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Vehicle Balancing Discussion

RacerXNFS

RacerXNFS

Community Manager
Vehicle balancing has been a hot topic as of late. It's well known that many of the cars have been particularly strong, while some are not in as good a position as they should be. So this forum thread will be dedicated to talking about the vehicle balancing, particularly to test the cars and record their times as they stand in the game right now. The end goal of this is to allow us to see what cars need help in what areas, and how classes stack up with one another overall.

For now, I'd like some input on choosing test courses. A proper test course should have a good mix of flat-out sections and technical ones to allow each car a chance to show its strengths. I have three courses in mind to test courses, and would ideally like to use at least two courses in testing to grab more consistent results. So suggestions for courses would be greatly appreciated.

Keep in mind that, as is PT tradition, all testing and balancing will be done in sim physics. This will give us a vehicle hierarchy consistent within most game modes, as sim physics is the baseline handling model for all of Project Torque.
 
I'd say Circuit is a pretty good test course for overall performance.
Mud is also a good testing place to test handling and acceleration on mixed terrains.
England is also a nice track to test out a lot of things at once. You have the wide open area for top speed, and then you have the section with tighter corners. Comes with the bonus of having layouts that are mixed terrains.
Serpentine is a good technical course with a lot of uphills and downhills. Similar to Mud, except you have a lot more tarmac here.

so basically, the CRC tracks are, in my opinion, the best for testing.
 
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Nurgenhoch makes a good testing circuit for mid-to-high speed tracks.
The tracks should be kept as smooth as possible to make testing as accessible to everyone as possible. Circuit and Nurgenhoch are the two ideal maps for the job.
 
I personally don’t agree with using sim for the balancing. I get all modes are based from it, but sim vs is completely different from arcade. Not even comparable in the slightest, whilst arcade vs handling and CTF handling are almost identical. One can play CTF all day then jump into Arcade without getting slaughtered due to the need of relearning the physics or vice versa. The same cannot be said for arcade vs to sim vs or CTF to sim vs.

I get where you’re coming from for sure but i truly believe if balancing is done in SIM VS, it WILL be broken everywhere else.
 
All cars have specific physics which is what you get in Sim Vs.
Arcade and all other game modes have a modifier that affects things across the board.

Let's say the Lion has an acceleration of 0.25 and the Buggy has 0.50
Arcade says +25% so now the Lion has 0.3125 and the Buggy has 0.625

This means you would need to test both Sim and Arcade physics to get a good idea of what changes are needed.
This is not a "Sim or Arcade" issue it is a Sim and Arcade issue.
 
A bad car in VS mode could be a class winner in CTF or Explorer as different characteristics are neeeded for each game mode, so I would not change anything. We already have 3 sub levels per car class e.g. 3.1 3.2 and 3.3 by which to categorise cars and the possibility to add or remove tuning stages e.g a Hexan could get stage 5 or 6 tuning and go up to class 3.3. Level R had the dynamic class system whereby the car class changed as tuning parts were added or removed allowing people to race stock cars with fully tuned lower class cars.
 
Actually not true the lion is the all around best car in vs and in ctf for class 1. If you use anything else in ctf against competent ctf players you will lose however anyone of high enough level only uses the class 6 spiedo because until the debadged subaru and evo return it is king of ctf hands down. the only car that remotely challenges it is the harpoon but you have to be good to use the harpoon.
 
Regarding course selection:

  • Circuit: very mid-speed with flowing corners and long straights, short enough to offer the slower cars a good race without stretching things out
  • Nurgenhoch: Good for high-speed cars, but not enough of a handling test to allow handling-based vehicles a chance to fight back
  • Mud: Technical and good for the slow cars, perhaps too technical and too loose a surface for any non-AWD cars to stand a chance? Not sure on that.
  • Serpentine: A more complex version of Circuit's balancing, possibly very useful to show the difference between drifty and grippy cars.

The two best options appear to be Circuit and Serpentine, so it might be worthwhile to put the cars through their paces in both of these. Perhaps Python Creek as well, if the offroad cars also need a hotlapping session.


Regarding Sim Vs. Arcade:

Jack said:
All cars have specific physics which is what you get in Sim Vs.
Arcade and all other game modes have a modifier that affects things across the board.

Let's say the Lion has an acceleration of 0.25 and the Buggy has 0.50
Arcade says +25% so now the Lion has 0.3125 and the Buggy has 0.625

This means you would need to test both Sim and Arcade physics to get a good idea of what changes are needed.
This is not a "Sim or Arcade" issue it is a Sim and Arcade issue.
Click to expand...

To be clear, any issues that need to be looked at have to be done so from both handling models. However, arcade effectively just being a modifier is also is exactly why the testing will be done in sim for now. All other game modes are modified versions of sim mode, and if the handling model was 100% unique in each mode then it would be a different story. But because it works the way that it does the order vehicles place on the leaderboard would be very similar, if not identical, in both sim and arcade handling models. The Lion would always beat the Corus, the Quadro would always have more understeer than the Spire, that sort of thing. This is not to downplay arcade handling and there will be arcade testing done after a sim leaderboard is established. For the sake of clarity and because the community wants it, yes I will aim for arcade testing too. However, from an official standpoint no changes to the vehicles are being considered yet that I'm aware of, and won't be implemented without thinking of both handling modes anyway.


Regarding the point of this:

Let's get this part out of the way: this is an academic exercise, and does not mean that cars will be reclassified in any way. I'm also not acting under any official direction, this is my own project that I hope can be used as a guide once it's done. There are two main goals here, to create a visible hierarchy of vehicle speeds and lap times and to have that as reference to figure out how performance parts are handled going forward. Some cars need more performance upgrades or tweaking than others, and being able to see what, how and why in a clear manner will be a significant help. Khrono's PT Lap Time series makes a great reference point to start, but more cars and courses need to be tested.

With all this explained, how do you feel about the course selection? Any suggestions, things that've been overlooked, etc...?
 
My question is, will this testing include unreleased cars or will you stick to shop only?
Course selection seems pretty good to me.
 
what I find funny is I'm actually doing this in arcade already as a YT series.... yet when I asked for suggestions most people had next to no imput to offer...
 
yes and the title of this thread is about the default game balance within each class. it has nothing to do with your question. so your question has no place in this thread as it is not on topic. So I will say again so maybe you can become enlightened. Stay on topic and ask your question in the appropriate thread.
 
I'm waiting the Cobra RS release to see if there is a big diff between it and spiedo in CTF. For now what we need is more maps and tokyo cars back
 
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