There have been a lot of threads popping up about people requesting cars, most haven't acheived any conclusions.
A lot of people are asking for imitation this and imitation that, there have been some good ideas, but few that would fit into classes.
This is an attempt to see which the community would prefer;
More individual cars for variation between races
or more cars within classes for more variation within races.

It would be nice if we also had the option for 'both'. Because for example the LX4 is pretty much in its own class, and [dSRC]'s server has proved that it is great fun to race with in its own class.

TBO is fun to race with, but really only the XRT and FXO are somewhat competitive. I just think for any car class to be fun, you just need to sort out the balancing issues and make sure they get similar times.

So I pretty much like Both, and I can't really vote for one of those up top

about balancing cars, imo the 3 gtr cars aren't that balanced cause the fzr has a higher power output than the other 2.

for example try to break 0:39.xx on the Kyoto_oval with the xrr, or the fxr.

mybee caused by my low-expierence or by the v6 in the fzr, i could not compete against it, using one of the other two
am i completely wrong or does someone actually agree to that?

it's pretty much like the "highlander" hook "there can only be one" or sth. like that, i've never seen the engl. original.

Tweaker: It would be nice to have stacks of cars, individuals and class cars.
Unfortunately, we aren't allowed to clone our devs to get it done...

Micha: There is more to balancing cars than their oval time. That's like using a drag strip to compare cars. The XRR's strength is in it's endurance. The FXR, well, that's another story that could do with fixing...

hm,... ok from that view.

i've always thought balanced meant sth like equal in all means necessary.
so i was pretty P****d when i saw the fzr performance on the oval.

Quote from micha1980de :

about balancing cars, imo the 3 gtr cars aren't that balanced cause the fzr has a higher power output than the other 2.

for example try to break 0:39.xx on the Kyoto_oval with the xrr, or the fxr.

mybee caused by my low-expierence or by the v6 in the fzr, i could not compete against it, using one of the other two
am i completely wrong or does someone actually agree to that?

it's pretty much like the "highlander" hook "there can only be one" or sth. like that, i've never seen the engl. original.

FZR: 490bhp, 371lbft, 2425lbs, 452bhp/ton
XXR: 490bhp, 462lbft, 2424lbs, 453bhp/ton
FXR: 490bhp, 462lbft, 2492lbs, 441bhp/ton

Those are the GTR specs from LFS. This tells me that the all cars have the same HP, the FZR is low on torque, and the FXR is too heavy. If you look at the numbers only the XRR has the best power weight advantage and should win most if not all the races. The XXR and FZR are closely matched, but in a long race with equaly skilled drivers the XXR will win on tire ware and fuel use. The FXR is only going to win on tight twisty tracks. For some reason the FZR eats tires and fuel like there is no tomarrow, despite being the same weight and producing the same HP but far less torque. It often will need to stop 3 times for every 2 times the other two need to.

so far right, but without proper control devices, these tail-whigglers are eiter to slow due to wheel-spin control, or fast enough to rotate the whole car instead the wheels only...
it's all about control on the gas-padal.
but thats all already said

Well I'm a sucker for class racing and never can get enough of cars from different manufactures trying to beat each other. In real life there is a series called Dutch Supercar Challenge, and they match cars into classes with a Weight to Horsepower system witch proves to be very good. And as said in the post above, two of the three GTR's are closely matched, but still got their strengths and weakneses. The third need some work though.

So... More cars in the GTR class please, and a couple of more cars to match the small GTR's (XFR and UFR) and make them equal to, but not the same as, each other. Thanks

I find some of the best racing is in single make races. It's nice to have a fairly even class but they'll never be totally even, especially now that S2 has tyre wear, fuel use etc.

just wondering... do you guys think it takes more skill to get a 1:44 on aston national with the FZR, FXR, or XRR?

Quote from X-Ter :

So... More cars in the GTR class please, and a couple of more cars to match the small GTR's (XFR and UFR) and make them equal to, but not the same as, each other. Thanks

RAC GTR?

Quote from Gabkicks :

just wondering... do you guys think it takes more skill to get a 1:44 on aston national with the FZR, FXR, or XRR?

FZR is fastest on that track so XRR or FXR. Of course FXR is easy to drive but it's so slow.

Quote from tailing :

It's nice to have a fairly even class but they'll never be totally even, especially now that S2 has tyre wear, fuel use etc.

True, we never had a completely even car class... but I still think it is possible to make them pretty darn even, and not just have seconds of gaps between their times.

I think it really requires Scawen to see what he needs to do to even them out by having all the fastest drivers throroughly test the cars. Then we could have patches to update the cars and keep seeing the results. Hopefully that can be done before S2 is final, I would love to actually drive the FXR and win numerous times against an FZR or XRR for example, but also still have close races.

Voted individual. Multi-car classes work well in real life, but they do not transfer well to sim-racing. 3 cars might seem evenly matched in real life, but give sim-racers millions of laps of setup development in those 3 cars and soon enough one will show itself to be significantly faster.

I say more variety, fewer cars ignored because servers run the class instead of the car (how many RB4 servers have you seen, and how many people take RB4 on a TBO server?, the car may be fun to drive, but racing it isn't much fun when your competitors have an unfair advantage.)

I'd just prefer to see cars which are built to be fun, realistic and varied, and not compromised in any way by being forced into a class which won't work as it should after a few months anyway, if history is anything to go by.

Saying it's impossible to match cars with different physics so that they are even are just plain bull... I created the STCC mod for Nascar Heat and it has 8 vehicles in it, all with different physics. There are even mixed FWD, RWD and AWD in that mod as it was in real life (STCC season 1999 and 2000).
I got these cars running with in a tenth of a second of each other on pretty much any given track, and it only took about 3 month of beta testing to get it there. One single patch was made after initial release since it was a general opinion that the AWD cars had an advantage on some tracks. After that, they are all considered equal and you can drive the car that most match your driving style and still be competitive.

If an old sim like Nascar Heat can do that, I bet it's possible in Live For Speed as well. It's only a matter of testing.

Both, but mostly classes.
The point of the game is to race one another, and if we're all in the same car for racing to be equal, that's one less chance of both fair and fun races.
Balancing cars isn't that hard, and the devs'll get around to it.

The faster road class has a lot of cars to choose from.. Ferrari, BMW, Corvette, R34 GT-R.. just pick up any 30k$+ pure sports car/performance luxury comparo issue of car mags and pick.

The GTR class could have the LXR, an MR like the F430 or Elise or a 4WD Lambo, maybe a rotary for some variety..

The road TBO class has probably the biggest choice of RL cars to mix and match specs from... 4 door cars, V-engines, a weaker MR2 (or something), a muscle car, etc.

The yoghurt pot class could have an old beetle or Fiat500 or something RWD.

The hardest thing to balance is variety versus a not too disparate short/long race pace. A muscle car would really stand out in either sports road classes, but it could need very different management of tires and fuel.
The classes' inequalities we have now aren't that hard to fix, so it shouldn't be a problem.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=29600#post29600

Krhhhm! Even though 20 people thought it was a stupid poll

The FXR could be just slightly faster, but because it's so easy to drive vs. the other two GTRs, I wouldn't change it much. Maybe more high end power to add topspeed. The GTR class don't visit the shorter/narrower/twistier tracks so often so the rwd get to use their adventages against the awd all the time. And XRR has too much turbolag. Make it a biturbo (or NA ). Not sure, but I guess no real life GTR-class car would be competitive with that much turbolag. But if XRR would be any faster it needed to consume more fuel and that would give some more space to the FXR. And I guess the fuel consumption in LFS is calculated mainly by engine size.

I want more cars to the GTR-class (middle-engine NA rwd and another XRR with NA engine) and a class with 350hp cars with slicks and no aero.

Generally no more turbo cars or fwd cars, please

(and a small formula (FAX), a truck, dragster, muscle cars, cars with rotary engines, prototypes, karts, historic classes, diesel cars, electric cars, horses and seaweed)

Quote from X-Ter :

Saying it's impossible to match cars with different physics so that they are even are just plain bull... I created the STCC mod for Nascar Heat and it has 8 vehicles in it, all with different physics. There are even mixed FWD, RWD and AWD in that mod as it was in real life (STCC season 1999 and 2000).
I got these cars running with in a tenth of a second of each other on pretty much any given track, and it only took about 3 month of beta testing to get it there. One single patch was made after initial release since it was a general opinion that the AWD cars had an advantage on some tracks. After that, they are all considered equal and you can drive the car that most match your driving style and still be competitive.

I don't know anything about that mod, or what you mean by "different physics", but the LFS devs have had years to make the GT and GTi equal, and they're certainly not close, even now, although the balance has swung from one side to the other.

TBH though, you can't really expect cars with different engines, drive layouts, power, weight, tyres etc to do the same laptimes at every track. LX6 is always going to be a lot faster than FZ50 on Aston Cadet. If you gave FZ50 enough power, or reduced its weight enough for it to do the same laptime round Cadet, it would be massively faster on a track like Kyoto National. You'll never balance LRF everywhere, or TBO for that matter.

Different physics mean they all are individual cars. That there is a distinct difference between how the cars handle and feel and that they all have their own strenths and weakneses.
Still, they are all competitive on most tracks.

Quote from sinbad :

You'll never balance LRF everywhere, or TBO for that matter.

You will never balance any class anywhere. But that doesn't mean that class racing isn't going to be very fun and competitive. The very nature that different cars are going to be faster in different sections of the tracks promotes overtaking and racing strategy (FZ5 vs LX6 on the kyoto infield). Leagues that don't allow the changing of cars between races will certainly test the drivers and the cars to their limits.

It seems from the replies that people's greatest concern with classes is their balance, not that there will be a lesser variety of interesting cars to drive.

Quote from X-Ter :

Different physics mean they all are individual cars. That there is a distinct difference between how the cars handle and feel and that they all have their own strenths and weakneses.
Still, they are all competitive on most tracks.

what do you mean different physics? I was under the assumption that all the cars ran under the same physics and what made them different were the drivetrain/specs/hardware. plz somebody tell me these guys are wrong.

By physics they are refering to suspension geometry and vehicle dynamics.

Yes... The cars in the STCC mod all have to obey the same physical laws
The difference is in engine performance, weight, aerodynamics, track width, wheel base and so on.

That's funny, I've never thought of using wheelbase to balance cars.

Seeing as it looks like class racing has a comfortable majority, can we start taking ideas then a poll on in what ways we want classes developed, or is that just taking polls a little too far?
It sure would be nice hearing from one of the devs which direction they would like to take the game in.

Quote from Tweaker :

True, we never had a completely even car class... but I still think it is possible to make them pretty darn even, and not just have seconds of gaps between their times.

Lap times are only one part of the equation, possibly not even the most important part. I think it's possible to get classes pretty even in general but it just seems to me when this type of discussion starts people focus on hotlap times. That might be ok for the average online pickup race but in some 1hr+ league races I've done the XRR was easily the better choice over the FZR. A lot of people seem to think the FZR is the better car in all situations and would have it changed to be slower which would more than likely only make it even worse than the XRR on certain tracks in long races.

Anyway to get back to the original post I'd be happy with any new cars, whether they're in a current class or totally new. I'd hate to hear that a potentially great car wasn't added to the game simply because it had no direct competitor though.

Before the full alpha was released, one of the devs (I think) mentionned that the closed alpha testers all had different stories to tell after the races..
It seems that comment went above most people's heads