The F1TIME wiki is born!
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-12-22 04:40:46

Welcome to the newest addition to F1TIME, a new wiki (http://www.f1time.com/wiki/) designed to help ensure game rules and information is up to date and current. The wiki will be home to the rules, guide, FAQ, game play overview and much more.
By using a wiki it will be easier to keep rules up to date and add useful information that is currently missing from the documentation. It will also act as a permanent repository for manager statistics and strategy guides that are currently scattered about the forums.

The wiki will initially be restricted to a handful of managers for editing, but all will be able to contribute to the discussion pages to help point out omissions or make suggestions for other additions.

It is still work in progress, as we also hope to begin translating the wiki, especially the rules, into as many languages as possible. By using the wiki, it will be easier for the language Admins to track rule changes and in turn keep the rules up to date in all languages.

We hope you enjoy the new wiki,
F1T team

http://www.f1time.com/wiki/

Designers and C.Directors negotiate new deal
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-12-02 07:47:45

Removing underbidding, has hurt best designers and commerce directors (Ds and CDs), who felt that they may be left without jobs in these tough economic times due to inflated salaries and collapsing financial markets.
These F1TIME Senior Staff Labor Union (F1TSSLU) leaders were so upset that they decided to go on strike, which is why F1T was unavailable most of the weekend. After intense negotiations and few sleepless nights, an agreement has been reached between F1T.I.A. and F1TSSLU representatives that satisfied both sides.
Minimum asking salary for Ds and CDs was reduced from new levels introduced earlier this season, but they will be higher than previously accepted under "underbidding" conditions.
F1T.I.A. and F1TSSLU agreed to monitor situation in the market and revisit matter after Season 36 if necessary.
Also was agreed to skip one market and only run Wednesday's market instead.

Season (re)start
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-11-18 20:29:52

Another season ended and another new champion has been crowned, congratulations everyone who did well and pat on the back for good effort everyone else!
Since there are no new features planned this time, we will try a very quick turnaround (why wait?), reset should happen tomorrow (Wednesday) and first race of next season will be races on Monday, 24th November, 2008.
Of course, during season some enhancements are planned, but more about that when it happens (those are not features, or changes). Also note, that from start of season 36 (most probably) designer and commerce director markets will be global (every staff member will be open to sign by anyone), and both designer and c.director will gain some new attributes.
In recent weeks there was some effort to clean up layout and F1T looks, sorry for inconvenience that was caused as some changes made into game a bit premature and had to be cleaned up on live environment, but now that I am well into this process, I can review each page, make them a bit more usable and present some more data. Your feedback as always is much appreciated and if you have suggestions, they are very welcome!

Forum Signatures
By Jon Payton
2008-10-28 12:40:05

Recently, people began using images as forum signatures again - this in itself, was not a problem while the images remained small, static and inoffensive. However one particular user who shall remain nameless has refused repeated requests to use a signature which is not animated. Sadly, the result of this is a blanket ban on image signatures for everyone. sadly the childish behaviour of one user spoils it for everyone else. If you have an image as a forum signature please remove it immediately.

Ghostly Goings-on in the Driver Market
By Jon Payton
2008-10-14 16:47:18

Hallowe'en has come early to F1time and it seems there are spooks on the loose. There are 'ghost' drivers on the driver market - drivers who should not exist, or who should be invisible to the game. These are easy to spot, when you view the driver details they belong to a league with a high number. If the driver belongs to a league with a 3 digit number (100+), DO NOT BID ON HIM, HE WILL IGNORE YOU. The Exorcist is aware of the problem and will hopefully de-spook the markets soon.

One more (last) delay of last race
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-09-03 20:04:24

I know a lot of people are eager to finish this season, get over with it and have a fresh start, however to have that fresh start, many people need an extra driver market, which is why I have decided that there are good enough reasons and big enough demand for extra market to be squeezed in before the last race of the season.
Unfortunatelly there is no way to run market after the last race, because many people will have new contracts by that time and others will have random drivers filling empty driver spots, so we need to do it before the next race.
We will have two market decisions: One on Thursday and one on Sunday. If you need a driver, if you ABSOLUTELY need a driver for next season, make sure you bid, bid big and bid a lot - there is no extra cost associated with making 50 or 100 driver offers, so just submit as many bids as you can and do not forget to RANK your bis. (more than 50% of people still forget to RANK their bids resulting in very poor market results for them, because unranked bids are processed last).
Last race of the season will run early next week (Monday and Tuesday), after that there will be another week of preparations for restart and season restart will happen on 17th of September (Wednesday), with first race fo the season on 22nd of September.

Last race postponed to second half of the week
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-09-01 07:39:17

To allow everyone catch up on recent driver related issues, last race of the season has been postponed to second half of the week. This should give everyone a little bit of breathing room and few more days for me to address most pressing issues or to answer your questions in the forum.
Last market of the season will be run on Wednesday
Thanks.

Random drivers fixed
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-08-27 23:26:31

After careful review and lots of shouting and screaming in forums, I was quick to realize, I was wrong, the fix was not appropriate or sufficient to the situation.
To restore some justice and make the system fair(er) to everyone, I have:
- reviewed salaries of random drivers and changed current season salary to more appropriate (good driver would make around 3.5M or more in remaining 2 races of the season)
- allow managers to sign their random drivers for one more season with regular salary increase (so that aforementioned good driver would make 4-4.5M)
- compensate random drivers for those seasons of service when they were underpaid by paying them 10M for 1st extended season, 14, 18, 22 and so on for every next year (so 3 extensions actually would make manager pay 42M). If you are one of those, do not start the riot just yet - calculate how much you have gained in total, then think before you want to post something not nice in forums, then if you actually post something, make sure include those numbers, I think you will find little sympathy for those people where were paying full driver salary every season on their contracts
I understand there is no really totaly fair solution, but that is it - I will not address this issue anymore, we as a community have to close this page and move on, hoping there will be no reasons to have everyone divided so sharply on something and start name calling. There are no "cheaters" here, some people were given an option to extend their contracts and so many of you came forward and admitted that. Thanks everyone, now let's end this season on some nicer note.

Random drivers
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-08-26 22:03:12

Some of you have niticed and reported in forums, that for a while now random drivers that you get when you start the game were not aging. Clearly, every driver should get older each season and this had to be fixed. However what made matters worse is that owners of such drivers could extend their contracts at reasonably low salaries.
To fix this problem, starting next season you can not longer extend random driver's contracts. Also effective immediately, all contracts for random drivers signed for the next season have been canceled by F1T.I.A. and their asking salaries revisited to make them fair to everyone. If you have such (non aging) driver, you can extend his contract for one more season until the end of this season. After that you will have to look for a new driver in the markets.

Tidying up name
By Jon Payton
2008-07-25 13:48:30

Just a quick reminder that everyone's name should be displayed as - 1st name - surname. It also looks much better if capital and lower case letter are used correctly. The admin staff will be tidying this up, so if you see your name is edited don't be alarmed. We'll also be investigating a few dodgy names too, so if you are using a false name now's the time to correct it.

Season 32 starts on Monday
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-07-03 09:26:16

In light of few problems that we got (teams and testing) I have decided to postpone first race of the season to next week (Monday C4 and Tuesday the rest).
This will give more time for everyone to get ready, and for me to clean up that bugs forum section.
Thanks,
Tadas

Welcome to New Season!
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-07-01 08:48:48

First, testing is now open again, it was fixed and testing results updated as well.
Welcome to new season and you will see some changes, most noticeable on testing page. Each track now has testing ratings for all available testing types (except setup tuneup). Each testing type has only 1 5 star track. At any time you will have 5 testing tracks available to you (unless there is race on one of the tracks, then there will only be 4, since that one will be unavailable).
Tracks will be updated on Sundays, after markets, when any 5 tracks will be selected for testing. Track that has at least one 5 start testing is a bit more expensive than testing previously, but it will also give about 20% better results.
Have a good season all, and let the best win!

Don't test yet
By Jon Payton
2008-06-30 17:49:23

Problems have been found with both testing costs and testing results. Please DO NOT do any testing yet until Tadas is able to take a look at it. Thanks

New season, heads up [updated]
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-06-18 07:35:33

[UPDATE] Not for the first time, I bit more than I can chew at the moment, so reset still is not done. I hope I can finish some changes tonight and have new season open for Saturday. Theare are some good changes planned for new season too, some will come during season (not gameplay, just visual, but still usefull). That means that first race will be in the second part of the week too. Sorry about the delay. Tadas.
Season restart will happen next week only, this will give me some more time to work on few things before restart. Expect restart to happen next Tuesday (or Wednesday), with first race of the season on June 30th.
To compensate for this long wait everyone will get 2 free weeks of supporter service when season starts.
Thanks,
Tadas

A little Euro 2008 fun
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-06-04 09:53:19

Are you a football fan too? Going to follow Euro 2008 closely? Want to see if you can beat your F1TIME friends in prediction pool?
Now you can do it right here, on F1TIME. I needed a way to run my own friendly Euro 2008 predictions pool, so to save some time, created a small website to do just that.
You can join me and other F1TIME managers if you just click this link http://www.f1time.com/pick
Please feel free to invite all your other friends (even not playing F1TIME), it has no annoying ads, not even F1TIME logo, so you can have fun with your friends even if they do not like F1TIME :)
You can also create your own "Groups" with your own scoring system, even private groups (assign password to it and let only selected people know it) and join multiple predcition pools.
It is completely separate system from F1TIME, so you will need to create a new account (no activation necessary and no wait time). Yours,
Tadas

Drivers' market fixed
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-05-13 10:04:24

Last week we discovered market bug and it was fixed for the weekend market, which had to be rerun, but still many people observed that results of one market before that (April 30th) were not what they expected. Since next market (May 4th) was already done, there was no simple solution, because many offers were affected and each offer since then would have to be reviewed.
Since then I have tried to find reasonable solution and to make everyone happy, but it proved to be harder than expected, so at the end I have went through the list of April 30th bids manually and processed all orders. This means that some of you will find new drivers signed as of today. Now this market problem is resolved and I could run next market (due last Sunday).
We have also decided to increase number of drivers you can negotiate at one time from 3 to 5.
Please do not forget to rank your driver offers from best to worst. In many cases not ranking drivers will result in not signing any drivers at all, because other managers, who have submitted their rankings, will be given priority.

Now you can sign drivers when negative
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-04-27 07:00:37

In light of drivers' market changes it became obvious, that new "start contract immediately" feature is very important for managers who have overestimated their finances and need to sign less expensive driver. However under current rules it is not possible to make offers when your balance is negative. From now on this restriction was removed when offering contract with "start contract immediately" option.
Markets will run late Sunday, so hopefully some of you who really are in need of cheap driver to save money, have time to make your offers.
Good luck and good night!

[UPDATED] Markets
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-04-23 10:04:09

[UPDATE] Note that there was old rule in effect - you could not bid on driver if you had valid driver contract longer than or equal to 17 races (full season). Now you can bid on other drivers if you chose 'start contract immediately' option. You still would have to pay 3 salaries compensations if you were to sign that driver with immediate effect.
First markets of the season will run this Sunday (26th of April). Because market has changed a bit, all your bids made so far have been canceled, so please submit new ones.
As you know, you are able to sign new driver now with his contract starting immediately. You will have to pay 3 races compensation to your current driver at the time contract is signed, if you decide to use this option.
To give some time to current driver owners at the start of the season, their drivers will not be available until there is less than 13 races left on their contracts. Details of those drivers have been hidden too. When there is 12 or less races left on the contract, current owners still have ability to extend their contracts even if there are ongoing negotiations as long as no contract has been signed.
As always, after submitting your offers (bids), do not forget to rank your offers. If offer has rank 100, it is going to be last offer considered by that staff member and most likely other manager will sign him then.

C4 races live coverage delayed
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-04-14 16:46:54

Due to bad TV signal C4 races are delayed few hours while we are fixing satellite transmission problems. All races should start at 17:00 server time. We apologize for inconvenience, please stand by for live race coverage to begin shortly.

Season 31 changes
By Tadas Bubelevičius
2008-04-09 09:55:53

- DQP was replaced by DRP
- drivers lost a little bit of importance for lap times.
- Pole skill is more important in qualification (less random in qualify, faster lap times).
- 4 new tracks added (Singapore, Fuji, Valencia, Yas Island)
- Drivers lost 20% of the sum of their primary skills (Concentration, Skill, Speed, Racing Line, Stamina). Those skills have hard caps (limits) now.
- On your driver page next to DRP, maximum potential DRP for that driver is shown in brackets.
- Sponsors tweaked to differentiate from class to class (there was also a bug that was fixed, so change is going to be very visible in Class 3 and 4 sponsor offers)
- Engine and gearbox influence changed a bit for most tracks to reflect reality.
- Pit in/out changed for some tracks (about 10 tracks in total).
- Base design level raised to 40 from 30. - Markets will be open after first race, Only staff with less than 12 races on the contract will be available for negotiations.
- 25 laps for practice
- Wet driving 'bug' fixed. In the wet race wet driving skill now replaces part of the concentration skill. The heavier the rain, the more important wet driving skill is.
- Soft tyres are a bit more efficient than before
Thanks for your patience during season restart!