Hello, i randomly found these two super interesting projects as i was looking for somenthing else, the "cockpit manager 2014" game, tbh.
anyway your projects are much more interesting so i want to give you some tips as a experienced mnagerial game player, especially in football and f1 management games, from the old spectrum 48 games to amiga, pc, playstation gaming.
i write you here as i didnt find a fb/ig/discord/youtube link as i think i can REALLY help u, both as a video game player and as an "old f1 lover".
these notes are related about the COCKPIT SIMULATOR PROJECT :
- it's very good u offer the option to make your own grid but u should also allow to change the car values, not just the driver's skills. I was editing the 1993 season, and with my surprise i could not edit the performance for the teams...to be honest u should also add the values for the engine and tyres in order to so the simulation would go much deeper as it is extremely unrealistic that all the teams have "80" so a mclaren would be same as a williams same as a jordan and so on.
In a perfect and credible simulation u should have 3 sections :
A) driver overall
b) car overall aka CHASSIS
c) engine overall
in terms of total overall u should leave the option open to assign how much each overall will influence the reults, for example, in a early 90s season a more or less correct value would be :
CAR OVERALL would be, in my opinion, CHASSIS 65% + ENGINE 35% = CAR OVERALL
Then u should also leave it open to the player/director to decide the driver / car ratio, still, in my opion, from the early 90s that would very much depend on the circuit, let's say it would normally be 60% car : 40% driver with some excetions, such as monaco where the driver would prolly be 60% driver 40% car, spa where id say 50-50% or hockenhaim where the car would be a 70% and the driver just 30%,
So u shold leave the freedom to the director/player to decide the ratio for each gp
RELIABILITY :
each chassis and engine comes with RELIABILITY, which should be calculated as an overall as well.
for example a 70 reliability overall would mean there's 30% chance oftechnical failure, a 50% overall = 50% chance of DNF and so on
PS BEAR IN MIND that until the mid 90s normally out of 24/26 starting cars just 12-13, in some places even less, were making it to the chequered flag, so the RELIABILTY plays an essential role on the "old" simulations.
in this case the ratio would also depend on the circuit, there's circuits such as MONZA who are very harsh on the engine, where the reliability ratio would go 70% from engine n 30% from chassis, other circuits, such as Monaco, where the chassis is much more imporant, let's say a 80% chassis and 20% engine.
Also in this case u should leave it open to the director/player before the beginning of the WEEKEND to decide all these ratio's.
Ofc if u want too make it awesome u'd also add a "DRIVER RELIABILITY" some drivers, like prost, almost never made a mistake, even a top driver like senna, was making costy mistakes who would lead him to DNF...
let's say on the "driver speed" overall for senna i d give a 97 and prost a 94 but reliability id give prost 95 and senna a 85, just to give u an example.
In general history is full of drivers who were not fast but very reliable, such as PATRESE, others who were extremely quick but not reliable at all, such as ALESI, DE CESARIS.
also it would be good that the player/director could decide before the beginning of the season :
A) CALENDAR how many races and where
B) point system 9 6 4 3 2 1 / 10 6 4 3 2 1 / etc with extra options such as +1 pole position/+1fastest lap/double points last GP
C) I undersood the simulator makes its own story, transfers for drivers or engines, rules and so on but it would much more immersive if u can decide them season by season or siimply "correct the simulator decisions", so, for example, if i dont like some changes, for example, as u see in many f1 managerial games, FERRARI WILL SIGN MERCEDES FOR THE NEXT SEASN u can correct it. This feature can also be cool if u want to simulate a specifiic scenario for a specific driver for example "last 5 seasons of career of ayrton senna should he have survived imola missing the rest of 1994 season and coming back to 1995 on a ferrari but knowing he'd never sign again for williams due to the responsibility they had on the imoola car nor mclaren after the ron dennis break up at the end of 1993)
D) very important : cars, engines and, why not, even drivers improve or get worse over the seasons and even during the same season, would be cool if we'd have the freedom to edit everything before each gp.
i hope my ideas helped u, if u want to discuss more my ideas we can swap discords/IG and have a chat about everything. From my side i'd be glad to help out such an interesting project.
Now i ll also write my ideas about the COCKPIT MANAGER project on the dedicated page