Vanilla Balance Mod Beta - Testers Wanted

[TheFlamingRed]

http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/motorsport-manager-balance-mod-part-1.12965/

Make sure you down load all the parts!​

This mod has now been released. All the changes are listed in the above link. If a Forum Admin is reading this, if you could remove the "Testers Wanted" and change it to "Development Discussion" thread, it would be appreciated.

UPDATED TO WORK WITH 1.3​

Note: In attempts to fix the interviews and dilemmas, I have temporarily removed all non English languages from those two files. I hope to reinsert them into a later version (but when I do, they'll still be the vanilla text as I am unable to translate in any other language).

 

[TheFlamingRed]

I find that is a really overpowered known component, especially at the lower levels, I thought about making it cost an extra mil to stop me crushing through it.

Ah yes. That was a mistake. It was an experimental component I added during testing. I removed it in 1.2e Fixed and 1.2f Fixed. That's probably helped you accelerate through the game. I was worried as it shouldn't have taken you so little time to take predator up that far.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

1.2g Update Plans

​

So I've been looking at all the things I plan on changing and I think I've come up with a plan on how the next version of the mod will take shape.

Personalty Trait Tweaks

• Going to be converting all the Temporary Driver Personality Traits to have an upper and lower bound in regard to time. Not much in the way of balance changes but it should vary up the gameplay a little.
• Going to be adjusting some of the debufs. Some balance, some suggestions for different types of effects and some fixes.
• Note: I believe these above changes will only occur when starting a new game. Sorry!

Development Costs - AI Improvements and their Finance

• I'm going to increase initial price of part designs. in ERS, cost of the development will be the same as it is in vanilla. The cost of development in APSC will now be x1.2 (so a Gearbox will now cost £1.2M instead of £1M). In WMC development costs have been increased by x1.6 (so that £1M gearbox will now be £1.6M). This should now help balance the costs for the player compared to the prize money available. This would mean the AI may have problems with money if they had to develop these more expensive parts, so.....

• These Development costs will be reduced by 80% for the AI Only! This will help the AI lose less money per year, making them far less likely to go into the red, and thus, more likely to continue development giving the player more challenge. The AI will have more money to spend in other areas (such as hiring and firing 3 drivers in pre-season). Of course, if they do become bankrupt, then their development will stop.

Chassis Adjustments

• I alluded to this earlier. I am making the following choices to how chassis choices work. By default, I find almost no (vanilla) differences between the best and worst Fuel Efficiency and Heating. There is quite a bit of change in Tyre Wear which can really help the player but it isn't amazing. All Chassis areas will do the same thing that they do originally, but will have additional benefits based on the Stars (0-5) on that area of the chassis.

• Tyre Wear to become "Component Wear"
  
  This will now effect the base RedZone (vanilla 20%) when developing parts. It will go from having 30% Redzone (0* Chassis) to 10% Redzone (5* Chassis)​
• Heat Management to become "Vehicle Stability"
  
  This will now effect the base Reliability (vanilla 40%) when developing parts. It will go from having 20% Reliability (0* Chassis) to 60% Reliability (5* Chassis)​

This creates the dilemma of more Redzone vs reliability when choosing chassis area. There is a lot more variability in Reliability then there is in Redzone. This is to 'encourage' the player to go with reliability, as the default Tyre Wear changes to the race are stronger then the Heat Management Changes.

• Fuel Efficiency is to become "Performance Efficiency"
  
  This will raise the BaseStat when developing a new part. This ranges from +0 (0* Chassis) to a +25 (5* Chassis)​
• Improvability becomes "Improvability"
  
  This does the same thing that it does originally, just better. By default, it increased the max performance (0-20) of a newly created part. This has now been increased to 0-50. ​

This creates the dilemma of getting upto a +25 immediately on a new part vs +50 maximum performance, which would require engineers time to improve each and every part.

When it comes to WMC and the ability to customise the chassis more, this puts:

(a) RedZone (default Tyre wear) vs + Base Stat. While +Base Stat is going to be a better choice for long term progressions, it means you'll be decreasing Redzone and Tyre Wear, which will hamper you more in a race.
(b) Reliability (and Heat Management) vs Max Performance.
​

All in this, this incentivizes the player to spend as much money as they can on their chassis - which when you compare with the increase costs in the higher series may really put a strain on finances. Great care has been taken to move the player away from Tyre Wear, which helps the AI in the race more-so then any other stat.

Given the player now has access to a potential +75 extra performance and the AI makes questionable chassis choices the following changes have been made:

​

Chassis Adjustments Compensating Balances

• The AI has been boosted to a +50 Tech Boost on developed parts (originally +25 in 1.2f). The player still gets this bonus in Season 1 / After changing teams until the next season begins (coding limitation).
• The Player's Tech Decay has been increased. Originally the player was given 95% base stat from the previous decision. Now the player will only get 92.5% base stat. However, the chassis points boost should make up for this. The player doesn't get this debuff in Season 1 / After changing teams until the next season begins (coding limitation).
• I may double (or triple) the Designer Base Stat Bonus (originally +0 to 20). This will help make up the deficit while also giving the AI an identical boost.

Conclusion

​

This should keep the game about as challenging as it already is, while giving the Chassis more meaning.
AI is now given a boost to help them out with their finances.
As always, balance is subject to change based on personal testing and audience testing from all your experiences. Please report any problems you have.

ps. I'll try to not to include that stupid +120 part which made their way into the last unfixed updates.
pps. I am contemplating making 5 Difficulty Levels. Putting Player Tech Decay to:

• 100% - Too Easy
• 97.25% - Quick Progression
• 95% - Not Too Challenging
• 92.5% - Really Challenging
• 90% - The AI should Outpace You.

All you'd need to do is select the difficulty by putting the Right Assembly in the Manage Folder.
You can change difficulty at any time I believe.

With these changes, I think I am getting close the the end of my 'new and improve' features wish list. I'm currently quite happy with how the game plays now with the mod. I feel all the features of the game which I thought were 'lack luster' now have meaning. As such, I think this is the last 'Big Balance' feature, so only smaller changes will likely happen from here on.

​

 

[Trainer]

last question i hope

i cannot save the new dll, "reflexil is unable to save this assembly. i have the new ilspy and reflexil for ilspy!

 

[TheFlamingRed]

public float GetSimulationTimeScale()
{
if (this.mSpeed == GameTimer.Speed.Medium && GameTimer.debugSimSpeed != 0f)
{
return GameTimer.debugSimSpeed;
}
return this.speedMultipliers[2, (int)this.mSpeed];


sorry i cannot find a number to Change?

last question i hope

i cannot save the new dll, "reflexil is unable to save this assembly. i have the new ilspy and reflexil for ilspy!

Cannot help you there. I don't have that error. Make sure you go back up to where it says Assembly.dll and right click save, instead of doing 'file -> save' That's the only thing I can think of.



In other news. I found out how to change the amount of crashes happen in a race; Anyone got some statistics on how often natural crashes occur?

 

[Trainer]

Sounds good flaming ur plan.

In Tier 1 there are max 0.5 chrashes per Race. No really much.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Sounds good flaming ur plan.

In Tier 1 there are max 0.5 chrashes per Race. No really much.

I meant in real life.

In the game, Each race has a pre-determined set upper bound (0,1 or 2). However if 2 is selected, but there is not enough 'opportunities' to have two crashes in a race, there will be less. So far, I set the upper bound to 10 for every race, but the most crashes that happen so far were 5. (which all happened at once). In another race, only 3 occurred (all separately). I'm trying to work out 1) an upper limit and 2) the average I should set.

 

[Trainer]

Nice i see u have a master plan for ur 1.2g update.

Needs a lot of work.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Thanks, surprisinglt, the driver traits change will actually be the most time consuming.

I am also trying to work out if instead of giving the AI a flat +50 Tech Boost per part, I should give them a Random Tech Boost (+25 to +75, or maybe 0-100) per part. To create some randomness and variability. A minor change so trying to see if it's worth it.

I'd give it to the player, but it would have to be generated each time you make a part, and selecting a new part would re-roll the value. So the player could scum the RNG.

I am looking at other areas to mod now / tweak slightly. I am open to suggestions.

I still don't think there's enough penalties for having a Fast Pitstop. The 2s time saved doing the quick stop is almost universally better then doing a slow stop. Even if you get the 'bad stop penalty) it's normally only 0.5s - 2s on 90% of the occasions, meaning doing the stop was still just as quick / quicker then a normal stop. I also don't feel the stats are as noticablepy effective as they could be. I for one only really look at the Reliabilty / performance value.

 

[Trainer]

My opinion is the ai improved very well with the changes in part components - active passiv wightness. I give the good part 0.9 and worst part 0.1. so the increased like the player.

I think -5% to the player base stat and a +25 to the ai parts every year is enough.

I think with ur pre season idea the improvement player vs ai is fair.

In the races u have right 0-2 accidents are to low. I think a average from 3-4 that will be fine.

 

[BrianUK]

-5% and +25 to the AI is looking alright in ERS as long as you don't abuse the risky parts. By making obscenely ricky parts but never using them, you'll make about twice as much performance progress over not making them at all, or making low risk parts only. As I'm running a rule of 'no risky parts if you're not going to use them', my progress is a lot slower, with me looking at 3 or more seasons in ERS before promotion is even on the cards, which puts me at 10 seasons. This is even with 5 seasons played prior with the old +20 days injector and no AI boost.

I'd probably say -7.5%/+30 is the ceiling in ERS if you want to progress without using the risky parts trick, with -15%/+50 being about right if you do use it.

 

[Trainer]

U mean to use the risky part to improved the next year car.

I mean the risky parts are useless , maybe I delete the risky and make normal parts in the parts components with an additional for 5-10 build time or so. So u must spend a lot of time during the ai improved more parts.

I changed my reliability and improvement staff from10-20-30-40 to 8-14-22-32. and the designtime for the f.e. Motor is 21 days with 4 mio cost.

I think

 

[TheFlamingRed]

The reason I'm upping the AI Boost from +25 to +50 is due to the fact that the player, who currently gets a +10 ERS to +20 (though the AI will get about +10 too) WMC in improvability compared to the bad AI chassis choices.

With the chassis changes that's going to become about +12 base + 25 max ERS (players up by about 25). So the AI's new +50 will even that out if they don't make a good chassis. If they do, they've got a better advantage - a reward for them for being smart.

In WMC you can get upto +75 total from a top chassis, while the AI will probably muster a +35/40 so still a +35/40 player advantage instead of +10. So the new +50 for the AI is balanced right for this chassis change.

I've decided he the simulations and 5% decay was alright at WMC but 7.5% is probably better for a long haul challenge. But as stated, I may well now let players pick and choose thier difficulty of player decay.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

New concepts.

Thinking of changing qualifying. Short qualifying being literally enough time for 1 run. So 5 minutes - it will be a one shot chaotic mess. Medium qualifying the Vanilla value. And Long Qualy about 50% longer so you can get your clean laps in.

I'm going to see if I can implement more then 4 rule changes per season. Maybe even randomise the number if it's possible.

I am contemplating making a 'chaos' version of the mod with components slots being random. Instead of there being 6 level one components where three is chosen at random to use on any part, I'd make ALL parts available at ALL levels, so it's choosing 3 random parts slots out of 80. It's going to lead to some 'part trees being awful, and some trees being amazing. Of course, you cannot see what's in the top three trees without making the more basic components, so it's a lottery. You may get a slot at each level having the original legendary parts of +110. Will you get amazing parts this season? Will the AI? Who knows.

This last one is a bit gimmicky and won't be in the official mod, but might be a fun 'alternate' experience for someone. Balance will be out the window and replaced with random luck. But I'd like to do something with the components one day. At the moment they're a little too static - and I can't alter the stats of them as they're all tied to their 'description' which is in a graphics file I am not modding.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

I'll be looking to get the new version out for early next week.

Current change log is:

• Crash Director - OnSessionStarting. Increased the chances of (race ending) crashes occurring from the vanilla upper bound of 2. There is now a 5% chance of upto 5 crashes, 5% chance of upto 4 crashes, 10% chance of upto3 crashes, 30% chance of upto 2 crashes, 30% chance of upto 1 crash, 20% chance of no crashes occurring.
• Assets - Simulation Settings. Changed Short Qualify from 8 minutes to 5 minutes to make it a one shot qualifying. Change Medium Qualifying from 10 minutes to 12 minutes. Changed Long Qualifying from 12 Minutes to 18 minutes, to ensure that all cars can get in a good lap.
• Assets - Parts. Changed the costs of part development for APSC by x1.2 and WMC by x1.6,
• CarPartDesign - GetDesignCosts. AI gets a 80% discount from the development of parts.
• CarPartDesign - SetBaseStats. Increased Designer Stats to be 3* more powerful! Luckily the AI have a tendacy to make pretty good Designer Staff choices! Yay for them.
• CarPartDesign - SetBaseStats. Made the following changes:
  • Tyre Wear to become "Component Wear"
    This will now effect the base RedZone (vanilla 20%) when developing parts. It will go from having 30% Redzone (0* Chassis) to 10% Redzone (5* Chassis)
  • Heat Management to become "Vehicle Stability"
    This will now effect the base Reliability (vanilla 40%) when developing parts. It will go from having 20% Reliability (0* Chassis) to 60% Reliability (5* Chassis)
  • Fuel Efficiency is to become "Performance Efficiency"
    This will raise the BaseStat when developing a new part. This ranges from +0 (0* Chassis) to a +25 (5* Chassis)
  • Improvability becomes "Improvability"
    This does the same thing that it does originally, just better. By default, it increased the max performance (0-20) of a newly created part. This has now been increased to 0-50.
    Note: Tooltip of the Performance Breakdown is no longer correct as the graphics were not designed to have these different values take place. I cannot change the 'names' of these things chassis areas yet. May need an artist to fix this. Currently deemed as a 'coding limitation'.
• CarPartDesign - SetSeasonStartingStats. Increased Player Tech Decay from 5% to 7.5% to take into account the new Chassis mechanics and the increase in designer power. Increased the AI Tech Boost from +25 to +50.
• GameStatConstants. Set the initial reliability to 20% and initial redzone to 30%. These values are then adjusted via the chassis points.
• PoliticalSystem - GenerateCalendarEvents. Change the number of voting events from 4 to 8 per year.
• Assets - Personality Traits. Made all temporary traits have a variable amount of time. Adjust some traits effects to better match their description.

 

[Zero260]

Cant wait to test these new features out. Some of them I didn't realize you can even change. I like that the number of crashes was tweaked as 2 crashes per race max was getting a bit repetitive when you do several seasons. Overall I I hope this will be a better race experience. Will these changes be save game compatible?

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Cant wait to test these new features out. Some of them I didn't realize you can even change. I like that the number of crashes was tweaked as 2 crashes per race max was getting a bit repetitive when you do several seasons. Overall I I hope this will be a better race experience. Will these changes be save game compatible?

Some of these changes involved a little bit of code manipulation - but there are some limitations and UI disparities. E.g., the x3 Designer Points added to part design. While the final numbers correspond to the change, the tooltip which says "Designer pluis X" will say the original value, not the x3 value that I've changed. May be able to fix things like that eventually, but I'd like to get the balance right first. Other things seem to have graphics files attached but I cannot find where they are (not that I know graphics at all, I'd need someone experienced with photoshop anyway).

Most of these changes will be save game compatable:

• Most things will happen live
• Several things won't take effect until the following season.
  
• Some few aspects require a new save. E.g., My changes to Player Traits don't seem to change within an existing save (but I have a feeling that if a driver gets a NEW trait, then they may have my new changes applied to them - this is untested). However, these are few and far between.

In general, if you're happy with your current save then please continue. At the same time, you;re going to experience a big balance shift! It may be worth starting again from a new save if you like consistency.

 

[Beynasuh]

Thanks for such an amazing mod. After the challenges were done I thought that I would done with the game. But your's and enzoli's mod and the EddieStyle's random driver and staff creator file made my day. I can't stop playing now.

Note: Tooltip of the Performance Breakdown is no longer correct as the graphics were not designed to have these different values take place. I cannot change the 'names' of these things chassis areas yet. May need an artist to fix this. Currently deemed as a 'coding limitation'.

By that do you mean the Performance Breakdown on the Car Page where the Graphs shows our cars and parts standing against the other teams?

Second you mentioned that because of your balance changes that we don't need to use the injector if we don't want too. Does that mean that I can choose any backstory that I want know and not only the Ex-Engineer Backstory?

Keep up the pace. (Sorry for my English if i wrote something wrong)

 

[TheFlamingRed]

By that do you mean the Performance Breakdown on the Car Page where the Graphs shows our cars and parts standing against the other teams?

The graphs (bar charts) and the numbers you see on the right hand side of the Of the design screen are 100% accurate. But if you 'hover over' those values you get a tooltip breakdown. That tooltip breakdown doesn't match the values. That is all that is inaccurate. (E.g., you have a 700 part being produced, but the tooltip may say 600 Base + 10 designer + 30 component). I hope to fix it in a later version.

Second you mentioned that because of your balance changes that we don't need to use the injector if we don't want too. Does that mean that I can choose any backstory that I want know and not only the Ex-Engineer Backstory?

Yes, feel free to use any backstory you like. That area of the mod which required the injector is now obsolete. Feel free to use whichever back story you like. The game should be harder now that the backstory advantages are negated for the most part.

Sounds like your about to start a new game...

I'd advise waiting two days, I plan on releasing a rather large update in the next couple of days

 

[Beynasuh]

You meant the tooltips on the bar chart on the right in the part design page (where we choose the components). So graph is okey but numbers don't add up. Got it.

Then two days it is. Really excited for the new version. Good luck and if I can help in any way (definitly not programming) just say it.

Quick note: Is the Reign Championship trait working correctly now. If not can it be fix in someway.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Quick note: Is the Reign Championship trait working correctly now. If not can it be fix in someway.

Should be, I added the 'yes' to repeatable where none originally existed. Haven't tested it though. I changed the buff to last anything between 26-52 weeks too.