Can't keep up with AI Car Development???

[brufo 🦃]

Been playing as Aston Martin in a team principal career lately. Never played F1 Manager before so I didn't really know how to space out design/research, etc. but funnily enough we had a solid 4th place in the constructor's in 2024, by 2025 I had a solid understanding of the game and signed Russel along Stroll (forgot to renew Alonso's contract lol), placed 3rd. Balanced design and research, upgraded design and factory facilities for 2026, yet pre-season testing comes around and my cars are... 19th and 20th. Despite this, we still finish 3rd in the constructor's. After the halfway point of the season I was ONLY doing research. 2027 pre-season comes around and we are once again the 19th and 20th cars on the grid. I even switched my powertrain from Mercedes to Ferrari for extra power. The only problem now, is that it seems to be accurate. I can't even break the top 10 - 12 anymore.

What am I doing wrong? Why can't I keep up with AI car development even with a team like Aston Martin who placed third the last two seasons and won the DHL Pit Stop Championship last season?

[alexbox]

My guess is the following:
* You don't give reseatch the correct priority needed after rule/technical changes
* you might allocate design/research resources wrong
* your technical and aerodynamic designers are unhappy resulting in lower stats points
* after technical changes you also go with the design (not research) into the wrong direction.
* or some or all of the list combined of course.

Just some ideas on where you could be doing something wrong!

[anti|HUMAN]

There's a somewhat "hidden" asped to design, and that's the fact that using multiple engineers on a design projects reduces the amount of expertise you gain from it.
It never shows this stat, which is sad, they should display the expertise gain when creating a new design project.

For a long time, I thought this game mechanic only applied to research, but then I noticed that a pop-up text says it refers to expertise gain when designing parts, as well.

And then there's the silly exploit where you create a project using a single engineer, and then go edit it to add more engineers, and it doens't seem to reduce the gains from the project, It definitely doesn't for research, though I can't be sure if it does when designing since they never show that stat, there.

Since the latest patch, it's indeed become hugely much harder to keep up with inter-season development. It used to be ridiculously easy, and now it's really hard (at least on hard difficulty, which is the only thing I play).

It sounds like the upcoming patch will adjust this, though.
I like it be hard, but not in such a way that it's impossible to keep up even reasonably no matter what you do. If they could lower it "5%", that'd be nice.

[Team Triss]

Originally posted by anti|HUMAN:

There's a somewhat "hidden" asped to design, and that's the fact that using multiple engineers on a design projects reduces the amount of expertise you gain from it.
It never shows this stat, which is sad, they should display the expertise gain when creating a new design project.

If true, this is by far the stupidest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ design decision I've seen in a game series full of terrible development decisions.

[Ngoc]

did they fix the bug? i start with the worst car and 1 star facilities and in 3 year i get the best car in all fields... they said AI wasn't developing the car correctly is it better now?

[Adam]

Originally posted by anti|HUMAN:

And then there's the silly exploit where you create a project using a single engineer, and then go edit it to add more engineers, and it doens't seem to reduce the gains from the project, It definitely doesn't for research, though I can't be sure if it does when designing since they never show that stat, there.

I checked it both for projects and research and this phenomenon does not occur.

[♥ good things ♥]

Originally posted by Team Triss:

Originally posted by anti|HUMAN:

There's a somewhat "hidden" asped to design, and that's the fact that using multiple engineers on a design projects reduces the amount of expertise you gain from it.
It never shows this stat, which is sad, they should display the expertise gain when creating a new design project.

If true, this is by far the stupidest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ design decision I've seen in a game series full of terrible development decisions.

unfortunately this is very true. and the longer it takes to complete... the more expertise you gain.