It’s worth remembering that while people do have cantilevered pushrods for offroad - no manufacturer has ever done that, and Automation is all about manufacturer’s tech. Same goes for long-travel MacPherson struts.
Make no mistake, I would love a dedicated offroad/rally expansion, but the system isn’t aimed at that currently.
Agree about the aluminum mass production, aluminum spaceframe, billet crank, hotter cams and especially the proper sequential options (There’s more than a handful of street-legal track cars using them, such as Radical and BAC).
Geared LSD is atrocious for offroading without computer assistance. In low grip settings (Such as a lifted tire) you now have zero torque available. They’re about as good as an open differential there. It’s worth remembering that the Hummer H1 has the ability to lock its axles, it isn’t dependent on the Torsen. Clutch pack LSDs are in the game.
Agree about the springs, progressive springs are usually avoided for that, agree about the downforce and especially agree about the rake.
Just because no one’s produced a pushrod for offroad so far doesn’t really seem like a reason to penalize its offroad performance. In this case it seems extra weird considering that the in game model for it doesn’t have the aforementioned heave spring or Z style anti roll bar. About the only thing the in game model implies is a greater ratio between shock and wheel travel. It would also be an arbitrary penalization based on expected use rather than anything about the suspension itself.
Rally concepts does sound interesting though, a sort of “what if” hypercar from a world where group B rally never went away.
Oh yeah, i also remembered a use case for rake: changing the rake of a car also changes the aero balance of downforce extracted from the undertray.
From my sim racing experience, rake changes two things.
It changes aero balance (like you just said), as well as affect dynamic response as little bit.
The issue though, is that in my opinion it would just add more settings for the sake of adding more settings. All the effects of rake can already be adjusted through other means, and considering how intimidating the suspension adjustement already are for the newer players, I don’t think adding one more setting would help much.
Also I’d still argue that the theorical advantages of pushrod suspension aren’t really helpful for offroading. On a road car with independent suspension, the main limitations to ride height and suspension travel is the angle of the suspension arms, as they can’t be made very long.
And even in SCORE and U4 racing, where they have super long suspension arms with crazy amounts of travel (something we’ll never have in-game), most people still run straight shock setups.
You could argue it should be as good as double wishbone, but I don’t think it should be better.
Although no one producing pushrod for offroad is not the reason that directly penalize the offroad performance, suspension used in a offroad car need to be a long-travel one, and the suspension need to be soft, but pushrod suspension is designed for lower the overall centre of gravity, lower the ride height and also better airflow[1].
While in theory there can be a long travel pushrod suspension system, it will either use up a lot of car space. Also, it will go against the advantage and the philosophy of the pushrod suspension, but cost a lot of money for engineering such thing.
And if offroad performance of the pushrod suspension is not penalized in the game, it will be OP, despite a proper offroad pushrod suspension technology in the industry is not even exist in production cars.
To sum up, if the game does not penalize offroad performance, it is not realistic, it is not what pushrod suspension actually means, and the create bad gameplay.
[1] A episode of Engineering Explained about the advantages of pushrod suspension
It is worth remembering that despite it existing, it’s still extremely uncommon offroad, even all the way up at the Trophy Truck level. There’s quite a few reasons for this.
It has more potential points of failure.
It needs ridiculously stiff springs and shocks to have long travel (Which further stress components).
It takes away valuable chassis space which could be used for fuel/tools/spare parts.
It doesn’t actually offer much over a long travel double wishbone for low speed travel.
As much as I like unconventional technology being used (Especially aftermarket-only stuff), this is one of those things that wouldn’t make sense to do. They could add “reverse cantilever pushrods” as a suspension type, something that costs a fortune to design/engineer, requires more maintenance, has less utility and engine space. But then, who would use it?
In other (non-offroad) balancing news, I noticed two little things:
A) 2 seats tend to score better in Family Premium (and Luxury) segments than 4/5 seats
B) Dumping Quality down to -15 almost always scores best in the Aerodynamics tab. The difference in top speed and fuel consumption is relatively low, but the production units decrease quite substantially.
I have only ever seen one off road vehicle use a push-rod suspension, It had very little usable space for anything else, and really didn’t seem to do any better even though the announcer kept commenting how much flex it had. Most are solid coil, solid leaf, double A frame, and solid 4-link with coil overs. I briefly considered trying push-rods for my shocks, but it was going to be way too complicated, and take way too much room in the wrong places…
Yeah, most of the advantages of pushrods don’t apply to offroad situations, mostly what I’m on about with them is the penalty seems arbitrary. Technically you could try and match the articulation of a solid axle without giving up the advantages of independent suspension (a heave spring and a konigsegg triplex style arrangement might have acceptable roll on road without much of an roll bar), but that would combine hypercar complexity and space utilization with an SUV sort of body, so there’s probably not a use case unless you want a trophy truck that is also a rock bouncer, and that’s well outside the scope of this game.
And a completely different one: I think I read on the forum that the engine dyno is supposed to always be simulating full throttle, but that doesn’t seem to be reflected by the manifold pressure gauge. For NA engines it doesn’t reach atmospheric until near the rev limiter, and for turbo engines the blow of valve actuates if you lower the RPM, but neither would happen if RPMs were being held down purely by the dyno.
I also remembered a slightly more common aluminum bodied vehicle, which was actually in production a lot longer: the classic Land Rover/Defender.
I went through and did a comparison between push-rod, and double wishbone (very similar suspension) and yes the penalty is excessive. It should be nearly the same as double wishbone due to the limiting factor being the lengths of the wishbones (I call them A frames) as they are the components that limit the travel.
It shouldn’t be the same as double wishbone. Double wishbone is very common in offroad (Pro-4 and Trophy Trucks both use them, and King of the Hammer trucks and buggies usually have them as well) because it can be beefed up to hell and back, and with long travel shocks, can provide well over a foot of travel. The pushrods as they are in game are designed to promote lightweight (Too weak for offroad) and are laid out to provide a mechanical advantage to the shocks, which limits the movement of the shocks.
In order to have it be “good” at offroad, all the things its good at currently (Lightweight, good on-road performance) would have to be flipped (Heavy weight, good off-road performance). To allow pushrods to be good at both simultaneously would be not only imbalanced, it would also be incorrect.
The double wishbone on the pro-4 and trophy trucks are custom long wishbones and not available in a production vehicle. Consider a length where you can still fit an engine or trunk between as you would with a production car. With the push-rods the intention is to move the shocks and springs someplace else such as out of the airflow. The light weight might be where the devs came from on the penalty as I did notice they were also lighter despite having more parts.
Light does not always equal bad for off road, weight is still the enemy, on my rig I always try to balance durable with light, and seem to have done quite will with that ballance
They’re unrealistically long on the front, yes, but even still, plenty of offroad vehicles have reasonable length double wishbones on the front (To say nothing of how many stock trucks and SUVs have IFS stock). And on the rear, in more specialized cases (King of the Hammers specifically stands out there). It’s worth remembering that in general, pushrods on passenger cars are lighter than double wishbones. With smaller shocks, smaller springs, smaller swaybars and lighter control arms, they tend to weigh less despite having more parts.
Weight is still the enemy, but there’s a reason a trophy truck still weighs over 5,000lbs: Durability needs material, there’s just no two ways around that.
I don’t think it is the length of the lower frame of the suspension is the decisive factor that the pushrod should be penalize in terms of off-road ability. Because if pushrod has the same off-road ability as double wishbone with that reason, so as the macpherson strut, since they are having the lower arm with the same length.
Different from normal double wishbone and the macpherson, the length of the suspension (spring and damper) of the pushrod in game is relatively limited, which leads to stiffer spring and damper, is why pushrod should be penalize in the game, since off-road car should have softer suspensions
Trophy trucks are the heaviest vehicles within SCORE rules. Class 1 and class 10 buggies are much lighter, with most class 10 buggies being around 1 ton.
Edit: Also, independent rear suspension is a lot more common in desert racing compared to the KOH and Ultra4 in general.
A class ten buggy is so far away from being a production vehicle, I’m not even sure why it’s even a part of the discussion here (And a class one is still usually just shy of two tons, for the record - they’re not light). It’d be like saying “Certain engines are too powerful” and having someone utilize Top Fuel Dragsters as proof that it’s fine. Trophy Truck at least outwardly resembles a production vehicle, and so again, it’s a little telling that they weigh as much as they do.
In production-based vehicles (Trophy Truck, Hammer Unlimited, Heavy Metal), they’re almost exclusively using solid rear ends with coils in the desert. While it would be nice to use double-wishbones, again, whipping along at 80+MPH while bouncing a 5,000 pound vehicle through the air puts a lot of stress on components. A solid coil is just stronger for dealing with that. And, again, to bring this back on topic: Literally no production-based offroad class is using cantilevered pushrods.
