NEW OPTIONS FOR HARDER CHALLENGE

[dusk bone]

I just tried harder on both new difficulty options, but still too easy after 1 season. No matter what you do, intense development breaks game, lapping Verstappen with Williams on second season. Idea is great, but would love to see 4-5 levels on difficulty, with hardest one being an inferno even for true gamers. Developers already programmed the option, so it should be easy to apply.

[coarse halo]

A difficulty slider is a wrong answer in the first place to a valid problem in my opinion. If developers continue to push this way, further quality degradation is in the cards. Difficulty sliders are a common feature of arcade games. But the game really should have an ideal balance in terms of difficulty level, there is no arguing that.

Until the fundamental problems are solved, there will be no difficulty slider that will satisfy the needs. The problems:

1. it is too easy to get a quality driver
2. too easy to get a quality key staff member
3. it's enough to focus on performance when developing the car, other parts can be neglected because there are no consequences
4. financial management does not exist, the money comes automatically
5. The race strategy is so "difficult" that a 6 year old kid can put it together easily

So, if you have the best driver, the best engineers, you can easily get ahead with your development, you have enough money, and you can easily put together a winning strategy in the race, so it's going to be hard to challenge you, no difficulty slider is going to help you.

[turbid timber]

#3 can at least be fixed with mechanical issues and it is being looked at for the future. Not too bad.

[naive grotto]

What really breaks the game for the Ai is not just intense development but also using custom sliders..
The Ai don't use custom sliders even if they do intense development.
Custom sliders give the user a game breaking edge over the Ai.
Try starting a new save with a bottom tier team without custom sliders

[dusky cove]

The AI does as much intense development as the player can fit in. That's got nothing to do with it

On hard the AI can and will outdevelop you by sheer raw numbers overall as well

It's kind of a combination between custom sliders for player and presets for the AI and how the parts/design system is used by them. If you put a bunch into cornering ability and take advantage of your parts, yeah, you're going to still do better then them in terms of the parts you design, even if your stats have overall fallen behind, since the slider benefit offsets that

And then the AI can effectively self sabotage by making a cooling focused part that hurts their cornering, or drag reduction on a part that's more effective on cornering than speed, which further lessens their advantage in development rate

Neither of those two really makes as much impact in the higher tiers of stats once you hit 75-80% since the slider boosts/nerfs from part design shrink down significantly, but at that point the drivers and staff are playing a significantly outsized role in comparison to the parts designed. But being a player, you're probably taking the higher skilled drivers/staff and so you still retain advantage then as well

[heavy brook]

for point 3 it is necessary to add a series of car attributes to make all the parts gain importance.
mechanical failures should depend on engine reliability and engine cooling.
they should also include tire wear and tire warm up.
therefore in the cooling attributes we would have:
tire cooling
brake cooling
engine cooling

while as regards the components we would have:

• tire wear
• total extra weight