Driver atrophy as it currently stands, still seems to be unsatisfactory, judging by the numerous posts on the subject:
Rounding points up, or down, the uncertainty this creates, the waste of fractions of a point caused by rounding, the difficulty of keeping drivers in top shape, even younger ones, etc. all contribute.
As this affects myself, as well as every other manager in the game to a greater or lesser extent, I have given a lot of thought to the situation and eventually come up with the following:
Givens:
- Drivers lose health during races, which in itself is a form of atrophy (it has always been like this, and makes absolute sense)
- The remainder of the health is used to improve the various skills of a driver, if those are not yet at 100%.
- The health of divers regenerates at up to 7% per hour, but varies according to age.
- The recently introduced atrophy per race, ranging from 0.05% to 0.3% (or 0.5%, not quite sure) per attribute per race, constantly erodes the training gains afforded by driver training (2. above). In most cases the combined per-attribute erosion/atrophy for all of the trainable skills, is bigger than the gains of daily training sessions, especially the higher the driver is levelled up, or the older he(she) is.
- Leveling up of a driver is therefore impeded right from the start, as even 18 year olds experience some, though small, amounts of atrophy per race.
- The rounding of training levels to full % points, while fractions are used in the background for calculations, severely impede transparency of the process, in addition to wasting fractions of training points which do not accumulate to over 100% (capped at 100%), and do not seem to be redirected towards other skills which are not at 100% yet
- This leads to frustration and general dissatisfaction with managers when losing (unknown) fractions of training points, which again leads to a lower training rate than expected.
Resulting from this status quo, I would like to propose the following modification to this aspect of the Game:
- Tiring, or loss of health, of the drivers be kept unchanged.
- Abolish skill atrophy as it currently stands in its entirety.
- This will allow normal and predictable driver levelling-up as before.
- Introduce atrophy once all trainable skills have reached 100%, or the driver has reached a certain age (30?, 35?), in order to force managers to keep on training their drivers regularly thereafter.
- Atrophy to be very low initially so as to allow for it to be eliminated every day by regular training. Net loss in skills despite daily training should only occur above a certain driver age.
- A 1% retraining in driver skill should be able to be applied fractionally to several trainable skills which have atrophied (fractionally) during a race, in order to eliminate wasted training.
- Atrophy, once triggered by skill level or age, should occur on a daily basis in order to compel managers to train drivers on a daily basis, and keep them active.
- Neglect to train drivers regularly should quite rightfully result in the deterioration of skills (atrophy).
- (Atrophy as a result of inactivity over extended periods can possibly also be implemented as a passive (but effective) anti farming tool?)
Even though I have put this as a proposal, it is largely meant to start a wider discussion of the matter with the hope that it will lead to an improvement of this aspect of the game.
I look forward to comments and counter-proposals on the subject.