Motorsport Manager Challenge Pack and "The Devil’s in the Detail" Update Released

[Paul Jeffrey]

The brand new Challenge Pack DLC has been released for Motorsport Manager, and comes bundled with a new, free substantial update to the game.

Motorsport Manager has come on a long way since its early life as a hugely popular mobile game back in 2015, and with the fairly recent inclusion of tin top GT racing and several sizable updates to the core software, Motorsport Manager on PC, MAC and Linux continues to grow into a very polished and exceptionally well put together racing management title.

Released today for PC, the new update and DLC adds several interesting features and fixes to the current build of the game. Firstly the "Devil's in the Detail" update has addressed several outstanding issues within the public release as well as adding plenty of improvements and changes to a title already very well formed and performing at a high level. Setups can now be saved and used again at each circuit in the calendar and improvements to the game AI are just some of the changes found in the latest build release.

Moving on to the new DLC offering, Challenges Pack, the developers have added to the simulation "12 thrilling new gameplay challenges inspired by events and ideas from the history of motorsport".

From the DLC release notes:

It’s time to return to the podium. Strap in and enjoy 12 thrilling new gameplay challenges inspired by events and ideas from the history of motorsport.

Each of the exhilarating challenges in this pack will test your ability to adapt and succeed under pressure. Try to win races in a season where unusual, but exciting rules like race track sprinklers and reverse grids have been introduced. Or strive to bring your team back from the brink in a season marred by the loss of your vital parts design centre.

Rookie, Pro and All-Star challenges, each escalating in difficulty, ensure that you'll need to bring your A-game to succeed, even if you’re a seasoned Motorsport Manager player. With each successfully completed challenge, you'll also earn a new reward in-game.

Update Notes

• Realistic AI Game Preference: If enabled, AI teams make smarter decisions on when to pit during races and adapt to wet weather conditions more effectively.
• Run Wide & Corner Cutting: Cars can now run wide and cut corners in all tracks, the likelihood of a driver running wide or cutting a corner is increased by the pressure they're under from nearby cars.
• Weight Stripping: Teams can now remove reliability from parts to increase their performance before practice, qualifying and race.
• Lap Chart Screen: Available in the data centre, the new lap chart screen provides detailed information for every lap of the race.
• Expanded Camera Preference: If enabled, increases the zoom of the race day camera, allowing you to see the cars up close.
• Ability to save and load setups for each track.
• When leaving for a race weekend, the player now has the ability to force a driver to sit out the weekend if they are injured.
• The driver who sits out the race weekend will recover faster and the reserve driver will take their position.
• Injuries now show an icon on the driver's portrait. The icon can be mouse over to reveal more information.
• Player now receives a mail when a driver recovers from an injury trait.
• The race report screen has been tweaked to better inform the player about gained traits and traits that have ended.
• Various UI tweaks to the title screen and race day screens.
• Session HUD now shows when teams are fixing parts.
• Tyre wear and heating are no longer banded into thirds, but are instead a direct reading.
• Car crashes have been rebalanced to provide a more even spread of crashes throughout the race.
• Driver’s adaptability stat impacts the threshold at which they can change onto wets/slicks/inter.
• The two different tyre suppliers have different wet/inter threshold points.
  
• Fixed a bug where the tyre supplier wasn't correctly affecting speed and wear.
• Fixed a bug where the track rubber wasn't correctly affecting the lap times.
  
• Street circuits (Cape Town, Sydney) take longer to achieve a full ‘Rubber on Track’ to imply that they have less grip then a standard track.
• Underfuelling the car is now possible when no-refuelling is active.
• Tyres left overheating for too long cause blistering, dropping the wear at a faster rate.
• Tyres left underheating for too long will cause graining, dropping the performance of the car.
• Cars who have retired will now keep their standings position if they cross the finish line.
• The standings tab has been expanded to show live Team/Driver Championship standings and tyre history.
• New personality traits.
• New dilemmas with unique personality trait event chains.
• Fixed issues with AI teams being able to perform pitstops faster than they should.
• AI teams now make smarter decisions on when to use 'safe' pitstops.
• AI team setup percentages now reflect their mechanics' stats.
• Downforce setup setting affects car performance during wet sessions.
• During pre-season, AI teams can gain an additional star in up to two different chassis stats. This is to mimic the player’s dilemmas.
• Vehicles that are experiencing critical issues ( broken part, out of fuel, etc ) will now pit regardless of whether it causes stacking.
• New radio messages.
• Grammatical fixes to existing dilemmas.
• Significant performance improvements to minimise game crashes.
• Chassis Suppliers available to edit with Steam Workshop.
• Single Seater and GT design data available to edit with Steam Workshop.

Motorsport Manager is available for Windows PC, Mac and Linux right now. The Challenge Pack DLC is available for £5.99 from the Steam Store.

Check out the Motorsport Manager sub forum here at RaceDepartment for all the latest news and discussion regarding the Motorsport Manager franchise of games.

Happy with the new update? Enjoying the game so far? Will you be purchasing the new Challenge Pack DLC? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[mysterion157]

Changelog is massive, well done playsport

 

[MarkR]

I've played through the first 2 new challenges are fun to figure out, looks like the difficulty ramps up quickly from here. Bernie's sprinklers he really was onto something there.

Of the other changes, before I saw the list here I noticed the tyre wear indicator is much clearer and balancing tyre performance is improved as a result. I've already seen one of my challenge drivers bury his car in the wall too when I asked him to push too hard, that was rare before but I also guess it depends on the driver skills/personality so might just be that guy.

The ICE Mod 2017 caused the new challenges to crash but once they were turned off the challenges worked fine.

For £5.39 there is plenty of value here once again, similar to the Football Manager series challenges as you might expect.

I enjoy the pace of this game, surely the best motorsport management/strategy game for years.

 

[JayOTT]

I never expected the vocal minority to express the level of backlash that I've seen on the steam forums surrounding this update. The fixes to AI race strategy and additional features made me a happy man. I think the issues some people might have is;

- The long life cycle of version 1.31 conditioned some players to expect to be able to overachieve on-track relative to their car and driver rank. So they end up in the mindset that 1.4 is too hard, when the reality is that it was 1.31 being too easy, and that I shouldn't have been able to finish 4th in a series with non-spec engines when my car was still only ranked 9th.

- People who are complaining about weight stripping mostly seem to be getting caught up over what the mechanic is called rather than what the mechanic actually does. That being, you're sacrificing car reliability to push your car to the limit and extract more performance out of it. I can't cite examples, but I'm sure real life racing teams do this with their parts all the time, walking that tightrope between maximum performance and just making it to the finish line.

 

[aqueousprism353]

I never expected the vocal minority to express the level of backlash that I've seen on the steam forums surrounding this update. The fixes to AI race strategy and additional features made me a happy man. I think the issues some people might have is;

- The long life cycle of version 1.31 conditioned some players to expect to be able to overachieve on-track relative to their car and driver rank. So they end up in the mindset that 1.4 is too hard, when the reality is that it was 1.31 being too easy, and that I shouldn't have been able to finish 4th in a series with non-spec engines when my car was still only ranked 9th.

- People who are complaining about weight stripping mostly seem to be getting caught up over what the mechanic is called rather than what the mechanic actually does. That being, you're sacrificing car reliability to push your car to the limit and extract more performance out of it. I can't cite examples, but I'm sure real life racing teams do this with their parts all the time, walking that tightrope between maximum performance and just making it to the finish line.

I for one am really glad as far as the AI is concerned. I am doing a full career lets play with Velan racing and I overachieved everytime it rained. Changing weather in qualifying almost always got me pole and in the race even with a car that was 9th or 10th fastest winning was possible. Haven't tried the new update too much but with the old system a couple of wins felt a bit hollow because the AI drivers stayed out too long on the dry tires during wet conditions.

 

[Trivio Zuppo]

Big problem about this version of the game: no MOD of this site works!!! Try everything, from the "Track names" mod to the "Perfect setup", always crush at start! even the "editor" of savegames ...