AI teams that hire expensive drivers tend to fall catastrophically behind in long term development.

[Froz]

While this should probably be true on some level, not to the extent that I'm observing in year 12 of my 1.42 game. Teams appear to be incapable of any parts development at all if they're paying two drivers a million or more per race.

This means their car falls potentially thousands of performance points behind, putting them hopelessly off the pace despite their amazing drivers. I know they're this far behind because I promoted into WMC a couple of seasons before a reset and despite my development, my car (being an average of 8th-9th best to start with) was as much as 600-1000 points below the cap on every part when the reset triggered, which meant someone was at the cap with at least one part.

As an example, Panther (Red Bull) had two excellent drivers in Surikov and Hashimoto, and were often the two slowest cars on the track by the time I promoted, and had been at or near the bottom of WMC for years before that.

For comparison, Chariot (Manor) hired a pay driver for a few years, and used the money to build their HQ and keep up in parts development and have won multiple world championships in my game.

I've observed teams in other series in my game in similar situations. Two expensive drivers and the 10th best car on the grid and results that are in line with having such a bad car. The last example I'll give is Spartan MRT, who has done well in IGTC over the years, but with three (!) drivers contracted for over a million per race. I'm out of town so I can't immediately follow up on how far their car slides down the field, but if I'm right and they keep this combination of drivers they should gradually fall to the bottom of IGTC, and then to the bottom of GTCS like Lockhart and Oberhof did.

Unsure what to suggest as a fix.

[Carbune]

It's well known that the AI is utterly inept at managing its finances in the vanilla game, sadly.

[Froz]

That's why I'm not sure how I'd fix it. An across the board discount to all costs would still favor the AIs that were financially healthy before, and they'd still outpace the struggling AIs.

A discount just for AI teams that are in the red doesn't fix the fact that those teams were in the red to begin with.

The AI already rates very bad pay drivers too highly as well. I'd hate to encourage AI behavior that gives Parkes a ten year WMC career.

I suppose you could make the argument that 4-5 star drivers are just too expensive (I'm very reluctant to pay their asking wages myself) and cut down their salaries by a big chunk, but that aids the player even more than the AI.

So we're left with what, a driver discount for AI teams in the red? That's awfully specific lol.

[Carbune]

Originally posted by Froz:

That's why I'm not sure how I'd fix it. An across the board discount to all costs would still favor the AIs that were financially healthy before, and they'd still outpace the struggling AIs.

A discount just for AI teams that are in the red doesn't fix the fact that those teams were in the red to begin with.

The AI already rates very bad pay drivers too highly as well. I'd hate to encourage AI behavior that gives Parkes a ten year WMC career.

I suppose you could make the argument that 4-5 star drivers are just too expensive (I'm very reluctant to pay their asking wages myself) and cut down their salaries by a big chunk, but that aids the player even more than the AI.

So we're left with what, a driver discount for AI teams in the red? That's awfully specific lol.

Last I checked, TFR's mod mostly gave the AI huge financial advantages relative to the player from what I remember, while I've yet to see what the FIRE mod has done but it does look as though the sponsor balancing and the insane all-around costs have mitigated this sort of downfall to an extent.

In general, the code just needs to be rewritten for them, with a bit of rebalancing being done for the fees accepted by various drivers as well. There's no simple fix for it when the code is this bad.

[Tig_green]

Originally posted by Froz:

An across the board discount to all costs would still favor the AIs that were financially healthy before, and they'd still outpace the struggling AIs.

I wonder if the teams that use paydrivers would still use them (as much) if good drivers would be less expensive for them...

In any case, by lowering costs for AI, teams that use good drivers that cost them more than bad ones but are still able to save some money for car developement, might stay in the fight by getting more sponsor money with their performances.

[Carbune]

Originally posted by Tig_green:

Originally posted by Froz:

An across the board discount to all costs would still favor the AIs that were financially healthy before, and they'd still outpace the struggling AIs.

I wonder if the teams that use paydrivers would still use them (as much) if good drivers would be less expensive for them...

In any case, by lowering costs for AI, teams that use good drivers that cost them more than bad ones but are still able to save some money for car developement, might stay in the fight by getting more sponsor money with their performances.

They do seem to overpay drivers massively, but I think that's more in relation to the player, as if anything I feel the player can massively underpay them.

[Tig_green]

That is probably also true, AI needs to be more intelligent outside the track too. But AI vs. AI situation OP described is serious too and needs attention. I wonder what would happen to player if AI would get discount for driver and staff salaries. Would player also get them cheaper when they have previously been payed less because of AI discount? If AI is given discounts then the previously paid salary shouldn't affect when the driver is negotiating with a player team. Game could also display the salary without the discount when a player is viewing salaries AI are paying, discounts would be hidden in code, would be more immersive this way.

[Carbune]

Originally posted by Tig_green:

That is probably also true, AI needs to be more intelligent outside the track too. But AI vs. AI situation OP described is serious too and needs attention. I wonder what would happen to player if AI would get discount for driver and staff salaries. Would player also get them cheaper when they have previously been payed less because of AI discount? If AI is given discounts then the previously paid salary shouldn't affect when the driver is negotiating with a player team. Game could also display the salary without the discount when a player is viewing salaries AI are paying, discounts would be hidden in code, would be more immersive this way.

Yeah I've experienced something similar in my now-abandoned main run as well, and it's been happening since the game's release. Chariot ended up having the joint third best car with me (Predator) when I beat the game in 2022 (or 2021, I forgot, but they did have the third best car both years), yet as soon as I left Predator, the AI completely destroyed everything good that I did (massively overpaying an aging, declining Valdes, for starters), and the pecking order was absolutely all over the place by 2025. I imagine if I had gone past the reset, Mercedes would've self-destructed instantly, and that's without me even getting back to the WMC to see it all for myself. The worst was probably Ricciardo being hired by one team after 2023, then hired by another, then ultimately fired by both and being stuck without a seat for an entire year, while both teams paid the release clauses and thus completely destroyed their finances. The second worst was Ferrari paying millions for PALMER, but at least their finances seemed to be in better shape.

As for the discounts, if Playsport did them, that's close to how I think they'd go about it, though I do currently prefer TFR's idea of simply making it easier for the AI overall even if it's cheap. They're both bandaids to me though - if Playsport want the AI teams to be smarter about their finances, they have to make sweeping changes that are fair to both them and the player. What those changes are, I can't say for sure without looking at the code precisely, which I haven't had the chance to do in the last few months. The fact that they're doing all sorts of weird things with the contracts in the pre-season buildup (multiple reserve roles, insane payments, hiring and then instantly firing drivers etc) is a clear sign that something's horribly wrong though, and that they didn't test long playthroughs enough to see these issues for themselves.

[Fritz]

Something needs to be done regarding the salary escalation that seems to happen to drivers. Every time their contract ends and they switch teams, I'm fairly certain the new contract the next ai team offers them is worth more money. After a couple years, you end up with some poor ai team paying nearly 2 mil a race for deGraaf which it inevitably can't afford. Once the player moves up the championship rankings and grabs the lucrative winnings, all the good marketability sponsor deals, etc their finances crash. Once that happens I presume part development stalls, they're forced to hire bumpkin drivers, purchase cheap chassis materials, and overall stop being competitive.

For teams like steinmann and rossini, they recover easily enough after a couple years with a cheap driver. They're able to bounce back and afford a good one which brings their competitive edge back to a certain degree (at least they're not finishing outside top 10 anymore). Then again, I've only cared to observe this once so it may just be anectodal.

[Carbune]

Originally posted by Fritz:

Something needs to be done regarding the salary escalation that seems to happen to drivers. Every time their contract ends and they switch teams, I'm fairly certain the new contract the next ai team offers them is worth more money. After a couple years, you end up with some poor ai team paying nearly 2 mil a race for deGraaf which it inevitably can't afford. Once the player moves up the championship rankings and grabs the lucrative winnings, all the good marketability sponsor deals, etc their finances crash. Once that happens I presume part development stalls, they're forced to hire bumpkin drivers, purchase cheap chassis materials, and overall stop being competitive.

For teams like steinmann and rossini, they recover easily enough after a couple years with a cheap driver, they're able to bounce back and afford a good one. Then again, I've only cared to observe this once so it may just be anectodal.

Force India and Mercedes both seemed to be able to afford Verstappen in each of my vanilla runs. He does end up in the APSC after S1 more often than not, but then he always bounces back very quickly. (It's also quite amusing just how weak he is for his stats - shortly after my promotion to the WMC in my main run he ended up partnering Vettel in his final year... and he promptly proceeded to get annihilated. While Vettel won ~14 races, Verstappen struggled to finish even 2nd in the championship. Maybe the AI teams are right to avoid him.)

And teams can make stupid decisions even with a lot of money. In 2025, Lotus, with the best car in the APSC, chose to race with a 3-star driver... and a 0.5-star driver, promptly destroying their hopes of returning to the WMC.

[Fritz]

Being able to afford a 2mil/race driver in isolation isn't the problem. Assuming you're fairly competitive and will finish high on the table, have decent marketability, a decent chairman cash flow, or any number of methods to balance the check book it's all good under the hood. Where the ai fails is when its combined driver budget gets >3.5mil/race yet still get out competed by the player who scoops up the prize winnings and the 5 star sponsor deals. This culminates in a lot of pressure on the ai's finances and something's gotta give.

In the case I saw, steinmann must have chewed through their budget paying degraaf and some other expensive chap top dollar for multiple years but still finish 2-3rd. Eventually they were forced to hire noobs which sealed their fate and they dropped like a rock. Went from 2-3 on the championship to 6-7 behind kitano and other middle pack teams (they still had top tier cars and despite the terrible drivers could still finish ahead some back marker teams). After a couple years of presumably letting their hq earnings pump life into their budget, they were able to grab top level drivers who hadn't escalated their contracts yet and bounce back to finishing 3-4 at least.

[The Flaming Red]

Ah, the financial issues of the AI.

Yes, we encountered back in 1.2ish that the AI had some problems with this area. Namely
- hiring and immediately firing drivers and hiring another (not always but on occasion)
- rebuilding the same Part over and over again on occasion (now fixed for next version)
- generally not as intelligent as a human.

I think I once had a save where 6 / 6 teams I checked on at the end of the season once, hadn't done any upgrades (presumably, been in the red most / all season).

My quick fix (this was back before I could rewrite entire areas of code, and only add/modify a line or two via opcode so) was to give the AI a 80-90% cost reduction on building new parts - which is one of the biggest expenses. And for the most part it works well - most AI cars are able to develop freely without hitting the spend limit - meanwhile some AI teams will find themselves in financial difficulty but this is much reduced (because I do like seeing the odd team fall from grace due to issues. It's much better as a rare behaviour rather then, what can be, quite a common behaviour.

At the same time, this fix also doesn't over power the AI - because in regard to development, they're still limited by time and (while to a lesser extent now) costs. While some may see it as cheap, it's a simplification I'm quite happy with as a solution.

Of course, I could probably delve in and rewrite the AI money spending algorithms, but - let's not underestimate the difficulty and time consumed doing that. MM, even when compared to FM as an example, seems far more complex financially then it may appear - the number of choices and avenues of expenditure is large - it's actually amazingly ambitious for a new series that they went the AI route of making the players and AI finances equal, rather then simplifying the system and let the AI have 'simplified' accounts.

It's certainly not something I can devote my spare time improving, and my system, while quite 'quick and easy' a fix it is, has been used in so many many games before now to counter the fact that making player-smart AI is no simple task. I would think that remaking the system would be on the agenda more for MM2 then the current game, as that would be more practical from a game development view.

[tullaian]

It isn't just the AI, not sure what drives the budget expectations of a driver but clearly they are in some way linked to what the market will pay. In my long WMC season I also had the De Graaf (Verstappen) driver getting a huge ~$2mill salary per race driving for the worst team in WMC and regularly finishing 19th or 20th. Once he got that salary, other drivers started jacking up their wage expectations and I entered a period of hyper inflation reaching its height when I tried to hire a 16yr old rookie who wanted $1.2m per season as a starting point.

No other team though ever broke the De Graaf $2m mark and when he retired wages slowly went down again. Average salary across all 20 drivers varies around the $950k-$1100k mark pretty consistently year on year when I remove outliers like DeGraaf.

The problem isn't the wages so much , it is how hard it is to get driver combinations that result in 4-5 star sponsorship. You can certainly afford to spend that much on a driver if you are winning in the WMC and will still be profitable and competitive IF that driver also has a high marketability score.

The AI do not seem to factor marketability into their decisions about $/race , or if they do they do not place as big an emphasis on it as players do.

They also seem to end up with dud drivers which is a bigger problem than overpaying a driver who will win. The AI is very passive when it comes to recruiting talent whereas of course in real life Steinmann/Rossini should be leeching your talent aggressively , in the game you can be Haas and steal Hamilton and Vettel equivalent drivers quite easily.

[Carbune]

Originally posted by tullaian:

It isn't just the AI, not sure what drives the budget expectations of a driver but clearly they are in some way linked to what the market will pay. In my long WMC season I also had the De Graaf (Verstappen) driver getting a huge ~$2mill salary per race driving for the worst team in WMC and regularly finishing 19th or 20th. Once he got that salary, other drivers started jacking up their wage expectations and I entered a period of hyper inflation reaching its height when I tried to hire a 16yr old rookie who wanted $1.2m per season as a starting point.

No other team though ever broke the De Graaf $2m mark and when he retired wages slowly went down again. Average salary across all 20 drivers varies around the $950k-$1100k mark pretty consistently year on year when I remove outliers like DeGraaf.

The problem isn't the wages so much , it is how hard it is to get driver combinations that result in 4-5 star sponsorship. You can certainly afford to spend that much on a driver if you are winning in the WMC and will still be profitable and competitive IF that driver also has a high marketability score.

The AI do not seem to factor marketability into their decisions about $/race , or if they do they do not place as big an emphasis on it as players do.

They also seem to end up with dud drivers which is a bigger problem than overpaying a driver who will win. The AI is very passive when it comes to recruiting talent whereas of course in real life Steinmann/Rossini should be leeching your talent aggressively , in the game you can be Haas and steal Hamilton and Vettel equivalent drivers quite easily.

Or steal Hamilton and Vettel themselves when you get one of the inevitable ridiculous questions that give the 'buttered up' buff.

It's a bit crazy that the market adjusts itself like that based on the current driver salaries, and especially that one lone driver can have such a big impact in that sense. The AI not accounting for marketability is absolutely an issue, but if I'm right, then the lack of sponsors would impact the game heavily if the AI did account for that, not to mention that this would quickly leave drivers like Raikkonen without a drive. There should be ways to get sponsorship outside of the drivers, or at least make it so that the drivers matter a lot less (as they make up 66% of the team's marketability right now). What TFR did works pretty nicely in that sense, for instance.

The whole talent thing really deserves its own DLC. At the very least some of the big names in the sport should get access to a building that lets you train and assess other drivers. It would make for an interesting run as Toro Rosso since you'd always be in grave danger of losing your drivers to Red Bull, doubly so given how exceptionally strong Sainz is for his stats in the game. They need to fix the highly random nature of races outside of the series you're currently in for that to really work though.

[Tig_green]

Originally posted by Coffer:

Originally posted by tullaian:

It isn't just the AI, not sure what drives the budget expectations of a driver but clearly they are in some way linked to what the market will pay. In my long WMC season I also had the De Graaf (Verstappen) driver getting a huge ~$2mill salary per race driving for the worst team in WMC and regularly finishing 19th or 20th. Once he got that salary, other drivers started jacking up their wage expectations and I entered a period of hyper inflation reaching its height when I tried to hire a 16yr old rookie who wanted $1.2m per season as a starting point.

No other team though ever broke the De Graaf $2m mark and when he retired wages slowly went down again. Average salary across all 20 drivers varies around the $950k-$1100k mark pretty consistently year on year when I remove outliers like DeGraaf.

The problem isn't the wages so much , it is how hard it is to get driver combinations that result in 4-5 star sponsorship. You can certainly afford to spend that much on a driver if you are winning in the WMC and will still be profitable and competitive IF that driver also has a high marketability score.

The AI do not seem to factor marketability into their decisions about $/race , or if they do they do not place as big an emphasis on it as players do.

They also seem to end up with dud drivers which is a bigger problem than overpaying a driver who will win. The AI is very passive when it comes to recruiting talent whereas of course in real life Steinmann/Rossini should be leeching your talent aggressively , in the game you can be Haas and steal Hamilton and Vettel equivalent drivers quite easily.

Or steal Hamilton and Vettel themselves when you get one of the inevitable ridiculous questions that give the 'buttered up' buff.

It's a bit crazy that the market adjusts itself like that based on the current driver salaries, and especially that one lone driver can have such a big impact in that sense. The AI not accounting for marketability is absolutely an issue, but if I'm right, then the lack of sponsors would impact the game heavily if the AI did account for that, not to mention that this would quickly leave drivers like Raikkonen without a drive. There should be ways to get sponsorship outside of the drivers, or at least make it so that the drivers matter a lot less (as they make up 66% of the team's marketability right now). What TFR did works pretty nicely in that sense, for instance.

The whole talent thing really deserves its own DLC. At the very least some of the big names in the sport should get access to a building that lets you train and assess other drivers. It would make for an interesting run as Toro Rosso since you'd always be in grave danger of losing your drivers to Red Bull, doubly so given how exceptionally strong Sainz is for his stats in the game. They need to fix the highly random nature of races outside of the series you're currently in for that to really work though.

I agree that the current marketability system is a problem and team performance should play a bigger role. Why don't make driver general marketability count less (some variation depending on driver) and add traits to high marketability drivers which would act as personal sponsors for drivers. Not all drivers would have these even though irl probably every driver might bring in some personal sponsor money but in case of MM drivers like Stroll, Ericsson, Maldonado etc would have this trait and others just general marketability. This way team financials are not so much depending on driver effect and they could focus more on choosing good drivers, because team performance would bring them enough money and sponsors.

I know there already is paydriver traits but this should be more of a thing and general marketability would be gapped, when drivers effect is now 66% it should be 30% for example.

[Carbune]

Originally posted by Tig_green:

Originally posted by Coffer:

Or steal Hamilton and Vettel themselves when you get one of the inevitable ridiculous questions that give the 'buttered up' buff.

It's a bit crazy that the market adjusts itself like that based on the current driver salaries, and especially that one lone driver can have such a big impact in that sense. The AI not accounting for marketability is absolutely an issue, but if I'm right, then the lack of sponsors would impact the game heavily if the AI did account for that, not to mention that this would quickly leave drivers like Raikkonen without a drive. There should be ways to get sponsorship outside of the drivers, or at least make it so that the drivers matter a lot less (as they make up 66% of the team's marketability right now). What TFR did works pretty nicely in that sense, for instance.

The whole talent thing really deserves its own DLC. At the very least some of the big names in the sport should get access to a building that lets you train and assess other drivers. It would make for an interesting run as Toro Rosso since you'd always be in grave danger of losing your drivers to Red Bull, doubly so given how exceptionally strong Sainz is for his stats in the game. They need to fix the highly random nature of races outside of the series you're currently in for that to really work though.

I agree that the current marketability system is a problem and team performance should play a bigger role. Why don't make driver general marketability count less (some variation depending on driver) and add traits to high marketability drivers which would act as personal sponsors for drivers. Not all drivers would have these even though irl probably every driver might bring in some personal sponsor money but in case of MM drivers like Stroll, Ericsson, Maldonado etc would have this trait and others just general marketability. This way team financials are not so much depending on driver effect and they could focus more on choosing good drivers, because team performance would bring them enough money and sponsors.

That would work pretty nicely if Playsport also added a few more sponsors to the game in general, yeah. Sure, there are several mods with far more sponsors than the vanilla ones, but if Playsport changed that themselves they could also make a few other changes to the code to accommodate for various new possibilities.