. I suggest this so as to make it a bit more realistic. Though I don't really watch F1, the actual teams likely take a while to learn about their competitors' cars after eyeing certain areas.
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Like Kevin Bissell mentions in the other thread, the current spying system gives less developed cars a big advantage in 3 races or less. I can relate to this as I surpassed the best car in my league in terms of outright performance two races ago.
There are a few posts I have read in the other thread which are good ideas as well, one mentioned by Leslie rings of a similar idea I had back in Open Beta.
By having the initial design points assigned more or less evenly at the start of a season a team is penalized by being the best car since they cannot catch up to others in the more critical areas of design allocation. At least half of the points given at the beginning a season should be given to the manager to freely distribute. Or a slider system could be given to the CD so that the manager could allocate which design areas were the most desirable for the CD to develop.
One thing that would alleviate this somewhat is if there were more than one way to get a successful car design. Fuel economy, which Jack intends to increase in the near future will help some. But reliability and cooling need to come into play as well.
I suggest that RELIABILITY affect acceleration, breaking and down force by reducing capabilities in those areas if it is not high enough.
And I suggest that COOLING affect acceleration, breaking and reliability by reducing those if it is not high enough.
This would mean that flooding certain areas with design points would not be as beneficial as it now is and an evenly balanced car at the beginning of the season would not be such a bad thing.
I suggest that RELIABILITY affect acceleration, breaking and down force by reducing capabilities in those areas if it is not high enough.
And I suggest that COOLING affect acceleration, breaking and reliability by reducing those if it is not high enough.
This would mean that flooding certain areas with design points would not be as beneficial as it now is and an evenly balanced car at the beginning of the season would not be such a bad thing.
Another ideas:
- NEXT SEASON: I think it's time. As managers, we need to be able to change the car for next season. Focusing, deciding where to put some design points or whatever. At the moment, we just know one strength and one weakness our CD has.
- NEXT SEASON: I think it's time. As managers, we need to be able to change the car for next season. Focusing, deciding where to put some design points or whatever. At the moment, we just know one strength and one weakness our CD has.
