automationgame.com

Ladies and gentlemen. This is Formula Automation. A racing series about speed, reliability and MONEY!

The idea
The idea behind this is to great our own Formula One style series, with all of it's glory and tragic. It will not be all about building the best car but also about managing your budget and maybe a touch of politics.
Users will be able to enter in 3 different ways:

Manufacturer: manufacturers are teams which build their own chassis and engine, like Ferrari or Mercedes today. They can also supply customer teams with their engine but its not mandatory.

Engine supplier: like the name states, they will only build and sell engines to customer teams. Like Renault and Honda today.

Privateer team: this is the most common form of team in today's F1. They build their own chassis and run customer engines. If you run such an outfit you have to find a manufacturer or engine supplier to sell you an engine.

Rules
Off course a series like this will need rules but i'll try to keep them at a minimum to make it easier for everyone involved.

Financial rules:
At the start of the season each entry will get 50 000$ as a start budget.
By now the only way to gain money(beside selling engines to other teams) will be prize money but you will have to spend your money on many things:
Building chassis/engines(material costs + Production units*25)
car maintenance
entry fees(1000 per race)
(buying engines: if you are a Privateer team)
development: develop future technologie by buying new tech years. (this advantage will be in place until standard tech year = team tech year; example: it's 1980 and you buy a +4 technologie bonus
+1...5000
+2...10000
+3...20000
+4...40000
+5...80000
(this advantage will be in place until standard tech year = team tech year; example: it's 1980 and you buy a +4 technologie bonus you can use the tech year 1984 now. It's an advantage until 1984 because everyone gets it then)


Technical Rules

Engine rules:
Tech year: team tech year (1975 plus development bonus)
Dissplacement: 3000ccm N/A ; 1500ccm Turbo charged

Here is the new rule:
"Designing" a new engine will cost you something called R&D costs. It's calculated like this: Engine production units * 60

This will have to be payed by the entry who designs the engine(Manufacturer team or engine supplier) only once(for each different engine off course).
To make this deal a bit sweeter for everyone who builds engines, you'll be able to "upgrade" your engine between the seasons without R&D costs. However, you won't be allowed to change any part, except the exhaust.
This means you can are able to change the settings and the year of your engine, thats it.

Chassis Rules:
Tech year: team tech year (1975 plus development bonus)
Driving aids: no driving aids
Aero: Each car CAN have 2 aero settings. (changeable values: aero inclination, downforce)
Gearbox: only manual. Each car CAN have 2 gear settings. (changeable values: spacing, Top speed(km/h))
Safety: standard 70's (quality 0) required

Race weekend
A race weekend will consist of 2 events: Qualifying and the Race

Qualifying: 1 flying lap(if possible track wise, else one standing lap)
3 points for pole
2 points for 2nd
1 points for 3rd

Race: Race lenght about 300km
1st lap will be standing start, the remaining laps will be a flying laps(if possible track wise)
Pit stops: cars economy stat will be used to determine how many pitstops are necessary. Fuel tanks can hold 90l. A pit stop will cost between 40 and 45 seconds.
A fuel multiplier is used to make it a bit more realistic: 4-6(slow to fast track) --> this means on a very fast track you'll have to use less than 10l/100km to have only 1 pit stop and less than 5l to make it without pit stop.
Car reliability will be used to determine if a car finishes the race or not. This means reliability is very important because to finish first, first you have to finish

9 points for 1st
6 points for 2nd
4 points for 3rd
3 points for 4th
2 points for 5th
1 points for 6th

Calendar
We will use tracks that didn't exist back in 1975

1. Grand Prix of China/Shanghai International Circuit
2. Grand Prix of Spain/Circuit de Barcelona
3. Grand Prix of France/Circuit Paul Ricard
4. Grand Prix of Great Britain/Silverstone Circuit
5. Grand Prix of Germany/Green Hell
6. Grand Prix of Belgium/Spa Francorchamps
7. Grand Prix of Canada/Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
8. Grand Prix of the United States/Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
9. Grand Prix of Japan/Suzuka Circuit
10. Grand Prix of Brazil/Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace

How can i enter?
Just fill out this form

Team Name/Manufacturer Name:
Nationality:
My team is: (Manufacturer, engine supplier, privateer)

After you posted your filled out form you can build your car. Once you did this you can send it to me via PM(i need the car.lua AND the engine.lua)

Deadline: 16th of december

So this is it. Hopefully i forgot nothing. If something is unclear feel free to ask.

Post reserved

How would we go about selling engines to privateer teams?

You'll have to negotiate a contract with them. Building an engine costs you x$ and you can sell it for y$. Btw x should be smaller than y or you'll make loss. You can also add a clause in order to get a part of the price money or what ever, be creative

I can be creative

Could you explain the buying of tech pool points more clearly? I didn't really understand that.
Also, what do you mean by "price money", are you talking about the price or to prize?

Rotary engines would be soooo good here

So we can A) build an engine with a chassis to race B) build a chassis to race with someone else engine or C) make engines for others to race?

will production units play a part or only total cost?

Good question. Building quality parts means high production units.

Will budget's roll over from the previous seasons.

Hmm... this looks a little bit to complicated for my taste. I think I'll just enter as a engine provider.

Well, how would you be an engine provider?
Make an engine that costs 3.000$, sell it for 4.000? Why would the buyer not just save it under a new name, claim it as it's own and save 1.000$?

Yeah...

I think that the "business" should be done under the host supervision. He's the one that supervises the individual accounts, and the "money" transfers...may be complicated, but putting the results in a spreadsheet on google drive for instance. And once the deal is done, no turning back.

But for that, should exist an "public" offer in this thread, i mean, the manufacturers and the engine suppliers, should advertise their engines in this thread, or give them to the host, so that he could announce in a spreadsheet, or something, the engines available, the manufacturer, specs, price, etc.etc. ...

Indeed. In order for this to work OP should find a way to simulate some sort of R&D cost distribution so that engines bought from an engine provider would become cheaper than an in-house developed engine.