If Ballast is introduced as a server-side option, it can work for leagues and pick-up races. The server admin could just specify how much ballast for each car.
This way, the devs don't have to worry about changing the cars and messing up all the hotlaps on LFS World. Leagues can implement BTCC style weight penalties for race winners if they want to(assuming admin can add ballast to individual drivers). Any server admin can use ballast to even out the cars they chose for the track they chose (or make them less even if they so wish). LFS gets yet another feature used in real racing series.
Seems like a no-brainer.
There are numerous threads in the improvement suggestions section asking for this feature - I really hope Scawen implements this feature sooner rather than later
+1
i really think this would take 30minutes to implement (make the ballast as "the co-driver with variable weight")... and would give the community a great tool to find the right weight to make the cars more even...
Can you think of any other option that is in real life racing, AND will not require all hotlaps to be reset ?
Why is ballast not a good option? I can't think of any good reason. There seem to be three options for evening out the cars lap-times: change the weight, change the power, change the contact patch. I cannot see any reason why any one of these is better or worse than the others except that ballast is used more often in real racing, and would be the least disruptive option for the development process.
There is quite a bit more options:
1. Centre of Gravity
2. Trackwidth
3. Wheelbase
4. Tiresizes
5. Weight balance
6. Weight
7. Engine construction
1, 2, 4 are directly responsible for cornering speeds. 3 and 5 are responsible for the behaviour through a turn. 6 of course is important for cornering speeds, topspeeds and tire usage. 7 is responsible for how good a car accelerates.
The FZR on the WR hotlap on AS North is 5kph faster through turns than the XRR was in qualifying were the fastest XRR set a lap quicker than the WR at that time. That means that despite factor 6 being the same on both cars, the FZR has big advantages here. Personally, I think it has the much better centre of gravity.
We are in the great position that unlike league organizers, we can directly work with car manufacturer in a way that all of the above factors can be changed. That way we can work with the cars for a while until they fit into the phantasy tech regulations which state a minimum dry weight of 1100kg. It is the more sophisticated method of balancing the cars which promises better results.
If you just change the weight or the power of course you might get the same results in the end, but the side effects like tire usage and fuel consumption will be much worse.
I clicked undecided on the poll as im not sure really if it would be good to even them out. As said "even out" means mroe balanced. I know that some cars will always have an advantage on one track over the other in that group.
For example i had a team race of FXR on blackwood which meant i had to practice that car/track set up and i like it now. Although im still not that near to the WR im quite fast. BUT when the server is public and people are racing the FZR (and arent complete novicies) then i dont have a chance. I know if they werre 100% even on blackwood they wouldnt be even on other tracks so im not saying that. Im saying i would like the be able to take out the car i prefer and be competitive against some FZR drivers (not including aliens )
If the gtr class / turbo class was more even then people like me would possible choose a slower car as they prefer but still be competitive.
I just think that they could be closer and people wouldnt always take the fastest car for that track and so have a challenge. As now the only challenge is - can you drive the fzr round track X?
Whether i think they shuld be more even - im not sure.
Are you serious? of course there is. Why do you think Scawen doesn't release small incremental updates to the Physics but instead keeps all tweaks and updates back for major releases ?
Apart from the multitude of users who enjoy hotlapping and competing on the many LFSWorld charts, there is the issue of invalidating all the available replays and setups - these are a valuable resource for anyone learning an unfamiliar car/track combo.
Hmm, I'm not sure about some of your implications.
While it's true that Centre of Gravity, Trackwidth and Tiresizes have a significant effect on cornering speeds, you seem to be suggesting that they have a fundemental effect while mass is only of secondary importance - this seems to me to be nonsense. Mass is equally if not more important in cornering speeds.
You also seems to be implying that Engine construction is the main factor in accelleration - this is also nonsense - mass is also equally important here (and in decelleration).
It seems to me that the factor in your list that effects more aspects of the cars performance than any other without drastically altering the cars handling characteristics (which would be bad IMO) that factor is mass (weight) !!
Mass is such a fundamental component of all physics calculations - it effects everything. The mass of the car has a direct influence on accelleration, decelleration, cornering speeds, top speeds, tyre wear & fuel usage.
The fact that Mass effects pretty much everything means that we don't need to make any major changes in order to even up the cars - add a little mass and they would lose just a little of each of accelleration, braking distance, cornering speed, tyres, fuel, top speed. This means that a cars race times can be reduced without it's overall character being altered. Add to this the fact that it should be possible to implement mass changes via a 'ballast' feature that should not require LFSWorld to be reset, allows control by race and server admins and gives us yet another real world racing feature and we have a win win win situation
ok col, i agree, there are people that like to compete on lfsw charts and etc
but reset the hotlaps = minor problem in comparison with the unbalancing
and if the cars get balanced from the start is better...
ballast = fine tuning, not for great changes
if we reduce everything to ballast, the FZR will carry like 100~150kg of ballast, the XRR will carry 50~70kg...
u dont think that 50kg will balance FZR with FXR, think?
ballast = good option, even if the cars get + balanced, but we need at least a good start...
if we reduce fzr tire size and give more power to XRR, we will get a better balancing... there are many ways to reduce the cornering speed or the acceleration or anything, i think the point isnt how to do this...
I don't think it's a good idea to balance the RWDs with the AWD. If you mean just closeER then I guess that's OK, but I don't think that the FXR should be able to turn the same lap times as the RWD cars.
if u ask me, if FXR must be as competitive as FZR i would say YES if was a real race, coz the racers "cant" choose the cars like on LFS... if u ask me if i think that devs need to do this i would say NO, the FXR needs to be a bit slower than XRR and FZR, but not 3s+ like now, maybe average 0.3~0.5s slower
if FXR get closer to FZR, some tracks the FXR will be faster, for sure, but this is not a problem, diferent cars = diferent performances in diferent tracks, that would happens...
no comments about the TBO class... lol... thats a joke...
It is one of the main factors. There is a .45s difference between the FZR and XRR in one single corner in AS North (the tight hairpain). The FZR has torque right away, the XRR does not due to its huge turbo lag. Without the stupid turbo but a nice N/A engine, the XRR would be much closer to the FZR.
Mass is great to balance cars if they are pretty equal to begin with. Like in WTCC. But as Carlos said you'd need quite a bit of weight added to the FZR and you are not really trying to tell me 100-150kg of weight dont change the handling characteristics, do you? Also, making the FXR leighter does not change its fundamental topspeed problem which is where it loses most of its time. It will still run out of power because it loses so much of it in the three differentials it has.
Weight is not a no brainer. It is a simingly easy way out for a complex problem which brings up new problems.
But....if u make the FXR closer (in lap times) to the FZR or XRR, then who is gonna chose them for a champ? we all know that is easyer to make mistakes, burn the tires off, and the chances to crash are bigger using them (in 20-30 lap races).
The FZR-XRR are the usual chose for the faster drivers, while FXR is the one for those who make more mistakes and look for a secure race (without crashing) or the FWD lovers.....
Im a RWD fan, i just love the funny tail, and i even chose them if i know im going to lose but think Carlos idea is ok (reduce the tire or increase the weight on the FXO) because no one chose the XRT! , and a little bit of power for the FXR (But not too much!!! )
Thats what I think, NOT the truth....so, don't get mad =)
Well, I think that if everyone agrees that we want ballast, it could be with us as soon as the next patch/update - the other stuff you're talking about is unlikely to happen until at least the next physics update ! - possibly not even in S2 full release !
In fact as has already been suggested, because physics changes can make a difference to handling and performance, and could even necessitate small changes in some or all of the cars design, Scawen may decide that trying to balance the cars further at this stage would not be a productive use of his time - e.g. he makes the balancing changes with testing and incremental updates == lots of dev time. These are released along side some physics updates in the distant future. Then the Aliens get their hands on them and discover that because of some arbitrary new variable of the updated physics engine, car X is suddenly faster than the rest ! (this kind of thing has been happening since early demo days ). Suddenly all that dev time was wasted, and the discussion and arguements on the forum continue !
The more folks argue that ballast just won't do the job, the less likely it becomes that we will even get that !
I guess what I'm saying is: aside from all the discussion about the merits of ballast vs. tyre changes and power changes in cars. Ballast could happen pretty soon if Scavier decide to do it - other updates will not happen for a much longer while !
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Something else I noticed is that the FZR is by FAR the most popular of the gtr cars* - so the lap times are swayed even more in its favour, and even with this extra advantage, the average wr times (averaged over different tracks) seem to be only about 1 second faster than e.g. XRR. IMO you wouldn't need much more than 50 - 75 kg and a heap of practice to make things a LOT more balanced. It may not be perfect, but it will be a huge improvement
*I noticed that for example on the configs you have driven online you have somthing like 10 times as many laps on FZR as on XRR or FXR - not surprising that you find FZR to be such an advantage
Yes col, i know you and i think u know me(LSR Carlos, driving FZ50 at BLGP, with rac and lx6 enabled), and with that u can find that i like the FZ50, and i like the FZR. I dont choose FZR just coz i find it faster than others, i drive FZR coz i like to drive, as the XRT. I think that this dont need to be considered(what car i drive) coz dont influence my opinion... maybe if my logs shows: "he drives FXR", ill be mad if u point this and say that im defending the FXR coz i like it... its not my point here... hehe... and i think its not your point too
I get your point, maybe ballast = the first option for the devs, can be implemented faster and easier, but again, i think that ballast is not the first option to solve the problem, we need a better start to balance with ballast, but if the devs implement only ballast, wat we can do... ill just get mad again, lol...
i think there is no problem in reduce the tiresize a bit of the FZ, reduce the turbo lag and add a bit of power to the others 2, and then add the ballast option
same to the TBO class, adding 5~10hp to the RB4; adding like 50kg for FXO and reducing a bit of his tiresize will not **** up the balancing, then, just add ballasts...
I think the performance advantage that the FXO and the FZR have atm is too big. The FXO seems pretty simple, just bring it more to the pack and the general preference of RWD overall will see many more driving the XRT even with the FXO still having a small advantage. This will also have the flow on effect like others have said where the XRT and RB4 will see performance gains just through being driven more often. I think the devs have tried to address the problem with the latest patch by making the FXO harder to drive but it doesn't seem quite enough just yet.
The FZR is a little more difficult I think because before the recent patch the XRR was generally the best choice for long races (1hr + and depending on track). It seems curious that the FZR gained the biggest benefit from the new patch, I can only wonder if the aim was to make it more competitive in the longer races. I don't think it would take much to get back to a similar position to the pre-patch situation.
I don't really buy the physics changing argument, particularly when it comes to the FXO. I can't remember a time when the FXO wasn't the quickest car under virtually all circumstances and it's nearing 3 years since I started playing.
I also wonder if the beta team is really suitable enough for car balance testing. No offence to them and I'm not having a go but I don't think there's anywhere near enough of them to get an accurate idea of the balance of the cars over all the various track configs (the FXO's domination aside ).
I think maybe a month or two of community wide testing is what it will take to get the balancing issues fully sorted out.
col: you are suggesting no changes before S3. And S3 might very well be 3-4 years away. Not changing anything would be a big put off for new and existing customers and thus be a bad marketing choice.
If you feel that you need to completely misrepresent my point of view in order to support your own arguement then maybe its time to re-think your own position ?
im for server side ballast too. it can be implemented quickly, it requires no hotlap reset (devs will reset hotlaps only if they are really forced to...and there are good reasons for that), also server side ballasts if they will not be "de facto" standardazied, it will make car choice and setup choice, much more variable and evening up races -> no more evryone's with the wr setup!
Col: you are saying balancing should be done for real only when the physics are done. They won't be done until S3, so you are also saying no balancing until then.
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