Sorry DB, just got back into this thread so I'll try to answer as best as I can. You can get notifications of expiring contracts when your assistant emails you, if I recall correctly. Driver's, engineer, crew chief, etc. After the latest update you can micromanage the pit lane crew as well if you want to. I started my own team and started at the bottom of the ERS. Took a few seasons to get competitive, but getting as much "Spec" as possible helped. (Pro tip: bank those votes when something comes up you don't care about). Won the EPS 2 years running with the best of everything. When I went to APS it took a bit again to get back to the top. Once I won the championship I moved up to the big leagues. And we had to start at the bottom again, despite having nearly the best facilities. I could get in the points once and a while but got shellacked pretty regularly. That's about the time I took a break.

There's a difficulty slider in the configuration settings that you can adjust to your liking. I usually keep mine in the middle or there abouts. Any more questions, I'll keep an eye on the thread and try to answer.

For anyone on the fence, get it on sale. It's worth it. You don't have to have a HAL 9000 to run it, that's BS. Don't have ADD and expect instant gratification (unless you use that slider ).

Thanks Dave and no worries. Yes, you get notifications for all of those positions, but none for the pitcrew.

Starting your own team is the hardest way to go as I understand. It gives you the worst possible starting setup. So well done to reach the WMC. I keep the slider at 0, seems to give me a decent challenge to this point. I have the default pitstops too, and I understand the other setting gives the AI a boost.

OK, was asked for some screens.




This is the HQ, and we're looking rather professional now. The helipad was a huge mistake. Built it in season 1, and have yet to get close to a sniff of the 5-star sponsors it unlocks. Waste of money.



This is the driver's screen, showing all the ratings, contract,, traits, etc/ Some traits are good, some bad, some temporary, some permanent.



The Archer BRM Eagle Formula One car. OK, so I exaggerated when I said I made a livery fit for the Show



Pit crew screen. Moving up to the WMC saw a change to simultaneous pitstop rule, meaning refueling and tire changes can happen at the same time. Faster, yes, but it made my pitcrew much bigger, more expensive and more difficult to keep fresh. I am not a fan of pitcrew stamina as a thing. I mean, these guys can't recover in 2 weeks? Good grief. Would eliminate this if I could. There's probably a mod...



Yours truly. Safe, for now.



This is the parts development screen. You need to use your available staff to improve part performance and reliability. Nice little strategic mini-game here, as you constantly have not enough of either

Nice!! MOAR!!

OK, as my public demands, a few moar.




This shot shows the sort of driver feedback you can expect to see...




,,, and this shows the setup screen, The goal is all purple smileys. It's not easy. Great is good enough, but if you can tweak it to Excellent it's even better. The limited practice time makes it a challenge.




Here you see I didn't get it perfect, but good enough.




Here you see how I took advantage of outsmarted the AI. At the top is the track wetness meter. You can see in the middle of the qualifying session there were a few minutes of dry track. I waited until the 6 minute mark, sent both drivers out and nabbed high grid positions 5th and 7th.. The AI isn't so smart. If they went out just one minute before it's dry they'll still put on inters, because those are right for the conditions now, but not necessarily for their flying lap. Result was a 7th and 11th in the race. Not great considering the starting positions, but freakin' fantastic in my quest to stay up.

Make sure you get this on pre-order. I want to see screens of this DLC as soon as it's released!!

Silly question, but is there any MP aspect to this at all? Or maybe have like a sister-team that you can share secrets and spread the costs around?

Are the races full 100% as they are in real life? Or are they shortened versions with just increased tyre/fuel usage?

No MP, and it would be a great game for it. I would imagine the game will be there at some point. It's quite well suited. This game was a mobile app a couple of years ago, but it's been enhanced and expanded as a PC release. So I suppose if it sells well it will get bigger, deeper and better as time rolls on. Just like Football Manager. I remember playing that back in like '06 and think of what it's evolved to today. I have no idea what the MM dev team have planned, but if it follows the traditional trajectory I would think that MP is coming.

Races are shortened. Depends on series rules. My current rule is '35 laps on average' which is on the longer side of the available rules. As a comparison, my next race is Australia, and 27 laps. The real Australian Grand Prix is 58 laps, so just about half the distance.

The first season in the WMC went better than I might have expected. We actually managed to put both cars in the points in Brazil. 40 points in the end, and only 559 off the pace




The grid as the lights go out.





The car for the new season

Please tell me you can rotate that view to get more view angles of your car? And what's the views like during racing?

Yes, that can be rotated at any angle.

The view during the races (and practice and qualifying) is as the grid shot above, You can pan and zoom the camera.

Season 11 has gone well, essentially according to plan. Have only managed to improve the car to the 6th-rated out of 10 teams, and stand 5th in the championship. We surpassed last season's point totals with 8 races to go, so it's been a good season. We are in the points more often than not. We have 3 races left and I'd say 5th place will be where we finish considering the distance to the teams directly above and below in the standings. Hopefully next season we can challenge for third, and then it will likely be a couple of seasons of trying to close the gap on the top two teams. Upgraded the forecasting center (for longer weather forecasts) and the scouting facility (to unlock more drivers) as my drivers aren't getting any younger and will need to be replaced in the next few years.

I did manage to pass a new rule for 80% fuel tanks, which I think will benefit me by allowing different strategies. Practice session length will be reduced from 20 minutes to 15. Like a fool I abstained from the vote thinking it wouldn't pass, but it did. I really need the extra practice time so it was bad to let that happen. I did successfully shoot down a proposal to go with a top-five points rule, which would have killed me.

One more post to button things up. I'm sure everyone has been wondering how my career went

Season 12 (2027) was a success, my Archer BMR team finished fourth in the team standings. It was progress. However, closer scrutiny reveals it wasn't really all that good. The number of points we scored, 101, was less than the gap to third place. So just to move up one spot I would need to double my points total. Forget about the 400+ points needed to catch the top teams!

And then the whole thing got flipped on it's head. At the beginning of the new season (2028), commissioner Ernie Hecklestone (yes, that's his name) announced a tech reset. All teams would see reduced performance, greatly closing the gaps. And it sure did exactly that. In the previous season only two teams won a race. Several teams scored no points at all. Gaps in qualifying were often 5 seconds from pole to last. My best qually runs were often 2 seconds off the pace.

After the reset the entire field was separated by less than a second. Five teams won races. All drivers scored points. Saving a couple of seconds on a pitstop had actual meaning on track position. And I cruised to victory in both the driver's and team championships.

It's funny, because at the instant I was crowned champion, I lost my will to continue. What is there left to achieve? It's like playing a RPG and maxing out your level before you've finished the story. Anyway, that's my cross to bear. Cool game, had lots of fun with it. I might begin anew with a custom team for the ultimate challenge with the worst possible starting state and Bond on the door. I dunno.

Thanks for the thread and grats on your rise up the ranks

I love driving racing games but I am not into the management side like this game entails but what would be cool would be a mash-up game of this and a driving sim.

You as the owner/manager of Archer BMR would recruit one of us as a driver and we would run the testing/practice/qualifying/race in a normal race driving sim mode while you have the race/pit management screens.

Sign me up

Think about it, all of these great racing sims over the years, none of them have any more depth than chassis tweaks and liveries. Of course, my finger is no longer on the pulse, but if we go back just a few years, I've raced them all. All of the Papyrus sims, GTR, rFactor, and on and on. My first was the original Indy Car way back when.

And in none of them do you hire crew, sign supplier contracts, manage sponsors or even have performance engineering. Well I think it's about time to bring racing sims in to the new century. I want to be owner/driver

Will it have those situations wherein DBond will order David to let his teammate pass so that Driver #2 can get more points and standings? What happens if David refuses DBond's order? Will DBond sign him up for next racing season?

I had one driver in this MM career that had the "Hates Team Orders" trait. He got fired haha.

I had another one that obtained the "Gone Rogue" trait, where I couldn't even give engine mapping or instructions to push or conserve. She just did her own thing for a while. I kept her around.

To the matter at hand though, I would run a meritocracy, so if championship standings or race pace merited it, that driver gets through. Fail to follow team orders and we will find someone who will dammit!

Of course if I am one of the drivers I won't be in front anyway, so rather pointless to ponder.

Exactly



Too funny

And then we'll have internal politics about who gets the fancy new tech for next race.....

75% off sale, now at £6.24!!

That's a great deal Football Manager is also on sale cheap