Been quite a while since the last time I’ve come to the forums and it was back in the old one.
It’s also been quite a while since I last played the game.
Here’re three things I’ve noticed that hasn’t been fixed since. Though I’m not sure if “fix” is the right word since… you know, the title:
Sports cars score in the negative when they’re oversteery. It’s especially weird to see a -10% penalty when I set the car to have a gentle oversteering tendency in a muscle/pony car. Oversteer is fun no? We all want our fast cars to be able to drive sideways?
Brakes are too powerful. Often I need to fit a tiny little disk to keep it from being too powerful, if going by the desirability numbers especially. It doesn’t make sense to fit a 250mm solid disk with a single piston to a car that does 186mph. Carbon-ceramics are so over-the-top that I’ve never been able to use them (in campaign).
Cornering doesn’t seem to be calculated separately for vehicle types. A muscle car’s desirability will go up significantly if it can corner at 1.15g. History and common sense would claim that cornering is irrelevant for a muscle car. It’s just not what they’re supposed to do. This particular desirability calculation also doesn’t seem to take the actual shape of the car much into consideration. It is frustrating to say the least to design a sensible, cheap 4-door saloon car and have it’s desirability rating in bright green for a track day car.
These are some of the things that bugged me a lot in the past and apparently continues to do so now.
I’m eager to hear your comments on these. Like I said, I’ve been away for a while and it is possible that these issues have been addressed by the devs in writing, during my absence.
Muscle/pony cars are for straight line speed and acceleration, so high speed stability is more important than good cornering or sliding around. Other types of sports cars should like the slight oversteer better.
The difference here is power oversteer vs neutral oversteer.
The graph in the suspension tab, as well as the penality to driveablility due to oversteer are related to neutral oversteer, which is oversteer in a corner with power applied only enough to keep the speed stable. That sort of oversteer is not something that you want, since it makes the car MUCH harder to drive on the limit, as going too fast in a corner can often result in the back end going out.
Even though you don’t want your sports car to plow into corners, you still want it to be reasonably easy to drive, or else you run into the same issues Porsche had with earlier 911s, or Toyota with the MR2, where they lost a lot of sales due to a reputation of snap oversteer.
I’d like to see what sort of tires you are using on that car with 250mm solid disks, as well as your braking power graph.
In general the issue with solid disks isn’t their stopping power, but their small thermal mass and poor thermal dissipation, resulting in brake fade.
As for Carbon-ceramic brakes, right now I’d say it’s more related to how easy it is to get 0% fade with the much cheaper vented disks. Further rebalances should make them more viable in the higher-end sport demographics.
The shape of the car doesn’t and will very probably never directly affect the desirability in the various demographics. Instead, factors related to the shape of the car like door count, overall size, aerodynamics, etc, affect the various stats of the cars and end up resulting in some demographics preferring certain body styles.
The only exception to this is with convertibles, as they get a flat bonus in the convertible demographics.
Also, if your cheap 4-door saloon is very desirable as a track day car, I suspect that parts of your design might not be optimum for a “boring” car.
I see.
That makes sense. However it also means there’s no tangible way of telling how the car actually behaves in “real world conditions” like under braking or during acceleration, basically how much “fun” the car is to drive. Sportiness header doesn’t really discriminate when it comes to that. It’s a bummer either way.
For the latest one that partly prompted me to create this thread it was:
Soft compound.
21" rims.
235mm width.
Don’t remember the side thickness, but it wasn’t super-thin. It was normal for a sports car, between 50-70 is my guess (it was in campaign mode and I can’t see the details now).
Mind you, a similar real world car like the new Mustang GT350 has:
Front: 394mm vented rotor 6 piston.
Rear: 380mm vented 4 piston.
305mm tyres in the back and 295mm in the front.
One thing to note would be that I typically allocate quite a bit of cooling air to the brakes. Though I doubt that even if I zero-ed it, I’d need 390mm vented rotor with 6 pistons in the front. I am especially aggravated by the apparent fact that rear brakes frequently require nearly 1/2 to 1/3 the power front ones do, regardless of the weight distribution or suspension settings, resulting in comparatively tiny rear rotors/drums, especially in sports cars.
Then there clearly needs to be a better way of calculating those desirability numbers or each ‘hull’ needs to have a base desirability that is dependent on its shape. I know how to build a boring car or a fast car or a van. The exotic desirability ratings are a common feature of any car in this game.
Brake fade IMHO defintively needs some adjustements, but that’s something that’s going to wait until UE4.
As for your example, the first issue is that you can’t really compare your car to the mustang, since your tires are quite a bit narrower.
Also remember that the brakes on the mustang are, like on most track cars, a bit overkill to reduce brake fade. The regular mustang has much simpler brakes, closer to your average car, and it’s more than capable of locking all wheels, and I am quite sure it would still be able to lock all 4 wheels with much stickier tires.
As for rear brakes, don’t forget rear tires have very little weight on them during braking, meaning you don’t need a lot of braking force to lock the rear wheels. If you have a pedal bike, you can even see the difference yourself, as the front brake stops you much faster than just the rear brake, which tends to cause a rear wheel skid pretty easily.
The rear disks on the mustang are probably that large only for brake fade reasons, and like I said some re balance might be needed with brake fade right now.
As for the multi-piston calipers, that’s something that might need some changes in the game, but probably not in terms of power but maybe in terms of brake fade, as the larger brake pads on those offer more thermal mass.
I built a commuter car real quick to make sure I wasn’t misremembering things, and this car defintively isn’t a desirable exotic at all.
I do score decently well in the budget sport demographics, but that’s because the car is cheap and very driveable. Some adjustements might be required, but it’s not as broken as what you are saying.
If you want to see what numbers are taken into account in desirability, go to the market screen and then hover your mouse over the selected demographic. If you want to see what goes behind each stats, go to the details tabs and select the desired stat. The effects of the various shells on those tends to be fairly self-explanatory.
While what you’re saying is -in principle- true, it doesn’t work as simply as that.
The weight on the rear axle largely determines how effective rear brakes are. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle, but there’s a marked difference on how quickly you stop using rear brakes when you’re alone vs when there’s a pillion in the back. Same goes for cars. Having a weight distribution that is rear heavy will actually increase a vehicle’s braking efficiency (with more rear bias) because the loads are distributed more evenly, rather than tossed all on the front axle. Some racing and track cars have brake bias adjustment that can be done on the fly to take advantage of optimum braking under changing conditions like tyre wear and fuel load.
Locking of the rear wheels can be a sign that there’s too little load on the rear yes. But it can be more correctly translated as having too much rear brake bias, which can be fixed with readjusting it. There are some videos of racing cars testing brake biases and clocking faster speeds around the track using more rear bias.
Yes, front wheels do most of the braking, but that’s hardly the full story.
On brake fading: Yes, Mustang’s rear brakes are that large for brake fade reasons. All brakes are as large as they are for brake fade reasons. They are vented and made out of exotic materials for brake fade reasons. Brake fade is practically the entire deal with braking and this game is -pardon my French- shit at it. That’s the whole reason why a solid rotor with 2 pistons is enough to stop a car doing 180mph, under loads of 1.7g, with no fade.
It looks like you’re making my point for me.
Your car’s desirability is more or less similar for a family car as well as a pony car.
… is comparable to a Ford Mustang? (This is where a picture of the Mustang would have been instead of its name, if I was allowed to post it.)
Yes, the prices are really close. There’s only about $2500 between a full Corolla and a base model V6 Mustang, but they are two fundamentally different cars. How can a family car can be in the same class as a pony car, even if their prices are similar? I mean one of them doesn’t even have 4 (full) seats. It’s literally like saying “Yeah I bought the Corolla instead of the Mustang because it’s cheaper and more drivable. Apart from those they’re the same”.
Your screenshots are exactly why I’m saying desirability numbers need a better calculation method and/or the chassis needs to be given a base number for its actual class. The current system works demonstrably poorly.
P.S.: Also a nitpick. What the heck is a “budget pony” supposed to mean? A pony car by definition means “an affordable and highly styled performance car”. There’s no budget pony car. Pony car itself is budget.
P.P.S: What’s the deal with new users being banned from posting more than two pictures? Who comes up with these rules? The most arbitrary and idiotic rule I’ve ever come across in any internet forum to date.
When and where did you hear of this happening, eh? No one gets banned for doing that. If you mean the limit on the number of photos, that’s to stop spam, bots, and other crap like that. All you need to do is like 10 posts or something.
This is a bit of a poor example. If you have a bike that weighs 200KG and then a rider that weighs 100KG, that’s already added 50% to the total mass. Add a pillion passenger that also weighs 100kg, and you’ve got yourself another 50%. With that in mind, it hardly matters where the passenger is sat, they could be at the front or the back but you’ll still need a hell of a lot more braking force compared to usual. It’s not like you stop using just your rear brakes very often anyway, the fronts are always going to be way more powerful.
Either way, the game already does simulate the effects of weight distribution on the brakes, as for a car with most of the weight over the rear axle you’ll need similarly sized, large brakes.
You do seem to be getting increasingly agitated here, and there’s really no need is there? It’s a simulation that is constantly being worked on and improved, not everything is going to be perfect.
You clearly didn’t see the amount of spam we used to get from spambots on the old forum then
The real problem with braking right now is that the game doesn’t simulate modern electronic brakeforce distribution. As mentioned before, brake balance is heavily dependent on weight distribution, so the game wants powerful front brakes and tiny rear brakes for front-heavy cars. But modern systems can modulate brake force, so you can have giant rear brakes for good fade but still have low brake force for good balance.
I’m not sure what you’re saying about the commuter car being competitive in the pony budget class? I mean, sure there’s a green number there, but it’s quite a bit less than the number for commuter, and the markup hasn’t been applied yet. You can get much better competitiveness by actually optimizing a car for the pony class. Competitiveness is highly relative and dependent on many factors. In real life, a small percentage of people who want a pony car are going to end up with a V6 Camry because of budget, practicality, or other reasons. That doesn’t mean that a V6 Camry is going to outsell a Mustang in the pony car class. In real life, people don’t exactly fit into pre-defined market classes like those in the game, they often are interested in aspects of two or more classes. Similarly, cars are also competitive in more than two classes, just like how a V6 family sedan can offer some of the power of a pony car with the day-to-day practicality of a regular family sedan.
Edit: Just realized you said you hadn’t played the game in a while. Yes, previous versions had a poor selection of competitor cars, which would make it ridiculously easy to get a high score in the pony class. The latest update of the game has a much better selection of competitors, so the desirability scores are more balanced now. Again, this game is still in development so there’s always things to improve on. Right now the devs are more focused on getting the new Unreal engine and campaign working, then there will be more rebalancing and revamping.
Brakes in the game are by no means overpowered. They are underpowered if anything, and it is a struggle to have good braking performance for a heavier vehicle until the 1970’s.
The brakes on real-life modern cars are overpowered, and sometimes unreasonably so in certain models. I suspect this is partly because of the mandated stability control systems that constantly use the brakes.
I drive a 2000 Altima that weighs roughly 2,950lbs (1338kg). The tires are the stickiest 205/60/r15s I could find. The front brakes are single-piston calipers with 280mm vented discs, and the rears are 230mm drums. I can lock all four wheels at will. I can lock the rears with the handbrake using the force of a two fingers. Those brakes are more than powerful enough for an average sedan.
The brakes in Automation do need some tweaking though. I would really like a brake-bias slider to help separate brake size, from brake power. More often than not the rear brakes tend to be too powerful at fade-less sizes, while the fronts are too weak. A bias slider would remedy this issue.
Allowed brake sizes could be increased too; as Automation won’t allow me to replicate my car. I believe the maximum brake size for 15in wheel is 260mm if I’m not mistaken.
As for the demographics; you have to keep in mind that this is a program that works with numbers. Demographic calculations look at all cars by their stats, and not their intent; which is something that can not be rationalized. The result is that you can have some cross-overs. That isn’t far from reality though. Sure, a Corolla has nothing to do with a Pony car, and no one would consider it… but replicating a Corolla in Automation wouldn’t really get you anywhere near the Pony Car segment either. Now a Subaru WRX on the other hand is a valid contender. No, it doesn’t fit the Pony car image for most people… but her performance sure does, and she should very well be competitive in that segment because of it. I know I’d pick up a WRX long before I even look at a Mustang.
Also, as Microwave has metioned… ease up on the hostility. Barging in and complaining as a first post is never a good impression.
In retrospect, I should have mentioned that the rear brakes are being used in conjuction with the front brakes and not on their own. I assumed it was a given.
I’m saying that while seeing only the numbers, one may think that the car in question might be suitable in a pony class, but seeing the actual physical shape of the car would dismiss any such notion. A family car like a Corolla or a Camry is not going to be a substitute for a Mustang. Now, after looking at the car itself we know that, but the game and the abstracted people in the game do not, because they cannot see it. That’s why I’m saying that the game needs to be told that a particular body is only suitable for this and that class and not the others. The way I’m proposing doing that is by giving each body a base value for classes it’s suitable for, based on their real life examples. A 4-door saloon body is more likely to be a family car for example and less likely to be a super saloon and very unlikely to be a track car. So it’d be given values to reflect those realities and the game wouldn’t think that a family car is also a good option as a pony car. Then all the other stuff can come into the equation like engine and transmission and tire size etc. to give a final value that’s largely within the frame of the classes the body belongs in.
As far as I’m concerned the real problem is not their power per se, but their almost supernatural tolerance to heat/fading. I don’t know how the game “tests” the brakes, but in real life they are subjected to a torture test to see and eliminate fading that can affect the performance and safety of the vehicle. Which is why brakes are “overpowered” as your experiences tell you. In game either the “test” is too mild or the materials are too strong.
I already addressed how the desirability calculations can -perhaps- be made to work more logically above. As for the WRX vs Mustang argument: Sure, performance-wise they can be comparable, but that’s where it stops. You can take the family out for a weekend camping trip in a WRX, but you can’t do that with a Mustang; it only has two seats. Most importantly you all seem to be unaware or forgetting that styling is one of the most important deciders as to how a car is classified. What makes a sports car a sports car is its looks almost as much as its performance. You cannot, cannot compare two cars based solely on their performance figures on paper. No one’s going to be able to convince many people to pay £150,000 for a car that goes like a Ferrari, but looks like a bell-end. That’s my point since the beginning; that the game needs to tell apart the bodies of the cars. Just because a car has sports car figures in its performance sheet doesn’t mean it can be considered anywhere near a sports car. That’s why there needs to be a way to account for their looks in the game as well.
To prove my point, I want you to guess which class you think these figures would classify this particular car as:
It could be a number of cars yes? It could be a super-saloon. It could be a slick grand tourer. It could be a high-end luxury car. The point is, you don’t know. You can’t tell what type of car it is unless you actually see what it is like. Simply by going with the limited data you have, you make a guess. In game terms this means making the car desirable in a number of classes, that could be appropriate based on the figures.
What if I told you that these figures actually belong to this:
Now that you know what it actually looks like, you know that it’s not a GT car, neither is it a super-saloon, nor a sports car. It could still be classified as a luxury car, though not really a high end luxury car. Simply by the virtue of the fact that you have seen it’s shape, everything became much clearer and you can classify it as appropriate.
The game needs to be shown the bodies as well.
I’m sorry you guys see it like that. I can get passionate when I’m talking about things I care about, but I assure you there’s a clear distinction between hostility and being passionate. In either case, I don’t tend to mince my words. I have neither barged in nor is this my first post. I’m not agitated. I’m as sober and cool as one can be. You guys need to stop reading it in a negative tone and start reading it in a level-headed and calm tone, because that’s how this whole thread is working in my mind. Not as a handful of petulant children shouting, but as grown adults who know how to behave in a civilised setting arguing their points in their own turns.
I think you are underestimating the depth of Automation’s calculations. What you are saying is basically exactly what the game already does. If you build a V8TT SUV, the game isn’t just going to read the power and acceleration values and throw it into a random class. The game is going to see that the body has 5 doors, 5 seats, and a large cargo capacity, and assign a high practicality value. It’s going to see that it has high ground clearance and big wheels, and assign it a high off-road value (compared to a sports car). It’s going to see that it is very heavy and has a high center of gravity, so it’s not going to corner as well. The high number of doors and seats will reduce it’s prestige score too. When you combine these factors, the SUV is going to have a much lower competitiveness in the sports category than a purpose-built sports car. Its score is not going to be zero, however, because like I said, not every buyer is going to fit perfectly into the sports category. But don’t go thinking you can build a 500hp SUV and suddenly outsell Corvettes in the sports category. If you haven’t played the game in a while, then I urge you to get it updated and try out the new competitors. I think you’ll find that the competitiveness scores will be much closer to what you expect, especially after you factor in the appropriate markups.
No hard feelings. There’s just been a few people who join to post that everything’s wrong, the devs don’t know anything about cars, and generally just start a shit-show.
I’ll have to disagree with you about the aesthetics dictating a car’s purpose or class, (unless we’re talking convertibles.) I believe what makes a sports car is based solely on the vehicle’s performance/capabilities. Having 4 doors doesn’t automatically make it an inferior vehicle for spirited driving.
Uh… the Nissan GTR has been doing that since 2007… though even cheaper, even faster, and even uglier.
To add to that, the devs don’t plan on ever adding looks into the desirability calculations, since it would be pretty much impossible to have an AI that knows if a design looks good.
As for car body shape relating to desirability, I think @phale pretty much nailed it with his explanation.
While a certain type of body shell won’t get a direct competitiveness boost in some demographics, the stats that are attached to that body will affect how desirable it ends up being in the various demographics.
Personally I think this style of demographics, which are based on general requirements instead of being based on body shell type like in gear city, since the more flexible definitions of the various demographics are closer to how it works in real life.
People usually don’t lock themselves to a body style when buying a car. Instead they ask for some characteristics that tend to favor some body styles instead of others.
