Forum topic: Merchandize

the fans & merchandise change went live without notice and will bankrupt my team within 3-5 weeks.

Data:
- Fans: 2,105,223, fan change: 0
- Merch income before: ~2,500,000/week
- Estimate now: 128,360/week (-95%)
- Last week and two weeks ago: 0 after winning a race
- Settings: Cheap pricing, Supplier B. Fan modifier 100%, sales modifier 115%.

My settings are neutral to positive. The drop comes entirely from the change itself.

Questions:
1. Were the last two weeks paid out? If not, that's a bug.
2. Is -95% income and zero fan growth at neutral modifiers intended? The announcement said "reduced significantly" and "harder", not removed.

Problem: my contracts run several more seasons and were signed based on the old income. Costs are locked, income is gone. I can't restructure in time.

Request: allow penalty-free contract termination for a limited period, or phase the change in.

I also seem to have lost approximately 90% of my fans income, though mine is way smaller so I didn't notice.

Obviously only Frank can decide what to do about this for you, but some ideas:
-fire any especially expensive staff, obviously this will speed up going into debt but will improve your weekly balance
-loans, I'm sure they suck, but it would help for a while
-make the team public, this will give you that income nice and quick and should keep you going a while

And the biggest one I can think of, delete some module buildings, they cost 250k a week and you seem to have 12, you should only be able to have 4 with am HQ3 anyway?? Deleting 8, down to your correct amount would save you 2 mil a week and pretty much solve your problem by itself.

answers:
1. yes they paid out, are you sure that your fans income in the first 2 weeks of the season is 0?
2. fans number will modify again starting from next week, as usual as the last seasons

i agree with Gareth, especially on the last point, but numbers seem wrong: maintenance cost are 125k per module per week, so deleting 8 modules will save you 1 million per week.
for me would be ok if you delete only 4 modules and start to build HQ5 when it will be economically sustainable. but having more than 8 modules is a bug and illegal.

what you and Gareth said, is the demonstration of what i was trying to explain to Philip on discord few hours ago: the new system hit only those very few teams that have both a lot of fans and very high expenses. those teams adapted to an unbalanced system in which was very easy to make money. now those teams need to adapt to this new system. teams like yours were an anomaly because they had an economical advantage.

- i agree that it needs some time, and i agree if Frank or some administrator give you help deleting 1 or 2 supplier contract and giving the points needed to renegotiate them at a lower cost (if you overspended for them) for example.

- analyze your staff and drivers to see if someone with a medium-high salary can be fired with a low penalty.

- try to get better sponsors (wealth 5) as soon as possible

that said it seems to me that your expenses are high even considering the old merchandising system, i can help you by being more precise if you share your financial page (in private if you want), so i can drive you out from this

About the facilities, the team was that way when I took over. I did nothing on the facilities page, HQ3 is enough. Thank you for pointing that out. I closed the modules now to save money.

A note from the admin side on Matteo's suggestion: admins only terminate contracts when a verifiable bug is involved. The fan change is intentional, not a bug, so that rule doesn't apply. Individual help would also raise questions we can't answer fairly: who qualifies, from which loss, and what about teams that already restructured on their own?
What would work is a general rule from Frank that applies to everyone equally, for example:
a limited window in which every team can terminate contracts without penalty, or
a phased introduction of the cut.
From the numbers shared so far, the reduction is 90-97 % for every team, not only for a few. Teams that planned under the old rules had no way to anticipate that.

I understand that Philip, but this is a very unique situation where Antoine's issue might have been avoided if the merchandising income modification were announced few weeks in advance. Fortunately the facilities adjustment is enough to solve the problem.

"Fortunately the facilities adjustment is enough to solve the problem." How would you know such things? The offset is much more than une million, the crissis is mitigated a little and far from solved. The crisis is caused by sudden change and no announcement!

I have to agree with Antoine and Philip here. We all agree that finances are vital to success in Pitwall (as it should be) but that means for teams who were budgeting accurately, based on the information at the time, have been punished
If you signed a 4 season contract the day before the implementation of the new formula then you will be out of pocket for 4 seasons and your good financial planning has been penalised. I don't think this is 'just a few teams' - with a small user base most of those on your seasonal list will be affected to a fairly large degree.

Don't get me wrong, this is a much better scenario (and the income levels are much more like GPM2 figures, which I know provides much inspiration to Frank (and me!)) and will help smaller/newer teams (inc those lobbying particularly strongly for the change, such as yours Matteo), but to say 'it was unbalanced and now it's not, so deal with it' isn't fair on those teams who had balanced budgets before the change. Facilities adjustments won't solve it for everyone.

Turbulent times in the Pitwall paddock...

Antoine, maybe my english is not good, but i understood from your previous message that the issue was solved. i offered you to help, you ignored me and now you are answering in an harsh way. honesly i don't understand why...

@Dan, in my previous message i literally suggested to the admins to help Antoine in every possible way due the fact that the modification should have been announced in advance, so i didn't get what you are agreeing in your first part of the message.

in the second part you are accusing me of saying something that i never said. i never said that "now the game it's balanced, deal with it". i said to Philip that before complain, wait at least a couple of seasons and collect the data to see how things goes... i literally wrote that tweek the cash cost % is the better way to improve the situation in the future if needed imho, so maybe you missed that chat or message i guess...

and saying that this new system help also my team seem an unneeded provocation: if i wanted to do something to win, i'd never resigned from minardi 4-5 seasons ago in the first place. my former team was in a position where i was starting to exploit the old fans mechanic after winning 3 championships, but when i understood it, i lost all the motivation to win in that way and i resigned. instead of complain, i collected data and shared it to all the comunity.

you agreed that this is a much better scenario, and that is the most important thing because i was lobbying for this change only to have a better, more balanced and more competitive game and i think the goal is reached now, but we always have room to improve