I have a deep hate for Cross Country races. Now, the concept looks amazing: a flat out blast through the beautiful scenery of Horizon 2, through fields, forests, and anything but roads. However… they are ridiculously hard. I don’t pretend to be good, but I easily win rally and asphalt races with no assists and the drivatar level set at Highly Skilled. I could probably turn it up, but I play for fun. This isn’t the case for cross country. I have never won cross country race at anything above Average difficulty, and even that happens rarely. Even now I am stuck on a race in the rain with a Subaru WRX STI and I simply can’t beat it, no matter what I do. I turned all the assists to easy, but it doesn’t seem to help. I think it has to do with the randomness of the events. Unless you spend hours memorizing the track to get to the top of the leaderboard, you are going to be pretty much figuring it out as you go along. And then if you hit a piece of flat ground wrong, you will go flying and end up rolling with the terrible roll physics until you are well and truly in last place. Or, if one of the mentally challenged AIs suddenly decides not to brake, then your car is totaled if you have damage turned on. Don’t forget that its almost impossible to tell which green bushes you can run over and which green bushes are made of concrete. Now you may say that the small ones you can run over and the big ones you can’t, but how are you supposed to tell when the grass is above your windshield and there is a whole line of green in front of you?
I will admit that the cross country race in the beginning was fun, but please don’t make us do two of them every championship. Give us the option to just not do them altogether! Give us the option to choose an asphalt championship or a dirt championship, or a combination of both!
I know I’m not alone in my dislike of this race type. Does anyone else want to speak up?
If only you could practice a track without the AI and rewind time by a few seconds to practice that really difficult part…
I personally don’t find the Cross Country events that difficult and enjoy them more than any other event in the game with or without rewind. They’re fun and they’re honestly not much more difficult than the road circuit races. You need to learn the course, find the best line, and then it’s all throttle and input control as is every other race in the game.
I’m in the same field of thought as the OP. It’s a good idea, but it needs some serious tweaking. And I do mean serious.
Another thing I thought of here when reading his post is the jumps. There are random FUBAR spots on top of the fact that it’s pretty much 50-50 with every bigger jump that your race will be ruined. On top of that is the fact that big jumps will ruin your engine half the time even if you land on your stinkin wheels. I do not enjoy games that punish you randomly for no reason. It’s just bad design.
The option to avoid those races altogether would eliminate half of my problem with the game. Stop forcing us to take freaking sports cars off road. If you do, at least make it fun. It is not fun in this game to me at all. It’s just dumb.
Of course, it’s all just my opinion, but I know I’m not alone on this.
The Drivatar thing needs help too, I can’t tell much difference between the Drivatar system and plain old crappy AI. Enjoy the scenery on your way to the next location? Sure, but let’s give you a time limit and about 6 or 7 moronic AI drivers plowing you in the rear and blowing your doors off and SLAMMING ON THE BRAKES right in front of you. Give me a break. How can a game have so much brilliance in it and have things like that that are just… idiotic.
To the part of your text which I highlighted in bold: Yes there are a few places where the ground is uneven and can set you for a nice little bump or flip but as you play the game you learn where the couple of spots are so that you can avoid them. Either you avoid them or you learn how to handle them so they don’t throw, spin, and flip your car around. In addition, there is always the rewind option in Solo play; sometimes you just have to turn it on or allow yourself to use it. As for the engine damage, turn simulation damage off. Yes it’s in the game, yes it gives you a minor, minor credit boost, but this game isn’t’ meant to be played with simulation damage. Of course flying through the air for 300 ft before slamming into the ground at 160 kmh in a hypercar will damage the motor, so why leave damage on? As for the 50-50 chance of ruining your race, that all depends on how you take the jump. You also want a car that is built well - not by upgrading in the game but in real life, one that has a good balance, weight distribution, engine placement, and that sort of thing if you’re doing off road. You’re not going to fair well on a cross country course with jumps if you pick a car like the Transit Van, right? You might not even do well if you’re in the LaFerrari; these cars can handle it in Forza but in the end they’re not built for it and they don’t always do well. Try cars like the Lancia 037. Personally, I love that car. It is a rally legend and in Forza Horizon 2 it flies through the air like a champion. I’ve yet to find a jump that will really unsettle it unless you get hit or you’re doing something plain stupid. To summarize, the game does not punish you for no reason. Off road environments won’t always be smooth and imperfection free like a race track might, you will find holes and bumps and divots and cracks and lump and crevices and the occasional tree and it is your job to find and build a car that can handle the job.
If you have the storm island expansion, you may try the rally suspension. I prefer to use the race suspension even for cross country events but I do recognize that some cars simply do better with the rally suspension - I think I run it on my LaFerrari at all times.
For the cross country races, try the following:
Rally Suspension
Race Front Roll Bars
Race Rear Roll Bars
Car Weight around 900 - 1100kg
Race Differential
Sport Tyres
AWD Drivetrain
Max Rear Tyre Width
The lightest rims you can get
Race Exhaust
Race Intake (if applicable)
Race Air Filter
Race Pistons
Race Valves
then load up on any parts that do help reduce weight - Race Weight Reduction, Race Driveline, Race Brakes, Race Transmission, Race Clutch, Race Flywheel…
Now tweak things so that you max out whatever class you’re in. Don’t add oil and intercooler parts or anything that adds weight. It’s not worth it. If a part doesn’t decrease weight, don’t consider it if the power increase is not significant as well (>5 HP).
Then set your car up as follows:
Tire Pressure: 28.0 psi for both
Gearing: That depends on the transmission and it’s all up to you - you might check out some free online gearing calculators or check SpotTheKitty’s reference thread
Camber: -3.8 in front and -3.3 in rear
Toe: 0.3 in front and -0.5 in rear
Caster: 2.2 - 2.4
Antiroll bars: -8.00 in front and 38.00 in rear
Springs: Look at the front and rear springs but only the numbers in the tens place and ones place (If the spring is set at 958 we only care about the 58). Take the number which is higher and use that for the rear springs but set the hundreds place to either a 2 or a 3 depending on car weight and driving feel. Then take the lower number and set that for the front springs with either a 2 or a 3 in the hundreds place but make sure that the front springs overall reading is lower than in the rear. ← God I hope that makes sense written down. It makes sense in my head, and in just a brief summary this has to do.
Ride Height: Set your ride height so that the rear is 0.1 higher than the front. You want to keep the overall ride height near the low end of things though.
Rebound: Go a little higher here and give 12.2 in the front a try and then to 11.8 out back.
Bump: How about 1.8 in front and 1.0 in the rear
Brakes: Don’t touch them, they’re fine where they are set - we only added them for weight reduction anyway
Aero: Max the front and Min the rear if you’re using any.
Differential: front axle → 35 / 0 rear axle → 75 / 10 torque split 55 - 65
Give that a go and see how it feels off road in a cross country race. I suggest trying it on the Lancia 037 in B Class, A Class, or S1 Class.
Gracias for the tuning advice. I haven’t put a lot of effort into any tuning on this game since I like to go all out with it… I built many top 100-top 50 leaderboard cars in Forza 4, and tuning is one of my favorite things, but I’m saving myself for Forza 6 at the moment haha :P.
Yeah, I’ve given up finally on that and for cross country races I just turn the drivatars down and damage off. It’s at least a little more fun for me, and it works better. Still wish some things were different but hey, we can’t get everything we want, right?
Also, I couldn’t swear to it, but I think some cars I’ve had better luck with leaving the stock suspension on as opposed to the racing suspension. I assume if I took the time to learn how to properly set up the race suspension it would do even better but I usually just leave it the way it is when you install it, and I think some cars react MUCH more violently to bumps and whatnot with the race setup. I like racing in lower classes anyway, especially off road, so it doesn’t make quite as much difference but I have noticed that.
The cross country races are much more fun to me in D-C class lol.
I also like the idea of cross country events, but with the current simulation of dirt and grass it is not very fun. In my opinion, not all cars should be able to do the cross country. Cars like the veneno should get stuck or get ripped apart when they hit the a small bump in the grass while cars like the ranger T6 and the all4 x-raid should have many advantages on cross countries. But i think that we would need a improved sim damage to help making low cars slower offroad and a lower pi for cars like the ranger T6, mini all4 x-raid and bowler exr-s. Most of the other offroaders have a ok PI though
Sorry for not using capital letters.
This is why my rally builds simply own online. Usually half the races are off road - either cross country harsh stuff or rally stage like dirt roads. Love the variety of horizon 2 online. Really makes you rethink tuning.
Yea I dislike CC races too. I dont bother upgrading any of my cars for it lol they handle fairly well anyhow. The way the car rolls is so unrealistic as well, I flipped my G65 at such a low speed and somehow it rolls 10 times before going upright, a 4000LB car? There really needs to be a button to reset the car somehow as it gets frustrating.
The cross country races were terrible and it was always like the game glitched and set the drivatar difficulty up to insane for only those events.
No matter how well you did the entire field was up your tail the entire time and one mistake…they all passed you and you never caught up.
You would then go and do any of the other types or event and make a coffee by the time it took for the rest of the field to catch up to you.