QFC13 - Truckin' - Sport Trucks!

Hmm…
Well, I’ll just say these bits: This is a hobby, and if it doesn’t please you, leave it until it does. I am still an amateur but I do think I’m decent at engineering and acceptable at design/styling. I constantly look up to the leaders and ask for .car files to dissect and learn from (AFTER competitions, not before!) That, and tons of practice. Try making things hard by making parts by hand, rather than just cut and paste. Try to balance the stats you want, and always reference real-world examples before using an engineering choice.

I was eviscerated on my first couple builds, because I just slapped on parts from the fixture list and called it good to go. That’s not good enough at this competition level, to be flat about it. My first good car was one I spent 10x the time on compared with my previous efforts. In time, you get much faster, for the same amount of effort, so it gets easier. Of course you always want to constantly push your skills and try new things.

How many cars have you created? If its in the 200-300 range, then you’re about where I am now.

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Made many cars, but I still get bashed to the end of the line. Despite my efforts, nothing seems to work. I could make something and someone else(22 other people) would make something better and it’s that they were all good at something except mine…

I tried to change my engineering designs based on others and what others tell me what is right and wrong and now nothing works. Nothing I do works at all, no matter what or how I do something, I always receive the same end.

Lanson was actually pretty nice about what he said. He gave CONSTRUCTIVE criticism I felt, and wasnt a complete asshole like some can be.

Id say, do EXACTLY as he said bro and youll be fine. To add to that, slide over to Discord and ask questions…you may or may not get help, it depends.

Also, pick a car/truck/van and try to replicate it. Visually and engineering wise.

Last but not least…PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!!!

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For all 20 of those people that made better cars than you, there was a time when all of them always got bashed just as badly as you were. In my case, I know I would never have come close to 8th place in a competition like this a year ago.

It’s important to note that, over time, you won’t usually notice yourself improving; it won’t be until you look back at an old car that you realize how much better your current cars are, or when you suddenly do unexpectedly well in a competition. So don’t worry if your cars now aren’t that good; just try to have fun making them, and let yourself be surprised several months from now.

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another power tip is to make 2 or 3 sample cars (minus the exterior for a bit), try different combos on each, and see which one best hits those priority stars, and feels “right”. This is the “many samples” model of making things. It isn’t efficient but it allows quick learning.

And on the exterior (and later, interior), make clones of your vehicle and try different exterior treatments. Once one starts to feel good, build on that one and see how it looks compared to real vehicles. Sweat the details! Layers, moving parts at angle in 3D and plopping them down to 2D (like how I did your tail lights), or using parts that were not originally supposed to do whatever it is they are doing can all be useful. 3D parts are super-useful, if not a bit tedious.

Ah yes, the steel wheels were there for the sake of a stronger wheel for weight, I don’t know if it’s a myth, but I think steel wheels on a sport truck would be common?

about my 22nd place, I think it was more than just overbudget. The truck was very great asthetically, but on the inside it was really dodgy, not to mention it was extremely long and performance was heavily lacking

TL;DR: My car looked sporty but didnt drive it

The closest I could think was the mid 90’s Chevy 454SS with steel wheels. Most steelies are heavier than their aluminum counterparts but also 16’s are about the limit with typical steel wheels. So brakes are limited to fit those as well. By the 2000’s, sport tuned trucks largely went for something 17"-20", depending.

But no worries, I didn’t rank such trifle things. Only the priority scoring (and penalties, if applicable) was factored into the placement of each contestant. Close ties were supposed to be resolved with style points but in the end the order worked out, with what I hope was a fair competition.

Thanks!

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it was absolutely as fair as it could be after two fuck updates, but I am still happy that my truck got shown off at all

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Yours took a huge hit with penalties but the engineering was not fitting with the era or budget. Semi active suspension The interior design was not judged but interior choices caused you issues, like a cassette deck. Imagine test driving a truck with a Sport interior (so, expensive with top-end lightweight materials), a tape deck, and semi active suspension (stuff found on extremely high end rides), and sitting on staggered magnesium wheels, which are largely extinct for street vehicles. The engine had money spent money on titanium rods and individual throttle bodies, but those are diminishing returns for the expense. Other competitions, this truck would have been binned for using race parts like that, because of the unrealistic nature of a mass production truck sporting parts out of a top shelf race catalog. Make sense? Also with all those impressive parts, you left the compression ratio at 7.5:1 or at high boost turbo-tuned levels, so with the fuel we were using, you could have either put twin turbos on it or upped the compression significantly and pushed huge power.

Really well done hosting; I’d have torn my hair out as a host given the timing of the updates, but you made it work and found a good solution to get everyone judged properly.

I will host the next round, expect a new post up later today.

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I helped Unhappyfireballman with his truck and sent it back for evaluation. If you are ok with it, I can do the same with yours and help with the engineering as a training example.

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Rock on, yeah lessons learned when dealing with updates, gotta let the tide rise all boats and then judge.

Congratulations with the runaway win, look forward to competing in yours.

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Thanks for great hosting!

The reason for staggered tires for me was to get rid of the oversteer warning… maybe not take the warnings so seriously in the future :wink:

Absolutely, swaybars can help compensate as well, though it’s always a trade-off. Service costs go way up with staggered tires. Makes sense if you’ve owned a vehicle with such tires, it’s a constant pain.

Any reason to choose flat plane crank on your low displacement V8, over crossplane? That might have hurt the final result as well.

This is a question for everyone that has been a host to a challenge…

It seems that there were quite a few entries that ran over budget, even more it seems with questionable engineering choices.

Any other challenge people would have been binned for those offenses, and not to mention talked down to…(asshole shit)

Would yall say the over budget issues came from the 2 updates?

I thought these challenges were supposed to represent “realism”. But yet, a lot of those with unrealistic engineering choices still placed decenty versus getting binned.

I guess this goes back to the rules of challenges being host specific? Like, if Aruna or Donutsnail or ANY of the OGs would’ve hosted this, HOW MANY ENTRIES WOULD’VE GOT BINNED INSTEAD OF JUDGED??

@Lanson this is no dig at you in any way, im actually pissed i didnt enter, i definitely would’ve loved to see where I would’ve placed on the engineering front. Much respect chief.

It was more about the budget. Most of the budget went into the engine itself leaving my to pinch pennies for all the other components.

What seemed to affect some was keeping techpool points when submitting their truck. In order to level things out, I had to zero those and then export, which forced issues for those. The updates and cost changes were a small issue, but mitigated by the mere 1 point per $100 cost penalty. However, the lowest placing trucks had both issues together.

Engineering choices were all over the place, I agree. I thought about this a while and technically none of the parts were labeled “race” and my lack of specifically banning parts like Ti connecting rods, or ITB’s, or magnesium wheels meant I in my mind had to allow them through. What’s interesting is that these engineering choices are at the extreme end of the cost to benefit ratio, so marginal gains for lots of money and ET makes them less of a good idea, because somewhere else you’d have to drop quality or skimp on parts. Semi active suspension but with a negative quality interior, or drivetrain, for example.

If one reviews the spreadsheet to see how it all came together, it makes sense how the numbers stacked up. My biggest “regret” was going with negative and positive points. Next time, I’m going to set up a system that has a max positive point factor down to zero, minus penalties if any. This would better show just how widespread the field was.

Edit:. Oh and to answer the question on binning, we would have lost more than 1/2 the field if I was being strict. 1/3 to over cost alone.

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No reason more then my lack of knowledge, I just didnt know the difference, I do know now. Its all about learning.

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Hey I learned a great deal about excess cooling being useful for utility, I had no idea. The game keeps evolving and we keep getting better at gaming the game.

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