(outside) "THIS EXCELLENT STRATEGY GAME PUTS YOU IN CHARGE OF A GRAND PRIX TEAM AND YOUR TASK IS TO TRY AND WIN THE TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP" FEATURES: RACE ACTION - DRIVER SELECTION - RACING CAR ENGINEERING - MECHANICS - FINANCES - SPONSORSHIP PROBLEMS - CRASHES, ETC. GRAND PRIX Manager SILICON Joy SO1 For Spectrum 48K GRAND PRIX Manager SILICON Joy A division of Addictive Games Ltd GRAND PRIX MANAGER for ZX Spectrum 48K Copyright Silicon Joy 1984 INSTRUCTIONS Grand Prix Manager is an exciting and complex sports simulation game. You are given full control over a very large number of factors affecting the success of your Grand Prix racing team, which will test your judgement and financial skills to their limits. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the game is to secure a maximum Managerial Rating of 100. This can only be attained by winning the Team Championship League at the hardest Difficulty level. LOADING: Type LOAD "" and press ENTER. The program loads in 3 sections and takes about 5 minutes to load. The sequence of the game is... (1) SELECT DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY. You will go straight to this screen after the title screen. You may choose any difficulty level between 1 and 10, 1 being the hardest level and 10 the easiest. Degree of difficulty selected affects nearly every factor in the game, so beginners would be advised to start at an easy level. (2) SEASON LENGTH. You can select your season length in terms of number of races. This way you can get a 'result', whether you have 15 minutes or several hours in which to play. In addition, longer seasons will mean you need to be more careful with your finances: you are not allowed to go overdrawn in this game, as the Bank does not invest in losing motor racing teams! Season length therefore also affects the difficulty level. (3) TEAM SUMMARY. This screen shows your rival teams' strength, in terms of driver skill and morale, car perfection rating, and number and quality of mechanics. Use this to judge suitable levels of investment in these elements later in the game. (4) SEE SPONSORS. You now pay your first visit to your sponsor, your only source of finance in the game. At each visit he will ask you how much you want. You must judge your request carefully, as he will reduce his offer if he thinks you are being greedy. However, he is fair, and will therefore vary his offer according to the number of races left in the season. During the season, the amount he is prepared to give you will depend on your success in the last race: he only likes to sponsor successful teams! (inside) (5) SELECT DRIVER. You may now hire a driver. The success of a driver is a function of 2 distinct factors, his innate skill and his morale. You are shown his skill rating on this screen. You can obtain the morale level of drivers currently driving for rival teams from the Team Summary screen (see (3) above) which can be re- accessed from the MENU (see below). Unemployed drivers' morale ratings are hidden, as they may be in real life: you'll have to take a chance! If you try to hire a driver currently driving for a rival team and are successful in obtaining his release, you will have to pay the transfer fee indicated. (6) MECHANICS Mechanics can have spanner ratings, indicating their skill levels, between 1 spanner and 5 spanners. 5 spanner mechanics are the most skilful, but also command the highest wages. You can hire any number and any combination of spanner ratings, although above a certain number you will find the law of diminishing marginal returns comes into operation! The quality rating quoted on the Rivals Summary screen is an average spanner rating. (7) CHANGE TEAM/DRIVER NAMES You can rechristan all the drivers, and change any of the teams' names. Therefore, you may make yourself driver and team manager!! (8) MENU You now move to the main MENU, which you will cycle through from now on. The options offered are: (1) Driver Summary (2) Car Summary (3) Hire Mechanics (4) See Sponsors (5) Rivals Summary (6) Go to Race Most of these options will already have been accessed to get to the Menu stage, so see above for details. The first exception is the Car Summary. In this option you may buy a new car (rather expensive!!), arrange for a service to your car (which improves its "Perfection Rating") or invest in Research and Development into increasing your cars 'Perfection Rating'. The second exception is option (6), "Go to Race". Once you have set up your team to your satisfaction via the Menu, selecting option 6 will take you to the next race in the season. You will be given an Expenditure Summary, news (if any) of what improvements the other teams have made for this race and will then have to determine your Race Plan. The Race Plan is constructed in 2 stages - 'SELECT WING ANGLE' and 'SELECT TYRES'. As you probably know, Grand Prix motor cars have a large aerofoil which assists roadholding. The larger the angle the greater the roadholding. Similiarly, Grand Prix tyres have varying degrees of hardness/ tread: the harder the tyres or greater the depth of tread, the better the roadholding. You are presented with the following information: (1) % of Bends/% of Straights: the greater the percent of bends on the course, the larger the wind angle required to achieve safe roadholding. (2) Temperature: the higher the temperature the more grip your tyres will have. (3) Probability of Rain: varies between 0% and 100%. Tyres will have more grip in the dry. The wetter the track, the greater the wing angle required to obtain safe roadholding. You must accurately estimate the correct value of wing angle/tyre tread and tyre depth ...otherwise you will crash!! You then move to the race proper: you may see full race highlights or bypass the highlights and go straight to the results table, the Pitstop Time Summary and the League Table. At the end of each season you will be given a Managerial Rating. There is a maximum for each skill level...will you ever get to that magic 100 mark? Grand Prix Manager programmed by Peter Boulton. Copyright Silicon Joy 1984. All rights reserved. Unauthorised copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting of this product is prohibited. The publisher accepts no liability for errors in the software nor liability for damage arising from the use of this product. SILICON Joy 7A Richmond Hill, Bournemouth BH2 6HE