First off I admit I am not real good at LFS, but I do have some AutoX and went to Skip Barbers performance racing school and I think I did fairly well.
Probably not a delicate as I am in real life, that and no fear of death.....

here are my 5 ideas (for road cars, maybe for all cars):
1: Limiting it to some degree;
Gear ratio for an example seems to be the consensus here that the level of customization is too much for people on both sides of this argument. Gears should be tuned to X.0 or even X.00 but not to X.000.

Suspension should be tuned to the whole number or the tenths but to the hundredth. And so on for the other settings.

2: Make it easier by adding predefined levels menu (Novice setting menu, NOTHING is taken away from how it is now);
Creating another menu for novices so that there are 3-5 levels for each setting:
Example Gears could be set to Close Medium or Far, but each setting equals a setting like the way it is now. So if us novices could see that we may like a Close gear ratio then we can tune accordingly and if we mess it up we can just set it back to Close gear ratio and begin again.

3: Same as 2 but remove fine tuning all together
(fine tuning meaning how setting are currently on LFS)

4: Limit what can be tuned even more (realistically);
dramatically decrease the setting level
Brake Pressure: Now UF1 Torque could be 100Nm to 10,000Nm. How about just putting it to a level maybe 1,000Nm and the max you can change it to is + or - 2,000?

5: Create ONLY 10 (or less) set banks for each car;
For each car there will only be 10 sets you can choose from not unlimited as it is now. Having a limited number eliminates the 1 set for every track instead that people do now, there will be people who keep a long track set, short track set, Drag, drift, ect...

I believe a one of these or a combination of these would greatly help the experience of LFS for all at all levels

Mate, You said nothing new . Well personally i'm ... against(couse playing with those setups is a lot of fun!), yet something like "Realistic setups - on" on servers side would be nice. So that if we would like then we could play with all those options and if we would like to race in a realistic manner then we could also. Btw. Here's similar topic http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=53638&page=3

Edit: OMG! I mean i want to vote for 2(very nice idea, good for both sites of this "war")... i voted for "leave them alone"... i want to change my vote .

Edit: Em... You've posted already there... well.. at least You've made a nice poll here.

lets just hope some of the holy trinity reads and agrees

Quote from OmniMoAK :

5: Create ONLY 10 (or less) set banks for each car;
For each car there will only be 10 sets you can choose from not unlimited as it is now. Having a limited number eliminates the 1 set for every track instead that people do now, there will be people who keep a long track set, short track set, Drag, drift, ect...

Never.
Or there will be illegal tools released to bypass this.

Voted for four and nothing more.
This is the most important thing to do for next if you ask me.

Quote from Shadowww :

Never.
Or there will be illegal tools released to bypass this.

agreed, but it would make each racer have slight variations for the same track yet even the field as they'd also have to use that set on every track.

Yes illegal tools will be out there but if you have to cheat to win, is it worth it? It will just keep *most* racers honest to the broad setups for all

I know this is not my best idea, but if we all had to make only a couple of sets for all the tracks we would make a well rounded setup.

4.

Restrict road cars to what is sensibly adjustable. That's largely tyre pressures. Not all the gear ratios stuff. Racing cars would need some tweaks e.g. less gear ratio flexibility for almost all of them.

Quote from duke_toaster :

4.

Restrict road cars to what is sensibly adjustable. That's largely tyre pressures. Not all the gear ratios stuff. Racing cars would need some tweaks e.g. less gear ratio flexibility for almost all of them.

Again, what I say with road cars is to ask the question :

In the developpers mind, are they road cars, or are they road legal cars ?

The question may seem pointless, but think about it... Maybe they are old road cars equipped with some aftermarket parts to make them trackday road cars or specced road cars (Spec Miata like, etc) and not the exact replica of the used car you'd buy in a dealer... Untill we know what Scavier exactly has in mind for the definition of what a road car is, we can't make judgement whether the actual setup system is good or bad, and we will have to comply to his decision.

Becaue let's be honest, cars up to road legal specs are what people drive on a daily basis, and are usually not optimized for racing. Just look at the UF1 right now... How many race servers use UF1 only ? I am sure that it is lower than the ratio 1/30 (UF1/total cars). Please do not show me the stats of LFS world, as I have yet to see how many of these UF1 miles have been done in a cruise server. The UF1 is underused, partly because it has a very strictly enforced setup system.

I am not against the limitation of the setup adjustments. And by that I mean changing the increment options to more senseful increments (especially for gears ratio). Also, how about chaning the names of some increments ? For the ARB, speaking of diameter instead of stiffness (but I can understand that the number displayed here is the number used for physics calculation in the model). The changing of names wouldn't have any change on how the ARB behaves, but might limit available increments; Though it would add some "unnecessary" code in the LFS.exe (convert : diameter value --> stiffness value for the calculations).

Overally, I am opposed to a very harsh limitation of setups, simply because it is an excluding suggestion. It excludes a variety of options we have gained up to now. I totally second the idea of a guy that posted some months ago (I can't recall the name, but if he shows up, I give full credit to him for that suggestion). He said that having three levels of setups tuning, with a server side option to select which level to allow :
- Pure stock/Road specs (very few limitations allowed apart from the tire type, pressure and maybe camber and toe, with handicaps possible)
- Specced up cars (a selection of less adjustable parts, like a choice between 5 to 6 spring stiffness, some narrow damping value damping values and the possibility of adjusting the final drive, have ARB, choice of pre setuped differentials, etc).
- Full custom (basically what we get now + more adjustability of the non-adjustable parts of cars like XFG, XRG and UF1 -add supers, change the differential, etc- )
Instead of having only one setup list, we would have three joint to each other. Of course, the race cars would only have the choice between the two latter. (Except for the BF1 who might even only have what we have now).

That done, servers, leagues would choose what type of level of adjustment they wish to apply with their own regulations and conception of racing. Everybody would play with their conception, and everybody with different expectations would be able to play without bitching at each other.

___

However I tend to think that the "limit-setup-options-to-tire-pressure" brigade is in fact a conspiracy by cruisers to influence Scavier so that racing with those non-performant machines gets boring and that racers progressively turn to cruise servers, so that they can get an overpowering majority on the forums

Quote from Zen321 :

Becaue let's be honest, cars up to road legal specs are what people drive on a daily basis, and are usually not optimized for racing. Just look at the UF1 right now... How many race servers use UF1 only ? I am sure that it is lower than the ratio 1/30 (UF1/total cars). Please do not show me the stats of LFS world, as I have yet to see how many of these UF1 miles have been done in a cruise server. The UF1 is underused, partly because it has a very strictly enforced setup system.

The main reason for the UF1 being underused is that many people unfortunately (and wrongly) think that slow cars = bad. While it's actually exactly the opposite.

Leave them as they are imo. but still, i would rather see a more fair race so, some setups should be limited to nothing apart from fuel and tyre pressure. but for now, leave them as they are.

nice topic, but i think it has been brought up many times.

leave it alone.
you want "basic" or "advanced" settings go play nascar99 or something.
a simulator simulates.
i dont go out in the garage saturday morning and click "easy" on the race car if i think i might not do well at the track that day.........
sometimes the lack of driving ability can be made up for in your knowledge of suspension geometry and such.

IMO, it should be limited to what you can really tune on which type of car. For instance, if you're going to race with a car similar to a XFG, the options available would be those that you would find and be able to customize on the real car. While things like camber and all the suspension stuff can probably truly be edited, I'm not sure it's so easy as it is in LFS to change the gear ratios on road cars.

e: I agree with Zen, here. The question really is to know what kind of cars we're talking about. If they're stock road legal cars, a lot of options would have to go. However, if they're road legal cars customized with some parts here and there, then more options would be available. On race cars, however, most things should probably stay as they are.

By the way: option 5 doesn't really work. I believe that a lot of people, me included, don't have like 30 setups on every car, one for each track. I usually have a qualifying setup and then a 5/10 laps race setup. Should I race for more than 10 laps, I usually just tweak my race setup accordingly.

Quote from zeugnimod :

The main reason for the UF1 being underused is that many people unfortunately (and wrongly) think that slow cars = bad. While it's actually exactly the opposite.

This can be a good explanation for the problem but I'm not sure it is the one... Look at the XRG and XFG which are pretty damn slow as well... The CTRA1 is always full, and not only with beginners, there are also a lot of very good racers playing there.

I think the main reason for the UF1 being underused could be similar to the reason RAC and LXs are underused as well... It is pretty hard to drive.

Yes, I am not that fast overally, and totally slow with the UF1. But think about this... the car has got an open differentail, which means that if one of your wheels slightly loses traction when accelerating, all the power will go to it, and you'll stop accelerating. Especially when you only have 53 horsepower, it's unforgivable if you lose traction before a straight like in blackwood.
I am pretty sure if you had the possibility of putting at least a viscous LSD, the UF1 would be driven more. The fact that it is too stockish may sometimes prevent people from enjoying it fully. And I am scared that if you do the same for road cars, bascially turning them up to road legal specs, they'll be used less and less

Quote from Zen321 :

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I agree here to a great degree (really, not just fake agreement like I announced in the other thread).

Nevertheless I don't even think the UF1 needs a different diff - it's the unprecise physics again.

I used to have a car with VERY similar specs to the UF1, and you really had to do a lot to make the inner wheel spin like it does in LFS. Not to mention the sudden brutal understeer that comes along with it.

Spinning inner wheel when turning right on a junction in 2nd gear and maybe 30 to 40 km/h? Yeah... sure...