Improving the car over the season

[Berto]

So, I was fired on my 3rd season after being GP3 champion on the 1st year and coming 4th in my 1st GP2 season. On my 3rd year the car was born so horribly that was the worst car of the pack, I mean literaly when checking that list thing that orders the cars from best to worse.

I spent huge amounts of money in new parts to a point that at halfway into the season my #1 driver had tier 2 and 3 (good and great) on all the parts, however the car barely improved, checking that list thing it was only the second worst car.

So my question here is more or less this: what is the major factor when improving a car through the season? If it borns as a slow car at the start of the season, am I pretty much doomed for the rest of the season? Is the driver quality a bigger factor? I poured rivers of money into that thing and has great parts attached to it but it didn't seem to work.

I looked like when Toyota were in F1 and that was depressing :D

[Cadieux101]

When building parts. The total performance is what carries over from one season to the next. You will be spending millions and millions in parts development, thats just how the game works.

Don't think of it as your team building a brand new part every time. Think of it as your team is building a different slightly better version of that part (Engine Greabox etc etc...)

Depending what team you started on, be prepared to take a long time to make the car better.

The name, Average, Good, Great, Epic, Legendary is almost more of an.... indicator to make it easier for you, to identify which is your latest and best part. The only thing that really matters at the end of the day, at the end of the season, is your overall performance.

**Note, it used to be your baseline performance, now its the maximum performance of the part**

Also note, if you build a part that starts at 200, with 300 max potential. You will only get what you add in terms of performance to that part next season. If you make the part score 250 of 300 you will only get 250 next year. not the 300.

Building one or two parts will not get you a big jump in performance. Be prepared to build many parts. For example one season i started with gearboxes around 200 performance. 5 parts... yes 5 parts later i made a gearbox that was 380... Then the next season i built 3 more gearboxes, finally got to 475 performance score... So thats 8 parts, taking the score from 200 to 475 and my ranking in gearboxes went from 8th to 1st.

For your question about drivers, they make a huge difference in this game. In the ERS a 4 star driver in a poor car, 8-9-10th in car quality. Will do as well or better than a 2.5 star driver in a top 3 quality car.

You will pay +400k for a good driver.... whereas the cheap 2.5 star drivers may cost you 200k. So you can decide... pay for driver. or save an additional 2 million dollars a year and buy parts.

The game does give you lots of flexibility in how you invest your money to have success... car or driver... or hq... or staff.... Your call.

[TornadoDash]

Gearboxes are too damn expensive to be building five of em, what team are you with??? typically i build three parts of each type, except for this season in APS i only built two average gearboxes cause the good components were both illegal.

[SonicsLV]

Simply put, you start at massive disadvantages compared to other team if you playing the backmarkers (ZRT/Predator) or just promoted to new tier and depending only on the "free" upgrade. This is why on first few season your car will always be the worst even though you develop to max. However it's not broken, it's just you don't catch up with others yet. When you finally get into like 8th best car, you'll find it much easier to overtake other team car ratings.

[Schoof]

Note, that those illegal parts will become legal in the next season.
Only the performance will be transferred to the base-equipment, not the risk-level.
So if you want to improve your car faster, you should think about building those things.
You don't have to use it, you just have to build it!
In other words, just make sure that the GMA does not catch you.
If they find it, it will be forbidden and does not improve your car for the next season.
I just build a motor with high risk (3) to catch up with the others next season.
A hugh investment (for predator) but absolutely worth it...

[Berto]

Uau, thanks all, very good and detailed information. So basically this is a on going and non stop pregress and money pouring situation, and means that I left them with a great base for next years car :p

But it kinda confirms that you are pretty much doomed if you start with an awful car at the season start.

[Xautos]

i upgraded the parts in predator in season one to good standard, all risky and the best i could get, fully upgraded in performance. factory and design are almost done to level 2 but i would need more money for better facilities in order to go up to great, so for now i will repeat the process.

i only gained 1 position in the standings for the best car, from 10th to 9th and already Santa Ana has gone from 19th last year in race 1 to 8th a season later in race 1 as well, albeit with 40% reliability across all the parts as i didn't have the ability to improve part reliability at the end of last season.

I am quietly confident of a great result in Milan and Ardennes now my car is faster, but i still have to keep an eye out for reliability concerns. otherwise the next season should make my car even bettter and at that point Evans will be gone, i can get another crap driver in place like Bjelland who pays me money for a seat or i could try Jonsdottir who is another pay driver with significantly more talent and potential.

[ced007]

Thank you all for these very useful tips.

[Xautos]

even with the 9th best car, you can be very competitive with Santa Ana over a season, discounting Ardennes, her worst result is 10th and her best result is 8th, an average position of 7th during the season.

Turns out Ardennes was a disaster, both cars had slipped back into old habits of being the slowest things around. got lucky when ZRT failed to score and i got a podium in tondela (race 8, it could of also been a win but pited for wets slightly too soon), that kept me in the hunt with 8th in the teams.

I can't wait to get rid of Evans, but team and car should be in a better place in season 3.

so yeah, maximize what you can.

[Cadieux101]

Originally posted by TornadoDash:

Gearboxes are too damn expensive to be building five of em, what team are you with??? typically i build three parts of each type, except for this season in APS i only built two average gearboxes cause the good components were both illegal.

First off i used the predator team, those who didn't use this team. your parts score, I'm not joking are all under 15. Engine is like 12, Breaks were like 2, Suspension... 8... You are starting like 100 points back from everyone else.

I didn't mention that my Designer, Doublet, has an epic park perk. I also had built a telemetry centre. So yes it was expensive to build 5 gearboxes in one season, But i was able to make massive jumps in overall performance because i could build 1 Epic engine.

I suppose the two strategies involved with parts development:

Strategy 1: Use Original parts all season, but build high risk parts and best possible parts so that next seasons car takes a major jump. Essentially start the season by building up reliability of original parts, then at the end of season, put all your performance into maxing out the parts for next season. Trying to bring a parts performance up 100 points can be very time consuming when you only collect 2.5 or 4.5 points per day. The key here is not to waste any time upgrading parts you build but won't use next season.

Strategy 2: Which is the basic strategy of building parts and implementing them in the car right away. Don't spend too much time on upgrading your original parts, each time you build a new part invest in improving the reliability and performance. Use them in the car, and enjoy a small improvement week by week. One note of caution for those doing this, i learnt the hard way that building a part with a huge potential in the max performance can be a waste of money. Essentially if you're building so many parts, you'll run into a problem that your factory simply can't upgrade them all by the end of the season. If you build a part that is 300 with 400 max performance... but have 17 days left in the season, there is no way you will reach that 400 max.

I recently made the jump from ERS to APRS, your parts do not directly carry over. I believe they design the car and base your part score relative to what you had the season prior.

In ERS i had #1 gearbox, 525 part score. in APRS the part was dropped to 425, but i was 7th in gearboxes.

Also Keep in mind, of rules, for me APRS had spec engines... So in my 4th season of ERS i finished 2nd in constructors, and i realized i could win it all in season 5, so season 5 i didn't build a single engine, i saved my money. So that in the offseason building the APRS chassis wasn't such a problem. 23 million later i still had 8 million to start the APRS.

[YouWin]

If that is the case, may I know what is the purpose of the designer's stats? Since your car attribute seems to be affected by what you did previous season and not from the designer right?

[Fritz]

Designer bonus gets applied x1 (despite tooltip saying x2) during chassis design to determine the performance level of the parts that carried over from the previous season. Then i believe it gets applied again when you design a new part.