Pitwall is a free online F1 management game.
After signing up you have the chance to either create a new team and start up from the lowest division, or you can join a team who are without a team manager. It's your choice!
As a team manager you should: develop your car, sign up top class drivers, get the best staff, get the best out of sponsorship deals by negotiating and build up a world class team. Because of Pitwalls advanced race engine, you can follow the race live every Sunday! This means that you could change your tactics in the middle of the race, change your driver orders, change your pit strategy, and much more.! If you can't be online during the races, then you can always set up a tactics so that you aren't disadvantaged.
Perhaps in a few seasons your team could be the team to beat.
Pitwall is an online F1 manager which is constantly being developed. Don't hesitate to sign up for an account. After all: it's free!
More information:
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Morale changes
After reading that a lot of people had troubles with their drivers' morale, I decided to raise the boost you get from resting your drivers by around 4 times. I also updated the drops so that they're about half of what they used to be.
Also, because this was all caused by a too harsh tweak, I added 1 level of morale to all drivers. The average of 1st and 2nd drivers is now the same as when a driver would join a new team.
Test site update
The test site should be working okay now, there was a problem with the new index so I reuploaded the old index on the test site.
Also, if another team offers a contract to a driver who is in your shortlist, it should now show up in your news center on the my home page.
New driver contract system
Today I will be announcing a change that has been requested a lot of times in the past. I've been programming the last few days a lot to rework the way transfers and driver deals happen.
In the old system it used to be so that when a driver his contract ran out, he was available for everyone right after the dayupdate. That meant that a lot of people flooded the site in order to be able to sign up one of those talents. Because of this the blackout period was implemented, which meant that each driver only wanted to talk to a team boss after a period of time. This was much better, but still it meant that the driver would join a team who's manager was really lucky. This meant that the driver transfers were handled with a random factor of 100%.
Keeping these issues in the back of my head, I started working on a new system which solved these problems, but also added new, exciting features.
It's a much discussed subject, whether drivers should be available to everyone and whether there should be some kind of a random factor involved. I decided to use both and combine them into a new driver transfer system.
Al right, here we go:
All driver contracts will now be changed from week to seasons. This means that a driver's contract length runs until (for example, season 20) the end of the mentioned season. After that, the driver will be available on the market of free drivers. Also, to prevent cheating with drivers, it's now only possible to make a driver sale after the season. This means that deals can still be done, but the driver won't transfer until after the season. Also, there will be minimum transfer prices to prevent people from selling a driver for 0,- (something similar is already used, but it doesn't seem to be working very well) to avoid the dismiss fee.
Now on to the new system. All the current rules as you know them are dropped, no longer can you only offer an extension to your drivers as from 4 weeks, and 2 weeks for other teams. That's gone now.
You can offer a contract to a driver once he only has 1 season remaining. Also, it depends on several factors whether a driver will want to negotiate already.
This means that every team can offer a contract to the driver once he only has 1 season remaining. Because this is unfair to the team who owns the driver, and because I wanted to add several factors to give the driver a decision, there's a hidden "Current team" stat which gives the current team an advantage up until week 6. This means that a driver will be more likely to sign a contract for the current team than for another team. If the driver is sick of the team (bad morale), or he wants to seek a new challenge, then this stat will be the same as for all other teams, meaning that it's the same for everyone.
There are several other stats, some you can change, some you can't. Those that you can't change are the current team stat (which has just been explained), the division (gives a very small advantage to teams in higher divisions) and the random stat (a stat which decides roughly on 1/10th of the decision of the driver).
The stats that you can change are the following:
* Weekly salary: The salary paid each week
* Contract length: The duration of the contract
* Contract role: The role of the driver in the team
* Bonus per championship: A fee paid to the driver by the team for winning the team championship
* Bonus per win: A fee paid for winning the race
* Bonus per podium: A fee paid for ending up on the podium
* Bonus per points finish: A fee paid for taking points
* Relegation release clause: Makes it possible for the driver to be released on the free market in the event of the team relegating from the current division
* 1 season extra option for the driver: Gives the driver the possibility to extend his contract by 1 season in week 13 of the season before his contract runs out
* 1 season extra option for the manager: Gives the manager the possibility to extend the contract of his driver by 1 season the season before his contract runs out
All of them have a different influence in the driver's choice of teams. Of course this is something that needs to be heavily tweaked, but as it is right now I think that it's pretty good.
You can offer a contract multiple times to a driver. After you've offered a contract, it can take from 8 hours up to 24 hours before the driver responds to the contract offer. Once he has responded you can make a new offer. Only the last offer will count for the driver in his decision.
Some drivers also prefer to have a big salary, while others prefer to have a big bonus.
Now on to the decision of the driver. Once someone starts negotiating with the driver, the driver will state his demands, and these will be the same for everyone. A press release will be posted so that everyone is notified of this event. Team managers who have the driver shortlisted will get this event in their news center as well.
As from this moment all managers have the possibility to offer a contract to the driver. Once his (hidden, but a hint is given on the approach page) deadline has passed, the driver will look at the best offer (depending on all those stats) and make his decision. The length of the deadline depends on several factors, the drivers age, the drivers character, the drivers morale, whether the driver is a free driver or not (this definitely speeds the process up), etc.
When the deadline has passed, the driver will go for the best offer (in his opinion, this is not always the offer which pays most money) and will sign a contract there.
At the top of the page you can always see who the driver is negotiating with, so that you can do your best to give a good offer. Also, the driver always gives feedback on your offers, so that you know what to do.
Because I think it's important to test these things, I've made a database backup and I'm restoring the database backup to the test site. Feel free to approach drivers over there, it won't make any difference for your team. Please note that at the moment of posting this news message the database is still restoring, once it is done the site will be available.
At the moment the announcement for all teams who have the driver shortlisted isn't working yet, this will be implemented tonight.
Also, please note that the current contract length indicator is wrong, this is because of the switch from weeks to seasons.
There, sorry for the long newspost, but this is something that is really important in Pitwall, and it needed heavy improvement. I went to bed the last few days with a headache because of the complexity of the driver system, it's implemented in a lot of scripts so I needed to be sure what to do.
I'm sure that I've forgot to mention a few details, and I will add them later on if I remember them, but this is all for now. Feel free to discuss several things, I will read all of them.
- Discuss about this in the forum
Updates
There have been several small changes today, most of them are changes which were made to prepare on implementing new features.
There were so many changes that I'll probably forget a few. First of all, the driver reputation stat will make a small difference in the main races as from next season, and as from the next youth race. The higher the reputation of a driver, the better his form is, the more confident he is, and thus the better his driving is. This is another detail that makes everything more interesting.
Next up, the reputation stat now also shows how high the driver is ranked in his division on the driver page. Two other stats have been added to drivers: loyalty and professionalism.
The loyalty reflects on how loyal a driver is to his team. The higher this stat, the more chance that he'll sign an extension of his contract. There was already a hidden stat similar to this one, and this hidden stat has been updated so that it reflects the loyalty of the driver. The second new stat, professionalism, gives a view of how professional a driver is. I won't go in detail yet about this stat, as this is something that is work in progress (there's a new driver contract system being programmed), but it has to do with how professional a driver is in contract negotiations.
Next up were other small changes. The my home page now displays the youth race as well in the Events box. Also the press releases which are shown in the news center are now limited to 500 characters, if it goes above that, then a link to the press page is displayed. This is implemented to avoid a crowdy news center page.
Then also the press page has been updated. There used to be two different tables which showed events from the division and then also the manager press releases. Those two tables have merged into one, and it will be used heavily in the future. I can't spoil much yet, but it's going to be interesting.
That's all for now, I will continue programming on the new driver contract system tomorrow, as once that is completed, I will add a bunch of new drivers to the game.
- Discuss about this in the forum
Scout update & new roaming option
There is a new roaming option: maximum driver age. This lets your specify the maximum age of a driver when a scout is roaming. This can be handy if you want to make sure that the scout is roaming for the really young drivers.
Also, the way reports are generated is now changed a bit. It used to be one chance out of 24 that you'd get a report. Because this could be unfair to some people (if you were really unlucky), so I've updated it so that the chances of a report increase depending on how many reports have already been done.
The script looks for the number of reports done in the last week, and it decides based on that. Because the date tag to the reports were only added on Tuesday, it is possible that you'll get more reports this week than usual.
Also, in the news center other teams press releases are now displayed as well. This is just a test to see if it makes the press releases more attractive, and to increase the interactivity of the site.
> Last 20 newsitems: (show all)
· Morale changes, 02 July 2009 13:43
· Test site update, 02 July 2009 00:28
· New driver contract system, 01 July 2009 18:02
· Updates, 30 June 2009 01:51
· Scout update & new roaming option, 26 June 2009 01:44
· Driver names, 25 June 2009 16:00
· Skills in numbers, 25 June 2009 11:47
· Testing open, 24 June 2009 11:26
· Restoring database, 24 June 2009 01:56
· Youth race, 23 June 2009 11:06
· Youth race start, 22 June 2009 21:12
· Scout roaming options, 22 June 2009 14:40
· Scout update, 22 June 2009 13:39
· Information regarding the first youth race, 11 June 2009 13:01
· A new test race, 11 June 2009 12:25
· Coach drivers skill, 10 June 2009 15:49
· Youth race test, 10 June 2009 13:04
· Statistics page, 04 June 2009 16:16
· Driver reputation, 04 June 2009 15:41
· Driver changes, 04 June 2009 01:59
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Latest press release
Best thing ever - for now!
31 May 2009 · Scuderia Fiat: Linus Arron of Scuderia Fiat was a bit cheerful as he claimed the top spot making history for the team. First win in Div1, the top level of Pitwall. Luck was on our side though but this proves that it has begun... Let's celebrate for a day and get back to reality - 10 points for a win isn't going to be a routine. Not yet. A rare win now and then will still keep the doctor away!
Standings
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Latest press release
Post Race Press Conference
29 June 2009 · Team Destroyers: The last race didn't go well, as per usual, but we are not giving on this season yet. We have a good car for next season so are feeling good of returning to this division next year if things don't go right. With the 7 youth races this week, we have managed to find a real star of a driver in Selasniemi. We hope he can continue this performance through to tomorrows race. We have also got a new youth driver replacing Ausmees (who is the only driver not to score a point in the youth division) and he is a much brighter prospect than Selasniemi so we will be wishing for great things from him this week.
Standings
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Latest press release
Bad Run
02 July 2009 · cerelak: After a fee tries we finally made it meet with cerelak´s team manager.
I: It has been a long time since you finished a race with your pilots. What is going on with your team?
A: I completly agree with your point of view. i am extremelly disappointed with my team. First our estimatives on fuel consumption made in the tests were terrible, as a result our strategy completly failed. Second our contracts, especially brakes, due to be own brand, are not holding the car perfomance. I will consider to tell the pilots to slow down a bit more and not to push so much for tha car, in order to finish the remain races.
I: How do you plan to solve those reliability problems?
A: i can assure you that for next season we will have a much more reliable and performing car. We have already signed some contracts, and will sign some more in a close future.
I: Will you assure your maintenance in this division this year? Who will be the champion team in you opinion?
A: I think we have everything to assure the maintenance in division 3.11. We only depend on us, and i don´t really belive that the teams that are behind mine will make it.
The cahmpion team in my opinion will be Marginel Team. Since the begining of the season they showed consistence, and for that i congratulate them. They really deserve to be champions.
Standings
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Latest press release
I give up
28 June 2009 · Red Bull Racing: Forget the Fuel Strategies please :)
Standings
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