Yes, and there may be benefits and/or drawbacks for that.
2 Likes
I notice no worldbuilding questions have been posted in the forum yet. Is that because no one’s been asking, or because all the questions have been posted in DMs instead?
Well, I haven’t asked any, yet. Mostly because I’m kinda trying to think of one or two really good ones that will give me some useful information.
THB, I haven’t asked any because I haven’t seen much of the world building reflected in the reviews. My perception from the reviews is that they are more heavily weighted toward a regular “car against car” type comparison like other challenges without a lot of consideration for the Aragan lore that we were building. Perhaps my perception is not accurate, but that’s the feeling I have. So I admit to feeling a bit ‘meh’ about world building.
Kinda, but I downsized my engine and made sure to give plenty of engine block “headroom” because of the roleplay. So it’s affecting somewhat.
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ROUND 2 LOBBYING RESULTS
Many people did not engage with lobbying. Eh, not my problem.
Leaded fuel will be banned completely from 1968 onwards, and banned in new cars from 1965 onwards. Most people were in favour of a ban, with only a couple wanting it to stick around.
As there is no clear lobbying on taxes, the Aragan Government has made two decisions:
- A slight modification of the underlying tax equation, to allow for easier tweaking in future. The new base equation is Tax=1.5^((displacement-3000)*506.25. This equation outputs the same values for every potential displacement as the old one. Why? Because now, if I want to change scaling, I have a nice, easy way to do it. Raising S means that cars under 3L get less tax and cars over 3L get more.
- On that note, S is being raised to 1.6.
The effect of these can be seen here.
There were items from write-in lobbying which will be brought forward, but they will not be lobbied on, currently.
10 Likes
One worldbuilding question:
Provided that we don’t get a complete set of tracks to test on for the racing round: what are the Aragan racetracks like? Are they oriented more towards long straights, flowing corners (e.g., Road Atlanta, old Silverstone) or more tight and twisty (like many Scandinavian racetracks)?
3 Likes
WHAM!! Welp, big block it is then. That said, are we being limited to solely 86-AKI Unleaded as in the game, or are we getting a different octane like the Soviet AI-93 (93RON/88AKI)?
I kinda agree with the above that the worldbuilding questions weren’t super useful, but I also think they’re pretty fun. So here’s my question:
What/when was the event that the Aragan people think of as having “created” Araga? And, if I may include this, why?
(for example, USA citizens generally think of the 1775-83 American Revolution as when the country they know today was born. A Spaniard, meanwhile, would think of the 1469 marriage between Isabel of Castille and Fernando of Aragon as having eventually created Spain.)
I’ll answer this now: You’ll be given tracks.
Also… Guess I’ll extend worldbuilding questions, how about an extra week? So closing at 11:59 PM ITC on the 24th?
1 Like
Ok, worldbuilding question: how is Araga’s relationship to its neighbouring countries? Any friendships/alliances, or rivalries?
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With this in mind, I have already made one new engine variant (from the family that I have been using since the first round) designed specifically to run on unleaded fuel.
World-building question: When the average Aragan citizen goes on vacation, what activities do they enjoy doing?
(Yes, I’m trying to find out if towing trailers for camping or towing boats will eventually become a thing, but at the same time, trying to figure out if just giving a comfortable car that goes anywhere will be enough.)
3 Likes
World Building Q:
Is the democratic system more Right-Leaning, (akin to the United States), Left-Leaning (akin to New Zealand), centrist, or equally balanced?
ie, is their “Radically Left/Furthest Left” party centre/centre-right or is it far left?
2 Likes
WORLD BUILDING ANSWERS, OR: I'M NOT DEAD YET
First and foremost, apologies for not including worldbuilding stuff. The reviews were somewhat rushed due to the expectation of adverse IRL stuff - which did eventuate, and has is why I didn’t post for a while.
@Edsel It varies in the different parts of the country. Araga started out as a union of smallish colonies, similar to the US and Australia. For some, it starts with the foundation of the first colony, in 1769. For others, it starts with Federation, in 1812.
@cake_ape Being a formerly colonial society, many of its neighbours are similar, and the relationships are strong - think of the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand. However, there is a disputed land border on the west of the country, between Araga and the Kingdom of Passant. Whether this will escalate or not remains to be seen; it’s viewed as less important as there are few large cities there, and not much trade.
@Madrias The new highway network has had major impacts on holidays. By concentrating traffic in a small number of corridors, national parks have flourished; accordingly, when people travel to rural areas, camping is common. However, if you’re looking to get to a good spot, you don’t need to use a super off-road capable car. It’s split pretty evenly between travelling to the cities to see museums, attractions and such, and enjoying Araga’s natural beauty.
@Fayeding_Spray Well, I’m already writing what I know so… Let’s go more left, around NZ. Makes sense given stuff like the push towards urbanism and the early introduction of environmental laws.
8 Likes
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ROUND 2R: I AM SO SMART, SMRT
Some housekeeping first: Round 3 is coming, but I have to do a bunch of work beforehand to get it working. It’s been delayed by IRL, not by this bonus round.
Basic Rules
- Rules discussion, feedback, additional submissions of cars open until 11:59PM UTC, on Thursday the 4th of August. Feel free to let me know any and all opinions of this round.
- Challenge will be open until 11:59PM UTC, on Sunday the 21st of August.
- Four classes to choose from for designing your car: Special, Modified, Rally, Trucks.
- Enter as many classes as you want to, but you can only submit one entry per class.
- Use one of the cars in this .zip as your base - it’s pulled from each person who submitted the car and gave approval in the same thread. If I missed yours, feel free to shoot a reminder and/or post it here in the thread. If your car is in the pack, you may use it - or you may use someone else’s. If your car is not in the pack, and you have not released it so anyone can use it, you cannot use it. Either anyone can use your car, or nobody can, not even you.
- Clone the model, by pressing the “Clone car model and corresponding car trims” button. Do the same for the engine family. If you do not do this, your car may not be reviewed or considered.
- Name your model and engine “ALC<1/2, whichever number is in original submission>R<Group of Car> - <Original Creator’s Name> - <Your Forum Name>”. For instance, if I modded Ldub’s car from the first round for the Truck group, I would name it “ALC1RT - ldub0775 - AMuteCrypt”
Engineering rules applicable to all series
- Cars must fit within a certain “Performance Bin” for the class, more on that later.
- We are making cars for the 1964 Season. This means that you are allowed to increment the model, family, trim and variant years to 1964. From an in-universe perspective, this means replacing stuff like bushings, bearings, that sort of thing which was always allowed in the era.
- Cars should be tuned to 98 RON leaded pump gas. There is no benefit to using unleaded or 92 RON.
- Aesthetic changes are mostly free, with the important note that the overall feel of the base car must be kept, and the final product must still have headlights, taillights, wipers and mirrors. There is a notable exception to that, which is wing, spoiler and lip fixtures. For those, the rules are:
– No more than four in total
– No more than three in front of the front axle, or behind the rear axle
– All should be visible from outside the car, and should not be mounted crazily far from the car. - You must include 0-quality Standard 50s safety or better, a standard AM radio (not prem or luxe), and your choice of Basic/Standard/Sport interior (not prem, luxe or hand-made).
- Chassis type and material, panel material, engine placement and suspension type must all remain unchanged from stock.
- Drive wheels and number of gears are must both remain unchanged from stock. All other trim options are free unless otherwise stated.
For all categories except Special, the following apply:
- Engine swaps are not allowed. Everything in the family section can not be changed. Head material, valvetrain, cylinder count, family bore, family stroke are all fixed.
- Number of carburetors/throttle bodies/barrels per carb can not be changed. Intake type is free.
- Exhaust, conrods, pistons, sliders etc are all free. Variant bore and stroke are free. Quality is free.
- Morphs are fixed and cannot be changed.
For Modified and Special, for administrative reasons, you must use sports compound tyres for your submissions in these series. If you do not, I will swap to sports compound tyres, then check if your car is still legal.
Tracks, Performance Rating and Your Goal
For this, we will be using tracks from Der Bayer’s Automation World Track Pack, plus ATT. Specifically, we will use ATT, Al Rilma Beach, Ellisbury Road Course, Narnilla and Terberbergring. However, you won’t be trying to find the wildest performance, because the base cars are super imbalanced - especially given the rules on modifications. Instead, you are looking for the best stats with a specific level of performance.
For each track, there is a par time. These times are:
- ATT: 135 Seconds (2:15)
- Al Rilma: 135 Seconds (2:15)
- Ellisbury: 110 Seconds (1:50)
- Narnilla: 120 Seconds (2:00)
- Terberberberberbergring: 145 Seconds (2:35)
Your car’s performance rating is determined by dividing your car’s time by the par time for each track, then averaging the five. For example, cake_ape’s Collis Celer Mk 1 gets times of 163.42, 162.14, 134.49, 148.62 and 176.62, which means we find the average of 1.21, 1.20, 1.22, 1.24 and 1.22 to get 1.22 (rounding all those to 2 decimals because I don’t wanna do the whole thing). The performance index of the Celer is 1.22.
Group T: Trucks
Let’s start with the trucks, then. To be legal here, it needs to have a review in the commercial section. Utes, offroaders and such. In addition, the Centurion 5000, Centurion 7400 and Centara ABM8 are a separate Truck Heavy class. The following rules apply to this series, in addition to the general rules:
- Performance index between 1.35 and 1.45, 1.45 and 1.55 for Truck Heavy.
- Max price of 20k. Max price of 25k for Truck Heavy.
Judging notes:
Truck races are short, maybe 25-30 minutes at the most. Accordingly, fuel eco, reliability and such aren’t too important. All that matters here is drivability, sportiness, not having crazy errors like insane wheelspin and, most of all, drivability. These cars are already hard to drive, make them easy as possible.
Group R: Rally
Okay, rally cars. I don’t have any stages around, but we’ll use asphalt performance as a proxy for rally - we can’t really do offroad anyway. To be eligible here, the base car must not be a commercial/truck car, and must have 2 rows of full seats. The following rules apply to this series, in addition to the general rules:
- Performance index between 1.25 and 1.35.
- Max price of 20k.
- Manual lockers are banned.
Judging notes: Rally stages are short, quick spurts of activity, with periods of downtime in the middle. What matters here is drivability, sportiness and offroad. You’re not going long enough on a race to care about reliability or fuel eco. Make it quick, make it predictable, make it happy off the road. Road rallies are nowhere near as common as dirt ones, so offroad absolutely matters. Comfort matters a little here too - while you’re not constantly racing, those breaks are only really breaks for the car, not the driver.
Touring Car Series
Both the Modified and Special cars will use one homologation for two series; cars will be evaluated for both of them. An important note here, fuel efficiency in this series is measured as “Your worst cruise test in L/100km plus your worst acceleration test result in L/100km as shown in detailed stats” - not the headline stat.
The first series is Touring Car Sprints (Modified), or TCS M.
- These are typically somewhere around 100-150km long (as the longest races in the Australian Touring Car Championship and the British Salloon Car Championship were) and take roughly an hour per race.
- Fuel economy is important, but only as far as whether you can get through the whole race on one or zero fuel stops.
- In this series, teams usually make 2-3 pit stops per race, with 10-20% wear “spare” on the tyres. Accordingly, tyre wear doesn’t matter much, unless you hit about 1.1x wear on the suspension tab.
- Comfort is somewhat relevant here. Races are decently long; fatigued drivers make more mistakes and do worse. Better comfort means fewer mistakes and easier to drive.
- What matters most is drivability and performance. How much can be extracted from the car?
The second category is Endurance Auto Racing Modified, or EAR M.
- In the 64 season, there are two six-hour races (Al Rilma, Ellisbury), two twelve-hour races (ATT, Narnilla) and one 24-hour race (Terberbergring). Don’t ask how a 6 hour race on a street circuit works, it just does.
- Average pace of each car is assumed to be 1000km per 6 hours, roughly what we saw at the '64 Le Mans. Tyres last 90km with 1x tyre wear, roughly half an hour.
- Fuel consumption is,
- Each car will be swapped onto hard compound tyres.
- In addition to drivability and sportiness, reliability and required number of pit stops matter. If your car can get through a race with 1 stop for fuel and tyres plus 8 separate tyres-only stops, that’s pretty good.
- Drivability and sportiness are great, but you need to finish. Reliability matters a lot and so does comfort, so your drivers don’t get tired and make mistakes.
For period accuracy, maximum tank size is based on displacement:
- <701CC: 60L
- 701-1000CC: 70L
- 1001-1300CC: 85L
- 1301-1600CC: 100L
- 1601-2000CC: 110L
- 2001-2500CC: 120L
- 2501-3000CC: 130L
- 3001-5000CC: 140L
- >5000CC: 160L
Group M: Modified
These cars are lightly modified from stock. Any non-commercial cars are legal. The following rules apply to this series, in addition to the general rules:
- Performance index between 1.1 and 1.25.
- Max price of 25k.
- Must have a minimum of 2 full-sized seats.
Judging notes: See above.
Group S: Special
These are the big ones. Heavily modified and tweaked, barely stock. Any non-commercial car is legal. Make them look, well, special. The bonus rules here are:
- Performance index between 1 and 1.1.
- Max price of 40k.
- Engine swaps are allowed, but will cost an additional $5000. An engine swap means changing anything in the family column - adding cylinders, changing the valvetrain and such. If it fits, you can go from a tiny i3 to a giant V12.
- Morph changes are allowed and free. In addition, I’ll be more relaxed on the meaning of “Keeping the spirit of the original car”.
Judging notes: See above
On Aesthetics
This period was when we started to see liveries and sponsors. Some cars of the era like the Porsche 904 and Ferrari 250 GTO just had a simple number on the side and maybe a stripe. Others just a little later, like the Alpine A210 and Porsche 906, had a decent amount of sponsors. Feel free to take either of these approaches, something in between, or even a more modern, artistic livery.Previous Post <<<>>> Next Post
11 Likes
The truck series seems pretty interesting. Wasn’t expecting my lineup so far to be very useful this round, except maybe as a V8-swap source, but I’d love to see how that series plays out.
And that does occur to me; for the special class where swaps are allowed, are we allowed to swap the engine from one of the cars into another?
Right, so a few things I would like to have clarified.
So does this mean no changes to these fixtures at all? It was not uncommon to see lights filled in with sheetmetal and whatnot to prevent broken glass left on the racing surface in the event of a crash. Would something like this be acceptable?
You must include 0-quality Standard 50s safety or better, a standard AM radio (not prem or luxe), and your choice of Basic/Standard/Sport interior (not prem, luxe or hand-made).
So for cars that used a basic radio from factory need to be upgraded to standard?
To be eligible here, the base car must not be a commercial/truck car, and must have 2 rows of full seats.
So cars that are two seaters or have +2 rear seats are not eligible for the rallies then? And are rallies open to any tire type?
An important note here, fuel efficiency in this series is measured as “Your worst cruise test in L/100km plus your worst acceleration test result in L/100km as shown in detailed stats” - not the headline stat.
I’m struggling to understand how fuel economy is going to be calculated. Could it be possible to have an example posted? Because say I have a car that’s worst combined L/100km is 30, that means in a typical TCS race it would only use 30-45 liters of fuel, yeah?
Each car will be swapped onto hard compound tyres.
May I ask why enduro racers need to use hard life tires? Is it simply for the wear purposes?
3 Likes
Do we have to leave all the seats in the car or does it just have to be able to take 2 rows?
When you say Quality is free - does that include the Family quality as well since nothing else can be changed there?