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).

 

[UglyPsycho]

Can I play the complete mod (assets and assembly) with ICE mod on top of it?

Yes you can. Only some minor balancing things will be missing, e.g. ICE is financially a bit easier.

 

[Beynasuh]

Hi everybody. Quick question FlamingRed. Is tyre wear supposed to be same when I use Pushing (orange) driving style in lower-half temp gauge as in upper-half temp gauge?

 

[UglyPsycho]

I took a closer look at the sponsors, comparing vanilla/FlamingRed to ICE and another workshop mod, 220 real sponsors. And I'm afraid there's some serious balance issues.

First things first, using 220 Sponsors alone with this mod seems to a bad idea:


As you can see, this mod gives you a lot more income, and since it doesn't change anything else, you'll probably be drowning in cash.

ICE has a similar problem, but I don't know how much the costs have been changed, so I have no idea how the overall balance is. Anyways, don't do as I did and take just the sponsor files to be used with FlamingRed's mod or vanilla:



Finally, comparison of all 3, if anyone is interested:

 

[Beynasuh]

Found a bug, It's not game breaking for now. But don't know if it's a game or mod bug.

As usually got the Choose a Vote mail and I choose Qualifying Grid (3th Season ERS).


But when vote time came we did vote for Wide Slicks rule (normally one of this years rule votes).


I looked at the GMA menu and it showed this


So this time I waited until the Wide Slick rule vote time. And we voted for Qualifying Based Grid.

 

[Zero260]

Is it just me or is the AI still pretty horrible in tyre selection? They can't seem to understand when to time their pits as the weather changes.
This happened during practice:


This one had the AI pitting for inters 4 laps before it started to rain, they may have predicted it earlier but by the time it started raining their tires were already half-spent forcing them to pit for fresh inters again.

 

[calvg]

Any chance of making it so some spins lead to crashes and retirements out of the race?

 

[Beynasuh]

If car behind is near then crash happens after spin.

Also FlamingRed 3th Season Race results are ready.

 

[calvg]

If car behind is near then crash happens after spin.

I see that but it doesn't really ever lead to multi part failure or instant retirement from race

 

[calvg]

Also FlamingRed 3th Season Race results are ready.

only two crashes all season seems low i'm seeing the same in my third season. hence my previous suggestion.

 

[Beynasuh]

I guess because of the retirements they don't have time to crash.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Hi everybody. Quick question FlamingRed. Is tyre wear supposed to be same when I use Pushing (orange) driving style in lower-half temp gauge as in upper-half temp gauge?

The wear should be more...

Basically. Tyre wear rate for orange is 1.2 (where 1.0 is normal). If your tyres were dead cold, orange will be 1.2 - 0.3 = 0.9 - so less wear then normal... of course, you're getting a sped boost from being on organge, but you're losing some lap time due to cold tyres....

At the max temperature, orange will be 1.2 + 0.3 = 1.5 so higher tyre wear then Attack at normal temperatures (1.4 + 0). And your lap times will be much better too for both the orange and

Obviously, if you're not at min / max the effects are less.

I took a closer look at the sponsors, comparing vanilla/FlamingRed to ICE and another workshop mod, 220 real sponsors. And I'm afraid there's some serious balance issues.

First things first, using 220 Sponsors alone with this mod seems to a bad idea:

View attachment 183225
As you can see, this mod gives you a lot more income, and since it doesn't change anything else, you'll probably be drowning in cash.

ICE has a similar problem, but I don't know how much the costs have been changed, so I have no idea how the overall balance is. Anyways, don't do as I did and take just the sponsor files to be used with FlamingRed's mod or vanilla:

View attachment 183227

Finally, comparison of all 3, if anyone is interested:

View attachment 183226

Interesting info. Money is probably the second most important balancing in the game (with how the AI handles upgrading their car being the only thing more important). I'm currently busy increasing costs for the player without giving them much more money. I may be too harsh on WMC, only time will tell.

The issue is, too much excess money = more hq upgrades... and if you outpace the AI on this, you win no matter what. Less cash and harsher AI development means you can't turtle without falling far behind - so it evens out the hq building rate balance.

At less, those people who find the additional difficulty I've added too much, can at least use these mods to alieviate the difficulty slightly,

I'd like to add more sponsors someday, maybe with an interesting mechanic. But it's low priority maybe a low prestige sponsor (a single one) might be a super sponsor. Low chance high reward.

Found a bug, It's not game breaking for now. But don't know if it's a game or mod bug.

As usually got the Choose a Vote mail and I choose Qualifying Grid (3th Season ERS).
View attachment 183270 View attachment 183269 View attachment 183271

But when vote time came we did vote for Wide Slicks rule (normally one of this years rule votes).
View attachment 183267 View attachment 183265 View attachment 183264

I looked at the GMA menu and it showed this
View attachment 183262

So this time I waited until the Wide Slick rule vote time. And we voted for Qualifying Based Grid.
View attachment 183266 View attachment 183277

I noticed something like this in vanilla. If I cancelled the offer after already selecting a rule, and go back and select a different one, there's a mismatch between what the rule and the messages. I assume you've encounter a related bug.

Is it just me or is the AI still pretty horrible in tyre selection? They can't seem to understand when to time their pits as the weather changes.
This happened during practice:
View attachment 183291 View attachment 183295

This one had the AI pitting for inters 4 laps before it started to rain, they may have predicted it earlier but by the time it started raining their tires were already half-spent forcing them to pit for fresh inters again.
View attachment 183294

This has been an issue since 1.23 ish. Ever since they took the pit strategy out of AISessionOrders and into the dll.

Any chance of making it so some spins lead to crashes and retirements out of the race?

If car behind is near then crash happens after spin.

Also FlamingRed 3th Season Race results are ready.
View attachment 183311 View attachment 183312 View attachment 183313 View attachment 183314 View attachment 183315
View attachment 183316 View attachment 183317 View attachment 183318 View attachment 183319 View attachment 183320

I am happy with your positions, it's taken three years for you to get this far and you're not close to winning ERS which is good. Two crashes all season however is not.

I see that but it doesn't really ever lead to multi part failure or instant retirement from race

I've played with it and it might happen one day. Problem is how to differentiate how the AI handles a collision after spin, and an ordinary collision.

only two crashes all season seems low i'm seeing the same in my third season. hence my previous suggestion.

Ah, 2 thing which may be contributing: 1. I raised the crash limit threshold. In vanilla, a lockup (used to be 500) points is now 1000 points. And spins and crashed were and still are 100 in vanilla. I've upped both in the mod

Thencrash proability distribution is vanilla in this edition too, I used to have different probabilities (so more crashes). I may Have to put back my old ones.

 

[calvg]

Just started season 4, still worse car and money struggles, but just got my first podium all career.

but in Two races there's been 5 crashes so it's definitely variating.

 

[Beynasuh]

The wear should be more...
Basically. Tyre wear rate for orange is 1.2 (where 1.0 is normal). If your tyres were dead cold, orange will be 1.2 - 0.3 = 0.9 - so less wear then normal... of course, you're getting a sped boost from being on organge, but you're losing some lap time due to cold tyres....

At the max temperature, orange will be 1.2 + 0.3 = 1.5 so higher tyre wear then Attack at normal temperatures (1.4 + 0). And your lap times will be much better too for both the orange and

Obviously, if you're not at min / max the effects are less.

Thanks for the numbers. Now I got a cleaner picture. I also looked in the SSDD but couldn't find the +/- 0.3 for min and max temp.

I am happy with your positions, it's taken three years for you to get this far and you're not close to winning ERS which is good. Two crashes all season however is not.

I thing crash count is low because almost all teams have better drivers. And I had almost no races in rain (just 1 or 2 races in rain but not the hole race).

Also got this cool dilemma for first time . But I thing made a wrong choice. Got both my cars suspensions on season start at %2 and %3 reliability . Now before first race got them to %25 - %27.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Just started season 4, still worse car and money struggles, but just got my first podium all career.

but in Two races there's been 5 crashes so it's definitely variating.

Getting a podium with the worst car is something :o rain, crashes and retirement help or some amazing strategy?

Thanks for the numbers. Now I got a cleaner picture. I also looked in the SSDD but couldn't find the +/- 0.3 for min and max temp.

The +\-0.3 is in the .dll somewhere. I'll grab the name of the area for you if you want to tweak it one day. In 1.31a it was only +\-0.1 which I realised was too small. I can't make the effect too big though, the AI aren't programmed to take any special care of this of this new feature, and I don't want them killing their tyres or pace through it.

I thing crash count is low because almost all teams have better drivers. And I had almost no races in rain (just 1 or 2 races in rain but not the hole race).

Ah, well that might be it. The Random element to the crash count, is only the limit of what's available. Even if I set it each race to have 10 crashes, there is normally less as some cars never reach the crash condition. Still, I may have adjusted the crash 'threshold' to high, or the random distribution too low (I think the current version has 50% of races = no crashes while my 1.30 has only 30% = no crashes.

Also got this cool dilemma for first time . But I thing made a wrong choice. Got both my cars suspensions on season start at %2 and %3 reliability . Now before first race got them to %25 - %27.

Ah yes I do like these new Dilemmas regarding Performance snd Reliabilty. I feel there's a nice strategic element to the game and also creates some real managerial problems for a team. Other projects have halted my work on this, so if you want to "write" some new dilemmas, then feel free and I'll put them in.

 

[TheFlamingRed]

New Editing Techniques

​

So, when I first started modifying the code, we could really only go one level - via an Injector, I could change some values. Then, one day, we leveled up! Level 2 let us use Relfexil/ILSpy to edit more of the code and begin really making some changes.

This weekend we upgraded to Level 3! We have a new tool provided to us (and thanks to Robery Eady who provided the link). Now we have DNSpy. https://github.com/0xd4d/dnSpy/releases

What's so special about DNSpy? Well, this:

​

Yes! We can now edit the code directly using normal coding methods!

As an example, in just a few minutes, I created that so during a collision, the part chosen is more random.

Original ILSpy

Edited with DNspy

Checking with ILspy that everything is fine!

​

And it works fine!
Race 1:

​

Race 2:

(obviously, damange to these parts isn't going to be added to the mod, but I could have collisions to the rear mean its Rear Wing Damage 20% of the time, and Suspension 50% of the time, and no damage the last 30% of the time)​

What this means for the mod

​

So, now I can edit the code, this means that:

• I can make far more complex changes.
• I can make them faster
• As I am literally changing code, I can copy all my changes into a .txt document. This means that when I have to update the mod to a new dev patch, I can use CTRL+C and CRTL+V to update an entire class, instead of spending an hour having to remake the opcodes!

This means that I can now add as many features as I desire, and I am nearly unrestricted. Because, though I have not began to test it yet, DNSPY has this:

​

If I can add classes, I can create entirely new features from scratch. Define new variables, craft new systems. I can make as many rules and manipulate variables however I wish to craft them. This means I can probably make new 'Season Rules', extend the amount of tiers, bascially anything I want.

I still cannot make new "Game Objects", or make new UI, but the scope of watch's acheiveable has probably increased 10-fold. Which is why I asked for wishlists... Anything Code Related is probably now possible. Some things will be simpler then others, but now almost anything is possible.

All this means is that we have New Powers. And more importantly, it means more people are probably going to be able to edit the code themselves (learning opcodes is was a new and long process, but as a mathematician, I can IF and For anything with ease just from seeing examples). This may mean I can get some more collaborators and help making new features!

Tomorrow I'll crawl through my and others wish lists to see which 'projects' I fancy adding to the mod and make a plan from there.

 

[UglyPsycho]

Whoa. That indeed is big, great news and officially neat!

 

[Coffer]

Yes you can. Only some minor balancing things will be missing, e.g. ICE is financially a bit easier.

You have to rebalance the ICE stats pretty heavily because of the way some buffs work in this mod if you want it to be in any way close to realistic. KMag is nearly at max stats because of this mod, for instance.

 

[UglyPsycho]

You have to rebalance the ICE stats pretty heavily because of the way some buffs work in this mod if you want it to be in any way close to realistic. KMag is nearly at max stats because of this mod, for instance.

K-Mag: Naturally Balanced Potassium, Magnesium and Sulfur Fertilizer

Hmm, I actually don't know how that would result from the mods being in conflict... FlamingRed does nothing to the drivers. Is it because of the traits then?

 

[UglyPsycho]

(obviously, damange to these parts isn't going to be added to the mod, but I could have collisions to the rear mean its Rear Wing Damage 20% of the time, and Suspension 50% of the time, and no damage the last 30% of the time)​

Add punctures to this list!

 

[TheFlamingRed]

Add punctures to this list!

Should be achievable.

I also assume traits will be raising said stars... Nothing I can do about that though. A balance mod will alter things like this. You could always 'Pretend' that Magnussen is simply an awesome driver in your game - but the problem with real world mods is that you have a pre-existing conception of peoples ability...

I've known people to get annoyed when in week one, a backmarker driver gets a 'good trait' and gets faster then people like Perez and such. 'It's not realistic' - they shout.

It's kind of why I like the vanilla game. No pre-existing conceptions, other then we are all sad Rodrigues is signed at the start of the game.