Do you like driving fast? Do you like driving cars made in Automation in BeamNG.Drive? If, like me, your answer to both is “Hell yeah”, then I have a proposal for you!
Note that I haven’t opened the board just yet. I need your opinions on a few rules:
How it Works
Export a car from Automation (or use a Beam vanilla car)
Pick a Beam track (mods allowed as long as the link is provided)
Drive around it in time trial mode (if possible)
Record your replay and grab a screenshot of the final time
To submit a claim, make a post and attach the car, include the essential info, the link to the track used, the time screenshot, and also either your recording or a link to the replay file.
Essential Rules:
The car must have a positive reliability, the exception to this being if it is zero due to suspension bottom out because of downforce.
For the claim to be counted you must attach/ link to all of: the track mod, the car file/mod, the screenshot. An actual recording of the lap would be ideal. .rpl file needs to be provided if requested.
All entries must be driven as directly exported from Automation. NO JBEAM EDITS on pain of being excluded from the leaderboards forever.
The only exceptions to this is if you’re bypassing the wastegate because you don’t have enough processing power for Beam to calculate the boost right or making edits to the electronics.jbeam file, as the automatically generated ESC sucks. However if you do edit the electronics you must post a link to the mod file of the car, not just the .car file
Great Engineer Terrible Driver option
Killrob does a segment called Great Engineer Terrible Driver, where he throws a car around the Automation track and compares his time to the Automation Sim driver’s time to obtain a GETD coefficient. If you’re using the Automation track you therefore have the option of doing the same, which may be handy for crude car/driver calibration.
However I recommend only doing this for lower powered cars with no more than one or two wings/lips. It goes quite awry in cars with significant aero kits, because Automation and Beam treat aerodynamics very differently. Having worked it out with some help, I will write up a post explaining how shortly.
This will only apply to the Automation track. Due to changes in the sun between builds most of the custom tracks haven’t been correctly calibrated so the rating will be misleading.
Additional rules
For circuits, I suggest doing a 2 lap time trial to get both a standing start and a flying lap. The standing start lap is most applicable for the Automation Test Track and Dunsfold Aerodrome (for Top Gear reference times), otherwise it would be optional
The essential information for each car would be the MY, format of the drivetrain, the power, the weight and therefore the power to weight ratio (don’t use Automation’s given value as the unit conversions make the calculations go weird) and Automation’s 0% markup price, because I am hoping to put these all on a spreadsheet and divide the performance into car classes. Also do specify what controller you use.
You want the replay app to be active (Beam will still record if you don’t have it on the UI, just hit Alt + R to start and stop recording). This is just to demonstrate that you can find it on the UI Apps menu
excuse my Beam UI colours I played around with them for shits and giggles
If you can, record and upload the video replay. Then make a post about it that includes the screenshot and the car. In this case the text will read something like:
Company: Armada Motors
MY: 2018
Model: Ultima
Trim: RX Competition
Format: M-AWD
Power: 840hp
Weight: 1151kg
Power/Weight: 755.9bhp/ton
0% Price: 38095
Class: Unlimited
Controller: Logitech G27
Track: Automation Test Track
Lap time: 1:49.363 (standing), 1:47.841 (flying)
In this case I’m not going to make a GETD time because the aerodynamic changes ruin the comparison.
What do you think? I have a couple of questions and need some feedback before I actually open the challenge:
For simplicity should the rules be no driving aids whatsoever, or ABS only? Or allow TCS and ESC but no .jbeam edits whatsoever?
Should there be tyre rules for any class below Race/Unlimited?
Should there be rules for allowing other people to drive your cars to try and beat your time?
ABS only please. I suck at not locking the wheels up during braking.
Maybe +5 sport tires for normal production cars?
Not every person has the same equipment and skills to drive their car, and thus I don’t think it’s unfair to let other people drive it. But it should be limited to perhaps up to 3 or 4 people.
What about launch control? It’s only available on very recent cars (2011 or later if I’m not mistaken), but given that it’s intended to make standing starts easier, should its use be allowed or not?
Launch control in beamng seems to work only with some cars with automatic transmission. (But only seems to work with advanced automatic or Dual Clutch transmissions)
Here’s a little tip of how to use the Launch Control on beamng (Based on my experience):
Simply put the parking brake on, put the transmission on “S” mode, Hold the gas until it gets to 5000RPM (maybe a bit lower or higher.) And then let off the Parking brake. And BOOM!.
This is, in real life, one way to ruin your engine mounts
To clarify my earlier comment, you can edit the launch behaviour by editing the engine .jbeam file with the lines about launchRPM. It’s just that it will do it not just for “launch” but for every time the car accelerates from stationary. Which is obviously not how it should work haha.
Oh well, I haven’t experienced how Launch Control really acts since i own a really shitty Nissan Xterra from 2003 with a damaged engine mount, But i guess you’re right .
Alright in that case I think we’re nearly ready to begin. I think for simplicity sake I will say that you’re not allowed to modify the ESC or TCS, but you can use the default Automation generated one (because they will almost certainly slow you down if your car is any good at hotlapping… hint: the threshold is always too high, the proportional effect also too high, and the integral part and max integral factor too low). Thus you should indicate whether you had it on or not. Much easier.
You’re allowed to use power steering (of course) and ABS, but also need to specify these things.
I’m still not decided about the bypassing the wastegate thing. I’ve been told this apparently actually makes the turbos more responsive than they should be, which would be an unfair advantage.
Finally I’m going to create a Google Sheet and divide the entries into decades and classes just for info organisation purposes so you don’t feel like you’re in a Fiat 500 trying to compete against an Agera R or whatever. I figured just having the classes be divided by power to weight ratio would be sufficient, hence:
Class D, up to 200hp: metric ton (like a Civic Si)
Class C, up to 350hp: metric ton (like a Falcon XR8 or Focus RS)
Class B, up to 500hp: metric ton (like a 458)
Class A, up to 750hp: metric ton (like a 918 Spyder)
Class S, up to 1000hp: metric ton (like an Agera One:1)
Class X, no power limit but uses road-legal tyres and… not have a reliability of 0?
Class Unlimited, any car can enter this
The only other stipulation I’d make is that for the car to be a valid “production car” time they must be done on sports +0 tyres. If this isn’t the case the time must be qualified. Could possibly, for the sake of track day parity, say everyone can use anything up to semi slicks +0, but I don’t know. Try to keep anything up to Class S street legal. Class Unlimited is obviously not for production or legal cars so go nuts, use semi-slick +15 if you want.
The only thing I will ask (and this is me being picky) is this:
Can we allow editing the jbeam of cars equipped with an automation auto locker to change it to a lsd in beam?
This is an edit I’ve done on my personal stuff, just because automation still doesn’t have a clutch type lsd, and many of my favorite cars (1960-70s american muscle) had clutch-based lsds.
Yeah the short of that would be “I don’t know, that seems kinda finnicky to police”. For simplicity sake I’m tempted to say no but am happy to hear from others.
You know how some cars or manufacturers in here are just so popular that everyone and their grandmother’s dog want to try a taste of it coughKeikacough. This to me doesn’t sound very fair to other, less popular cars that are similarly competent on the track, so they too deserve an equal chance to be loved and tried out by other people.
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Okay, now that I think of it more, it does sound a bit dumb.
Speaking of the Keika, one half of the reason it’s so popular is because it demands tuning. I’m not sure this is in the scope of this league lest were prepared to have an exploding leaderboard.
I’d suggest that as per standard etiquette you need explicit permission to drive the cars yourself and explicit permission to tune them but no posting retuned results here unless that retune becomes a lore thing. Besides if you change the settings of a car and don’t change the name of the mod it seems to break the .rpl entirely.
Tl;dr ask for permission to challenge a driver’s time and you must drive the car as is to compare times unless otherwise negotiated.
Because no production car would be affordable when using tyres with performance on par with 15 years future technology (check the material costs). 0 tech is just a way to make it somewhat even so the situation doesn’t run away.
Except in unlimited class. You can do whatever you want there.
Speaking of quality, I wonder if the light campaign will change that. I mean, for challenges in general.
Imagine, a round of Generations or something similar based on light campaign run. If you managed to make a company that sells only lore cars, and ends up being able to stay afloat while researching +15 quality something…
