It feels like not swapping everything to AWD has the effect of purposely gimping my performance against the AI in basically every situation. Is there any reason at all not to do this, other than stubborn adherence to “realistic” tuning or sheer bloodymindedness?
I’ll give you not one but three reasons (especially vs AI).
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Tuning a lower class car: There is no doubt that AWD has a distinct advantage when you push your horsepower high enough, but when tuning lower class cars, AWD is just sapping your limited engine power for no real reward. This is especially true for rear engine cars. I race my 60s love bug in D class, and upgrading to AWD is an absolute waste that only makes the car worse while still “spending” valuable car rating points.
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Adding to what I said above, tuning to AWD will push your cars rating up. If you have a car that drives well in RWD stock, and you’re trying to keep your rating as low as possible, upgrading to AWD can spend your precious budget. It’s usually a good idea to keep your car as low rated as possible when facing AI, and when PvPing having cars at all rating levels that you like driving is usually a good idea. On top of that, there are some really good highly rated RWD cars where converting to AWD may improve performance, but it will also add a ton to the cars rating and makes the conversion debatable.
Hot tip: If you’re looking for some highly rated RWD cars that compete well against AWD cars, I suggest giving Ferrari a gander.
- Fun. I’ve always been an AWD guy, and while I still believe AWD is superior (both IRL and in video games), I’ve been learning the joy of driving a RWD car in Horizon. That and I needed the challenge. Unbeatable AI just weren’t cutting it anymore. Well except on Cross Country races, where in this game they live up to their name. I’ve won a handful of CC races on unbeatable on many, many attempts. I cannot beat perfect jumps, perfect landings, and better power+grip no matter how I tune my car when I’m offroad.
Basically you keep em as rwd if you want cars to feel different. As you said is it worth sacrificing performance? No if you race online. You’ll be raging especially at s2 class but s1 iz twitchy too.
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In lower classes you might get more for your PI out of other upgrades.
It does vary by vehicle, but on the whole I’ve been surprised at how small the PI cost is on some vehicles to convert to AWD, while the weight gain has also been less than expected. Combine that with the effects on actual handling rather than the numerical stat and it gets harder to justify not swapping to it for many vehicles.
If doing Cross Country and Dirt, unless your doing class D, yes everything should be made AWD. I don’t like it at all, but it is what it is.
There are plenty of “tracks” where RWD will win (where Dirt/gravel/offroad/water is not present). But as a whole RWD is pretty gimped in this environment :).