Back-to-school 2017 release

(12:00 09-08-2017)
We are targeting having a new release at the start of the next season on Sunday 3rd September around the start of the school year for a lot of countries (apologies to some countries in the southern hemisphere).

Game enhancements
As already announced with a previous release, we are working on a number of enhancements related to relays:

1. Include relays in the individual championships: this will be something extra for the users to manage. Relays will be something worth focusing more attention on as there is glory and money to win. We also think this might change the focus on the market (more interest in skills that benefit the relay teams) and of course there is the economic benefit of prize money to win in relays at the championships.

2. Add categories to the relay teams:
- if there are no masters in the team, the age of the oldest athlete will be the age of the team
- if the team consists of only masters, the age of the youngest athlete will be the age of the team
- If the team is a mix of masters and non-masters then team will be part of the category 22-34 (seniors)

3. Create club, national, continental and world records for relays

4. Allow ranking of relays per age category

5. Show the individual skills when selecting athletes to make a relay team

Economy
We consider changes to make a shift in the economy to increase income for teams who actively participate in the game and reduce the “fixed” income for teams who are not actively involved in the game. As a start we will improve the balance between athletes' salaries and sponsor income which will reduce the salaries. Currently the salaries are partly based on the number of fans of an athlete and this factor will be removed to decrease the salaries.

Promotion of the game
To stimulate the promotion of Maxithlon, we plan to include a point system for voting in browser game pages.

Fixes
As with the previous releases there will be a number of small fixes included.

The development team
Ned, Apolo, Ivanovik & Guyvandamme