So I was thinking, while I don’t see it being terribly useful to have complete control over individual gear ratios, I would like a feature where you can limit the amount of overdrive gears.
I was trying to replicate a 1966 Escort using a shop manual, and I got almost everything to spec; but the gearbox is a 4-speed with a 1:1 fourth gear. I couldn’t really get that in the game without a really stupid setting that made the car useless.
Would it be easy to have a feature something like “number of overdrives” and pivot the gear ratios around that? so if I select no overdrives, final gear is 1:1, one overdrive, second-to-last is 1:1 etc, (max 2 overdrives?)
for a little 80hp sport coupe in the 1960s, it makes little sense to have a 0.75 or 0.8 overdrive as fourth gear… too slow!
In fact almost all cars have one gear on 1:1 ratio, and on most cars that’s usually 4th, or 3rd if 3 speed manual.
I have been thinking the same thing for quite a while, and while I do agree that adjusting each gear individually, which in my opinion would be ideal, might be overkill on game such as automation we still should have one gear that is 1:1 what ever the case is.
I personally think it would be nice to have customization over individual gear ratios. Many transmissions are evenly spaced between gears, however many aren’t. A LOT of automatic transmissions, once 5+ speeds became commonplace, have weird ratios. For instance:
The Chrysler 62TE transmission. I drive a Town & Country with one and it’s awesome.
To make the 6-speed 62TE, they modified the existing 4-speed 41TE. They added a gear before first and after first.
It means first, second and third are all within 1000 rpm’s of eachother - 1st goes to 35 mph, 2nd goes to 55 mph and 3rd to 65. It makes a big heavy van feel very fast around town and it pulls like crazy once it hits that lonnng 4th gear.
It’d be cool to have customization over ratios so we could specialize transmissions to specific aplications.
That’s what I do, because I actually mod BeamNG (see my ‘Gavril Engines’ mod with 130k downloads teehee) I just change the .jbeam files. But it would be cool in Automation too.
I go too much on trial and error to go adapt the .jbeam file. I’d really wish for some in-game configuration sliders. I guess I should just learn up on gear-ratios. (I actually haven’t played around with this in Beam, only with tire pressure and fuel load… but at least I think it’s not possible now).
In Automation I understand why it is not modeled. Two parameters for gearing are already difficult enough to use in the score calculations.
It is in fact possible to make in-game ratio sliders via jbeam, as you can see in Beam’s Race Transmission configs. Maybe we could get the devs to incorporate the jbeam code for that into the exporter?
After experimenting a bit, I cannot seem to find the gearbox data in the .jbeam files of some cars. For others it works perfectly, thanks for pointing that out.
Most manual transmissions were also known for uneven gears. A three speed was often converted to a four speed by adding a gear in between first and second. Then you slap one in the back and you’ve got a five speed. But one well known observation would be a longer third gear.
Just noticing something from processing cars. 3-speed automatic has a 0.75:1 ratio (overdrive) for 3rd gear.
Dunno about Europe, but this wouldn’t be a thing in the US. 3-speed autos would have a 1:1 3rd gear. Only 4 speeds would start having OD gears.
I think for most people, custom gearing would be excessive. But between this and the weird-ass final drive ratios, transmissions just seem funky to me. I mean, I’m looking at one where the final drive is 4.88:1. Common “short” gearing here would realistically have been 4.11:1. 3.70:1 or 3.53:1 were common for highway cruising.
The argument why they don’t do this is, along with various other details of car design, is that ‘officially’ (rather than based on player behaviour) Automation is a tycoon game and not a car design simulator, so excessive effort in implementing ‘irrelevant’ features is not a good way to spend time and money.
I think that IF car design simulation proved to be a bigger draw for sales than the tycoon element that Camshaft should consider the direction of future development, simply as a matter of good business. They already recognise the value of collaborating with BeamNG. It’s quite possible that simulationists are a vocal minority, however.
The only real “issue” I’m having that while I try to get one of the gears match the realistic 1:1 ratio I often have to have stupidly long or stupidly short final drive.
And final drive on most cars (At least those that I’m familiar with) is between (Lowish) 4.xx:1 and (Highish) 2.xx:1 Some larger or offroad oriented might have tighter 5.xx:1 but still having that one gear that has 1:1 ratio on gearbox.
