I’m going to suggest you limit it to the standard +5 all round, giving people the ability to use +15 techpool is a bad idea as it does effectively increase the year by 1 for each tech right. a 1990 car with +15 techpool all round is effectively 2005. Then you have quality on top (which becomes way cheaper the more tech you have)
I am assuming you knew this though? I’ve explained anyway so feel free to shoot me 
I have expressed an interest in sending in live rear axle, but if it’s going to be penalise I’ll just swap it for IRS instead. Although it’s definitely not just the pony car still using them then by 1990 there were only few left. It’s not much of an issue.
I’ll also second +5 techpool all around.
some people will get salty at me for banning it beyond +5 because muh company lore so how about a compromise?
Free tech pool up to +5, but for each point above that you incur that many penalty points accumulatively i.e. +6 = 1 point, +7 = 1 + 2 = 3 points, +8 = 6 points etc.
I may open up live rear axle or may impose 2 penalty points or something small on it.
I like the sound of that, doesn’t matter to me but frees up more people to enter I guess.
I am on board with the idea that overusing tech pool in a specific area should be penalized, but what about implementing bonus points for using fewer than 5 tech pool points in any given area, to offset the price, PU and ET increase that it entails?
Lets keep it simple and not do that
I feel the presence of the mechanism would encourage people to focus more on trying to manipulate the scoring system rather than adhere to the spirit of the rules.
You may have a point. Underuse of tech pool (and the idea of rewarding it with extra points) could be encouraged, but if it were, it would overcomplicate scoring - so it would better not to award bonuses for underusing tech pool.
Given that we’re looking for front-engined, RWD sports coupes, I don’t think there should be a place for ladder frames in this challenge either.
Staggered diameter, as opposed to staggered width, refers to the front and rear wheels not having the same diameter (e.g. 15 inches up front and 16 inches at the rear).
This refers to the area between the comfort and drivability markers (the first two white vertical lines on the damping/spring rate graph) in the suspension tuning tab.
I would like to add to this an additional mandate/recommendation that tire sizes should (must?) not be divisible by 10 (i.e. the last digit of a tire’s width must be 5).
I’m going to actually not do this for now, because while less realistic, the increased resolution in tyre width variation will remove significant angst from people running close to the limit on tyre sizes, plus I can get less distorted data.
I debated doing this and may well do so.
A modification to this that might balance the penalty points out for non-turbo engines. Only start counting techpool penalty points on N/A engines after accounting for the 5 turbo techpool points that people have put other places. That would mean people would still be using the same base amount of techpool for their engine, but N/A engines wouldn’t be penalized by having to keep techpool in a nonfunctional area.
After revising my first test mule to account for the new soft tech pool limits, I ended up with something that cost $200 more than the $25k approximate cost cap for its era (a 2-point penalty) - but I could consider that an acceptable sacrifice if it performs well enough. If I reduced the brake compound to 50 (from the mandated minimum of 75), it would be right on the limit, but it would have 0.1% sportiness brake fade unless I increased the brake cooling level to 51 or more.
As it stands, however, my test mule still has a 400bhp NA V8, but running double wishbones all around on a corrosion-resistant steel chassis with treated steel bodywork to get closer to the soft cost cap - it now weighs 1500kg, so it won’t be the lightest car of its time, but at least the extra weight allows fitment of 285mm-wide rear tires without penalty.
It might be a good idea to extend this down slightly to around the 180 hp mark or differentiate this by eras as well. As it is right now, stuff with a power to weight similar to a lotus elise or a ND miata (something you specifically said you were using in testing) would be completely shut out. Even a FD RX7 is borderline on the bottom end as it currently stands and the Honda S2k that you have in the inspo pics also fails it, incurring 2 points of penalty.
The Elise is mid-engined (as is the Exige, by extension) and would therefore not be eligible, but your point is valid.
Regarding the current recommended power/weight ratio range, my test mule boasts 266 bhp/metric ton, so it won’t be penalized on that front. Its rear tire profile is 35 (as low as the rule allows - its front tire profile is 40 and it’s running 18-inch wheels on both axles), but at least its engine and trim ET values have both dropped below 100 each. Also, its trim weight of 1500kg is right on the upper limit for its era; if it weighed at least 5kg more, it would have been penalized (by at least one point) for being overweight.
yeah I made those figures based on the fact that several of my low power tests are not performing as hoped, but given how they are to drive I am hesitating to discourage them outright. I’ll probably bump the lower limit of the power:weight ratio by about 10%.
How many tech pool points do we have?
this will be finalised in the next draft. For now assume that you have as much free pool as the sandbox gives you i.e. up to 5+ for each part, except for wheels, which must remain at 0.
I think the tech pool is far too much with the ET times. With 5 techpool points in everything, it’s impossible to even come close to 110 engineering time aside from V16s probably
I thought it meant this:
Did you confuse the two? Especially since up until now, I had been assuming that wheel/tire quality had to be set to 0, but wheel/tire techpool should be +5 at most (any more than that will be penalized).
What else did I expect? At any rate, this will mean that someone could submit a big, powerful muscle sedan in the vein of high-performance trims of the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon, to name two. That’s not even getting into Euro super sedans such as the M5 and AMG E-Class, among others - but getting something like those to fit into the budget caps (or at least not be too far above them) would need a little more care.
Many of the trims of such models will be heavier than spec so while I’m accepting the sedans I don’t expect there to be too many, and if there are any they’ll probably be in the earlier decades. Otherwise they’ll likely run the risk of being slow or cut due to penalty points.
Yes, yes I did. Turns out since I last played the game the techpool feature was added. Now that @Portalkat42 has brought me up to speed, I understand the confusion.
You will have, across all decades, up to a total of 30 techpool points for the engine, and 50 techpool points for the trim. I don’t know what your standard rule for chassis is so someone please inform me. If you exceed these points then I will start penalising you i.e. if you use 31 techpool points you get 1 penalty point, if you use 32 then that’s 3 etc.
Note that tyre quality must still remain at 0.
This has also been my finding. Even with the above clarified I don’t really understand why people are talking like I’m crushing the life out of their engineering soul 
I’m going to have to do some further calibration to see what the deal is, but at the same time I don’t really want to force everybody into going basic bitch on their interiors if their car’s meant to be a sport-tourer instead of a sport sport car if you know what I mean.
Also I personally feel that 30 engine points and 50 trim points is REALLY generous. Are you all being spoilt? Or have I been living in austerity land?
Just my 2 cents here, but with this challenge not really being stat based, techpool ruleset doesn’t add much at all to the decision that can be made.
As people have noted, quality points doesn’t actually do much to how the car would drive in BeamNG (especially as you don’t allow tyre quality) compared to, say, suspension tuning. If it’s just the default 5 all around it’d be easier for judging as well.
I can’t think of a reason why going above techpool limit which incur a penalty would benefit the car I’ll be submitting, for example.