I have always been competitive at forza. I have ran times in the top 500 numerous times, however only with mods never once touching the tuning. Any tips on where to start?
I’m trying to go pretty in depth like preventing understear on awd or tuning difference between rear, mid and front mounted engines as well as different drivetrain formats. Anyone willing to help a new tuner?
Build is 90% of the laptime. Tune makes it nicer.
The fastest build isn’t always easy to drive.
Ignore the real world.
Real world expectations do not equal in game performance.
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If you are looking for tuning guides, your best bet would be to search through the Tuner’s Garage areas of both FM5 & FM6. Folks had published a lot of material that could get you pointed in the right direction. Yet, to D2D’s point above…(1) Driver ability, (2) Build, and, (3) Tune go in that order of ranking. Plus, after you read, tune by “feel”.
PRKId
p.s. If I find an old list of links that I had I will re-post here.
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ignore tuning calculators tune by feel for best results (learn what each slider does to your tune it will make your tunes better )
Basic tips…
Pick a “home” track to tune on, it’s important to be very familiar with it so you can focus on how the car reacts to adjustment. I like Catalunya full as it’s generic enough, but I always follow up with something like Brands Hatch or Sonoma to getting a better feel for stability at higher corner speeds. IMO the best cars to choose to help develop a feel for what does what are cars with a 50:50 weight distribution, with a front engine and rear drive layout; same tire width front and rear helps, but don’t get hung up on it.
Do a bunch of laps in the car stripped of upgrades to get a feel for how it naturally behaves. If you want to feel some contrast in base handling characteristics drive something like a Lotus Evora then compare it to a 370Z; the Z is significantly more stable and likes to drift on power, while the Evora spins like a top with trailing throttle then buttons down nicely when on the throttle.
When I intend to spend a lot of time in a particular car I’ll build it out, and then remove the race suspension (I like sport, if available), remove aero, and run the stock differential. This leaves me with adjustments for tires, swaybars, and brakes. At this point I focus on how responsive the car is to yaw adjustments at mid corner with trailing throttle. If the nose will not tuck in, I remove front bar or add rear.
Next I add the race suspension. Using telemetry I make sure camber is in the right ballpark. Then check ride height, spring stiffness, and bump (dampers); the initial goal is to get the car as low as possible with as little bump dampening as possible. After that, I’ll tweak the front to rear spring rate ratio depending on how the car drives out of corners and last, fine tune rebound dampening.
Regarding toe and caster: both can be adjusted to good effect, but it’s really easy to ruin a car with these. Some high powered RWD cars love a bit of toe in at the rear, some AWD/FWD cars love to out up front, read the description the game provides and experiment. Caster is a tricky one, and is great to increase if you have a car that wants to rotate too enthusiastically, but the downside is that it blunts turn in response; use with care.
Next add aero. At this point the hardest work is done. Add front aero for more front grip, reduce rear aero for more relative front grip. Do the opposite if you want to shift the balance to having more grip at the rear.
Last, add the race differential. This is absolutely the least understood part, generally speaking. It doesn’t help that the game doesn’t firmly establish if the adjustment sets the lock ratio or, as it seems to say, sets the speed at which it locks. The decel setting is easy, lower number for more rotation when off the throttle (braking, turn-in, mid corner trailing throttle adjustments), or a higher number for more stability (the car will be more sluggish and less willing to turn).
The accel setting is tricky. Best I can explain it is… lower setting for more stability, and higher setting for less stability. This is where knowing the car and knowing the track matters, because this setting is going to be felt mostly in how the car feels at part throttle. The higher the setting the more traction you’ll have available to accelerate, but the car will be faster to spin because you’re asking more of the outside tire because you’re telling the differential to send more torque to it faster when you increase the setting. Again, like the other adjustments, experiment.
I don’t share many tunes, but if you want to try an example of what I feel is a well sorted car I have a Honda S2000 out there that I think is very well balanced. But there are also a great number of excellent, much better than me tuners on these forums that are worth trying out as well, if for no reason other than to see what can be done with any particular car.
A good way of learning the basics… https://forums.forza.net/turn10_postst221_Tuning-Guide.aspx
I’m very new to tuning and must say personal feel is very important. I like a reasonably stable car and many of the top tuners create very aggressive tunes that are hard to drive for beginners. The tunes tend towards very loose setups for great lap times, but you need some serious practice and skills to maximize the tune. Like SgtFancypants wrote, understanding what the changes you are making is the entire battle. I find you need to change slowly and purposefully to not get lost in the weeds, literally.
It’s always one thing at a time. Don’t ever change your entire tune at once. I posted how I set up RWD cars, and how to start based on vehicle weight/balance. Everything is done by how the car feels to you as a driver. I hate using other people’s tunes personally, because they never feel right. Just because you don’t always share your tunes, doesn’t mean you can’t be a good tuner. It all takes practice. I’ve been playing FM since FM2 and it took me a while to learn the tuning aspect. I’m still learning.
Always remember that the real world dose not apply.
Dial in the suspension and diff settings to your preference based on feel. Then go back and make slight adjustments to the tire pressure, brake pressure and brake distribution using the calculator in the tuning screen to minimize braking distance.
I use to approach all builds with a base tune depending on the drive train layout and then tune from there, but found it’s better to make slight adjustments from the stock settings after you have all the parts you desire fitted. This allows for a progressive and predictable evolution of the tune that isn’t too extreme in any particular setting.
Try to approach all your tunes with a track style in mind. Do you want a short track car with great handling or acceleration, or a well balanced medium track car, etc? Tune for a track and then try a few different tracks of the same style to adjust gearing, if desired.
As a rule of thumb, the first thing I set is front/rear sway bars according to the vehicle’s overall weight and balance. The example I will give here is the 1969 Fairlady Z at 2300 lbs and 51% front 49% rear weight balance. I set the front to approx 27.00 and rear to 23.50. An example of a heavier car would be a 1970 Camaro Z28 at 3500 lbs and 55% front 45% rear weight balance. The Camaro is heavier and will require more sway bar stiffness. I would go with 28-29.00 for the front, and 24-24.50 for the rear. Once the sway bars are set, adjust your bump stiffness. This is absolutely CRUCIAL to the handling of your car, as it affects how hard the suspension is forced to the ground. On the Fairlady with 2300 lbs and 51/49 weight balance, I find that a bump stiffness of 6.5 front, and 6.0 rear is perfect. After that, set your rebound, which is the factor that judges how easily your suspension compresses. I set the rebound to +0.50 higher than the bump stiffness front and rear as a start. Set your spring rate as you see/feel fit, and choose your ride height. Set tire pressures to whatever feels comfortable. If you have an adjustable differential, set to about 80-85 accel and 60-65 decel for cars with less than 300 hp, and 90 accel for anything higher than that with 70 decel. This can also be altered for feel. Taking the heavier Camaro, I set bump stiffness to 7.0 front and 6.5 rear, and rebound +0.50 higher than front/rear bump. Pick heavier spring rates for heavier cars, and try to lower the center of gravity more if you can. Everything is done by feel and what you like best, but I find that this is a good start. Try buying these cars and set them up like I explained. If you can tune a slow car or slightly faster car, and master that, then you can start to understand the mechanics better for tuning even faster cars. FWD and AWD have a different set of general tuning rules, but for RWD I find this method works best for me.
By the way, if your car feels sluggish in the turns and unresponsive, take a look at increasing bump stiffness FIRST before sway bars.
Hope this helps.