GRM Project Cars 2 - Series 7 Discussion Thread

So, since I am going to miss the next two races and not all that excited about the final two races (both are essentially racing on public roads), I started thinking ahead to the next series.

If we follow the pattern, the next one will be a class of cars and not a spec series and will be a race car and not a road car. That throws out any of the open wheelers and road cars. Sadly, using those rules, I'm ignoring the Radical RXC Turbo for now.

•   If we do GT3, we could specify that we have to run a car that hasn't been used last time around. There is 20 cars. If we outlaw the Audi, the Bentley, the Lambo, the M6, the 911 and the AMG (Spool ran the Ferrari in one or two races- not sure if that counts.) we would still have a lot of cars to pick from. Bonus complication would be if we as a group picked the car for each person, so you may get a car you do not like.
•   If we don't want to do GT3 again, what about Group 5? It has 6 cars that I haven't driven, but expect they all have giant turbos with a lot of lag. Might be fun. Might be frustrating. Dunno. I'm guessing Air would love to race in a Porsche 935.

•   We've talked about Group A before, so that is choice. None of those really speak to me, but they may be fun. We've also spent an entire series trying not to run over these guys, so we may not want to look at them quite yet.

•   Group C has 9 cars if we want to go fast. I've not played around with any of these in PC2.

•   GTO has 6 cars that all look cool. Not driven any of these, so no idea how they are.

•   GT4 has 8 cars to choose from. I've driven a couple of these whilst doing the career mode. Not all that fast, but might make for some good racing.

•   There are 4 Touring Cars. Looks like you can choose FWD or RWD, so that is different. These may be fun as well. We would have duplicate cars, but I'm guessing there are enough livery choices that we'd have different colors.

•   LMP2 - I think you guys did one of these series before my time? 6 cars (sort of) (3 are the same car with different engines, two are made up cars for the game that don't exist in real life AFAIK). I would be up for a series in these and I think Argo said he was interested a while back.

•   Lastly, I see the Rally Cross cars. There are 6 of them. I don't really want to do a season of Rally Cross, but maybe these would be fun on real tracks. Anyone tried them?

In the end, we'll all have some strange thing we want to try, but not reach a consensus and finally Brad will announce the next series and we'll all have fun, but between now and then, let's talk about it.

So far, the LMP2 cars are my favorite. The downside is the visibility in cockpit view unless you drive the Oreca. 

Edit: I take it back. Group C is way more fun. LMP2's are sterile in comparison. 

If we want to consider another spec series, I would love to do the Formula Renaults. They are a blast. For something a bit slower and one that we haven't done yet, we could do the Ferrari Challenge car. It seems like it would be fun. About the same weight as the GT3 cars, but more power. I'm guessing they are not as developed in terms of aero, but not sure.

Try the Formula Renault.

I’m in favor of GT4 or Touring Cars. 

Are we in favor of bringing back the AI or running by ourselves?

I will have to try some of these

if I remember the GTO cars were a bit nuts. 

We did rather extensive testing with the Touring Cars, they were great fun but had one series flaw the way we run, and that is tire wear.  All the cars are FWD except the BMW, and being RWD it is just better on tires than any of the rest.  If we wanted to adjust that rule then it could be a good.

We tried the GTO cars, those were nuts in the best way possible.  Not sure if they would make for good racing, but they are a ton of fun.  

I don't think I've tried any of the other proposals except the GT3, and with all the other options available I don't think that's worth revisiting now.  All of the cars have potential but are by no means equal, so random car assignment is a recipe for people to get stuck in cars that aren't going to get there no matter what they do.  

As I remember the GTO cars where pretty wackadoodle, but did suffer from the same issue that most of these different cars series do, some of the cars are clearly faster than others.  We could always do a ranking on them and do a bit of handicapping, as in you win too much (ahem), you move down the list and Brad gets the fast car 

I favor the GT4 cars at the moment. Like the idea that if you win you get the dog car next race. I liked running without AI though I did miss listening to Dean bitch about them.

;-)

I did a lap or two in most of the GT4 cars last night after the race. I was testing on Nurburgring GP, so the cars all seemed slow. They do feel different from each other. Some have ABS and TC and some don't. Some have sequential gearboxes and some have H-pattern boxes. Could be interesting series to run. Not sure what car I'd pick yet, I think it would depend on the tracks in the series.

I also did a lap in the Megane Touring car. First FWD car I've driven in PC2. Way different. Would be interesting learning experience to do a series with the TCs. We should do a test with the tire wear off and see if that negates the BMW advantage Sauce was talking about, or just consider a BMW ban and we all run one of the FWD cars.  The Megane at least sounds good. Haven't tried the other cars yet.

I'm not sure about AIs. I see benefits either way. If we are going to have AI's, I liked the multiclass approach we did with the GT1/Group A cars.

Have we considered doing a series with damage turned on? That would change things quite a bit. Also, someone mentioned the idea of a mandatory pitstop. That would also change things up and may be fun.

We could probably use some practice with pitstops, so that's not a bad idea.  The only issue with damage is when it's not your fault.  It made the races pretty interesting because it introduced a lot of variability but sucked when someone else caused the damage to you.  One thing we did do for that though was that if you caused damage to someone else, you had to follow them into the pits for a fix.

What is the shifter/clutch status of everyone? 

If we all have shifters and clutch setups, it would be very interesting to require using those (with cars that need them of course).  It would add a whole new dimension.  Of course, my current setup makes heal-toeing very difficult, but that might inspire me to fix that.

Any update on that pressure sensitive brake feedback thing TJ?  That would be a big improvement to heal-toe for me.

In reply to aircooled :

I haven't driven with it all that much compared to how much I drove with the stock G27 brake pedal. I find myself struggling a bit with it still. Right now it seems harder for me to apply just the right amount of braking force and I have been running with ABS to compensate. I think I'll figure it out eventually. Not sure if it was money well spent or not.

GTE cars are fun. Similar to GT3, but no ABS. Put the AIs in LMP2 or LMP1 cars for extra fun. 

I did a couple laps in 3 of the GTE cars and they seem fairly evenly matched. Haven't tried the other 3 yet. 

How about a series loosely based on WEC where we all run GTE cars and the AIs can choose between GTE and LMP2 cars. Run at some of the actual WEC tracks like Spa, Silverstone and Fuji. (I would be ok with leaving LeMans out because we've raced there twice in the past). Mix in a few other tracks where the LMP2 cars can get by easily like 24 hours of Daytona and maybe throw in a track like Dubai GP, Zhuhai or Brno that would be ones we haven't used recently.

Maybe have Spa be the finale and make it an hour instead of 30 mins and use the time progression to make it go through the night with a finish in the morning.

It seems like using the built in online championship worked pretty well and it keeps track of the standings automatically.

The GTE cars as a class seem well balanced and it is one of the few classes where there are always people on line running them, so maybe we could get some additional folks to join us to fill out the field more.

I'd like to do a test of this concept Wednesday if there is any interest.

In reply to T.J. :

I really haven't seen any advantage to the load cell. Unfortunately. Braking really does need work to be more realistic.

GTE with a faster AI class might be a new challenge. No narrow go cart tracks though.

Think I am going to have to give the C7 a try

i like all the GTE cars except the BMW, which I just didn't like as much. 

I did some laps at Spa and the LMP2 cars easily get by on the high speed areas and there is a pretty big lap time delta. Then I ran at Dubai GP and I was fairly close to the slowest LMP2 times. 

You can’t run AI in the online championship. You have to run the races manually. 

In reply to BradLTL :

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

Ran all 6 GTE cars at Silverstone GP with limited setup changes and all are within a second. They feel different, but I ended up with very close laptimes. It seems these cars have less power than GT3 cars with maybe better aero. Seems like the tires may be different than GT3 as well. 

Apparently I have to work tonight. So, karts on ice in Air’s room. 

Bitchin!

OK, so I chickened out and ran the GTE cars... I panicked.  I only saw the notice above 5 min before start time.

We did an open room (I just used what ever I had set up).  The GTE cars seem pretty popular as we ended up with something like 8 people for the first race (a few rather highly rated people).  The second race dropped of a lot in drivers and quality.

I drove the 911 and Ferrari.  In general, they are pretty reasonable cars, even in stock tuning.  Much better than the GT3's in my opinion.  Not the understeer pigs you get with some cars.  It looks like they all come with TC but no Anti lock brakes (which did not seem to be much of an issue at all).

The GTE cars were fun, though I only tried the Ford GT. I agree with Air, out of the box they are better than the GT3's. I'm wondering how the suspension calculator affects the cars, it was huge on the GT3 cars.