Finish Line Racing: Car Management Series

Forza Team Management Series

I have an idea for a summer race series, and as I start to flesh out some details I wanted to get a feel for people's interest and opinions on how this may work.

There are a lot of sports series, like Madden NFL, NBA 2K, and Pro Evolution Football, where you not only play the "games" but you're also responsible for as ownership and GM of the team. To date, this team ownership and management hasn't really been modeled in racing simulations. My hope is to be able to somewhat mimic this with Forza and FLR.

The simplest way to do that is to set prize money for each race, and restrict car upgrades to the prize money each driver earns. The problem with this model is that The fastest driver wins the most money, adds the best upgrades to his car, and becomes even faster. Over time, the quickest get quicker, and the slowest fall further behind.

To potentially resolve this challenge I've added a couple twists. First, almost every upgrade purchased is temporary. For example, tire upgrades would have to be purchased every weekend. Tranny upgrades after every two weekends. Engine upgrades after every three weekends. Things like weight reduction or race rollbars would not be replaced.

Second, and more importantly, drivers would be impacted by "events." Think of this like community chest in Monopoly. Sometimes you have good luck, and sometimes you have bad luck. In this case, the drivers who earn a podium finish would always have a bad luck event, while those in the bottom three would always have a good luck event. The hope is these events would help to level out the playing field a bit more and give the slower drivers an opportunity to compete. Also, regular payouts would be given for things like the fastest lap, finishing a race with no damage, or using equipment from the main race sponsor.

So, that's a lot to take in. I'm not sure if this would be a single car series, or if I'd limit it to a choice of three cars. I'd love to hear any feedback you may have or interest you'd have in participating. Thanks for taking time to read this.

Seems like a good idea but it would take a lot of planning and organization to make it happen.

I'm also presuming that members would run their own 'team' and possibly teams of two?

I think this is definitely something we should look into and I'd definitely participate in or help out with if I have the time. I'm very much into sports games that have management modes as they add a more tactical element to the gameplay. I also think the scope for idea's relating to this is large and in terms of new rules etc, the limit is really how far the community is willing to go with it.

I think this will work, it'll just need a LOT of work and time, which I presume your willing to put in or else you wouldn't come up with the idea.

I'd be all for it, just throwing it out there I am gone from 12JUN - 8AUG so if it ends up a summer event won't be there.

I would do a constructor thing as well though. So if you do 3 cars - say Porsche, Corvette, Ferrari...I dunno then the drivers with those types of cars could get an upgrade based on the previous weeks performance. Say Porsche wins, the car manager could decide we all get Race tires

I think this could be a great idea. I would suggest that a member could be an"owner" of a team, and not necessarily be a driver. They would then be responsible to hire a driver, provide the car and upgrades, and pay their driver. How many drivers and cars they could field could be limited, and must be financed out of their own credits to start off. All car upgrades would have to then be done with credits earned racing. Several comparable car choices should be offered, but any team should be limited to one car model.

This would offer a completely different aspect to the game. Even a member with considerable credits would still be limited to a set number of drivers and the base cars, keeping the teams relatively even to start.

I like the idea of having to re-purchase tires and upgrades. To facilitate the rules being followed, and in addition to fund the series properly, all upgrades should be done through a race organizer. They would be responsible to collect all necessary funds each week from each team to insure that they have purchased the required upgrades. They would also then be responsible for the payouts to each team for their finishing position. All positions should pay.

This will indeed take some thought and effort to organize, but I think if done properly and managed well, it could be a lot of fun! These are just a few ideas I had off the top of my head. Feel free to refute and discuss.

As you said, Duck, it would take not only a lot of planning, which is really the easy part, but also tracking of every driver and their car and upgrades from week to week. I plan to recruit a little help with this.

There would be a different element of strategy involved. For example, you have the money to purchase races slicks, which will drop .5 from your lap time, but will only last you one race, or you can get the muffler that drops .2 and lasts three races. It resource management against the backdrop of race performance.

Also, we would be able to cycle around to tracks multiple times, as you car could have totally different upgrades from the first time you were there, as well as your competition's cars.

My post must of not of saved. I think it's a cool idea and depending on when you do it I'll be interested. I'll probably won't be able to get on XBL most of June and some of July.

Regarding the payouts and cost for upgrades, my idea is that each driver would have a psuedo bank here in FLR. This is where the strategy and tracking comes in.

For example, lets say I earn 6,000cr for my race position, 4,000cr for a clean race, and 2,000cr for finishing one spot higher than I started. I have earned a total of 12,000cr credits to spend on upgrades for their next race. I already had 2,000cr left from the previous week. I have a sport muffler from a couple weeks ago, which is good for one more week. I use 7,000cr for the race tranny, which will last two weeks, and decide to keep the other 5,000cr added for the next week. I finished in the middle of the pack, so I got no good/bad luck events. This is what my bank will look like:

Dominic Mako
Car:
2010 Wackymobile
Bank:
7,000cr
Upgrades:
Sport Muffler (1 week remaining)
Race Tranny (2 weeks remaining)

After the next week I'll lose my muffler, but hopefully I'll earn enough money to replace it and start getting some tires for an important push to the front.

I think it may be an idea to have some people to check the 'books' so to speak, and make sure everything is running smoothly in terms of the rules.

I love Mako's idea of having a team boss, A idea I've had which is kinda taking idea's from Mako, is to have someone to start a team, they can then race for themselves or employ someone to do so having up to 2 drivers (including themselves if they're racing) in their team. People who are willing to drive can charge a certain amount (within reason) to do a certain amount of races so kinda like a contract I guess. Perhaps there could be a cap for drivers charges which is increased with good results and decreased with bad results but that gives the driver some room to name their price. Maybe there could be some sort of Reputation points system to have some way of enforcing this.

So say drivers can have rep between 0 and 10000, all drivers start at Level 1 rep so between 0 - 2000 with a wage cap of X amount of credits. If a driver gets for example 500 rep for winning and eventually reaches over 2000 rep then he becomes level 2 (2001 - 4000) and his wage cap increases to X credits.

Sorry at the how poorly this idea is written, English isn't my strong point : /

I think what you and Mako are talking about is not quite in the scope of what I was looking at. Really, I'm just looking at one car per driver. Think of this as more of an amatuer racing league rather than trying to run McLaren or Ferrari. You're the owner of your car only and it's your job to keep it competitive.

If you have some other idea to run a B Spec Gran Turismo type organization, you're welcome to run with that concept.

I like Mako's comment. Seems like a good idea, Dom! I'd be in for this

Im up for this, if you need help with anything I can try and provide it

What were you planning on storing everything data wise in? if you really really really really felt inclined you could use my POS database i made in PASCAL. (Shameless plug is out there now, i'd still probably recommend excel if files are not accessable via webternets)

Also, this sounds like it could be a good way to reintroduce the medals that were trialled out before. It wouldn't really encroach on yuor initial concept - just add images to the income. Possibly even the outcome or the karma system you have going.

Whatever you decide on, it sounds (conceptually) like a good idea.

Sounds interesting. My only concern so far is if more than one member per team they could pool resources to build one vehicle up and leave other at disadvantage to gain positions.

ID be down! ill hire my friend to manage my team haha also what about sponsors? we can do feel bad sponsors to the people the slowest feel bad about them being slow and give them money.. like a charity lol