Supplier attributes launched

Here is my theory. Your suppliers attributes do not change until you actually switch suppliers. I dare say all the people running with the old combo will continue to have the old attributes until they actually cancel and re-hire the same suppliers.

You might recall a while ago Jack there was a bug I found where if you ticked parts to refit after the race, and then hired a new driver after you did this, the parts would not refit even though they were still showing ticked. You had to physically untick them and reselect them to make them register for the new driver.

I have a funny feeling this is what is happening with the suppliers. After spectating a handful of races and taking note of the qualifying pace and the race pace, there is absolutely no change what so ever to the old murk / beep / bridgerock combination. This is at a handful of tracks, not just one. I highly doubt that is purely coincidence since those suppliers attributes have changed quite a bit.

I just ran Bahrain for my first race since the changes.

I have yet to compare my lap times and race pace against last season when I had the same suppliers, but my fuel consumption was much higher this season than last, which aligns with the reduced economy ratings on my Engine and Fuel suppliers (Murk and Beep, respectively). My fuel consumption was about 4% higher this season running a similar strategy.

Wel, now I think I can say something about new updates as I saw it in 2 different tracks. Earlier I was in the same race of Yuri and noted how poorly my cars performed, and now, in my night race, in a different track, the same.  I am using Toy Motor and Donelots.
With a car filled with 31 litres only, for Spain race (9laps) my driver with soft tyres had a 18/26 position in quali, behind lots of driver on hard tyres, just for an example. 
Also, I have same complaining about tyres, I am in Donelots, and people that did not change from Bridgerock are in the race with tyres in the same or even better condition than mine. 

My sensation is that people that didn't change their suppliers were not affected by changes.

For the record, my Partners page shows the new statistics, even though I have not changed suppliers in multiple seasons.

I, for one, am convinced that the simulator is using the new values across the board. I think the issue people are having is expecting that different suppliers would be the best and that not really being the case.

I spent this morning logging all the new supplier data. Engines and tires have been a hot topic today. I've seen a lot of you mention that you're on Donelots tires now; I imagine because of the extra point on their stats (their ratings adding up to 16 instead of 15 like all the others). I don't think many if any of you have given thought to how much weight each rating carries on the track. Yes, the Donelots on paper are best, but they don't grip as much as the Bridgerocks or Goodweeks. Same with the engines. The Toymotors are responsive, but their power rating is middle-of-the-road.

I honestly think some of the stats have minimal effect, and this in my opinion is as it should be. When I first signed up to this game in 2012, I purposely took the time to use each and every supplier so I could log the data from each. I wasn't very competitive early on, but I treated my first couple of seasons as a learning experience. I know from that time the sort of fuel consumption I can expect to get in just about any situation. When you join the game, you're automatically given a supply of Cosurworthit engines. I used these for half a season before changing. The Cossie engines' Economy rating was originally 5, and Murk's was 8. Now with the update, Murk's is 5 and Cossie's is 8. In my race today (Bahrain 50%) with Murk engines, my fuel consumption was almost exactly what I got in Bahrain with the Cossie motor (about half a percent less today than my first Bahrain race).


My only question regarding the changes is this: Were the new values generated randomly, or set manually by the developers?

Wonder if the assumption is correct that the old and post 27th values for suppliers are acutally comparable?

Way out of my depth (total noob), but perhaps they were using the popular murk/beep/bridge combo as a baseline and then improved the other suppliers, but with different stats weighting obviously. That would have the advantage of not rocking the boat so much for people not changing.

It is only a theory, but I suspect those of us who have changed will not be as fast as the guys who haven't changed suppliers when we revert back to the same combination we had before this update.

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If that is the case simple fix just force everyone to resign but unsigning everyones suppliers

It's good that we have to work out ourselves what to use and which suppliers are best for each team.

It's also good that there are descriptions on the attributes.
However, the descriptions doesn't really tell us much. "More cooling ability decreases engine temperature" means what? Does it make the engine last longer or does it make the car faster (because it doesn't need so big cool openings)?

And what is the actual difference between Reliability and Rigidity for engines? The descriptions sound a biut like it could be the same thing, more or less. 

A post describing things a bit better would be appreciated. I know that cooling cools the car, but what does it mean for the sim engine?

I've just hired a Technical Director (for 1 race as i don't use them) to see what he says about my fuel usage for the next race. I haven't changed engines but have changed fuel supplier to one with a little less fuel economy. Plus my current engine now has worse fuel economy so i'm fully expecting to use more fuel the next race.

I've worked out from the last season race for this particular track that my fuel useage is 2.3L per lap.

BUT my technical director says i'll be using 2.1L per lap, how can that be when i have an engine and fuel which has less fuel economy than before ? Usually the technical director over estimates.

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Try hiring a TD with an experience between 12-14 instead of 19+

Hi Jack,

Shouldn't have the performance been analysed in testing? Isn't what the council was supposed to be doing?
At the moment of posting we haven't been explained why the old fastest combination is still the fastest combination for those who haven't changed. What does that mean that those who will revert to that combination? 
All of this give me the feeling that we are doing some live testing of a new feature.
I am not going to assume what was done behind the scenes but maybe the sim developers should have a manager account to see for themselves the impact (or lack of) of their modifications.

I will add to Jason's theory with my own:
You seem to be using some sort of cache to prevent loading the data from wherever you store it (let's say it's in a database) if it hasn't changed. It's a good behavior because it saves you lots of useless access if the data hasn't changed. In the case of the new suppliers, for those who have changed the supplier, the entry in the cache is no longer valid so you load the new suppliers values from the database in the simulator. For those haven't changed anything the entry in the cache is still valid because nothing was changed, so you load the values from the cache which are the old values. Hence we have the behavior that we are seeing where the old combination is still the fastest.
The only thing that doesn't work with my theory is the fuel consumption which increased for everyone, even those using the Murk engine.

These were just my 2 cents, I hope you find it constructive.

PS: Good job on the sim stability, I haven't seen any postponed or restarted races in while. 

It would be interesting to know the number of user per supplier prior to the new attributes an what they are a week to two weeks later.

BD

definatly the case what Jason suggested. iWS quali has been weird for 2 days now, today Jake is the only one that hasn't switched supplies. look at the quali results:

http://awesomescreenshot.com/03729ppr6a

normally it's an exeption if the top 10 is 0.6 or further apart, and we had top 30 in 1 second. I'm gonna have to join the league with a new account to race well :/

Ive kept the same suplliers (Murk-Beep-BridgeRock), i have not changed them in this team so i cant comment on other stuff but i can point out the things that have changed and the things that haven't:

Fuel econemy has gone up for sure, which means that part is working as the econemy attributes of those engines/fuel have gone down alot so need more fuel.
cant comment on power and things like that.

Tyres.
Bridgerock resilience attribute has gone down massively cant remember what it was maybe 8? but its now 2, but my tyre where is exactly the same as previous season's, which clearly isn't working.

Every single team ive seen change there suppliers to different from the normal has been dog slow.

but like i said i haven't changed suppliers at all and cant draw any other conclusions.