x) This brings me to my last major issue, the evolving rules of the racing series. The 20 minutes in the highest tier is better, but by no means perfect. x) The 12 minute free practice in the third tier is way too short to actually get a setup going, which the AI seems to be able to cheat with as well. Of course, this happens the other way around too, with you benefiting from it once in a while, but it's annoying and unrealistic. This also has the aggravating side-effect of making you lose positions against your opponents often. In nine out of ten times your driver will fall out of the "blue flag zone" again, because he's apparently not capable of following a much slower car close enough. I don't know how often it has happened to me that my driver was lapping someone else and instead of losing at most 2 seconds of lap-time the other driver was slower than mine, the lap-time dropped by 5-8 seconds. This is a fatal oversight in a manager game! x) The way overtaking is solved in the game is quite horrible. There is no so-called "silly season" in the game, where you're able to get a new driver for next year at all. Either you sign an unemployed character after the current employee contract has run out, or you end up replacing your current employee in that spot with someone else, paying either one or two release fees for the person you're getting rid off and the one you hired. That doesn't sound so bad, but there are sadly a number of minor and some major issues with the game, but let me explain: x) When you sign a driver, lead engineer or race mechanic you cannot do so for any time in the future. I fear it'll take too long to get anywhere. If you have chosen the weakest team as I did, then trying to make it competitive (without being fired in the second season) is a hell of a job, but at least so far I have had fun trying to beat the challenge I set myself. Now the start in the third and lowest tier was a real challenge. Some of those races manage to tell thrilling, harrowing and unbelievable tales and in my opinion they're a lot more interesting than watching Formula 1 on TV. Sadly it only went downhill from there and neither of my drivers finished in the top three at the end of the season. Not the strongest team, but I would have won the first race of the season if not for an unlucky parts failure. So far my experience in the game consists of one season at the highest tier, trying to win the world championship with Ferrari and two seasons trying to build a third tier team from the bottom up. It is no surprise that the Steam Workshop isn't activated/available for the game either as of yet, because so far the game does not appear to have any modding capability whatsoever unless one is willing to edit the original game files with third party tools. While that is quite nice, there is no easily accessible way to change the names database to your liking, which is a feature the developers had mentioned to be included in the game. It is that way with many other teams and people as well, just like many tracks are created in a spiritual similarity to their real-life counterparts. Motorsport Manager comes without a license, but even a quick glance can tell you that an Italian team called Scuderia Rossini with a German and a Finnish driver are in truth Ferrari, Vettel and Räikkönen. Part of the problem comes from the question of how close the game should imitate the real sport of monoposto racing, more specifically Formula 1 and its two feeder series GP2 and GP3. The foundation this game is built on can be considered excellent, but what about the meat and bones, the managing aspect? There it gets more difficult, because I have seen some obvious up- and downsides to Motorsport Manager. The on-track graphics are beyond lovely for a manager game and the player can really immerse him/herself and feel at home watching the cars race across the screen. On the one hand this game is *finally* done professionally from the ground up, it has a decent publisher with manager-game experience and it's not merely a rip-off and money-grab like so many other formula racing managers have been in the past decade. On the one hand this I am very much of a split opinion about Motorsport Manager, it's hard to put everything into words. I am very much of a split opinion about Motorsport Manager, it's hard to put everything into words.
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