Hello, Golden Lap enjoyers!
We’ve got fantastic news for you this week! The next major update is finally here!
Introducing the Spy Update
Inspired by thrilling events from the 70s, the spy feature lets you send a spy to another team between race weekends. Your spy can then sabotage one of your opponent's parts or copy a design to get you a powerful part for free.
But be careful! If your spy is caught or your stolen part is reported as fraudulent, you’ll face penalties!
Both players and AI can send spies. You can deploy a spy once per race weekend and up to twice per season. Sending a spy costs $10 of your team’s budget.
Along with the new features, we're making other noteworthy balance changes and enhancements, including ramping up the aggression of AI drivers and limiting the building of parts to one per race weekend.
The Spy Update levels the playing field, helping underdog teams compete, making late game more competitive, and providing opportunities to spend your budget late in the game or playfully disrupt other teams.
ℹ️ These changes will significantly alter the game’s balance. To ensure everything is top-notch in the main releases, we'll start by sharing the Spy Update on the public beta branch.
✨ Your input is essential for refining the new features, so please try the Spy Update, complete a few seasons, and let us know what you love and what you'd like to see changed. We greatly value your feedback! 🙏
⚠️ As always, remember to backup your save data before trying the beta builds. If you experience a game-breaking bug, please avoid using the in-game report form. Instead, collect your save files and the error logs and send them directly to us by email or on Discord (for the file locations, see the How to Report a Bug post).
v250205_edacf2cc3 Changelog
Spy Update
- the player and the AI can send a spy to another team (cost is $10 per spy, up to 1 spy per weekend, up to 2 spies per season)
- the spy can copy a part design (gets you a free part)
- the spy can sabotage a part (failure results in a penalty)
- the spy can report a fraudulent part (results in a penalty)
Gameplay Improvements
- you can now build only one part race weekend (the change will apply in a new career or after you complete one race weekend in your current career)
- AI will use high engine mode more often
- AI will occasionally push the car past its limits
- you can tune the car in Quali during red flag (send out is still after the red flag ends)
UI Improvements
- long driver and team names are handled gracefully
- retiring team members who participated in previous seasons, but were not hired in the current season, will be included in the retiring members summary at the end of the season
- added a Points column in race results screen
Mod Improvements
- mod debug now checks the number of free drivers in the mod and returns a warning if there are too few
Bug Fixes
- fixed an issue where AI drivers with puncture won't pit sometimes
- fixed various issues with car speed and position in standings during yellow and red flags
- fixed issues with sponsor challenges not clearing in certain cases
How to access the Public Beta branch
To access the public beta build:
- right click on Golden Lap in your Library
- select Properties
- go to the Betas tab and then select the public-beta branch (screenshot below)
- wait for the update to finish
- verify the installation
