Part of the problem is the brake sizes most people are using… in automation people size there brakes to avoid that little blue advisory… often using higher tech sooner, and bigger brakes than real life. The funny thing is the markets already don’t care that much… in fact most cars I’ve seen score better in there best markets if you pull the pads 5-10 more into comfort or down size the brakes… yes the stopping distance goes up, and yes you get the sportiness fade notification, but your still miles from the yellow warning, and unless your scoring for super\hyper or GT\GT premium the comfort, drivability and cost improvment is way more important than a few more meters should you try brake to a dead stop from modern highway speeds.
However regarding beamNG, even with peoples over-specified brakes, I still cooked the rotors till I got fade on most cars I’ve tested if I push from best times on back to back laps… my automation back straight braking will almost always be giving fade warnings and visible smoke after a few laps, and none of killrobs GETD cars that where not painfully slow, nor my sports car CSR 78 finalists where any different, so its not just my designs.
I do however agree about not giving enough force in automation… the whole idea of drum brakes is the have a self applying mechanism, hence the level of force needed to lock the wheels is set by the lever arm used, meaning you could have them lock up with extremely minor forces (or indeed pass a threshold where they do not release until the drum stops, even if the pedal is released). The reason very high self actuation is not generally done, is locking up is not the idea braking state (save for on dirt\snow, but I digress), and so providing less multiplication allows more user control… just like with power steering systems.
As for disk brakes, you don’t need higher pressures to get more force, just a higher ratio of piston area at the caliper vs the master cylinder. Bigger slave cylinders (in calipers) work equally well at adding area as more cylinders, and either will provide more force for the same total system pressure… and doesn’t really represent more engineering time or even much higher costs, instead just as with the drum brakes, a super soft pedal isn’t ideal for control, and adding more pedal travel beyond a point also makes the car less comfortable\drivable, as you end up lifting your leg a half a foot to get onto the pedal, and just as with a level, your still doing all the work, its just over a longer distance. All of this about calipers also applies to later car drum brake systems, which unlike early cable braking systems or truck air brakes (where the force actually comes from a spring in each brake, and the air only releases it), use essentially the same hydraulic master\slave setup as a disk, just with lower forces due to the drums self application.
So what does this mean for automation? I think fade is fine, once we have more force, you’ll use smaller brakes that will fade to realistic degree with no further changes. However I’d like to see more force… and good news, the devs have stated at a few occasions (including on killrobs GETD youtube series) they are toying with the idea of increasing force a lot, and increasing the threshold or reducing the penalty for too high force. However I honestly think for now it should be a pretty low priority… after all it only makes a impact for comparing automation stats to the real world, both the markets and other player cars already work perfectly fine if you just expect the number given in automation is going to be high… and get this, its not even the same result you’ll get in beamNG. Yep, once you export, you’ll actually stop in a different distance, and can lock wheels on cars that shouldn’t have enough force based off the numbers in automation.
So I agree with you, but the effect small and isolated to only the Automation sandbox graphs\numbers right now.