Tips for starting your own Team?

[Mobscene]

I'm fairly new to the game, watched some videos, played a bit over 20 hours so far, so I get the general idea of the game and how to play.

I did one season with a new team, and pretty much just got stomped on the whole season. With a couple decent finishes(around 7th) due to well done pit timing. But I didn't really have money to build anything for the HQ, and was losing around 500k-1m per race. I suppose the second season would have gone a bit better, as I had some extra cash to start putting into my HQ as well as getting some better Staff/Drivers.

But I wanted to try out that big Fire 17 mod, so want to start a new team again.

Anyone have any tips or recommendations for doing well in the first season with a new team. Or is it basically just the first season is going to be♥♥♥♥♥♥no matter what and should just be rushed through while aiming to do mediocre on the future seasons?

[WhiskeyMatt]

Having basic HQ and design facilities at the start you can do only one of three things:

1. Hire the best possible drivers, develop the car without looking at the budget, end up in the upper-midfield, then go bankrupt
2. Hire mediocre drivers, try not to spend more than you make, probably not make it into mid-field, not have any money to upgrade HQ, be where you were at the start of next season
3. Hire pay drivers or cheap drivers with a lot of marketability (most likely they will be bad at driving), minimal car development, you will be last, but save as much cash as possible, develop HQ and facilities a bit - (design +1, factory +1, gearbox and suspension) - start next season with a better HQ. When it's enough to survive next competition level, start spending money to catch up with development.

There are probably guides out there with specific steps - in general you don't want to overspend the HQ upgrades (they will cost you monthly upkeep too!) and start working on getting promoted as soon as you have upgraded your factory and design center once + 2-3 facilities to upgrade parts. Note - if next competition level has spec engine - don't build facilities to upgrade the engine, as it will be useless when you get promoted.

One more thing - when possible, vote for introducing more spec parts. It will make it cheaper to catch up later on.

[Mobscene]

Originally posted by Matthias_Wlkp:

Having basic HQ and design facilities at the start you can do only one of three things:

1. Hire the best possible drivers, develop the car without looking at the budget, end up in the upper-midfield, then go bankrupt

What happens if you go bankrupt?

I suppose I did alright with my first team/season by the sounds of it. I ended with 4-5m leftover and had 1 pretty good driver and decent mechanics. My HQ was barren though, probably had enough to upgrade and buy some new stuff in the second season.

I think a big problem with my first season was I built all the parts that weren't spec and spread myself too thin. Maybe this time I will focus on Engine/Gearbox or something and keep the other parts stock unless I have the extra time to build more and improve them.

[WhiskeyMatt]

I don't know what happens, when you are bankrupt... Probably the owner hates you and kicks you out.

It looks like you did better than #2, but not as extreme as #3.

One thing to keep in mind when designing new parts:

If a stat improvement say "+10 to X" - this will be carried over to the next season. If it says "+10 to Max X", even if you work on it to improve it, it will not be carried over to the next season. Optimize your development for stat carry over.

[Erik Springelkamp]

Originally posted by Matthias_Wlkp:

One thing to keep in mind when designing new parts:

If a stat improvement say "+10 to X" - this will be carried over to the next season. If it says "+10 to Max X", even if you work on it to improve it, it will not be carried over to the next season. Optimize your development for stat carry over.

I thought this was changed in the latest patch?
That now the actual state of your best two parts carried over - without the reliability.

[WhiskeyMatt]

Apparently I missed that. Will check on my next season.

[Mission001]

I have been doing my CYOT and have struggled for 3 seasons and only in the 4th season ive actually moved into the middle of the pack.

Invest in level 2 Factory and Design Centre but the most important thing for me that most people overlook is Race Mechanics and Lead Designer.

1. Look for Mechanics that are around 2.5/3 stars, 1 with a good performance rating and 1 with a good reliability rating. This means you can start repairing your car quicker and upgrading your parts.

2. When you find one, go to the contract screen and if they have their wage description of 'wages aren't that important to me' then go for them, don't worry about their traits, if they are decent then its a bonus.

3. Sign them up for a long contract even if they don't like it and max out the performance bonuses but make sure you put the bonus for 1st place (As you wont be getting first, it doesn't matter)

4. The Lead Designer is less important in the 1st season but as you start to get your pieces in place, Get a designer that has a good normal and good trait, that way you can fast produce for a slightly lower cost as the traits don't cost. I found the best ones are -1 Build Time or every million spent lowers your build time.

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For Drivers i went with in order of importance:

Marketability (Must Have 75+)

Pay Driver (Try and get at least 2 Pay Drivers but 1 would do, I had one which brought me in around 130k a race and one which cost me 130k after his Pay Driver Money came out, so essentially I broke even on drivers)

Smoothness

Mentor (Only if you have a youngster as a pay Driver) a Mentor in your Reserve slot with a small salary is awesome if you can find one)

----

After the first 2 seasons i decided that i was essentially going to 'tank' for the next year and save as much money as I could, took all worst parts on chassis and then invested a lot of my money into brakes (As i got the R&D facility)

tl:dr Be prepared to get beat pretty much for a few seasons. Invest in things that give you money over instant performance.


That is my experience, which I probably went around a longer way then i should have but im slowly seeing results now, another 2 seasons and I think ill be on my way for challenging the series.

[Mobscene]

Originally posted by Mission00I:

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Good tips, thanks :D

[Daffers]

If you start in F3 with the fire mod, pick the middle package (marketability)..
you end up with the vanilla drives who are too good for the mod, so to have fair gameplay hire new ones, anyone between 200k-300k a race will do fine..
with sponsors you have money to upgrade factory, staff centre, then go for the brake facility when you have the cash..

i also got 2 star staff, making 100k a race with budget for next years car on high..

try to save up for the brake rd centre once it is finished you can build good brakes in the next season, be aware that ai will hire better drivers in the 2nd season (they stay the same in season1).. they are going to go for some good 3 star indycar drivers..

best to get better drivers that season as well!

good luck!

ps you can easily get good results with the weight stripping by making your parts 100% reliable quickly.. i dont do it because it abuses the game, but feel free to do it!

[Dionysus 🐭]

I cannot even download the DLC that lets you start your own team.

[Inardesco]

HQ is main priority. Go get Design and Factory to lvl 2 asap.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by aaronth07:

I cannot even download the DLC that lets you start your own team.

You go the store page and start the game through there.

[[Ars] Village]

I don't know about firemod, but in m vanilla game w/ macromanagement mod. I've found that I often don't have the mechanics to maximize +MAX mods when building my car up before new parts are developped putting strain on the whole perf/rel dynamic. Typically now I tend to go with the +stat first and get reliability up and build up a competitive car. Towards then end I'll switch to +MAX since by then I have reliable decent parts and now I'm pushing for performance to start next season with.

[Inardesco]

You bring the max performance with you for next year's car. So having that extra bit of performance open is good to have.

[Dionysus 🐭]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Originally posted by aaronth07:

I cannot even download the DLC that lets you start your own team.

You go the store page and start the game through there.

It doesn't work. When I press download it just starts the game. When I go to create my own team it still says to download the DLC.

[C-FPAS]

Originally posted by aaronth07:

Originally posted by Inardesco:

You go the store page and start the game through there.

It doesn't work. When I press download it just starts the game. When I go to create my own team it still says to download the DLC.

The formation of that own team is in the game:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137872643

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137872693

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137872737

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137872786