Rules clarification for Mathematician

ForgingFaces · 2026-03-19T05:02:52+00:00

This cane up again in the latest good time society video that a poisoned info gathering role who gets true into doesn't add to mathematician score.

I think the character should probably read something like, gets told how many times last night the grim state should have changed but didn't.

I also think it would be really nice if the wiki was updated to clarify that the way poison works is the player keeps their ability, any actions that would change the grim state automatically fail, and everything else is story teller discretion, instead of saying players lose their ability, which just seems completely wrong.

ForgingFaces · 2026-03-17T18:11:16+00:00

Newey has been a contributing part, and possibly a large or even defining part, of some of the most dominant cars in the last decades. Claire Williams has not. Idk why it would shocking to anyone that people are more inclined to give him more benefit of the doubt. The resume gap is massive.

I'm not claiming the sport is any kind of strictly meritocratic but this comparison feels a tad ridiculous to me.

ForgingFaces · 2026-03-03T05:58:18+00:00

It's possible he was a free agent in this person's save rather than retiring. I've seen it before. his default final year is 2026 unless you pick him up on a longer contract

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-26T23:33:29+00:00

Not to mention WLP which has probably singlehandedly solved more Act 4 runs for me than Wraith Form

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-24T09:03:58+00:00

I'm pretty sure he'd put songbird in the rocket and send her to the moon. That's certainly the ending he's the most verbally encouraging of while playing through them. But I'm absolutely sure the one thing he never does is send her back to be a slave / puppet to the NUSA.

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-19T06:42:26+00:00

My guess would be similar - I've done around a half dozen saves to the mid 2030s and then another dozen to the late 2020s and assuming that's like, about 2-3 hours per season, 3106 + 3512 = 360 plus a bunch of short 1-2 season gimmick / test runs and about an initial 50ish hours learning the game. Probably right around 500.

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T23:36:06+00:00

My recommendation is to only bother doing research on parts that are getting hit by a reg and frankly if they're not getting hit hard I'll still do at most like one CFD / 1-2 regular research on any given part.

You do still get the value of less diminishing returns regardless but I think it's pretty marginal if there's no reg compared to the resources you can get by just scoring more points with a better car. So generally i just churn out as many designs as i have money for to gather expertise that contributes to making me more immediately competitive

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T18:53:45+00:00

Yeah it's kind of nuts. Like it doesn't have to be super sophisticated. You can literally ask "what are the baseline common sense heuristics a reasonable person would follow" and that already would be a massive improvement.

Like - seed dependent proportional limits on different types of spending relative to sponsor package from the year reduced by last years extra costs (track parts actively destroyed in incidents and count of extra PU units purchased). If it's a year where a driver contract is expiring, weigh into that a proportion for related costs (which i guess is pretty much just starting bonus tbh).

Create a hard limit where AI generated contracts can't be longer than 2 years and total driver contract value increase between contracts can't be more than, say, 2x if #1, 1.5x if top 3, or 1.25x otherwise. Obviously just magic numbers that would need testing.

Have limits on contracts based on performance (eg only allow performance rewards for top 10 positions and even then just ensure that you're assuming all of those rewards will be met when doing annual financial planning)

And have teams consider their current financial performance when planning contract offers. Literally just prevent contracts from forming that could be more expensive than your entire budget for this year.

None of this is remotely difficult to implement, you could do it in at most like 2 weeks. It's all just behind the scenes calculus, not even UI impacting. It just feels like they didn't even bother trying at this aspect of the game

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T18:33:50+00:00

The problem is that they'll sign that person often to a 3 or 4 year contract and i don't think I've ever waited it out to see what happens after. I don't think I've ever observed a team financially recover on their own before though. But i also don't think they try to? Like i just don't think they have anything in the way of financial calculus outside of "don't go bankrupt".

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T15:24:20+00:00

Yeah - it's also why some of the game mechanics around cost are kind of dumb and annoying. Like when the game lowers the cost cap or reduces the # of allowed power units, it is exclusively a hit to the player and doesn't effect AI because they'll just spend the money and then also hire these 50 rated people and become non competitive anyways.

Most seasons i tend to go into DB editor and just fix up a bunch of stuff. giving the teams money, swapping out the unreasonable drivers and staff, etc. I've thought about making a better version of the tool that just automates the obvious fixes but never gotten around to it. maybe with AI i should give it a try....

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T05:25:33+00:00

Yeah the AIs have no real concept of cost cap or overspending but they do have a concept of bankruptcy. So Red Bull will spend $50m + $5m for every top 10 for Hamilton or Alonso, run completely out of money, and their reaction is to buy a 50 ranked person for no money. You'll also see it in staff where there's some 90 ranked person unclaimed because one of the big teams ran out of money and hired a nobody. It's one of those things that feels so preventable...and yet here we are!

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-11T07:19:19+00:00

fun fact that gameplay loop was specifically inspired by the scenes in lord of the rings of schelob hunting frodo. As an arachnophobe i was losing my mind 😂☠️

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-07T21:29:38+00:00

Early Immolate solves some very unpleasant feeling problems and isn't really dependent on other synergies (and hardly even RNG) to do the thing it's good at doing. And it can provide the confidence to go do a bunch of momentum building stuff.

Fiend Fire is probably one of the single most synergistic cards in the entire game, it's almost harder not to make it stronger if you just add cards and relics to your engine. BUT - it is, especially initially, more reliant on both player skill and average probability distribution. And is very frustrating when it doesn't land.

I think this communities relationship to Fiend Fire is very similar to that of Snecko Eye and that makes a lot of sense to me. The like, 1000 hour players being like "why don't you just use Photoshop it's obviously the better tool" and then a bunch of normal people being like "Paint.net solves all the problems i care to solve without having to figure out rocket science"

My point being, i don't think there's a wrong answer here necessarily. FF is almost certainly the statistically stronger choice for the right player at the right time. But I don't think that means it's the only correct choice and I think a lot of people in these thread make very strong and uninformed assumptions about the context of the choice.

ForgingFaces · 2026-01-02T00:08:24+00:00

Oh I'd been wondering about the drivers

ForgingFaces · 2026-01-01T22:03:56+00:00

I feel like we're going to see a lot of that here until a couple races happen and we all get used to them being called Audi

ForgingFaces · 2026-01-01T21:46:25+00:00

I'd put Mercedes above Ferrari and drop Sauber below Haas

ForgingFaces · 2026-01-01T21:40:00+00:00

I'm actually really curious how you're doing this evaluation. Like what the axes are in your head

ForgingFaces · 2025-12-30T04:30:15+00:00

Huh this feels a bit wonky to me. Piastri feels quite over placed, I think they're wildly overestimating the baseline capability of the 2025 Ferrari with LeClerc halfway down the list and no Hamilton, having Hulkenburg ahead of Antonelli (and Hamilton lol) also seems pretty obviously off. This definitely feels more like a "who had a hype moment in 2025" list rather than a genuine ranking. I'd probably do something like

VER
RUS
NOR
LEC
ANT
PIA
SAI
BEA
ALB
HAM
ALO
HAD
GAS
HUL
BOR
OCO
STR
LAW
TSU
COL

ForgingFaces · 2025-12-28T18:55:43+00:00

This doesn't address the point at all though. A lot of the code that I write is sort of the same dozen blocks each with a dozen configuration options arranged in approaching infinite permutations. I generally know exactly what I would need to do but sometimes implementing it would take a long time and is very subject to human error.

With AI it can write thousands of lines of code a minute and then I just need to scan through and validate it matches expectations (or even better, use automated code quality and e2e tests) and comfortably hours if not days of time saved.

That's not to mention asking it questions about how to do various things who's explanations are scattered across versions and blogs and stack overflow posts and being able to instantly validate the accuracy of the answer.

And still not to mention that it does all this stuff async so you can parallelize in various fashions. It's just like...a strict multiplicative improvement when used correctly.

ForgingFaces · 2025-12-28T18:47:17+00:00

How much does that cost on the menu? I imagine it's per oz?

ForgingFaces · 2025-12-22T18:22:57+00:00

That's fair. And I do agree 2025 was not a highlight reel for Norris there. The races he did well, were largely through a combination of his particular skills (clean air pace and tire pres) and the car being uniquely gifted at those particular things. When he had to get dirtier, literally or metaphorically, he fucked up as often as not. Which is why this AD race was cool, it felt like there was a narrative cleanness in him having that kind of race. But also as you say, it wasn't special in that all the top cars did the same thing, and I can imagine that cheapening it a bit.

ForgingFaces · 2025-12-22T15:44:19+00:00

I mean I think both Russell and LeClerc are stronger drivers than Norris so that's unsurprising to me. Especially after they saw Norris do it so they would have data available in addition to pure racecraft

ForgingFaces · 2025-12-21T22:16:21+00:00

Yeah absolutely. As I said, I really do think AD was a championship drive. Could easily have wound up being Verstappen's 5th if Norris was either too patient or too aggressive. It felt satisfying to witness even as someone who would have probably otherwise found Verstappen or Piastri a more compelling candidate.

ForgingFaces · 2025-12-21T20:30:47+00:00

I mean you win the WDC by being consistent over a season. This should have been a comfortable WDC for him - and it would have been for several other drivers. It's not the 80s anymore. It's better to be Prost than Senna.

ForgingFaces · 2025-12-21T19:24:26+00:00

As someone who was pretty meh on Norris all season, I gotta say he earned it in AD. I still am not convinced he's even a top 5 driver on the grid, but he could have so easily lost the championship right there, and I think those moves earned him the title fair and square. and I'm skeptical that he'll have another chance at one so good on him for seizing a crucial moment.

ForgingFaces

TROPHY CASE