Manager Backgrounds

[Mightyrick1]

Hello everyone, I'd like to ask you all about your opinions on the backgrounds available to you as manager. I've been playing the game for like 20 hours now, but most of that has been with the Ex-Driver background, which feels strong and at the same time in the ERC it feels like driver development takes one season to maybe get 1 point if you're lucky. The extra feedback is nice but I don't really find myself super reliant on the mechanic feedback anymore.
As for the other backgrounds, I don't really consider the Ex-Mechanic background as something amazing, sure the -1 part development day is nice but initially my factory is going to be so bad that I probably have to develop a part for the race after the next race so that I can actually use it. The financial background seems like it might save me 1 million dollars/euros/pounds in the first season, which could help with building up my team in the long run, and I do intend on at least promoting to tier 2, so I should be playing for at least a few seasons. Having a lot of extra funds could help with building up the HQ faster or getting better parts quicker, which can further snowball into higher sponsor payments and a happy chairman.
Finally, the political background. I really don't care an awful lot about the votes.

So that's my outlook on things, like I said, I'd love to hear about your thoughts on the manager backgrounds and which would be most beneficial!

[Fritz]

IMO they rank as such
1) political, this one adds the ability for extra votes which can be op since you'll eventually own the gma. Plus it comes with a free vote proposal which is an automatic 1mil for free, that's huge early game.
2) ex engineer, this is more for late game when you become rich enough where the bottleneck isn't your finances but how quickly you can pump out parts.
3) financial, saves a lot of money in the long run but simultaneously once you're big enough money stops being relevant which means this also becomes moot.
4) ex driver, this helps early game a little bit but really feedback is weak and lol driver moral.

[Ohayoghurt]

If I had to pick, Financial would be #1 with Political a very close 2nd. Political is great for preventing the GMA from doing stupid stuff like 'Random Grids lol', but you can never have too much money...

Ex-Driver is actually not far behind in 3rd for me. The +3 in Feedback is more useful than you might think due to how the game calculates raw driver pace (as in, it gives all skills equal weight for this purpose), and you get a driver improvement rate bonus too.

Ex-Engineer is only 4th by virtue of being situational. Often times if your HQ is small and/or you're in a lower tier series, you'll have upgraded all of your parts as much as you're able to before the end of the season even without this perk.

[Fritz]

Really, by the time you get to season 8-10 and you have fully upgraded the hq, there's little else to sink your money into. You literally start earning more than you can reasonably spend and you have 100s of millions saved up for a rainy day decade. Once that happens, the value of financial background evaporates imo.

That's why I put politico higher, there's a lot of value in becoming the gma's effective dictator. Plus, it has benefits that help during the early career days and much later as well.

Good point on the +3 feedback applying to driver pace, I had forgotten about that. But still, I feel like this will only be crucial during a specific point of your career and it eventually becomes moot.

So looking at it again
Ex driver- useful early to mid career
Ex engineer- mid to late career
Financial- early to mid career
Politico- early, mid, and late career

[Ohayoghurt]

But you're thinking REALLY late game before money stops being an object. Until then the 5% discount is huge.

Honestly though I'd pick having no background at all to make the game a challenge ;).

[Fritz]

Well even before it gets that late (s10+), you're still more than wealthy enough to buy whatever you please which is why I categorized it as an early to mid game (s1-7ish) ability.

I value politico because it has 2 advantages. First is the free 1mil which is massive early game. Not only does it save you a mil, but it allows you to vote in rules that further save money and help your team up the ladder (i.e. spec engines etc). Then there's +4 votes every new season which can pile up into a massive reserve (this is valuable throughout the entire career length). Once you have 10+ votes in the bank, nothing passes or fails unless you want it to.