The online racing simulator
FXO should be slower
(105 posts, started )
Quote from Funnybear :+ 1,000,000.

*Dives into the nearest lake*

Great, let's kill the RB4 and XR GTT and put them out of their misery. Or we can just open a new class called the FXO class and kill this thread ASAP.
Quote from Jamexing :Just wish they make RB4 and XR GTT as good as they realistically should be. Can't believe the RB4 has such puny tires. 215/45/16s?

Whilst there is a risk of getting trapped in the real cars issue it's worth pointing out that the ST205 has 215/50/16s as standard so don't feel hard done by as a standard car. http://www.gtfours.co.uk/stuff/facts/205/facts.htm#General

I do however accept that the current FXO tires are massive.


Personally I feel the best thing to do would be to add a rollcage to all the cars in LFS and offer them in there current form, with less adjustable options as road based racing cars and offer the same cars with slicks and other modifications to change them to create a Group N style racing class as seperate cars.
The RB4 only LOOKS like the 80's Celica GT4. It's suspension is way superior to that car. The RB4 has a great Mcpherson strut all-round suspension, whereas the 80's GT4 had decent struts up front but absolutely horrid rear trailing links that walked laterally in response to lateral forces.

At least the XR GTT is a very close copy of the Mitsubishi Starion, both appearance and suspension wise. Just hope it gets a powerband close to the RL 80's car. And I agree the that road cars should be given finite gear ratio choices, though 2-way adjustable dampers are perfectly resonable for anyone planning to drive road based cars on the track.

To be rasonable, the FXO is definitely non-standard as it's tires are HUGE and so are its massive fenders. Yes, that the OEM tire package is absolute crap, typical of toyota. Well, my friend's 191hp corolla has horrid 195/55/16s all seasons as OEM, and they struggle to contain 191 horses. Doesn't mean that such a car should be FORCED to wear those horrid boots to a track event. In fact, its optimal size is 215/45/17, something well known to those who tune it.

To level the playing field, let's just increase the RB4s tires as much as what you would realistically do for such a car. Notice that the 90's GT4 had less power but MUCH MORE top speed then the lighter RB4! As I've said, there's something very wrong with the Rb4's aero ATM. 215 to 225 shouldn't be a problem. It's not as if I'm trying to stuff FXO sized meatloafs to the RB4.
Quote from Becky Rose :
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Ive done some testing for a TBO series and found that if you put "road normal" tires on the FXO and use "road super" on xrt and rb4 they are very equal.

Easy to check too. When the race is done check replay. look at the FXO tires. If someone is running anything other than "road normal" on the FXO they get a DQ.
That's one way to slow them down, though we'll end up with FXO drivers complaining about such a ridiculously artificial rule. Unless road supers disappear from the FXO's tire inventory, which in itself isn't entirely fair since road normals are crap at racing temperatures. Well, at least that'll force FXO drivers to watch their front tires like RL FWD racers.

A reasonable upgrade of the RB4 and XR GTT's tires isn't TOO much to ask for, is it? While FXOs don't suffer excessive front tire wear if driven properly, the poor RB4 suffers overheated tires at all 4 corners of pushed hard enough to have any chance of catching an FXO in a straight race. Frankly, RB4 just needs a slight upgrade to remedy this, no need for ridiculous FXO sized meats. just enough to survivie full speed racing without melting its tires without resorting to 40+psi pressures. This compared with the fact that you can race the FXO at full speed without excess tire wear at only 38psi! Wow.

Something like 225/45/16 isn't ridiculously large for a road car like RB4 used on the track. I bet RL 90s Celica GT4s use 225/45/16s as an optimal upgrade size too. This is nowhere as OTT (over the top) as FXO.

Anyway, what Sp3cTr3 suggested is a great band-aid for now.
the cars should either be balanced or unclassed, and not close enough in performance to class. having classes with 1 clear winner narrows the depth of cars used in lfs massively.

if league organisers ran rb4/xrt and fxr / xrr leagues, there would at least be 2 reasonable car choices instead of one...
I still think putting the three on the same size tires and adjusting the weights or power slightly will go a long way to ballancing the class.

Removing 50lbs from the GTT and 100lbs from the RB4 has proven to make the three much closer in performance when drivin by the AI in my tests. So I think that a little power or weight tweaking in addition to a uniform tire size and shape would yeald very good results.

I performed my weight/performance tests with differing fuel loads between either car and the GTT to arrive at the 50lbs figure. With the AI driving and all havng the same ammount of training in their respective cars the average time difference dropped from about 1 sec per minute to .1 - .2 sec per minute on a variaty of tracks.

Lets look at the facts.

FXO:
Lightest Weight
Widest Width, Lowest Profile Tires
Best Power/Weight Ratio

GTT:
Meduim Weight
Medium Width, Medium Profile Tires
Average Power/Weight Ratio

RB4:
Heaviest Weight
Medium Width, Medium Profile Tires
Worst Power/Weight Ratio

So the lightest car has the best power/weight ratio and the most rubber. The other two are more competitive, but are heavier, have lower power/weight ratio and less rubber to put the power down. Its no wonder the FXO just runs away.

The differece is too small to use a passenger as a ballancing tool, and too large to use fuel. So a change will need to be made in the core game to ballance this class. I also agree that we should not hamstring the FXO to rein it in, just boost the performance envelop of the other cars to allow then to keep pace. Right now the FXO just has all the advantages and no disadvantages other then tire abuse but with smooth driving that is not an issue. Its easy to drive, its fast, light and has the rubber to carry more speed through corners. As it is now it will out accelerate, out corner and out brake the others hands down.
Good point, Blowtus.

Good points too, Gimpster. Just keep the FXO as it is and tune up the other 2 cars JUST enough to maintain competitive racing.

Not trying to be repetitive, but it's been years and it's about time they fix the turbo modeliing and powerbands. These 2 things aren't eye-candy or anything that trivial, they're fundamental physics that a sim like LFS is supposed to simulate. We can only hope that Scawen has already fixed the problem in secret and waiting to surprise us with the next patch...
A way to get the tire thing to work in leagues is after the race, NO PITTING, (atleast for the FXO drivers, but all drivers would be fine) and have to send the setups to whoever ( a neutral party in the server) who would collect them all one at a time, and review them and go "this dudes on supers. DQ!"

But do the normals vs supers equalize it?
I don't agree with no pitting as that might be too crippling for FXOs, which by itself is unfair too.

Road normals would reign the FXO in, not the optimal solution, but a good band-aid FTM. At least it'll stop TBO races from turning into invincible FXO affairs.
Quote from Gimpster :I still think putting the three on the same size tires and adjusting the weights or power slightly will go a long way to ballancing the class.

Good points you make, but on this particular one, wouldn't the XRT have wider rear tires than fronts?
I would expect such a car to have 225's rear and something like 205 up front.

I would also like the other guy I don't know the name of (sry) try to fix the powerband issues to see how it makes them things more competitive and maybe fix the longitudinal grip loss of the tires so that spinning on a start actually is slower than full throttle (or is that already fixed?). Then if things are normal we should have the FXO much slower on starts and RB4 quite a bit faster.

But really. 240 width tires on the FXO? That is just ridiculous. Hrrm...the Acura TL has 235 tires and is a fwd...but it's much bigger than what an FXO would be.
But the band-aid option only helps leagues, the pickup races would still have the FXO-wins-always issue

But shouldn't the RB4 still be the heaviest because of it's drivetrain weight? But smaller tires for FXO +1. XRT...hmmm, reminds me of Porsche 944 (maybe the S2 turbo), think it had similar tires on front and rear, Vain prolly knows, he drives that kind of thing irl .

Anyways, let's just give 10hp more to the FXO so it could compete with the LRF cars
Quote from Nick_ll :Good points you make, but on this particular one, wouldn't the XRT have wider rear tires than fronts?
I would expect such a car to have 225's rear and something like 205 up front.

I don't believe either the starion or rx7 ever came with wider rear tyres than fronts - it's not a common thing the factory would go for.
Staggered setups aren't THAT uncommon these days. Besides, some cars are almost impossible to drive safely without wider rears, e.g. Corvette ZO6 (500+hp!).

Anyway, although the TBO cars are heavily based on road cars, the FXO tires are definitely non-standard. It's got HUGE fenders.

Yes, the OEM Starions or RX-7s had equal sizes all 4, but no one with serious track time in mind wouldn't upgrade to wider tires than OEM ASAP. Many if not all used on racetracks have slightly staggered sets IRL anyway, so it's not unrealistic.
Errrm....you guys might want to check Tire Rack...
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/ ... ear=1989&autoModClar=
OE Front: 205/55-16
OE Rear: 225/50-16

Oh and...a Conquest is a Starion.

Maybe the GX had same size front and rear, but that's not a turbo. It would be the XRG...and besides, the starion TSI was something like 197hp apparently and our XRT is 240, so I think it just makes sense with 40 more hp to have it with wider rear tires.
fair call. Didn't happen on Aussie ones.
Quote from Nick_ll :Errrm....you guys might want to check Tire Rack...
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/ ... ear=1989&autoModClar=
OE Front: 205/55-16
OE Rear: 225/50-16

Oh and...a Conquest is a Starion.

Maybe the GX had same size front and rear, but that's not a turbo. It would be the XRG...and besides, the starion TSI was something like 197hp apparently and our XRT is 240, so I think it just makes sense with 40 more hp to have it with wider rear tires.

Excellent Point, Nick II!
Quote :ut shouldn't the RB4 still be the heaviest because of it's drivetrain weight?

Mazda shaved 7grams off the weight of a rear view mirror for Tristan's hair dresser, so should relative weight of the cars be an issue based on drive train alone? I'd rather weight was set to make the gameplay better than left as is in persuit of a pseudo-ideal of perfection.
Yup, but after spending thousands of dollars making a mirror lighter, they added a heavier engine, more kit, cup holders, and a terrible, intrusive ESP system, and made it go from the worlds best handling car (or at least top 6) to one of the worst handling front engined rear drive sports cars in one fell swoop.

And they made it uglier too.
Quote from tristancliffe :Yup, but after spending thousands of dollars making a mirror lighter, they added a heavier engine, more kit, cup holders, and a terrible, intrusive ESP system, and made it go from the worlds best handling car (or at least top 6) to one of the worst handling front engined rear drive sports cars in one fell swoop.

And they made it uglier too.

Unfortunately Tristan, that's where modern car design and technology is heading these days.
It's not actually uglier Tristan, it's just been made more butch to appeal to a male audience, which is why you dont like it ! *runs and hides*
Could be, but there is something sexy about more feminine curved cars than butch angular bodies.

Personally, I'd rather look at a curvy young girl than a butch one, and the same applies with cars. I don't often hear people call Elans girly/hairdressery (except the newer one).

@James: Yeah I know. You have no idea how much that ideology depresses me
Believe me, I do. This coming from a guy who drives RL cars with NO ABS.
Hey my Focus has no ABS
Most older cars have no ABS so your not the only one.

FXO should be slower
(105 posts, started )
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