The Racing v2 Update & some Quality of Life Fixes

Release Notes

Racing Team Updates

Your racing venture gets a full chairman-style makeover: race weekends feel like events, the garage is a real management layer, people have faces and stories, and the season finally closes loops that used to trail off.

Race Weekend Spectacle (Racing V2)

Race day is no longer a three-label animation. It’s a proper weekend.

Where to find it: Empire → Racing Team → Race Weekend tab, or tap the status bar alert when a round is ready.

The flow:

1. Qualifying — grid is locked in and stored (no more re-rolling when you open the screen)

2. Pre-race briefing — strategy and setup recap

3. Live race — timeline of overtakes, pit stops, safety cars, team radio, penalties, and more

4. Classification & report — full results with readable team colours

5. Press interview — answer questions after the flag

Also new:

• Championship Standings board (F1-style driver & team tables with team colours and logos)

• Track profiles — click a circuit name for lap records, win history, flags, and trackside imagery

• Race replay / history on the Race Weekend tab

Race Weekend Polish

Readability fixes

• Qualifying grid, starting grid, and classification rows now use proper contrast (no more near-black names on dark purple rows)

• Driver stat bars show rounded values with sensible widths

More drama on track

• Expanded mid-race events: pit stops, tyre deg, battles, penalties, team radio, and more mechanical/crash lines

• High-overtake tracks get extra wheel-to-wheel action

• Safety car chance tuned up for more variety

After the chequered flag

• Post-race social sharing — optional posts to Pulse or your platform (tone varies: win, podium, points, double DNF, aggressive gamble)

• Press answers hit Sport Wire — what you say in the interview can show up as founder quotes in the sports feed

Garage & Car Development v 0.1

Where: Empire → Racing Team → Garage

• Dual-car garage — Car #1 and Car #2, each with wear, maintenance, and setup

• R&D projects and upgrade packages tied to your facilities

• Race-weekend setup presets — High Downforce / Balanced / Low Drag

• Facility bonuses and per-chassis quali/race simulation wired through

Sponsor Paddock

Where: Empire → Racing Team → Sponsors

• Logo-forward sponsor cards (shared football-universe brands plus racing-only partners)

• Dynamic empire-linked sponsors — rivals, platform holders, your own games/consoles/airline/gym can appear

• Who’s Who sponsor contacts for deal-making off the track

Regional Fans & Politics

Where: Empire → Racing Team → Fans

• 20 nationality fan markets for AI and player teams

• Fan growth, loyalty, and regional appeal simulation

• Political bridge — motorsport cohort affinity feeds into approval and mass appeal when you’re in politics

People, Portraits & Who’s Who

Drivers and staff are actual people now, not just name + stat blocks.

Where you’ll see it: Empire → Racing Team (roster, transfer market, staff hires), Who’s Who, and Sport Wire

What’s new:

• Portrait images for drivers and staff (cropped from collages)

• Nationality flags, gender, bios, and simulated career history (e.g. “formerly at Scarlet Motorsport”)

• Who’s Who entries for everyone on your roster, transfer listings, and hire candidates

• Role-specific meeting actions in Who’s Who — paddock coffee, R&D reviews, setup feedback, pep talks, contract chats (no random “acquire company” nonsense)

• Personnel news when you sign, fire, promote, or lose a poach:

  • Industry Gazette headlines

  • Sport Wire transfer/paddock articles with portraits

  • Pulse reactions from rivals, drivers, and the paddock

Track profiles: click circuit names on the calendar or in race weekend UI for full circuit dossiers.

Season Close-Loops

Things that used to fizzle out now have proper endings:

• Season-end modal with championship summary

• Sponsor bonuses & contract clauses (performance triggers, renewals)

• Contract renewals for drivers and staff

• Missed / auto-played races surfaced clearly so you know what your CEO ran without you

Empire CEOs — Run Your Ventures Hands-Off

A new command layer for the whole empire: appoint CEOs, set budgets and targets, and let them run — while you watch results roll in.

Where: Empire → Command → CEOs

New CEOs Screen

• Venture CEO table — every subsidiary at a glance: leader, hands-on/off mode, performance score, revenue, profit, YoY growth

• Expand any row for the full executive console: posture, weekly budget, risk tolerance, focus archetypes, and KPI targets

• Industry-specific targets you can set (routes & load factor for airlines, etc.)

• Proper performance charts — 52-week revenue and profit lines (readable Tycoon-style charts, not tiny sparklines)

Investor portfolio fix: gym and airline profit now flow correctly into the Stock Market → investor digest table. New CEO column shows empire CEO performance vs raw unit P/L.

Venture CEOs That Actually Work

Racing CEO

• Auto-runs race weekends when hands-off

• Watch-only dock when your CEO handled the race — see positions, points, and what happened without playing it yourself (mirrors football match-day watch flow)

Airline CEO

• Wired into the empire CEO system

• Opens routes, buys affordable aircraft, runs marketing when it makes sense

• Weekly budget injection — your CEO budget now transfers into airline cash so they can actually spend it

• Bootstrap routes on a fresh airline so growth isn’t stuck at zero routes

• No marketing spend when there are zero routes

Football & Wrestling CEOs

• Automation guardrails — clear banners when an empire CEO is active so you don’t clash with hands-on match prep

CEO Press & Media

Hiring a hands-off CEO isn’t silent anymore.

When it triggers:

• Right after you appoint a CEO

• When performance drops below 40 or climbs above 75

• Random ~8% weekly press beat (one global story at a time)

What you do: answer or defer the modal — choices nudge brand, reputation, and venture morale.

Political Campaign Director

You asked for someone below the venture CEOs to handle campaigns — here they are.

Where: Empire → Command → CEOs — scroll down past the venture table to Political Campaign Director

What they do (hands-off):

• One campaign action per week — rallies, ads, grassroots, safe public stunts, war-chest building

• Postures: Popularity, Organise, War Chest, Balanced

• Phase-aware picks (early campaign vs final sprint)

What they don’t touch (you keep control):

• Manifesto / platform

• TV debates (always your call)

Funding & charts:

• Weekly campaign funding — cash transfers from your company into party treasury each week

• In the final 12 campaign weeks, 30% routes to the war chest automatically

• Treasury / war chest readout on the director panel

• Poll share and mass appeal history charts over time

Notifications — Turn Down the Noise

Where: Utilities → Notifications (also under Settings → Notification types)

Mute what you don’t want popping up:

Always on: errors and critical alerts — those can’t be silenced.

When you mute community or industry events, the sim stops spawning new ones (existing pending events in old saves may linger until they expire).

Quick Reference — Where Everything Lives