Motorsport Manager (PC)

[Riso]

Motorsport Manger

Despite the similar named mobile game, it's an entirely different thing; a proper game. I've been playing the game way too much and have several championships under my belt. It is rather addicting.


You manage an open wheel single seater race team in one of three classes. You can start with the worst team in the lowest class and work your way up to the Olympus of motorsports and win all the titles or you can take a world champion team and mismanage in a way to be relegated down a class. You're usually fired for such a performance.

You will hire drivers and staff, design the car, research new parts and manage the race. Of course, there's also politics where you get to vote on new regulations or track changes.

They've recently added steam workshop support and there's currently a 1000£ competition for designing a new livery.

Pre-release screenshots because I can't be arsed to take my own:

That is how the race track will look on high-quality. There's a potato laptop option that's topdown 2D map. You get to set pit strategy and tell drivers to save tyres/fuel or just waste them.

Pictured: bad drivers. Should have scouted some good ones.

A good driver. Max stats is 20. Young drivers will gain skills and older drivers will start getting progressively worse. Marketability affects chance to get good sponsors and morale is affecting their performance.

Your engineers. The lead designer can give you bonus skills for R&D and the race engineers track and build relation with drivers for some special abilities like being able to have less tyre wear.

Facility management. Expand your base to be able to build better parts.

http://www.motorsportmanager.com/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/415200/

 

[Irenaeus]

 

[Nirvash]

Not bad but is a bit repetitive (qualifying is a MASSIVE pain in the ass for car set up) and exploitable.

Only play with max laps. (since safety car does not "scale")

A few times every season you vote for "rule changes", thiose can change the gameplay BIG time. (like no pit for fuel, standard components, points only until x positions etc)

oh right, there is some SJW feeling since HALF the pilots are fermale and that's pretty moronic, mods can fix this. (a must is the mod for real cars/people/circuits)

 

[Irenaeus]

HALF the pilots are fermale and that's pretty moronic

 

[Endemic]

Meh, they didn't want to spend on the licences. All that stuff can be edited to the desired values anyway.

Looks interesting, we might finally have something to bring back the wonder of GP Manager.

 

[racofer]

Female drivers are rare. Good female drivers are even rarer. And here is a fucking awesome female driver kicking ass nowhere else than in Nordschleife:

 

[Stokowski]

It's the only course she knows, though.

 

[Nirvash]

Female drivers are rare. Good female drivers are even rarer. And here is a fucking awesome female driver kicking ass nowhere else than in Nordschleife:

Formula rancing is way more physically demanding than "normal cars".

The real ratio of fermale drivers in top formula leagues is 0 for that reason alone.

 

[Endemic]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lella_Lombardi

Not that many make it past karting (heck, it's hard enough if you're male, with the money required these days). http://www.motorsport.com/kart/news...ing-talents-of-2016-859123/?v=2&s=1&q=karting

Speaking of which, how detailed is the commercial side of the sim?

 

[Nirvash]

Speaking of which, how detailed is the commercial side of the sim?

Marketing and stuff are barebones, you get to build some buildings for x income/race and manage 6 sponsor slot.

3 different sponsor for placement (x money at sign and x if you manage y position or better, pick one every race, is a gamble), and 3 more sponsor for fixed money at sign/race.
You do good, you get better sponsor. (pilots also got a "marketing" value and random events to raise it)

 

[Riso]

They have announced two DLCs and patch for next Wednesday. The paid DLC (£5.99/$7.99/€7.99) will add GT racing, the free one the ability to create your own team and the patch will be a general overhaul.

The 1.3 patch notes got accidentally leaked and this what we can expect:

New driver traits
New mid and pre-season dilemmas
Pre-season chassis dilemmas have been rebalanced
Added safety car notification dilemmas
Fixed pre-season car info panel exploit
Fixed Chassis Stat related bugs in Car Design
A mail now arrives once a year that allows the player to choose a new rule to vote into the current series
Improved 2D liveries performance
Simulate Session screen has been redesigned to provide more detail
Practice simulation has been improved
Added a popup to see chassis suppliers on the Team Screen and Car Screen
Rebalanced the starting chassis suppliers of all teams
Interviews have been given an overhaul with a new widget and new questions
New interview-specific traits have been added that are gained by drivers reacting to the player's interview responses
Fixed a bug where all journalists were Gabonese
Rebalanced existing drivers with new traits and to suit the new GT teams
Ex-Driver backstory now improves driver feedback stats and increases the improvement rates of drivers
Politico backstory now also gives the perk of not having to pay to propose a new rule
Can now request funds from the chairman each season
Car liveries are now accurately displayed in races
Pit-stop mistake times have been rebalanced
Improved standings information during a session
All drivers now have a weight in kg
Road Car Factory now unlocks at level 3
Player Manager stats now start at 8 instead of 10
Improvability impact in Car Design has been doubled
Car crash traits such as Whiplash and Cracked Rib have been re-balanced to be more impactful
Car crash limit per race has been increased and re-balanced
Fixed being able to build parts during pre-season
Players can now automate the 'Clean Air' setup in qualifying
Fixed an issue where drivers were given drive-through penalties during the practice session
Fixed a bug where vehicles were coming back into the race after they had retired
Fixed a bug where race messages would not appear when loading a race
Fixed a bug where a team's fanbase would never increase or decrease
Fixed a bug where the Balance, Standings and Track Guide drop down menus would be missing when loading a save
Improved road textures in Milan near the 5th corner
Fixed a Preferences Screen bug where all presets would default to low
Contract Negotiation screen now displays additional information about current drivers
Fixed multiple instances where journalists would refer to drivers with the incorrect gender
Rebalanced race retirements
Rebalanced driver desired championships and wins
Fixed an issue where members of staff would retire too early
Fixed a issue where chairmen would be hired and then quickly retire
Rebalanced the peak ages of regenerated drivers
Rebalanced team AI when they're first in their series
The Grid Screen will now stop auto-scrolling when the player interacts with it
Fixed an issue where relegated teams could still re-negotiate contracts with drivers who were valued above their new relegated series
Changed the starting grid positions of the player's drivers in the tutorial race
Fixed a racing line issue in Dubai where cars would appear to drive off the track at certain corners
Fixed a car crash path in Vancouver that lead to cars going through concrete barriers
Fixed an issue where some mechanic bonus icons did not reflect their actual bonuses
Fixed an issue where inputs other then the mouse/keyboard were set as active
Fixed an issue where qualifying position was not being correctly displayed in the driver form tab
Fixed an issue where an old notification for a part being built wouldn't register as being read
Fixed an issue where the Gone Rogue trait wouldn't behave correctly
Fixed an issue where drivers would still send radio messages about their car after they had crashed or retired from the race
Re-aligned the car model on the HQ Test Track
Improved the visibility and apperance of the car during races
Improved the performance of background videos
Multiple performance improvements
New Steam Achievements

http://www.motorsportmanager.com/content/huge-new-dlc-packs-announced

 

[Riso]

DLC steam page is actually up. http://store.steampowered.com/app/559430/

Features:
Two GT series
Energy Recovery Systems
Modified simulation model
Ballast system + driver weight
Teams have different financing
Three Stage Qualifying and the Energy Recovery System can be voted into the single seater category

 

[Nirvash]

I don't know, the main problems (pratice session minigame total boring bullshit waste of time, so so ia, hq building) are still here.

New rule to choose can be very exploitable.

Nice creating a team.

 

[SmartCheetah]

oh right, there is some SJW feeling since HALF the pilots are fermale and that's pretty moronic, mods can fix this. (a must is the mod for real cars/people/circuits)

There is a mod tool to randomize all the pilots depending on your preferences. You can even select the male:female ratio. You can also go for "full randomization" (whereas, some high-end teams might end up with shitty drivers) or vanilla friendly randomization(Starting pilots stay the same, people you scout are totally random)

I've basicly finished like 10-12 seasons going through all three tiers and winning every championship. The game is very solid overall, but I'd change a lot of things. Qualifications are one of those (Not really strategic. More like "reflex" game, which I don't like) and something should be done with practice seesion minigame, just as you said. Time sink you basicly have to deal with if you want your drivers to perform well. :/

Another thing that gets pretty repetitive is working on reliability early season, then improving some parts and their reliability, and finally making risky parts with high performance rates to "boost" your next season car.

 

[Riso]

My main gripes about the game are mostly related to staff.
You can hire people only instantly and not at the beginning of next season, the inscrutable and dumb hiring practices of the ai and the lack of a save/load/copy function for setups.

Grand Prix Manager 2 got this right 20 years ago!

 

[Riso]

Alright, the new patch and DLC is out and it brought some nice things.

The interviews are now more varied and not limited to your own team. You will get asked about repairs and why your drivers complained about pit strategy and you can blame the driver for fucking up. You can also now insult or butter up to other drivers and teams and assign blame in crashes.

The dilemma system in general has been improved and can actually give your drivers new permanent traits. I've seen options to get Wet Weather Pro and a choice between Late Braker vs First Lap hero. A very welcome addition to make drivers more interesting.

Drivers themselves not only have more permanent traits now but there are now three types of drivers: Single-seater only, GT only or both.
A bit disappointing but the game has about 200 drivers so it shouldn't be a problem finding one.

The main DLC features:
Now, the two new GT series are a single manufacturer chassis so no changing drive train setup.
The ERS system works exactly like you expect it to. It's charged over a lap and then you or the computer decide when to use it.

The new qualifying system is what Formula 1 uses. Three stages with eliminations at the bottom. The patch incidentally brought a very nice improvement to the qualifying. If you want to simulate the thing you now get a minimap display of cars moving around a track with the lap times on a table and a running text commentary. The other improvement is that if you want to deal with qualifying yourself you can automate the outlap mini-game to get the brakes and tyres working.

The GT car setup is more fickle than the single-seaters one because instead of downforce to setup cornering and because you do that with ballast it changes the other areas of handling and gearing. The car improvement is a lot cheaper than in single-seaters which is great because you don't get a lot of money but all the HQ stuff has the same high prices which is rough.

The free DLC lets you create your own team but you basically just replace one on the grid and then you can hire your guys. You cannot take a GT team or single-seater to the other racing series. You will have to switch to a different team.

 

[SmartCheetah]

Starting a new team is tricky as fuck, as your car starts with... 1-10 performance stats basicly, and very shitty team. First season is a pain in the ass, but I've started the 2nd one already and my guys are already in the top of the table.
What's bad about the new DLC then? Lack of free agents. I've got 2nd level scouting facility and there are serious lack of good drivers/mechanics. Good that they introduced a workshop and it's not that hard to mod in new guys.

 

[Wilian]

How does it compare to the old Grand Prix manager?

 

[Riso]

How does it compare to the old Grand Prix manager?

A good replacement I'd say. While there's three features missing (stealing/buying stuff from the competition and performance restrictions of parts without going spec, multiplayer) the ones that are in the game are deeper than in GPM.

The drivers will have preferences and behaviours based on traits and can form rivalries so you can't just hire who you want for example. The research itself is randomised at the beginning of each season so you can have a very good draw of parts or you will have to slog through crap. The HQ updates actually influence research options instead of just time and money.

 

[SmartCheetah]

One thing I lack in a new version is... Selection of drivers. Without scouting facillity level two, selection is very poor in first seasons. AFAIK after few seasons some other randomized drivers are gonna show up, but still - selecting from 8-10 drivers who are the only free agents freaking sucks.
Other then that - AI isn't that stupid anymore. I used to end up on 1st -5th place every race with my older team which was supposed to be in the bottom. Now I really need to fight to achieve something like this (playing GT series for now. Got pretty decent drivers and 7-8th place in car performance)

Here are my current standings and drivers:

Spoiler

Funny stuff, because Lara is doing way better and she's mediocre pay driver (Sponsors pay me additionally for having her) while Makarova was supposed to be my main girl(Despite the fact I offered her 2nd driver status) and so far she's doing rather bad. Might it be that "smoothness" is the crucial skill there?

Also, for some reason, Makarova is wearing the tyres much faster than other drivers on the grid. It's the 2nd season with this team (create a team feature) and our car parts leave aren't that good on that field, but still. After few laps, Lara might have 46% tyre wear, while Makarova is already in the red :/ Dunno what's wrong with her. Is it smoothness, some hidden perk (those she have are really good), lack of communication with her pit guy or maybe that "2nd driver" status?
And I'm stuck with her for another season. Meh.

 

[Riso]

Makarova is the best GT driver based on potential and skill and pre-patch has me won several championships in WMC.

Right now Lara has indeed the upper hand because she has the highest possible smoothness to go longer on tyres than normal. The game will actually tell you what the stats affect when you mouse over the titles.

What status affects is the moral relative to parts on the cars.

 

[SmartCheetah]

Yeah, I was using Balcazar and Makarova pre-patch as well. Both are very good drivers.

This game seriously lacks randomization in terms of drivers. Everyone is talking about it on steam forums, so maybe they'll listen? After playing for few seasons you already know who to pick in your next playthrough.
Right now people need to use mods, which are basicly... A half measure.

 

[Riso]

You know, the old Microprose games dealt with the driver problem by simply ending the game after ten seasons.
What I find most annoying in MM is to scout them all over and over again.

 

[LESS T_T]

This game is free to play for 5 days. Go store page and download it:

 

[Burning Bridges]

Does this have the usual SJW crap, that half the drivers have to be women? Because in that case I could save a lot of time by not installing it.