Well done! I appreciate the hard work you put into this.
I can see after a few seasons, most teams would upgrade their cars fully, so only the tiers would change at the start of the season. I take it there's no way around this unless you restart the career?
Yeah, in vanilla, once all the cars are fully upgraded, that's it - their performance is static. RnD is over and progression is gone.
This mod will indeed allow you to customise their final performances of the teams at that point. (You can customise them earlier, but you see less effect from the AI as all the teams are upgrading at different rates - but you will feel it in your own car). if you're a top team, at least you can keep it fresh by having different challengers at the top, instead of it always being Merc.
This was the best solution I could implement. My original hopes where to (a) increase the resource points needed to upgrade cars so upgrading takes longer - which I can find no variables to do. Reducing the amount of available resource points would work in the same way. Or (b) at the end of each season, have every car on the grid lose some, upgrades - so that you'll be working on some RnD each and every season - but that doesn't seem possible. Or (c) create more RnD upgrades (50 instead of 25) so that you have more to upgrade. Alas, none of those options seem possible, with (a) probably being the only one eventually may be possible if we can decrypt more files - but even that maybe beyond what we can mod.
So my original vision is somewhat different to the final version of the mod - but in the end I have one of my key goals done.
I like starting as a back marker, and trying to wrestle to the front over a long time - the true zero to hero story. In vanilla, I was able to do that quickly - too quickly for my immersion. And then I saw that I'd be at the back of the grid once Merc and all the others also finished their research. At which point, I was in my 'final' position, and be done - unless I swapped teams.
Now swapping teams is fun, don't get me wrong. But 5 seasons with Manor, and I come to like them a lot, and would rather not see them back at the back for eternity.
Now, (using the ability to customise final tiers and using challenge mode) can really make slow and stready progress to my goal. It isn't properly balanced yet - that's going to take testing and time and lots of playing F1 - but it is fun to have that challenge and not race away too quick. Also, so long as I get on top, and not mess up, my manor will stay towards the front of the grid until I am forced to retire.
In the championship rankings (which determine next years AI car builds and levels) is allowed other teamS to potentially use Build Level 4 - a car which I don't have access too in challenge mode - making them naturally faster then me - and thus, making me fight to keep a top spot from a team which has a clear advantage - even though I am already I'm a great front running car,
With all the randomness and possible outcomes, even with the in game RnD finished, the game can still keep on going forward a bit - and search season should feel a little different.
Restarting the career will indeed - mean you can partake in the RnD race again (and I seriously recommend Challenge Mode - if you commit to it - it makes your RnD take a long time depending when you balance it with your goals for next years car) - and yes, today that's the only option if you wished to redo the RnD portion of the game,
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The other thing, which this mod lets you do - as an unintended consequence, is redefine your difficulty level.
Let's say you're 1 second faster then most of the other cars on hard, but 1 second slower then the slowest cars on expert. Well, on hard, give yourself the Dud car and you'll be slower about half a 0.5 seconds (if using a backmarker) or 1 second (if using a higher team). On expert, give yourself a higher level car, and you'll gain 0.5 - 1 - 1 .5 seconds .
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My wish list would be - complete RnD Reset after season 2, and season 5 (simulate rule changes within the sport). But as of today, I'd more then likely need a save game editor before that's at all possible - and there isn't one as far as I know (and It doesn't decompile using any of the save game editors I have in my tools folder).
Of course, my final wish list to make this a perfect game would be
- the above desires to RnD and tiers.
- difficulty sliders (Anyone notice Brazil is quite an easy track to suddenly outpace the AI - even if you're a midfield car?)
- customise your car - replace teams with new teams. I.e., Manor gets taken over by Jaguar,
- customise your season - rearrange tracks, remove some tracks and insert tracks from the previous games,
Actually, what I'd like to do, is have Motorsport Player Manager! - like in football player manager mode, you can customise your team and make improvements in all areas that way, but when it's race time, you play as your driver in this f1 game.
I'm not the best modder
so I'll put that in the requests forums later and see if there's a genius who can make that for me
