Post by Momoko Murasama on Nov 26, 2017 5:45:24 GMT -5
Hai-hai, everyone~! It's been a while, hasn't it?
I miss this place, I miss broadcasting, and I miss the wonderful teams and the personalities both in and out of the Racing Heart Universe... and I'm sure many of you reading this feel the same!
The Racing Heart Universe project has been something that's grown quite significantly in scope, so much so that quite literally everything was up in the air, but I'm looking to set as much as possible in stone. This post will be a long one, so grab a snack and a little drink.
Establishing RH Universe's Direction
Initially, RH Universe (previously Global Racing League) was inspired by forum games such as the World Sportscar Championship and Formula B-Spec, both series organized by GTPlanet member Earth. As a result, many of the rules and game mechanics in place were made ideal for a purely competitive platform.
However, that was not really supposed to be its intended purpose. When I initially envisioned Racing Heart Universe, it was supposed to be more akin to a forum RPG with motorsport as its theme. You may have noticed in some of the Season 3 Rule Book posts that several of the additional rules are not designed strictly to give players an advantage, but to instead give their characters potential for new story arc and development opportunities.
The "Racing Heart" project as a whole was envisioned by me to be a hub for creativity in the motorsport gaming community, and our Universe would be the centerpiece of it all. As a result, many of the more 'competitive' elements will be scaled back or even eliminated entirely, both to lower the barrier to participate, and to allow me to expand on the number of series while hopefully maintaining or even reducing workload on myself or my team of assistants.
New Driver Creation Rules
There will be a major sweeping change to driver statuses that effects all teams. Player-controlled drivers are now divided into two distinct types: Franchise, and Support.
Franchise drivers are the main focus of a team. They work exactly the same as Drivers did in Season 2: once created and hired, they are permanently part of the team. Each team may have a maximum of two Franchise Drivers. Also, Franchise Drivers can start at Gold B tier as long as the player can afford to do so. Examples of Franchise Drivers include Callista Silverstone (PARSEC), Ren Yoshizawa (Dragoon RP), Thrasher Kato (Underground Racing), and Ryoko Maruyama (PWRband Technica).
Support drivers are the secondary background characters in the League. Unlike Franchise Drivers, all Support drivers are hired on a season-by-season or race-by-race basis, making them temporary additions to a team. As long as a team can afford to do so, they can hire as many Support drivers as they wish. Also, while players can create their own Support drivers, be warned: player-created Support drivers must start at Silver tier or lower.
Driver Stat Balancing
In Season 2, both players and I alike discovered that the stat system was heavily slanted toward drivers who put all their points into Skill. I am looking to balance the system so that Tenacity, Consistency, and Preservation have greater impacts on race results.
Particularly important is that I will change what the Preservation stat affects. Car Reliability was all kinds of messed up in Season 2, so rather than do that, Preservation will now affect tire wear rates instead. This will make the impact of drivers with poor Preservation scores quite significant.
Cars, Engineers, Facilities, and Upgrades
Cars and Upgrades will be seeing a significant change from previous season, as the game mechanics surrounding them will now be handled according to discipline, or even by class in some cases.
General Changes
Engineering is no longer tied to a massive group of Engineer characters. Instead, all upgrades will be handled through an R&D Facility. This Facility mostly impacts the technology-focused classes, but I'll get to the specifics a bit further below. R&D Facility ratings go U (lowest) -> C -> B -> A (highest).
The R&D Facility determines how many more times a car's Element can be upgraded. With a U-Grade R&D Facility, you can't even upgrade the Element in question. A C-Grade R&D Facility can upgrade the same Element once per Season. A B-Grade R&D Facility can upgrade the same Element twice per Season, and thus an A-Grade R&D Facility can upgrade three times.
Also, for the most part, setups will be greatly simplified, reducing their impact.
GT Endurance AM
Our favorite semi-pro GT class will be seeing a lot of changes. The main thing is that development is no longer allowed in GTE AM, meaning new faces and grizzled veterans alike will be always be racing with competitive cars. In addition, setups will be greatly simplified: teams may only adjust strategy parameters, anti-roll bars, wing angles, camber, and tire pressures.
GT Endurance PRO and Works Prototype
The centerpieces of the Racing Heart Universe, these super machines represent the 'dream showdown' fantasy. These cars are somewhat dependent on upgrade development.
Each car is divided up into four Elements: Engine, Chassis, Suspension, and Aerodynamics. Each Element has 20 "steps". For the first season of a given GTE PRO generation, all four elements start at a "base" Step 0.
Teams may go up +1 step above the base Step for ONE Element per Phase. However, to stop teams from just rushing development, Upgrades cannot be developed until the current season has reached Phase 16. In addition to that, teams may only implement a maximum of three Upgrades per Season.
At the end of every Season, winter testing begins for the manufacturers. When next season's preseason phases begin, all new cars sold will go up +3 Steps in all Elements. Once this happens, players have three choices:
- Use last season's parts (no additional cost)
- Upgrade to new factory stock spec (moderate additional cost)
- Develop upgrade in-house (high additional cost, only available for C-Grade and higher R&D Facilities)
If the third option is picked, a random number generator will determine the outcome for each Element. For C-Grade R&D, the chance of success is 25%, B-Grades 30%, and A-Grades 35%. If it fails, the Element will be the same as the new factory stock spec. If it succeeds, the Element will be +1 Step over factory stock.
Continental Super GP and Lightning Car
These classes are purely spec, and thus upgrades are not possible. However, setups will be slightly simplified.
Battle of Kaido and Modified All-Stars
The customization-focused classes will become even more individual. Unlike all the other classes, which are either spec or balanced, the entire point is to build the ultimate racer within the rule set given. To this extent, cars are divided into several Elements...
In both classes, these Elements are all kits that can be bought from a variety of in-universe manufacturers. Some, like Suspension, Differential, and Chassis, have parameters shared across all cars, while others are engine type specific, such as Engines and Turbos.
All Elements in this class have a specific "Parts Bin Weight". Each team's Parts Bin for a given event can only weigh so much, and that limit is for all of that team's entries.
Because of the dependence on part builds for car setups, parameters for these two classes are a lot more limited: only camber, tire pressure, rear wing angles, and anti-roll bar stiffness can be adjusted individually.
To conclude...
While it seems like there are an overwhelming amount of changes, they are made with the goal of aligning the RH Universe 'game' and community closer to the original vision - a creative hub for racing game and motorsport enthusiasts. The changes to Drivers is intended to allow more freedom in how drivers progress or not, while the changes to the car classes and their mechanics are meant to give the disciplines more identity with how they play. This isn't all, but it is the major part of the changes I plan on rolling out for Season 3. In the next part, I'll talk more about the meta and my plans for both current and upcoming series!
I miss this place, I miss broadcasting, and I miss the wonderful teams and the personalities both in and out of the Racing Heart Universe... and I'm sure many of you reading this feel the same!
The Racing Heart Universe project has been something that's grown quite significantly in scope, so much so that quite literally everything was up in the air, but I'm looking to set as much as possible in stone. This post will be a long one, so grab a snack and a little drink.
Establishing RH Universe's Direction
Initially, RH Universe (previously Global Racing League) was inspired by forum games such as the World Sportscar Championship and Formula B-Spec, both series organized by GTPlanet member Earth. As a result, many of the rules and game mechanics in place were made ideal for a purely competitive platform.
However, that was not really supposed to be its intended purpose. When I initially envisioned Racing Heart Universe, it was supposed to be more akin to a forum RPG with motorsport as its theme. You may have noticed in some of the Season 3 Rule Book posts that several of the additional rules are not designed strictly to give players an advantage, but to instead give their characters potential for new story arc and development opportunities.
The "Racing Heart" project as a whole was envisioned by me to be a hub for creativity in the motorsport gaming community, and our Universe would be the centerpiece of it all. As a result, many of the more 'competitive' elements will be scaled back or even eliminated entirely, both to lower the barrier to participate, and to allow me to expand on the number of series while hopefully maintaining or even reducing workload on myself or my team of assistants.
New Driver Creation Rules
There will be a major sweeping change to driver statuses that effects all teams. Player-controlled drivers are now divided into two distinct types: Franchise, and Support.
Franchise drivers are the main focus of a team. They work exactly the same as Drivers did in Season 2: once created and hired, they are permanently part of the team. Each team may have a maximum of two Franchise Drivers. Also, Franchise Drivers can start at Gold B tier as long as the player can afford to do so. Examples of Franchise Drivers include Callista Silverstone (PARSEC), Ren Yoshizawa (Dragoon RP), Thrasher Kato (Underground Racing), and Ryoko Maruyama (PWRband Technica).
Support drivers are the secondary background characters in the League. Unlike Franchise Drivers, all Support drivers are hired on a season-by-season or race-by-race basis, making them temporary additions to a team. As long as a team can afford to do so, they can hire as many Support drivers as they wish. Also, while players can create their own Support drivers, be warned: player-created Support drivers must start at Silver tier or lower.
Driver Stat Balancing
In Season 2, both players and I alike discovered that the stat system was heavily slanted toward drivers who put all their points into Skill. I am looking to balance the system so that Tenacity, Consistency, and Preservation have greater impacts on race results.
Particularly important is that I will change what the Preservation stat affects. Car Reliability was all kinds of messed up in Season 2, so rather than do that, Preservation will now affect tire wear rates instead. This will make the impact of drivers with poor Preservation scores quite significant.
Cars, Engineers, Facilities, and Upgrades
Cars and Upgrades will be seeing a significant change from previous season, as the game mechanics surrounding them will now be handled according to discipline, or even by class in some cases.
General Changes
Engineering is no longer tied to a massive group of Engineer characters. Instead, all upgrades will be handled through an R&D Facility. This Facility mostly impacts the technology-focused classes, but I'll get to the specifics a bit further below. R&D Facility ratings go U (lowest) -> C -> B -> A (highest).
The R&D Facility determines how many more times a car's Element can be upgraded. With a U-Grade R&D Facility, you can't even upgrade the Element in question. A C-Grade R&D Facility can upgrade the same Element once per Season. A B-Grade R&D Facility can upgrade the same Element twice per Season, and thus an A-Grade R&D Facility can upgrade three times.
Also, for the most part, setups will be greatly simplified, reducing their impact.
GT Endurance AM
Our favorite semi-pro GT class will be seeing a lot of changes. The main thing is that development is no longer allowed in GTE AM, meaning new faces and grizzled veterans alike will be always be racing with competitive cars. In addition, setups will be greatly simplified: teams may only adjust strategy parameters, anti-roll bars, wing angles, camber, and tire pressures.
GT Endurance PRO and Works Prototype
The centerpieces of the Racing Heart Universe, these super machines represent the 'dream showdown' fantasy. These cars are somewhat dependent on upgrade development.
Each car is divided up into four Elements: Engine, Chassis, Suspension, and Aerodynamics. Each Element has 20 "steps". For the first season of a given GTE PRO generation, all four elements start at a "base" Step 0.
Teams may go up +1 step above the base Step for ONE Element per Phase. However, to stop teams from just rushing development, Upgrades cannot be developed until the current season has reached Phase 16. In addition to that, teams may only implement a maximum of three Upgrades per Season.
At the end of every Season, winter testing begins for the manufacturers. When next season's preseason phases begin, all new cars sold will go up +3 Steps in all Elements. Once this happens, players have three choices:
- Use last season's parts (no additional cost)
- Upgrade to new factory stock spec (moderate additional cost)
- Develop upgrade in-house (high additional cost, only available for C-Grade and higher R&D Facilities)
If the third option is picked, a random number generator will determine the outcome for each Element. For C-Grade R&D, the chance of success is 25%, B-Grades 30%, and A-Grades 35%. If it fails, the Element will be the same as the new factory stock spec. If it succeeds, the Element will be +1 Step over factory stock.
Continental Super GP and Lightning Car
These classes are purely spec, and thus upgrades are not possible. However, setups will be slightly simplified.
Battle of Kaido and Modified All-Stars
The customization-focused classes will become even more individual. Unlike all the other classes, which are either spec or balanced, the entire point is to build the ultimate racer within the rule set given. To this extent, cars are divided into several Elements...
- Engine (base power)
- Turbochargers (torque curve shifting, power and torque multiplier)
- Suspension (spring and ARB stiffness, ride heights, center of gravity)
- Front bumper/splitter (front wing angle, Kaido only. All-Stars get fully adjustable fronts)
- Differential (1-way, 1.5-way, 2-way, Kaido only. All-Stars get fully-adjustable diffs)
- Chassis (center of gravity, car weight)
In both classes, these Elements are all kits that can be bought from a variety of in-universe manufacturers. Some, like Suspension, Differential, and Chassis, have parameters shared across all cars, while others are engine type specific, such as Engines and Turbos.
All Elements in this class have a specific "Parts Bin Weight". Each team's Parts Bin for a given event can only weigh so much, and that limit is for all of that team's entries.
Because of the dependence on part builds for car setups, parameters for these two classes are a lot more limited: only camber, tire pressure, rear wing angles, and anti-roll bar stiffness can be adjusted individually.
To conclude...
While it seems like there are an overwhelming amount of changes, they are made with the goal of aligning the RH Universe 'game' and community closer to the original vision - a creative hub for racing game and motorsport enthusiasts. The changes to Drivers is intended to allow more freedom in how drivers progress or not, while the changes to the car classes and their mechanics are meant to give the disciplines more identity with how they play. This isn't all, but it is the major part of the changes I plan on rolling out for Season 3. In the next part, I'll talk more about the meta and my plans for both current and upcoming series!
