MY TEAM CAREER QUESTION

@pekish79This year my team is unfortunately isn’t balanced. And also changes to the ai difficulty over last year have made it harder.. last year ai every 10 difficulty equated to 1 second. This year i think it creeps up for every 10. 1.1 - 1.2 - 1.3 etc etc

I find best way is to see what times the other ai teams closest in the rankings. Are doing in practice and setting my difficulty by +\- 10 for every second then adding another 10. I do the until I’m lapping around the same times. Obviously takes more than one session.

Also durability upgrades are not added to the overall Teams performance rankings. As they don’t add anything to performance.

Beware off brake up grades, as well as tyre and fuel efficiency.

Best upgrades… bang for buck drag reduction, weight reduction, and ERS.

Last year was so simple to work out.  Always started near to Alpha Tauri  and Gasly had a pace rating off 90.  So If was a simple case off going to race director during FP1 seeing what times he did on medium tyres and then  +/- 10 for every second faster or slower.   Job done.   

You have good understanding off how My Team works.  This is a little outdated but still stands up https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/Some-my-team-hints-and-tips-for-the-new-people/td-p/11624510

Nice, I checked the link to the other thread. I feel it's pretty good information.

My question here is

when during the career, you reach the same value of performance as Ferrari or Redbull (for instance, 700) and your car is equal to theirs

do your time/lap match theirs by selecting the difficulty the way you described?

Because matching a bad driver time at the start doesn't feel like the best way to calibrate it.

The team closest in ranking has some of the weakest drivers. I would understand if Williams had Hamilton or Verstappen, it would probably make sense to match them.

If I match Latifi's time at the start, I doubt that when my car is equal to Ferrari in power, I will be able to match it.

Ultimately I don't feel the car improving that much time-wise with upgrades. It feels like it is all about the difficulty level of the AI and driver stats, the car power doesn't seem to affect performance much.

@pekish79Your right. Ai driver pace rating is the most important one. As that directly relates to how fast they are over a lap. Obviously our pace rating would be 100. So if all things being equal in terms off the teams performance ranking. For instance all cars ai and yours are maxed out. You want to set the ai difficulty so that your pace matches those ai drivers with a pace rating off 90+

I use practice sessions to gauge this as the ai on mediums laps are a good baseline as they are not pushing. Plus during the race the game uses scripts and cheats to as excite mechanics. Be it weather changes or ai boosts. Yes unfortunate but the game is designed for the casual Gamer.

Also in my team and driver career modes. The AI drivers ratings are not accurate.

The 2nd driver facilities effect all ai drivers not just your teammate.

Mercedes’, Ferrari and Redull all start with spec 2 facilities. So their drivers start off with +10 to all their stats. Up to a maximum off 100. It’s stupid. For 3 games we have been begging the devs to change it. But for some reason they don’t. And ignore any post that brings it up.

In other words, I think the best way to calibrate it would be to use the time of the first four pilots as a reference (Ferrari Red Bull) during qualification. And remove an x tot of seconds depending on the car performance difference.

Since car performance difference at the beginning of a new career is a somewhat fixed amount between 125-150 performance points. We need to find out how many seconds are, in theory, the 150-performance point difference.

My opinion is that 150 performance points equal at max 1 second making us fight for position 7-12 with the starting car at the beginning of a career as a "NEW" team. Right now the current "first season," I arrived 8-6-7-8-9-5-9, but as the gap in performance gets smaller, I don't feel my car is closing the gap :/ (honestly, I think there is almost no difference)

Now the top car is around 570-580, and my car is 500. I halved the performance gap (researching mainly weight components, downforce front and rear, and drag reduction) from 150-125. I am now 70, but the gap time overlap is not halved.

The difference of a fraction of a second is a sneeze during a perfect lap, so no matter what performance point your car has, your lap can swing +/-1 second just because of your daily mood! The gap depends on AI difficulty-level and specific track (some being more challenging than others); it is tough to factor it in. It is hard to analyze it.