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).

 

[calvg]

spin numbers seem a tad high i had double figures in a 33 lap race and 3 for my driver and 1 for the other

It was an intermediate race in Belgium

 

[TheFlamingRed]

spin numbers seem a tad high i had double figures in a 33 lap race and 3 for my driver and 1 for the other

It was an intermediate race in Belgium

What is the focus and fitness if those respective drivers?

 

[calvg]

What is the focus and fitness if those respective drivers?

the one for 3 spins is 4 and 5
the other 2 and 15

thou not so bad in next dry race

 

[TheFlamingRed]

I think your driver skill has more to do with the 3 spinning driver then the spin occurrence.... Focus at 2 and 3 is effecting your whole race, the fitness compounding it late race

with better drivers, you may find that the soon chance is too low those stars are pretty important

 

[calvg]

was more referring to the whole race not just my guys. but might just be quality of championship

 

[TheFlamingRed]

was more referring to the whole race not just my guys. but might just be quality of championship

Could well be, I assume a lot of drivers will have bad focus\ fitness. If you've got reverse grids, this compounds the issue due to lots of overtaking and defending, which also I creases the spins

Try a quick Wmc race, same track, same weather. Dee if its as baf

 

[blancoro]

As i saw in history, i assume ver 1.31b still have interviews bug, right?

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Yeah, it is. I'll be home late late tonight so will get a fix for the main issues out tomorrow.

Luckily, no news from the devs on new features / beta patches so looks like we can have a stable run for a while.

 

[blancoro]

Yeah, it is. I'll be home late late tonight so will get a fix for the main issues out tomorrow.

Luckily, no news from the devs on new features / beta patches so looks like we can have a stable run for a while.

Btw, tested this one and still marketabily its wrong

 

[Beynasuh]

Marketability bug happens since 1.31(a / a Dilemma fix / b) is out. FlamingRed said he will release a new version around Monday.

 

[blancoro]

no problem, just to note it, thx

 

[calvg]

Couple of dilemma bugs i had, not sure if raised yet so will post

and one that shows no cost and is unselectable

 

[raja1234]

1. Wondering if the performance stat calc is right.

2. My team (Ferrari) has a lead of 49 points. The report says the lead is just 2 points. (ignorable bug though)

3. AI PIT strategy is not up to the mark during rains. AI tend to change to Inters only after a while that gives the Player the advantage.

4. Dilemma bug (I remember someone pointed at this already)

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Okay, home from work. Let's get sorting all the reported issues: I'll be sorting and then uploading this tonight, so please download tomorrow and check to see if any of the issues still persists.

Serious bug here, game stuck like this (question without answers) nothing that I can do, except exit game and load until I don't get this question.

+ lots of other interview problems

• The interviews in this 1.31 version have been a pain. The devs added some fixes, and I must have made a mess merging their changes into my changes (going from 1 question to 4 questions and a dozen or so other fixes). I apologize for messing this up bad. Indeed, my default Question 3 had a condition added to it - which made it non-default anymore. As such, the game couldn't find a suitable question 3 and goes 'Boom'
• So I am releasing my latest 'working' version of interviews.txt.
  
• In this set of interviews, there are 5 questions. The fifth set of questions discusses "Talking about another driver who beat your drivers" (or came 2nd or 3rd if you came in first). This is so that you can "butter up" and "insult" other drivers - which will make some drivers willing to sign with you - or not. So there's a consideration of how you handle the interview, and who you may want to steal next season. I think its a cool avenue to add to.
  
• BUT: Currently, all the questions are the same (with different drivers being considered). I'm getting the mechanic correct before I add in the flavor "text" and responses, and new traits and various other additions. So know that these changes are literally 'work in progress' and just a glimpse of what I have planned for the interviews.
• ALSO: If you're not playing in English, expect the text to be talking about the wrong drivers. I've not altered localization into English (and I won't do that until I do all the flavor text... otherwise I'm just going to spend weeks copy and pasting text which is all going to be replaced anyway). So sorry for those using the game with a non standard language (this applies to new elements in the dilemmas.txt too).
• Note: Question 4's default still says 'Final Question'.... I know about this and the fact it's no longer the final questions. But as I'm still overhauling the interview system, I'll be doing the rearranging once I'm done - which is going to be a while as I've still not got any volunteers for writing interview questions.

It looks like that this problem happens because {InterviewSubject:Name} is used instead {Subject:Name}. And there are a lot of this differences. Since I don't know which ones are correct and which ones are wrong I didn't changed the code.

InterviewSubject:Name is commonly used as "One of your drivers who an event happened to" while Subject:Name is rarer, and the question has to Define the Subject:Name in another way. Both work, but with various degrees of success depending on how it's implemented.

4 races done with 1.31a with a new team in GT2, some small weirdness to report:

1. Similar "String in database not yet translated" problem as already reported, but a different dilemma:
View attachment 181052

2. Got again the "do you want to hire your own driver for next season" -interview question, this time for my reserve pilot (who actually, because of an injury was one of my main pilots). Weirdness did not end there, the game showed me a pilot from rival team, who somehow was supposed to get the effect?
View attachment 181053 View attachment 181054

On to more suggestion-like category:

3. I believe there's a part component which gives +50% reliability and +35% red zone. Is that on purpose?
4. Creating own team with Stonewell as Investor seems pretty much impossible, at least in GT2. They have absolutely nothing going for them, and the amount of money you get in the beginning of the season means that you can't do ANYTHING during the first season, since there is no money for anything except the running costs. That is simply not fun, and definitely should not be the "mid" pressure option at least.
5. Could you increase the importance of right setups a tiny bit? 1 sec of difference between 0% and 100% seems ridiculous.

General remarks:

6. I like how the spins work now, they do occasionally cause a bit of an traffic jam, but I think they just spice things up!
7. Got one suspension damage from collision, worked fine for me, pitted to fix it and was able to finish the race.
8. That's probably just vanilla, but I did not have any major problems with the AI and the rain tyres. Couple of them went for risky gambits, but in general they were fine.
9. All in all my finishing positions ranged from 10 to 19, mostly falling into 14...17 region, so this seems fine.
10. Suffered no sudden part failures myself, but I believe AI got one. So far so good.

1. This is a custom trait added by Brian. It doesn't have the string in my version of the frontend, and I don't know if it's in his. I'll ask him and merge again later in the week. For now, I've modified the PersonalityTraits.txt as it has a new "Custom Name" section - so hopefully that will be fixed. If this doesn't fix it, at least we'll know that "Custom Name" isn't the be all and end all of modding PT Traits now.
   
2. I've actually modified this a bit as Question set 5... I've not used a reserve driver so I wonder if it's messing with the names. Either way, Let me know if they appear again in this new version.
   
3. I believe this is a default vanilla components.... not one of the most appealing choices. I've not altered it.
   
4. Pressure isn't meant to be a difficulty setting as such, but it is the most 'predator' type start in the game - and this the hardest and grindiest. I don't see how I can balance it for both GT and SS though - which may mean that it's best to go for the El Banco start for additional money.
   
5. I could, but I feel the AI seems not so good at making their setups - at least if I simulate sessions they can have really bad ones. I do want to change the smily face system though. I'd keep Perfect and Very Bad.... but I'd like to change the Poor, and Great ones to have the same face and info as the "Good" smiley - effectively increasing the Good range and making it harder to refine to Perfect. Once I get that working, I'll be increasing setup importance
6. Awesome. I assume the traffic jams is why the feature isn't in vanilla. But if people can handle 99% of other harsh things in the mod, they can cope with spins.
   
7. Sounds like that's working as intended.
   
8. This has been reported a few times still... I changed the Part Fixing during pitstops last time, if this doesn't get fixed I may have a look at this too.
   
9. Excellent. That's about what I'd want from decent play.
   
10. It is a low chance, I think I've only seen one from my tests. However, I once set the chance to 50% per tic and get the entire field retire - so the mechanic works. Its just the low percentages that may need tweaking - but again, need a larger sample size to see if the probability is 'just right'. Some unlucky person is having a car fail for each of the first three races. Fun fact: the game get stuck if all 20 cars reture.... there's no script to stop the race before a winner is decided. If there's no winner, there's no race end.

↑
AI tires managegment still stu***
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=888963593
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=888963256
The AI have obviously foresaw the rain and attempted a strategy that begins with wets. as it is raining soon.... I have no idea why they've done that. I am hoping it is nothing I did.

Yah its awfull also in steam version. Just to note you if there is anyway to change it

• If it's in the steam version that I'll look into having a look at it once the main bugs in the mod is fixed. Though admittedly, I want to stop working oin the dll now... It's so much work to update each mini-patch and I'm already doing so much that I'm making minor mistakes - as its impossible for me to test each feature - and its really easy to miss one command and mess up a gameplay element, as indicated by this update. Shame Coops has been away even though he only did a few bits on the Speed/Camera, it took away a layer of work for me which helps.

Just a thought on tires, maybe its about lenght of races, i mean, if it was on short races could have sense, but in long races the AI strategy is a bit dumb

• Is this a Vanilla issue or not though? I don't know... it's been a long long time before I've done any serious vanilla testing now.

Small bug spotted from the buildings.txt: Requirement for Theme Park says lev 4 staff center, while only 3 levs exist.

Which version are you playing. In 1.31b it says Factory 4 and Design Center 4

Funny thing is in the txt there is no staff center 4, just Factory 4 and Design Center 4.

• I did add Staff factory to the requirements of the income buildings. But yes, I forgot that Staff Housing didnt have a Level 4... as such, I don't think the game accepted it as a "viable option" because it didn't exist. I've turned it into a level 2/3 thing now, so we can see if it's now added to the descriptions and requirements.

Observed minor bugs in 1.31b

1. Targets for the season (1-1-2)

2. I think the calculation for the new part stat is wrong.

3. Vettel is in my team already. When I answer positive, I see a new personality trait added to Carlos Sainz. So I think the reported is referring to Sainz but the name is displayed as Vettel.

1. This is something that happens when you're 'last season finishing position' is 2nd or 9th. This is because of the new system to 'Not having the option to say you'll do worse next season'. So if you were second, you used to choose (4th (+2), 2nd (0), 1st(-2 but limited to 1st as you can't come in 0th)) but now its (2nd (0), 1st (-1) and 1st (-2 but limited to 1st as you cant come in 0th). It's purely cosmetic Maybe one would like to challenge himself to accept less money,
2. It's stated on the download page that the 'numbers won't add up'. There's no UI elements I can add into the game to give you graphical feedback on "tech decay" and "Fuel Efficency (or its replacement name) addition to mainstats"
3. This is an interview issue. It should be fixed with the new Set 5 of questions as I've tweaked how it works.

Hi everybody. Here is something odd. Never happened to me before in any other version of the game. In the setup screen before Race session, both my drivers start always with the 2nd set of tires and the first set of tires estimated laps are always 1 lap less then other tire sets. I didn't use them and there % is always 100. So what do you thing is wrong?

View attachment 181303 View attachment 181304

Yes, every race and to both of my drivers

I still have no idea. This doesn't happen on vanilla, does it?

so i just noticed something that makes no sense to me. i'm not a genius in math but the final score is wrong in my opinion. let me explain: we are placet 5th in team rankings
Hülkenberg 74% marketability
Palmer 85%
Team 61%
-----------------------------
220 (%) : 5=44% but somehow it says 13.. or 14 something... can't remember the exact number. anyhow it's way off. in result i have only a 1 star - rating. can someone elaborate on that... thx!

Same here 60+17+96 1st place 173/1=173 but my rating is always one star i got 3 stars with a 100% and 70% market pilot.

Now 14,4

Is this the Marketability Formula?
View attachment 181372

Also, never saw this before. Are they new or am I just unlucky never to get them?
View attachment 181373 View attachment 181374

Yeah, I messed up for formula, pointed it to look at the wrong stat. Should be sorted in this next version: Which I am starting to pack together, give a glancing test and then uploading.

Couple of dilemma bugs i had, not sure if raised yet so will post
View attachment 181562
and one that shows no cost and is unselectable
View attachment 181563

The one with no cost and is unselectable Is interesting. I think it's to do with my new "NewPartReliability" string which replaces the "EngineReliability" string. this is something me and coops were working on. I've just found an instance in the .dll which still refered NewPartReliability as it's old name, which might by why this isn't working. Have a go and report back if you (or anyone else) get's this blank dilemma again.

1. Wondering if the performance stat calc is right.
View attachment 181651
2. My team (Ferrari) has a lead of 49 points. The report says the lead is just 2 points. (ignorable bug though)
View attachment 181652
3. AI PIT strategy is not up to the mark during rains. AI tend to change to Inters only after a while that gives the Player the advantage.
View attachment 181653
4. Dilemma bug (I remember someone pointed at this already)
View attachment 181654

1. As above, the final number is right, but it's not telling you the adjustments via the chassis or the tech decay.
   
2. I didn't add the report in.... i think its a new feature in vanilla.... maybe it's always been there but it's been broken up until the latest patches. Certaintly isn't me. I'm using Brian's messages.txt I beleive. and I've not explored the potential of messages.txt yet. It might be just as powerful a tool as the interviews.
   
3. Again, seem to be a vanilla issue. Will investiagate it one day.
   
4. And that's also fixed (I hope... I've added the string in the persinality traits.txt... this will be the acid test to see if the game 'read' personaility traits or whether they're backed into the save game entirely.

FINAL NEWS
Well, I think that's all the issues. I'm uploading new versions of everything now 1.3c... Let me know if any issues fixed about still persist. At least I'll be at home tomorrow to squash any last remaining bugs! Thanks for the patience and feedback everyone.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

and 1.31c is alive let's see if that sorts out some problems

 

[raja1234]

and 1.31c is alive let's see if that sorts out some problems

Can I use this with my current save? Or do I need to start a new one? Please advise

 

[raja1234]

Is the sponsor consideration logic correct? I'm looking at the formula in ur "Notes" (Driver 1 Market + Driver 2 M + Team M / Constructors champ position). My team tops the group this season. Shouldn't my sponsor appeal level higher?

 

[raja1234]

Hopefully this issue is fixed in 1.31c but wud like to report the one that I had in the previous version.

Thanks for the new release buddy!!!

 

[UglyPsycho]

Allrighty then, time to start another new game tonight.

 

[Beynasuh]

I still have no idea. This doesn't happen on vanilla, does it?

No problem in vanilla.