Patch v0.7

***Hello All*** 👋 

**Patch Notes - v0.7**

@everyone 

It is that long awaited time (2 weeks) for the largest overhaul this game has had. There are so many miscellaneous fixes & improvements it will be difficult to list them all in three let alone one or two posts. Thank you for the continued support, as always. It has been a pleasure developing this update, and I think we may even be out of that "Pre-Alpha" phase with this patch. There are still always areas & rooms to fix, but I feel I have taken a major leap in this update. I honestly might be missing items in the patch notes here, but there are improvements everywhere in this game. 

**Fixes/Improvements**

- **Fixed Diminishing Development Returns for top teams & catch up values for slow teams**

- Fixed poor ai logic in races with multiple wet-dry logic. Will require more testing, but you should see less ridiculous stops

- Fixed drivers pitting wherever they pleased when players selected.

- Added two pit modes, selectable in options. "Auto" and "Manual". Players can only pit their cars in "Manual", ai will not do so for them in this mode.

- Added "mark all as read" and filters tp emails

- Fixed regen drivers sometimes disappearing upon save reloads

- Added a cancel negotiations functionality to negotiations

- Improved grid screen with up to date visuals

- Reduced engine development cost by half

- Widened the gap in ratings by drivers, top tier drivers are truly head and shoulders above others, and consistency effect has been almost 4x'ed, so you will see laptime variation from poor drivers.

- A couple dozen misc. smaller fixes, such as minor ui touch ups. 

**What's New**

- Introduced significantly overhauled multi-phase chassis development. Complete with car concepts such as low rake, high rake, ground effect focused, etc. Managers have complete control about what direction to take their car in with this update. 

- Added new car attributes "Reliability", and expanded greatly upon "Dirty Air Efficiency"

- Introduced an entirely new, fluctuating season-by-season regulations profile, with 6 regulations & multiple different options for each regulation. 

       1. Reliability Profile

    2. Tech. Reg Era

    3. Driver Aids Restrictions

    4. Points Systems

    5. Prize Money Distribution

    6. Tyre Profiles

- Added new "Driver Center" and **driver aids**, which leverage staff from the "Driver Simulator" to research/develop 5 unique risky driver aids.

- Added aerodynamic development which replaced "upgrades". Aerodynamic multi-phase projects & spec upgrades allow managers to further specialize their cars.

- Added new staff for the wind tunnel building, which are used to develop these new systems (alongside lots of cash)

- Added new CFD building, important in the "Correlation" phase of development.

- Added new recon centre building, which can be used to research other teams chart to determine teams strengths & weaknesses. (In the process of building this out further, will update more once 0.7 is released)

- VASTLY improved ai budgeting and spending. AI Teams will prioritize long-term development, budget for HQ upgrades, and be more competitive financially.

- Added staff "talent", retirement, and skill fluctuation season-to-season

- VASTLY overhauled multiple ui's across the game. The schedule tab now shows a better breakdown of each track, a brief look at its history, and viewers can look at the full qualifying and race results from any track on the season for the past 5 years, allowing easy season-by-season comparisons

- Added Governmental fines & penalties for teams using & developing illegal driver aids

- Refreshed staff negotiation ui

- Fleshed out team bankruptcy logic much further (s/o @Punished Jasper)

- Added ability to have your drivers focus on improving certain stats

- Added new technical regulatory changes, that will promote certain concepts and harm others. This provides a unique team-by-team shakeup, and has provided a lot of longevity to playthroughs

- Added driver "negotiation". Managers will have to submit financial offers to drivers, who have 5 chances to accept. 

- Removed perfomance screen, but added ability to toggle it on in settings for mod-balancing, or players who prefer to see all data without "mystery"

- Enhanced testing ui, and generated a pre season test summary email after tests conclude. Testing is now the best insight into team performance

- Re-worked some starting team performance and driver ratings to be more indicative of recent f1 seasons (still an amalgamation of 2023-2025)

Some things to note, I will be releasing a video guide on the new features & an overall game guide in the next week or so, as the chassis development might be slightly complex. 

EVERYTHING is editable in this version that is new. Regulations in "regulations.json", development coefficients in "constants", driver aids, etc. If you think anything is unbalanced - change it!!! 🙂

You will see development season-to-season make significantly more sense, as I previously uncovered a bug in which top teams didnt correctly have diminishing returns. Players could never catch up without chassis reg changes. Now, development makes significantly more sense. As static regulation cycles persist, teams will converge on eachother. Once every 4-8 years, new regulations will spread the pack out once more, with teams fighting back and clawing back pace as regulations persist. 

Thanks everyone for the support.