GPM2, May the best manager win!

[Shadaza]

With their second first round pick, Ferrari chooses Rubens Barrichello.

I'd also like to change a few things at my staff:
For each of the departments except the commercial one, add "Good" staff until it has 39 employees. The commerical one should be off well enough by having 15 Excellent and 5 Trainees.
Furthermore, set the new chassis developement at a ratio of 95:5. And - to give some controversy - I'd like to begin work at an in-house gearbox.

I think I got all that. We have our first complete driver line up, with teams yet to even begin to pick!

Adrian Sutil is next up for Arrows.

[AdrianSutil]

Arrows will pick Adrian Sutil

Also can I add staff?

[Wizzie]

Since Arrows have made their pick, WIlliams picks Jenson Button as their number 1 driver.

[the Masked Lapwing]

And with Williams choosing, Jaguar will take Luca Badoer.

And the Jaguar team principal is Jimmy Rosenforth (a cookie to anyone who sees where I'm going with this )

[Shadaza]

Arrows will pick Adrian Sutil

Also can I add staff?

Done, should I refer to you as Adrian Sutil's long lost twin or that Adrian Sutil is now a driver/manager? .

As for staff yes you can add staff. The number of staff at game start is different for each team, i did a quick couple of loads and Arrows had 7 excellent design staff on one load, and 8 on another (whilst the likes of Williams have 40+ design staff on game start) I wouldn't worry about adding staff just yet (I will cover it later in more detail) but if you wan't to add any specific number now please say. Staff are divided between Excellent, Very Good, Good, Average and Trainee.

Since Arrows have made their pick, WIlliams picks Jenson Button as their number 1 driver.

And with Williams choosing, Jaguar will take Luca Badoer.

And the Jaguar team principal is Jimmy Rosenforth

Both ok

Phoenix's Mclaren can now pick BOTH a first and second driver then the order will go back to Jaguar then Williams eventually ending with Sauber.
After that choosing test drivers will be a free for all.

[Wizzie]

Will it be possible for me to sign Button on for a 48 race (3 season) contract rather than just one?

[Shadaza]

Will it be possible for me to sign Button on for a 48 race (3 season) contract rather than just one?

You could do that, but the way I had planned this was for managers to have more control over their driver (there is no risk of someone stealing your driver without your consent) Of course signing your driver for 3 seasons means his wages won't go up so really it is up to you.

[Wizzie]

Will it be possible for me to sign Button on for a 48 race (3 season) contract rather than just one?

You could do that, but the way I had planned this was for managers to have more control over their driver (there is no risk of someone stealing your driver without your consent) Of course signing your driver for 3 seasons means his wages won't go up so really it is up to you.

3 year contract it is. Plus, will it be alright for my number 2 driver (whoever that may be) have a 2 year contract as well?

[Shadaza]

Will it be possible for me to sign Button on for a 48 race (3 season) contract rather than just one?

You could do that, but the way I had planned this was for managers to have more control over their driver (there is no risk of someone stealing your driver without your consent) Of course signing your driver for 3 seasons means his wages won't go up so really it is up to you.

3 year contract it is. Plus, will it be alright for my number 2 driver (whoever that may be) have a 2 year contract as well?

Ok then, added this to the list along with your other requests.

[Wizzie]

You could do that, but the way I had planned this was for managers to have more control over their driver (there is no risk of someone stealing your driver without your consent) Of course signing your driver for 3 seasons means his wages won't go up so really it is up to you.

3 year contract it is. Plus, will it be alright for my number 2 driver (whoever that may be) have a 2 year contract as well?

Ok then, added this to the list along with your other requests.

And, for the record for everyone else, this is a strategy that works because running the 2001 Sauber team, I've won races with Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber and Christian Klien all in their first or second years in F1.

[Shadaza]

Problems

I just ran a quick one year play test to check how switching between teams works and if there are bugs or not. There is one MAJOR bug. And that is the AI finances don't seem to work properly. Ai teams budget did not stray very far from the initial 20 million start (some teams gained a couple or lost a couple of thousand that's it) yet despite this Toyota went "bankrupt" at first I thought this was as a result of switiching teams yet, Asiatech (the team I have to control over races) went down to 15 million and stayed at 15 million everytime I changed to them. Yet no matter what point I changed to any other team in the season their budget did not change.

Only AFTER the season finished did the teams true budget show. This means I will not be able to tell you your budget mid season.

I find it hard to see how Toyota went bankrupt, as the lowest team I saw was 11.8 Million (from the 20 million start) (A horrific loss btw!!!)
Also of note, NO teams made a profit. Though 3 teams all had over 19 million.

I have a suspicion that a team dropping out after 14-15 races is scripted because I have seen this happen multiple times, perhaps the game automatically wipes out the lowest budget ai team. Turning Toyota back on reset their budget to 20 million.

-----------------------------

Experimenting

It seem the ai don't get sponsors the same way as the player, seemingly being given them at random, as they do not use the "focus on sponsor" sliders at all. Having selected Renault, I placed 100% of intrest on Benson and Hedges, switched back to my team, advanced forward a race, swapped back to Renauly and Benson and HEdges remained at 100% which is good, I will now test further to see if BNH will be intrested. Advanced a few more races and they do indeed wish to sponser the team.
Sponsorship WORKS

the next season car development and R&D seem to work as normal, so no problems there. It seems overall the only short fall is "invisible budgets"

[Klon]

Maybe you should take up this "All Teams are player controlled".exe?

While I am posting - look at Wizzie, look at him and laugh.

[Shadaza]

Maybe you should take up this "All Teams are player controlled".exe?

While I am posting - look at Wizzie, look at him and laugh.

Sure, if Nuppiz can send me a link, then I will do that instead, the mechanics I had planned already will reamain the same. This way you guys can set pit strategy. One modification i will make at the start will to put all rookie drivers up to 3 star expirience, just to get rid of the rookies sucking glitch.

As for laughing at Wizzie? looks like Ferrari are confident.

[Klon]

As for laughing at Wizzie? looks like Ferrari are confident.

Who wouldn't be if one of their main competitors would put their eggs in Button's basket?

[Nuppiz]

Maybe you should take up this "All Teams are player controlled".exe?

While I am posting - look at Wizzie, look at him and laugh.

Sure, if Nuppiz can send me a link, then I will do that instead, the mechanics I had planned already will reamain the same. This way you guys can set pit strategy. One modification i will make at the start will to put all rookie drivers up to 3 star expirience, just to get rid of the rookies sucking glitch.

As for laughing at Wizzie? looks like Ferrari are confident.

It's not a modified exe, but instead a modified config file. Here's the download link: https://rapidshare.com/files/2093605980/2003b.gcf

[Ferrim]

I posted a while ago in the GPM2 World forums that the "team goes bankrupt" is scripted indeed, although I remember some people contradicted me...

I don't fully understand what you said about "invisible budgets". What does exactly happen after the season is over? Do the AI controlled teams suddenly change from having around $20 million to, let' say, $8,471,653?

[Shadaza]

I posted a while ago in the GPM2 World forums that the "team goes bankrupt" is scripted indeed, although I remember some people contradicted me...

I don't fully understand what you said about "invisible budgets". What does exactly happen after the season is over? Do the AI controlled teams suddenly change from having around $20 million to, let' say, $8,471,653?

That is exactly it.

Then I experimented further and used the iamacheatcode to take 50 million away from a team, switch them to ai, advanced the game and they didn't go bankrupt....

So all teams will be human controlled. It may be late, but this means we can have 13 teams not 12. so, Asiatech is now a playable team.

So if anyone wants to join in late and be the manager of Asiatech (who are a factory team!) then I will add the team to the driver draft list.

[AdrianSutil]

Can I have Adrian Sutil and my second driver both on two-year contracts please?

And can I had 15 'good' staff to whatever the department for development is. Thanks.

[Wizzie]

Before I forget, before we even do the first test, WIlliams would like to start negotiation with a three star sponsor and four star sponsor (50% for each), that we start research on semi-automatic gearbox level one and start developing an internal mechanical component to be determined after we find out the levels of all our components.

[Ferrim]

I guess the AI teams expenses are calculated at once at the end of the year. That would make some sense from a computing point of view -it takes much less resources to perform the calculations just once than to do it 16 times, for the same practical result. We know from DJ Bytedisaster's investigations (he is the guy who wrote the GPM2 editor, back in 1997-8) that the game developpers did their best to save space at different points of the code; that was still an issue back in the mid 90s, when the games still came in floppy disks and the like. Another example I remember was the way the allowed/banned driving aids was programmed IIRC.

I also suspect not all of the teams expenses are taken into account in that end-of-season update; the AI teams never have many expensive sponsors and would easily go bankrupt if that was the case.

Having all the teams human controlled will probably spare you from some bugs. One is the driver contracts: the AI likes to mess with them, so you would have to manually cancel every non-wanted deal. This has the unintended consecuence of destroying "your" reputation: I did something like this once, because I wanted to have the drivers in their correct teams for my second season. I went team by team cancelling those AI contracts, and all was well until I tried to sign a new driver for the team that I actually controled: the driver in question told me that he wouldn't sign a deal with me because I had a reputation of breaking contracts!

Another bug usually appeared at the Hockenheimring, and knowing that you won't use the original track it probably wouldn't have happened anyway, but still: some AI cars, always belonging to one or two teams (but not always the same teams) would spin during practice and qualifying and not take part in the race. I was always surprised by this bug, until I had the chance to take control of these teams thanks to the modified exe. Then I found out some curious things in relation with the AI setups. The first one was that not every AI team used the same setup! They were all similar, but not identical. The AI setup also took into account the driver; some had softer suspensions than their teammates, just like when you're controlling the team. And I also came across teams who were using no front wing at all (0) and even... negative numbers! The old Hockenheimring was a track of very low downforce, and whatever formula the AI used to calculate its setups produced funny results like -1 or -2 degrees of front wing. Then I thought, "that's why they are spinning, the game engine can't handle negative wings!", but I was wrong: it was the teams that used 0 degrees of front wing the ones that had their drivers spin!

I also discovered why the human controlled teams are always good at Monza. For some reason the AI setup for that race is not great (IIRC it used similar setups to Hockenheim, which makes sense, but the perfect setup for that track was something like 13 front wing and 20 rear wing, a bit more downforce than Hockenheim). I tried to give every AI team the proper setup for Monza, went back to my team and voilà, I was as competitive at Monza as elsewhere.

Finally, and before you all think I'm a complete GPM2 geek (although chances are high that you already do, and with good reasons), a suggestion. When I play as a team with a driver of 1-2* in experience, I increase these to 3 and, at the same time, I reduce one or two of their other abilities, generally stamina and/or intelligence because these two are involved with driver mistakes and crashes. That way I avoid the bug while not giving myself an advantage (because experience is also related with mistakes and crashes, so increasing it from 1-2* to 3* is not "neutral").

[Wizzie]

The softer suspesion for one driver over another is usually down to the fact that they are less experienced. Therefore, they'd want a softer suspesnsion until x number of races or experience rating (I have no idea what the crossover is) before they want a slightly harder setup but I don't know the difference in performance is between the two setups.

One thing that really annoys me about GMP2 is the weight limits. Never in a month of Sundays are you ever going to reduce the weight to anything close to the original minimum weight of 600kg but then they insist on REDUCING the weight limit to ridiculously low levels.

[tristan1117]

Sauber will not make any updates before picking their second driver as the owner has to play some GPM2 again to remember what all the mechanics are.

[Wizzie]

I just found the results record of my 2001 Sauber game. Currently in it's 7th season.

2001

16: Nick Heidfeld: 15 points, 0 wins, 7th in WDC
17: Kimi Raikkonen: 13 points, 0 wins, 8th in WDC
Test driver: Felipe Massa
28 points, 0 wins, 4th in WCC

2002

16: Kimi Raikkonen: 22 points, 1 win, 7th in WDC
17: Fernando Alonso: 12 points, 0 wins, 8th in WDC
Test driver: Felipe Massa
34 points, 1 win, 4th in WCC

2003

16: Felipe Massa: 5 points, 0 wins, 12th in WDC
17: Christian Klien: 12 points, 0 wins, 7th in WDC
Test driver: Anthony Davidston
17 points, 0 wins, 5th in WCC

2004

16: Mark Webber: 17 points, 0 wins, 6th in WDC
17: Christian Klien: 32 points, 1 win, 5th in WDC
Test driver: Justin Wilson
49 points, 1 win, 3rd in WCC

2005

16: Justin Wilson: 7 points, 0 wins, 11th in WDC
17: Christian Klien: 20 points, 0 wins, 6th in WDC
Test driver: James Courtney
27 points, 0 wins, 4th in WCC

2006

16: Michael Schumacher: 34 points, 1 win, 4th in WDC (When you earn 50 million a year, a 13 million yearly salary isn't all that worrying actually )
17: Fernando Alonso: 20 points, 1 win, 7th in WDC
Test driver: James Courtney
54 points, 2 wins, 3rd in WCC

Currently done one race in 2007 many moons ago with Fernando Alonso and James Courtney as my drivers. Courtney finished 2nd in the season opener. Might just finish the last 4 years off just for the heck of it. Also, other than Schumacher, none of my drivers have ever cost me more than half a million a year in salaries. You just have to do a crapload of driver development testing to improve their stats but trust me, it's worth it in the end

[Shadaza]

Can I have Adrian Sutil and my second driver both on two-year contracts please?

And can I had 15 'good' staff to whatever the department for development is. Thanks.

The sections are Design, Engineers, Mechanics and Commerical. The first 3 represent the different stages of developement and Commercial relates to how you attract sponsors.
Once we get going I will post a screen shot of each dept, handily there is a total cost section in each dept.

Both drivers with a 32 race contract is fine.

Before I forget, before we even do the first test, WIlliams would like to start negotiation with a three star sponsor and four star sponsor (50% for each), that we start research on semi-automatic gearbox level one and start developing an internal mechanical component to be determined after we find out the levels of all our components.

Done, Traction Control is a legal driver aid too, just so you know. Semi Automatic gears and Traction Control are the two legal driver aids, and anyone who has played gpm2 before will realise that advanced steering will be legal at the start of second season, an unfair trap by the devlopers as the top teams all have level 10 advanced steering at season start!

McLaren to pick drivers asap please!!!

[Wizzie]

Before I forget, before we even do the first test, WIlliams would like to start negotiation with a three star sponsor and four star sponsor (50% for each), that we start research on semi-automatic gearbox level one and start developing an internal mechanical component to be determined after we find out the levels of all our components.

Done, Traction Control is a legal driver aid too, just so you know. Semi Automatic gears and Traction Control are the two legal driver aids, and anyone who has played gpm2 before will realise that advanced steering will be legal at the start of second season, an unfair trap by the devlopers as the top teams all have level 10 advanced steering at season start!

Meh, I'll just nick the technology from someone

Semi-Off topic now and 7 races into season 7 of my Sauber career and Fernando Alonso is currently 2nd in the championship behind Mika Hakkinen. James Courtney in the second car scored a second place at Imola but has been plagued by bad luck ever since with only 1 other points finish to speak of. The two Mercedes powered teams of McLaren and Sauber (I have the works deal thanks to having Schumacher last year and Andre Lotterer this year ) lead the constructor's standings followed by Ferrari-Asiatech and BAR-Cosworth. (No, I'm not making this up ). Other interesting teams include Williams-Asiatech, Toyota-Audi and Arrows-Ferrari (Yes, Uncle Tom's merry men somehow got the works Ferrari deal )

[Ferrim]

Done, Traction Control is a legal driver aid too, just so you know. Semi Automatic gears and Traction Control are the two legal driver aids, and anyone who has played gpm2 before will realise that advanced steering will be legal at the start of second season, an unfair trap by the devlopers as the top teams all have level 10 advanced steering at season start!

You probably won't believe me, but I had a game on which advanced steering did NOT become legal for the second season, and semiautomatic gears remained the only allowed driving aid!

[Shadaza]

Engines BIG POST

These are the following engine manufacturers, as some of the F1 teams are Factory backed teams, they have the option to choose who can run their engines.

The following manufacturers are in the game:

Ferrari (and Petronas)- Owned by the Factory Ferrari team. (Klon)
Currently supplying:Ferrari Jordan and Sauber.

BMW- Owned by Williams (Don Rennis)
Currently supplying: Williams

Mercedes- Owned by nobody.
Currently supplying: McLaren

Renault- Owned by Renault (Eurobrun)
Currently supplying: Renault

Honda (RA002E-RA003E), Owned by Minardi (Kostas 22)
Currently supplying: BAR

Ford (CR3-CR5) Owned by Jaguar (The Masked Lapwing)
Currently supplying: Jaguar(CR5), Arrows (CR3)

Toyota, Owned by Toyota (Fmecha)
Currently supplying: Toyota

Hart- Owned by Nobody
Currently supplying: Phoenix


Unnatached Engines:
Nissain
Supertec
Zytek
Asiatech

Stats

The amount of stars is to do with build quality and reliability.

Ferrari 052: 730BHP 120kg 5 stars
Toyota RVX-03: 690BHP 125kg 3.5 stars
Ford CR-05: 695BHP 130KG 3.5 stars
Honda RA003E: 700BHP 120KG 4 stars
Renault RS22: 710BHP 120KG 4.5 stars
BMW P83: 725BHP 120KG 4.5 stars
Supertec FB02: 680BHP 121KG 2.5 stars
Nissain VQ30: 645 BHP 101KG 2.5 stars
Zytek KVF: 650 BHP 105KG 3 stars
Petronas 03A: 695BHP 125kg 4 stars
Hart T2-F1 C: 650BHP 130KG 1 star
Mercedes FO110P: 720BHP 120KG 3.5 stars
Ford CR-04: 685BHP 130KG 3 stars
Ford CR-03: 675BHP 130KG 3 stars
Asiatech AT02: 675BHP 125KG 3 stars
Honda RA002E: 690BHP 120KG 3.5 stars

I need to make a few engine rules clear:

1-If a factory team owns an engine, the manager choses who can and can't use the engines (how he does this is up to him)
2-If no factory team owns an engine ONLY 1 team can use that engine.
3-If you wish to become a factory team you will not be able to change engines for 3 seasons (but you do get a +5million bounty)
4-If you wish to become a customer team yous lose 5millon but have the right to change engines.
5-For the first season engine choice is free as long as all other rules are met.

[Stramala]

Minardi has announced a shock tie-up with Honda to be their new works team, in a deal including Honda RA003 engines.

(Unless the BAR thing makes us ineligible for that )

[FMecha]

As it says on tin the Toyota engines will be Toyota's works.

[Shadaza]

Minardi has announced a shock tie-up with Honda to be their new works team, in a deal including Honda RA003 engines.

Okay we have a factory Honda team, it means you now provide engines to BAR too. You now control the supply of Honda engines. (But you can't take BAR's deal away for the first season)
So to clarrify you now own the Honda RAE003 and 002 engines.

So you have Mika Hakkinen and works Honda engines and finance now, some plucky minnow. ^^

[Wizzie]

As expected, Williams will take ownership of BMW

And, for the love of HWNSNBM, DON'T take an offer for a customer deal if it costs over 1 million because engines become ridiculously expensive after that point if you end up damaging one.

[Ferrim]

As expected, BMW will take ownership of Williams

Fixed.

And I never came across the need to buy a new engine in the game. I only ever had to buy new chassis -I guess you are doing it from the screen where you change the car parts? There, when the chassis is destroyed, you get a dialog box that asks you if you want to buy a new chassis, and it includes the engine prize indeed. But there is a screen where you can just buy a new chassis, at a cost of $250,000.

[AdrianSutil]

Arrows are happy to keep their Cosworth engines for the first year at least.

[Wizzie]

As expected, BMW will take ownership of Williams

Fixed.

And I never came across the need to buy a new engine in the game. I only ever had to buy new chassis -I guess you are doing it from the screen where you change the car parts? There, when the chassis is destroyed, you get a dialog box that asks you if you want to buy a new chassis, and it includes the engine prize indeed. But there is a screen where you can just buy a new chassis, at a cost of $250,000.

But seriously, 3 million for 3 new engines at the beginning of the year (That's not even a good one mind you) is incredibly expensive (And a good customer deal is looking at 2 mill+ an engine)

[Wizzie]

It's just occurred to me that it'd be in everyone's best interests that they knew the levels of their ECU systems because I just remembered there's a direct correlation between it, the driving aid level and finishing records.

[Nuppiz]

It's just occurred to me that it'd be in everyone's best interests that they knew the levels of their ECU systems because I just remembered there's a direct correlation between it, the driving aid level and finishing records.

Yep, this mod doesn't use the 1.02B patch, so your EMS level must be higher than the highest-level driving aid you're going to use. Otherwise you'll retire almost every race with electronics failures.

[Shadaza]

It's just occurred to me that it'd be in everyone's best interests that they knew the levels of their ECU systems because I just remembered there's a direct correlation between it, the driving aid level and finishing records.

Yep, this mod doesn't use the 1.02B patch, so your EMS level must be higher than the highest-level driving aid you're going to use. Otherwise you'll retire almost every race with electronics failures.

Oh snap! If i remember right an EMS rated at 45% means you can run driver aids at level 4 or lower but will have Electrical failures every race for driver aids above that. I will keep "Asiatech" as my player team then, use the develope all parts cheat, remove the security and then give all the teams 100% EMS. I think that would be fair for everyone. I think keeping a team for myself as a frankenstein team in case unforseen problems crop up would be a good idea anyway.

Phoenix seems to have gone AWOL at McLaren, I'm not sure what to do here, skip his pick in the hope he appears, wait a bit more, or give Mclaren to someone else?

[Klon]

Phoenix seems to have gone AWOL at McLaren, I'm not sure what to do here, skip his pick in the hope he appears, wait a bit more, or give Mclaren to someone else?

I propose we wait until the end of the weekend to see whether he's online or not.

[Phoenix]

I'm here, but since I've been absent for a while, I'm lost as to what I need to do. If someone can give me some advice, I'd really appreciate it

[DanielPT]

I'm here, but since I've been absent for a while, I'm lost as to what I need to do. If someone can give me some advice, I'd really appreciate it

You just need to pick your first driver.

You can find a comprehensive list of available drivers on page 1 and some of their salaries in page 2.