First of all, yay we are back to Letara boys! It’s a shame we have to wait Ellisbury for the round 5 start, but it’s also for the best.
Since blinkers appear to be an hot topic right now, i would look into relaxing the regulations on blinkers, either for this or the next round. It’s not uncommon for car to have front blinkers behind the rear axle, integrated in some vent/decoration near the wheel arc, for example; some cars started have blinkers integrated in the mirrors as soon as the late nineties too. Not a big issue ofc, but something to take note of, i think.
My only other gripe comes on the race regulations, specifically the 20 comfort minimum requirement. I’d advocate for a 15 comfort minimum requirement in place of the 20, on the grounds that .
Cars are either gonna run very soft, or have to get creative to meet the goal
It’s not uncommon for MT, standard interior cars to result in a sub 20 comfort stat even on soft-ish tunes, so having racecars run more comfy than industry standard seems…weird.
Ofc, this are just some opinions, and maybe there is some balance stuff i don’t see running behind the scenes, but i’d throw my two cents at it while we are in the preliminary phase
If it hasn’t changed from last round (and it doesn’t look like it has), additional side indicators are still perfectly allowed. I’ve had semaphores on all my cars so far and this hasn’t been an issue.
So how exactly are these being operated? Like, are they being given/subsidized for the impaired themselves to use as daily drivers, or is it more like a specialized taxi service? Or perhaps are they just shuttles to/from specific places, like hospitals and clinics?
As a new entrant, I’ve no formal lobbying power and little informal leg to stand on, but specifying comfort minimums for race cars, especially 20, seems very odd. Perhaps a suspension rate maximum (how about 1.6) and tire profile minimum (35) instead?
Re @TanksAreTryhards: 20 comfort is not that unattainable. These are supposed to be road-legal GT cars with very minimal modifications and tuning from stock - i.e., NOT made for purpose race cars. I don’t think 20 comfort for a GT is all that high. As for why setting a limit? Well, otherwise people would indeed build a full race-spec car, which is not a GT.
Re @Edsel: They are vans/mini busses operated by the city/gov’t transport agency that also operates the city buses and such. So they are driven by professional drivers and if necessary need a space for a professional aide. They are not exactly like a taxi service, but similar in that you can pre-order rides to and from destinations.
Re @moroza: See above. Another consideration is that I will have very many cars to judge, so typically choose to make judging/scrutineering as easy as possible. That generally limits me to what stats export easily and reliably with the CSV exporter. But not a terrible idea, combined with a minimum interior type and quality I suppose… but that gets complicated. We’ve had comfort limits before in racing, and it has worked well.
Re @Fayeding_Spray: Nope, there is nothing to sell. If you feel like not continuing, then you can just not submit a car for this round.
Apologiess since you’re getting so many questions but will there be a minimum speed/lap time for the race like before to ensure only actual race cars will race?
There will be some form of minimum performance metric for the race, yes. I haven’t decided yet on what that will be, but it may be lap time based as that seems to work quite well. I’ll have to see what the new track sim does exactly. But there needs to be something to weed out the meme-y or subpar entries that just waste everyone’s time.
One additional question, will fuel consumption taxes be adjusted for cars on E70? E85 fuel has 25.65 MJ/L E15 has 33.18 and Gasoline has 34.02 - E70 is far, far closer to E85 than to E15. This makes cars on E70 use a much, much higher volume of fuel, even accounting for changes in thermal efficiency and such - it’ll be especially hard to dodge gas guzzler taxes. I ask because ethanol supposedly has an environmental perception bonus, so it should theoretically be incentivised - wouldn’t be the only time environmental laws didn’t work perfectly though.
Just one blanket fuel usage tax which - as you point out - I’ll balance with a little bit of ‘environmental perception/consciousness’ on the consumers’ part. Some gov’t decisions are indeed meant to be a bit flawed, as they are in real life.
Don’t see it as a restriction, but a cut-off for classification. It is not determined from total car length, but wheelbase dependent. I cannot tell you what the cut-off will be though, as it depends on what everyone submits, i.e., what the general car population is. In the first three rounds it was 240 cm and under, in the fourth round it was 245 cm and under.
There’s been quite a few questions re indicators and side markers. Here are some permissible permutations (this is not an exhaustive list, but gives you an idea what is allowed). All four corners of the car are treated the same in this regard.
Slightly more advanced: A wraparound amber indicator and an integrated side marker or a separate non-illuminating orange marker. Note: the marker must be amber.
You can also have the non-wrap around indicator options with white or amber cover glass, note that it still needs to be amber when illuminated. The side marker can be a separate fixture from the side indicator, but always must be amber glass.
Bottom line: indicator must be visible from both the front and the side, either as one wrap-around fixture or as two separate fixtures, and must illuminate amber, but cover glass may be white as well as amber. The side marker must have an amber cover glass, and may be integrated into the wrap-around design, or into the separate side indicator, or completely on its own…
So i have a new query regarding the race rules. Since the new consumer rules do not state a minimum safety target, but just a generic “must have 80s standard or better safety” rule, how big of a gray area is using negative quality on safety for our racecars?
Safety quality can net a pretty big weight reduction, but i also think that negative quality spam on it is beyond cheesy.
Am i missing a rule and this is already regulated? Or is this indeed a potential issue?
Does the street legal requirement in the racecars apply to engines as well? In other words, swapping the stock airflow parts for race ones with no cat and a straight piped exhaust is banned?
@TanksAreTryhards You are correct that currently there are no hard safety limits, as I wasn’t sure yet how the update would change things in this realm. I will implement something. Stay tuned.
@passengerpigeon You are correct, the race car still needs to be street legal with the few exceptions mentioned in the rules. That includes no race parts on engines and mandatory cats.
Small change-log: I’ve added the track file to the brief (see under the track image). It seems to work fine in the OB, so you can download it and play with your tuning! But keep in mind that rules are still in flux as I get more acquainted with the OB.
I also think, as some other people have mentioned, that the comfort requirement for racecars is too high. Because you are allowing pure alcohol fuel and don’t require the submission of a fully road legal homologation car, the vehicles are already not identical to those sold at dealerships, so stripped interiors like those seen in every real-life touring car series (to my knowledge) should be allowed. Maybe have a lower minimum comfort threshold like 5 points to prevent outright injury, but at the moment the racecar I’m working on has to have a Sport interior instead of the normal Standard one to make the minimum, and I’m not done tightening the suspension up yet. Smaller cars might even need to cheese the score with a Luxury or Hand Made interior to qualify.
Also, are the racecars taxed? Does using power steering (which is a good way of boosting comfort) worsen performance in the Automation test track mode in any other way apart from the slight weight increase?
To your first point, I totally get where you’re coming from. This is unlike any real life racing series. But this is also not real life, not even set in the ‘real’ world so to speak. Letara is completely separate from that, so you cannot draw parallels in that sense. There is a fairly good lore reason why the cars in this round have to be street legal (except those few allowed modifications) - if you read up on the thread and can read between the lines, you will know why. This racing rule includes that the cars need to have this level of comfort. I could’ve mandated sports or premium interior as a minimum, as GT cars have that usually (not standard) - but I didn’t. This leaves you more freedom to achieve the goal of 20. For what it’s worth, I am running the 356 body with fibreglass panels (again for lore reasons) with a sports interior and hit 20 comfort without issues. So I don’t think it’s by any means unattainable, even for small cars.
To your other questions: no race cars are not taxed (what you see in the statistics tab is what they cost). I don’t think power steering hampers track times aside from their weight. But your increased stats will likely outweigh any time loss due to weight in the RNG.
They range from high schoolers to old retired people, there’s no one person in this role play but a group of markets you could appeal to, to the best of your abilities.
