Ok, I will try to further go into what I was talking about for this
game since I'm at work and have plenty of time to goof off in between
ballgames here at the radio station :)
The entire interface of the game would be text based with the only
graphics being in cutscenes between loading screens. It would be cool
to have a loading screen of each track when you go to race it in a
season. The game would be very open ended and allow you to do many
things with it but I'm concentrating on it like this is a Nascar sim.
You could pick an established team in Nascar to join and become the
team manager and handle aspects of the race team such as: Hiring and
firing of crew, crew obligations and time alloted to certain cars,
sponsorship negotiations, driver discipline, and many other duties
carried out by managers. You could help renegotiate your drivers
contract or try to find a new driver. The fun of the game would be you
could pick any team you wanted to take control of. The biggest fun
would, to me, come from the fact that you could also start up your own
team and pick from drivers in a "pool" that the game would have. The
game would follow the actual Nascar schedule and have the actual crews
and drivers and ratings and everything. So, the "pool" of drivers
would include drivers currently looking for rides, or drivers in the
Busch Series or Truck series or any other drivers put into the games
pool of drivers. If your an upstart team the chances of total failure
would be pretty good so it would be a challenge just to stay afloat.
There should be a difficulty slider to make it less tedious to
actually be successful in the game, however on the hardest level it
should mimmic the hardships of small funded teams.
When you start this "Nascar Simulation" you would be asked to either
choose the established team or start your own. From there, assuming
your starting your own you would need to do various things to get your
career started. I would have the game start near the end of the actual
2002 season if you started as an upstart so you would have opportunity
to pursue drivers before the start of the next season and get some
crew and cars ready for the Daytona 500. With your limited funds as a
new owner you would probably be getting second or third rate crew
members. The "skill ratings" of the crew members is how you would
determine how good the cars being built were. Some people you could
hire would have a better skill at building cars for Superspeedways
while others would shine at short tracks. Or you could get some crew
that was all around about the same skill at each kind of track. Being
a new team and first time owner your not going to get a marquee driver
either. Something I would want built in the game though is drivers
contracts. Say Ward Burtons contract is up in the game in 2004 and
he's not been running so great he may move to another team if they
have an opening so drivers and crew could move around. There would be
a "probability of move" rating for each driver as well. Like Jeff
Gordon's probablity of moving from Hendrick would be less than 5% or
something but a driver like Jimmy Spencer would have a much higher
probability of moving. Also, in the drivers ratings you would have a
"axed" rating where the driver would have a rating where they could be
fired as well.
Back to the new team thing. We have hired our small crew, just enough
to get by, and hired a driver. For simplicity sake I guess I'll say I
hire Steve Grissom. He's a driver that has basically ran out of
chances in Cup so he would be easier to hire, plus he's got some
experience. Remember, were trying to stay afloat and there may be some
19 or 20 year old drivers available that is willing to drive for us
but his experience rating would be very low so he is more liable to
have an accident. If we only have one superspeedway car we don't want
to crash it in practice before the race even starts. Each race would
have certain travel costs alloted to it so some races are out of the
question. We could choose to go to Daytona since its the first race
and its got a bigger purse and hope we win enough money to finance the
building of a say, short track specific car. If I designed the game I
would allot enough money to have the small team enough money to go to
Daytona automatically and enough money to build the superspeedway car
and a choice of 2 other cars. You could build another SS car, a short
track car, a road course car, or a speedway car.
Everything costs money so you go down to Daytona and when you test, it
costs money. You have to decide how long you want your car out on the
track and things like that because we don't want to ruin our engines
if we only have a couple. The caliber crew chief you hire will reflect
in practice sessions to a point as they will be responsible for
setting up the car. If your crew cheif has a great rating at Daytona
that will be a good thing as they may be able to get you into the show
by setting the car up right but if their ratings suck at the other
tracks you may have problems making shows elsewhere. Crew chief
ratings, car ratings (built by crew at shop), and driver ratings would
all factor in how well the car will run. I would pick a crew chief
that had a slightly lower rating at the SS tracks to have a better
balance. Grissom's rating at SS should be decent, and my car shouldn't
be too awful great. When you go through this game you go day by day so
you move every single day through the calendar. It could get boring
but you always have mail in your inbox to deal with and sponsors and
things like that. In your mailbox would also be other changes in other
teams and things like that.
So we go to Daytona and when you test the game would show all test
speeds for all the drivers so you could see where you stack up.
However many full time teams there are in WC would be represented each
week with some teams choosing races to come to. So there will always
be more cars attempting races at Daytona, Lowe's, and Indy. Just like
our team, other teams could also go bankrupt and shut down and new
teams can spring up each year. When you practice it would go to a
screen that shows the track conditions and drivers lap times and car
condition. You would have the option to take control of the crew chief
during the race weekend and actually coach your driver through the
race. There would be many commands you could give such as hold back,
go for it all, hold your position, etc. During the race, assuming you
make it, it would be much the same. You wouldn't see graphics of cars
going around but rather a list of drivers positions on track,
intervals apart, track conditions (track temp/wind speed), and flag
conditions. You could set this by mouse click or something like each
lap would be ran in a single click and brought up on the screen. You
could give your driver commands to try to improve a position, hold
position, and other commands like that. You could also tell him to get
more aggressive, less aggressive, and the like. Of course, if I
actually had my driver make the Daytona 500 and I knew he wasn't a
great threat I would probably have him hang towards the end of the
draft if he could even keep up with that to try to avoid the big one
and maybe get a better finish. I don't know these are just ideas I
have but I think this kind of game could be killer. If you told your
driver to push the envelope he could very easily crash the car or
crash someone else. If you start new you wouldn't have no feuds but if
you dumped someone into the wall at Daytona you could instantly have a
rival for the year. Likewise, if you get dumped you could choose to
have a rivalry with said driver. If your driver has a gripe with
another driver they are more likely to beat and bang while racing one
another. But be careful, too much beating and banging could lead to
another crash and if you crash too much with drivers your feuding with
you may be parked by Nascar.
I would also have the game build injuries into it for drivers. Nothing
morbid like death but there could be a chance a driver gets banged up
at Dover and is 75% for the next event. Or even a driver get sidelined
for a few races and a replacement driver has to be called upon. Maybe
this text based thing isn't possible but after seeing all the things
that was done with the Extreme Warfare Revenge wrestling simulator I
believe its possible with time put into it. Sorry if I rambled too
long or didn't make sense. I have it in my head, its just harder to
put on paper.
DD
