I’ll start by saying I’m a slightly more casual/Beam focused player, more interested in pushing the limits of what an automobile can do, so my list of issues may be of low concern as half the list is minor gripes that won’t be noticed too much when making more pedestrian vehicles. Please try not to turn the thread into an argument over the final paragraph, since the rest of the post is the main focus.
However, these issues are all nontheless present and replicable in vanilla, hence I’d love to see them remedied. I pre-emptively apologize for any issues that are already known. By issues, I refer to not just bugs but also things that may be simple adjustments to improve the quality of life of the playerbase, even if only a small portion.
Please do not dismiss me as someone making meme builds, I try to push both beam and autom to their limits but that is usually in the name of performance vehicles and I also make plenty of sensbile cars, there are just less issues with making those
I currently cannot upload files because my forum user is new but I’d be happy to build cars and that show these issues and send them to requesting relevant parties.
Beam Exported Cars:
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Rear and/or front suspension tends to insta-break on some bodies or run into some very extreme tire wobble.
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Direct injection per cylinder in race configuration v engines will come out in beam in a weird blue
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Offroad tires etc do not actually provide more offroad grip(last I checked) and there is a value that ranges from 0-1 in the wheel .jbeams that determines offroad loss of grip and all autom exports seem to have this at 0, whereas setting it to a value that matches the autom compound chosen would solve the issue.
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Backfire is present in autom and can be very easily enabled on Beam exports using some more simple .jbeam editing (pasting 2 lines of code in) and works remarkably well when done so, yet needs to be done manually.
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High power turbo engines will immediately damage piston rings when hitting powerband even if they are showing all greens and 0 damage in autom, also fixed by a simple jbeam edit but shouldn’t even be an issue.
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Sometimes, repeatedly exported cars will change color to the default red and/or have silver tires, this seems totally random and I cannot replicate it at will.
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Only wings create downforce in Beam, combined with the fact that placing wings on vertical surfaces is no longer possible in autom, making a good looking and performing downforce car is downright impossible. I know this is already known but it’s exacerbated as it’s a combo of two issues and could be fixed in a bodgey manner by counting other downforce fixtures as wings when exporting or allowing vertical wing placement.
Automation Only
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As previously mentioned, vertical wing placement. This used to be a feature, was removed, I think it allows for creative uses of the wing shapes and/or ridiculous, cool racing vehicles ie Metro 6R4
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DAOHC making more power than DOHC 5V for big boosted engines. This only happens in specific cases but when going for max power/high boost builds, DAOHC reigns supreme. This is only true in specific edge cases, but seems to suggest a deeper problem within the algorithms of engine dev.
Building limits:
Boost, AFR, Cam and Exhaust size limits; I know these are deliberate design choice and the game is geared more toward “normal” cars, but by that logic why do we have so many things we can do that 0 street cars have or will ever have. I understand the limitations faced with some of the limits the game has on engine building and accept that it’s generous as is, but as far as I know, the listed 4 are plugged into algorithms and not much more, hence could be much easier to unlock and make the game more fun and free.
Why I’d like more lenient limits
Allowing more aggressive cams may make higher revving engines more plausible since I’ve never had a case where a 12k rpm rev range was of much use due to power curves more or less flattening past 9-10k.
Just allowing us higher max boost and/or to remove wastegates may offer up some extra engineering creativity headroom, for cost saving and/or extra performance reasons.
AFR and exhaust are already not enough but generally only limit huge engines with huge boost. A high power per liter turbo build could make more power, had it been allowed to run richer fuel and/or bigger exhausts, but especially if other changes here are implemented, will become necessary as they’ll further choke performance engines. I mean I know this sounds even madder but heck maybe even allow us to just straight up have no exhaust system and have the effects come from the headers/turbo’s backs.
Beside performance and practicality, maybe you just want to slap a 40cm -15 quality exhaust onto your 88 hp eco 4 banger and wake your neighbors.
I think those are all reasonable things to consider from the perspective of a player with your preferences. There sure are some easy wins in here from what you write. We have a new patch, the final one for LCV3, come out pretty soon and if some of those fixes/features for the exporter are as simple as you mention, then I’m all for including them.