I am writing this post to share a car with 95.1 points in comfort. I never thought such a high value was possible, but when I made an ultraluxury car with 87 rating in the light campaign started june 2023 without finetuning, I thought, how far can I get it.
Pretty far, but this is not the upper limit at all. Pushing interior quality to +15 and increasing additional weight, I believe it’s possible to increase to 108-109. As the car was created in the early 2000’s, there could be even a higher score possible with better entertainment settings. Maybe a score of 120-125 ish could be true upper limit, if disregarding price, engineering time and many other practical aspects.
Here are some screenshots of the car and below that, I will explain some aspects of the settings. Now that I write the article, it seems that I still have missed some aspects which could have led to an even better comfort rating by normal means (without going over the top with technology). Maybe it could be even better?
This trim of the car is manufactured for the rich only as a high luxury car, thus price and tech can be high. The only weak spot is probably sportiness, but a 2000kg+ sports car is a contradiction in my terms, unless it’s made for Dakar.
Game settings
The car was made in the light campaign 4.1 (I believe) Unreal version. Not in the sandbox of the game.
Engine
The engine is a 3.6L V6 NA, with direct injection, VVT+L producing about 260 hp. It could be considered underpowered for this car, but I like to make luxury cars with modest amounts of power and fuel economy. With 67.4 smoothness, 29.4 loudness and 21.4 throttle response, it’s quite quiet and smooth, along with a smooth torque/power curve.
I did test the car with 3.6L B6 with the same settings elsewhere, this resulted in a smoothness of 83 points, but only a 0.8 increase in comfort, so I decided it was not worth the effort of installing a boxer for this kind of car in the campaign. It seems that a throttle response of 20-21.5 points is the sweet spot for this engine, in regard to the best comfort possible. Higher or lower results in lower bonuses or even penalties.
Maybe there are better engines configurations for high comfort cars and making them more silent should probably help as well. I doubt if smoothness can do that much more.
Body and chassis
The body chosen is 1997 3m wheelbase option in year 2000, sedan shape 4-door (there is a 3.3M body as well, unknown why I didn’t choose that one?) with partial aluminum, AHS steel monocoque, front longitudinal. For the best conform, front double wishbone and rear wishbone/multilink are the best options, but that is pretty obvious. The longer wheelbase body would increase passenger space and thus comfort as well.
Drivetrain, wheels and brakes
Drivetrain should be very straightforward, pick AWD drive type with an automated gearbox. Electronic LSD probably gets the best comfort, but I picked geared for better drivability and sportiness. Research time, even when focused on developing tech, still remains long for some tech in the campaign.
The wheels are 750mm high wheels, medium radials with 18 inch rims, giving the tire sidewalls of about 14.6cm or 146mm. This is crucial for just that extra bit of comfort, compared to 10cms for many cars in real life.
Brakes are probably straightforward as well for comfort cars, as many piston brakes as possible, especially for the front, with as soft as possible. Still, the cars struggles with the best brakes possible in the front to stop as soon as possible. On the rear though, I made a compromise between cost and performance and disregarded high comfort. The comfort rating could be improved by 0.6-1 points there, with 3-4 pistons.
Interior, safety and suspension
Regarding interior, it’s rather straightforward, but I picked handmade, 4 adult seats (2+2) luxury satnav. Interior quality is just +1. Increasing it to +15 would increase comfort to 105, but it would increase cost from $21700to about 90.000’ish.
Always, the best safety option, but this not have great effect on comfort. Steering, the best at the time is variable hydraulic when it comes to comfort, drivability and sportiness. Variable electronic (drive by wire) is probably the best. ESC as traction aid is the best for drivability, especially for high power cars, it’s does not affect comfort. When it comes to weight, I have increased weight by lowered optimized weight to 25. Lowering it to 0 increase comfort by 3-4 points, but it makes the car move heavier, thus compromising drivability and sportiness and costs. The compromise has always to be made somewhere.
Finally, there are the suspension settings. I believe that a spring frequency of 1.1 Hz is the biggest odd choice I made in hindsight, as that is the frequency which incurs motion sickness and thus vomiting, if memory serves me well. If that’s true, should that be penalized more harshly, as that would seem far from comfy, right??
Anyway, the rest is quite obvious, auto comfort springs (magnetic fluid adjustable) with semi active dampers and passive sidebars. The other things differ per design, but picking a normal or standard preset and then adjusting to your preferences for the specific trim.