Hey guys, I am new to this forum, and all the information that I have been reading through these last months about modifying the game files has made me wonder the question that I am going to ask you now.
One thing I want to do is a RTG type of career mode in which I start with a little continental team and it ends up being a WT big team, but what of the things that thorws me back is the fact is that, as there is a cap in wages that even if you get a very high sponsor confidence you are not going to be able to exceed, you can't keep the sponsor the whole experience.
I've done some research and the only thing that I have been able to figure out is that in the DYN_sponsor file, there are 2 fields (value_i_budget_min and value_i_budget_min) that may have some importance regarding this change, but I changed them with no luck.
Yes, there is a cap every year, but it rises with time if you keep the sponsor happy. I don't have PCM 18, but here's a career from PCM 17 with a custom team and where I've stuck with my sponsor the whole time. I started in the CT and my first budget (2017) was 672k/year. In 2020 my budget was 3,324k/year and in 2024 (now a top team in the WT) it went to 9,865k/year.
Well, I don't think I explained well what I am talking about, so I'm going to make an example about that .
On this first image, we can see that yes, if lthe sponsor is very happy, I will be getting for next year a budget of 1 014k/month
However, in this other image we can see that there is a cap in the salaries which can go from 950k/month to 1110k/month.
In the case of that the cap on this savefile is 1kk/month, even if I achieve super success I am not going to be able to get the 1041k/month, as the maximum for this sponsor is set to 1kk/month.
And my goal is, as you probably can guess, changing the cap with an editor in order to be able to grow the salary budget with no limits.
On this example (default squad Sky) you don't really need to break that cap, as with 900k you have already an amazing salary budget. The problem comes when you are starting with a lower team that has like 30k/month salary budget, whose maximum salary budget will probably something like 60-70k/month.
From your description this might be an oddity that was present in many/all previous PCM versions: Even if you're very successful and your sponsor is prepared to increase your budget by, say, 50%, you found you couldn't actually spend that much on new wages because they are based on the current wages, not the future budget.
The simple editing trick that I found for that is to use an editor, go to the table DYN_contract_cyclist and just add a 0 at the end of one of your cyclist wages. So suddenly somebody's earning 100k/month instead of 10k. Save that (under a new file name, just in case) and now load the new save game in PCM. Voila, suddenly you can spend a lot more money on new wages. But keep in mind the actual new budget so you don't go into debt next season. After you've completed your new squad don't forget to change the wage back to the original value.
Not sure if this works for you, but it's the only trick I know.
Hey, thanks for quick replaying again, but I think that my problem is another one, as I am a person who always uses 100% of the budget for optimizing my squad. Maybe this wasnt present in PCM 2017, as in PCM 2012 (last version I played) you didn't have this inconvenience.
Let's put another example that hopefully is more clear, this time with a custom team.
On this case, currently we have 50k/month on salaries, and a "global" max around 100k
If I get "super success", then for the next season I will be getting a 62k salary budget, and here is not the problem for me, as this seemed to work fine.
The problem comes when, in a season, I have a 100k budget, and, even if i get "super success", I will still get only a 100k budget for te next season as the "global" maximum is only 100k.
My question here is if there is any table in thich i can change the "global" maximum.
Still, thanks for the replay, this may work too, but sadly I don't have any savegames in which I can test this out, as I was waiting till I was sure that the sponsor will work fine.
That must be new then. I never hit a global maximum with any sponsor and I always start in the CT and finish when I'm by far the best WT team. I hope somebody else has an idea.
Maybe is my fault at understanding how this maximum works and I am asking an stupid question, please is someone knows anything about this topic replay, it can always be useful
The increased/decreased rate of salary is likely due to your current budget constituting a smaller proportion of the max after your changes.
I do feel the gradual increase/decrease in budget is a bit problematic at times. Whilst it's quite enjoyable to gradually build up your team it makes little sense that if you do really well in the World Tour no sponsors are willing to significantly bump up your budget.
Even if you win the World Tour you will only gain a slight upgrade in budget. This means that with a sub 200k/month budget it will take many years before you have a budget comparable to other top WT teams. This make it seem that sponsor offers are purely based on the size of the current budget and not performance and team reputation.
I have to admit, I should have checked something right away, I opened up a PCM 17 save file in Lachi's editor and DYN_sponsor only has one budget column, value_i_budget, no min or max. So there's definitely been a change in the way PCM 18 works (hooray!?) and thus my advice was useless, sorry.
