I write this as I sit waiting for practice to end in a P Open Class lobby where in a full grid, 5 of us are not in the Ferrari F1 car.
Would really like some better categorized racing that doesn’t stick me to Forza’s builds like the Spec Racing series. Something in between Spec and completely Open Class.
Was really looking forward to the options this week but I’m surrounded by Formula Mazda and F1 Cars.
T10 seems reluctant to look to real-world examples of how to select and class their line-up of vehicles. This is evidenced by things like the placement of GT4, GT3, and Trans Am into a single division (class), or the 92 Supra being in a different division from the Group A cars it ran against IRL.
Personally, I think it would make a world of difference if T10 ditched the PI lettering system for multiplayer and replaced it with something that creates better parity among vehicles like SCCA regs.
Scca regs are they not just as simple as displacement body style and production numbers.
Not sure how well that would transfer over.
I don’t think there will ever be a perfect balance as it will always come down to track. And there is no track that is 100% balance between power and handling
I do think handling cars tend to have a pi advantage but this I think is down to the tracks especially in the rotations. The higher up the pi ladder you go the smaller the variation in speed there is and the more reliant the cars are on downforce, high speed grip too.
In racing in real life a good handling car will be less impacted by running in traffic as it can carry momentum and can generally take more lines,a power car often needs to get a good run on the racing line to minimise it’s weakness, thus if it gets hung out to dry it is not able to get on to the power and therefore has a poor overall lap.
A good example is historic racing,Cortina v Mustang for example if the Mustang gets out in front they tend to run away, but if that Cortina can keep on the tail and challenging the Mustang it stops it from getting perfect laps and negates it’s lap time advantage.
Can guarantee the lap times will be vastly different in quali, but race pace the easier to drive better handling Cortina will upset the Mustangs ultimate pace. Soon as Mustang gets a clear track they tend to disappear.
This is based on the vast number of races I’ve attended (UK) for these car types and the Mustang is the fastest and best car in class (falcon is probably quicker) but as soon as they get disrupted by a Cortina or sometimes a very well. Driven mini it’s all to play for. These are FIA spec cars 1200kg 400hp Mustang v 800kg 180hp cortinas.
I don’t think there will ever be a perfect fix. Power to weight maybe but then that doesn’t factor aero, chassis dynamics,mechanical grip
I can live with the PI system if cars are grouped and classed somewhat appropriately.
Group A cars seem comfortable in A or B class. I’d like to see a Touring Classics lobby with an Open A Class PI. Or lobby for old Group 2 cars built to C500 or B600.
A700 is also a nice place for Group 4 cars. And I don’t disagree that the Formula Mazda should have a place to race. But they don’t need to be on the same track at once. I just want some legit looking grids.
There are tire size and part regulations as well, depending on class. And having run balanced cars for replica series, I can assure you, IRL regs are a great starting point for getting a decent BOP for a class. The PI system clearly is not.
I have no expectation of perfect parity, but narrowing the breadth of options and having more strict specifications for builds, it would certainly improve the disparity we see at the moment.
As for vintage touring, that’s not a type of balance any IRL series strives for a reason.
That make sense,being UK scca rules are a little outer my remit.
I have been looking at a trans am league to the 71 rulings. So aware wheel sizes where part of those regs.
I don’t think there is any series that is balanced gt4 and Gt3 bops need to level those fields and we often see complaints that doesn’t work. The cars without bop clearly wouldn’t allow a fair race due to each chassis unique differences.
I was just using vintage touring cars to show how handling most times on most tracks is more advantageous than power.
Road America and Sebring are only real world tracks where a power car I think in real life would ultimately be always best. There may be a few that almost fit the bill mugello but I’ve seen plenty of low power cars win over big power cars there to.
An example in scca of a nimble car being too nimble and being moved up a class is the elan in the sixties think it got moved up to class B against gt350, sunbeam tigers and small block corvettes as it was way to quick against mgs and Alfa in lower class but I guess that’s a glass fibre car v metal bodied.
Modern stuff I have no idea and the modern way is restrictors,ballast and some series pit penalties.
The sixties and fifties you had pi calculations based on capacity and weight but that always favoured the smaller cars, so that certainly didn’t work.
How do the scca factor the difference in power train and engine layouts? That’s another factor that makes balancing a challenge? (Generally interested for future league ideas)
I can only guess regarding how it’s figured, but my money is that it’s a formula that’s been adjusted over time based on how their homologation system has favored particular build styles, ie; they find forced induction awd is too op at current weight limit for a class, raise the minimum weight or lower the max tire width for that type of vehicle the following season.
It’s funny how many people poo-poo’d Homologation in the previous FM entries, yet at the end of the day it is the best method for creating variety in races without a great disparity in overall performance. Yes it wasn’t perfect, but it should have been kept and refined for that interim step between Spec and Open racing. I almost only race online in Spec series, one because I don’t have the time/inclination to really delve in to upgrades and tuning (and I’ll often choose cars because I like them, not because they’re the best/fastest), and two because you’re less likely to have really dominant Meta cars. Granted I’m a 4970+ skill rating, but a lot of that is down to racing clean and smooth and picking my battles rather than going out and dominating on pure pace.
I didn’t hate homologation but I don’t remember there being much place to race online in that format in whatever category? Unless I’m mistaken but that’s why I always raced free play.
Just had the last A Class race of the week. Driving a 190E. Was super pumped to have another 190, an 850R and an M3 in the lobby. I didn’t care about the rest of the field. I just wanted to race them. And it was MY 190 vs HIS. Not a forced build with no tunable parts.
Would love to have a full field of this. And across multiple divisions.
I never really played FM multiplayer much before FM2023 (and I’ve played everything in the series all the way back to FM1, apart from one or two expansion packs), always been a single-player/Career guy apart from Forzathon type things (especially in Horizon) but I’ve jumped in to Featured Multiplayer a lot. Mainly due to how short the Builders Cup is (especailly compared to how long you could make FM7’s) but also due to the more curated options like Spec and Spotlight which tend to suit the more casual player who doesn’t want to spend hours tweaking and upgrading or sorting through dozens of cars to find the one that works best
That’s exactly what Homologation should do. Curated car options to suit a bracket/theme, modifications allowed within a given spec range (that doesn’t necessarily link to the top of a particular PI class), solid tight racing without it being a given as to which is better, no min-max extreme builds to eliminate the flying-brick dive-bombers etc
I was super excited when I saw Spec Events but so far they’ve been a little less than what I’m after. Some have been great however. 17 laps of Lime Rock in Formula 60’s was incredible and a tease of what they could do if someone tried.
Homologation racing is fun however if you where to build cars to actual homologated specs you would find there are still desparities especially classic cars.
Group A I think is the example brought up before.
The Meta car for 90 to 92 would be the R32 skyline
Late eighties the rs500, depending if you then split to the various divisions you’d probably have a field of Skyline in division 1, a load of M3s in Division 2 and either escorts or corollas in division 3.
The group a rules and divisions also do change year to year and regionally.
Themed lobbies is what we sorta have now with slightly looser rulings i.e GT can be anything from One make challenge car to full on GTE/GTLM to Gt2 and GT3 cars
I don’t think they are far off with their groupings and multiple cars could fit multiple groups too. 92 supra i don’t think would be group a, I don’t think they homologated the version we have. Earlier cars where but I may be wrong, I know at least 3 versions where raced and at least 2 different engine specifications.
You’d struggle to have a public lobby I think of 80’s touring cars built to XXX Pi as you’d have to find enough players interested in building a car to that spec. It may be a theme they run but if it was anything like the Pre war GP it would be a bit of a mess and there would still be a meta car and you’d get a grid full of that car.
Best solution is to set up a league…I’m doing one for the sixties and building classic race cars as close the homologation as possible. You can then hopefully find others that would be interested.
There will be as there is in real life the dominant cars
Touring car - Mustang
GT - Cobra
But part the fun is trying to beat them with the other cars. We currently have a one make mini series at min but will be doing the rest of the pre 66 touring cars next.
Yes there will always be a meta car, my issue with FM23 currently is there are very few lobbies that have options that result in real looking grids.
When I posted this I was in a Porsche 962, a car that had a large part in killing 2 racing categories. The Ferrari 641 being faster wasn’t my complaint. It was that I wanted to race Group C.
I would love to do a league if custom lobbies got some tweaking. I have been interested in your Pre-66 racing coming up.
If I did a Group A league it would be “any car homologated under Group A or a reasonable facsimile thereof” so things like the Vauxhall Carlton can play pretend as an Opel Omega. A700 PI, must have race tires, full weight reduction, and a cage.
I still want to cross my fingers that they start putting some thought into the Spec Events. They’re so close to being what I want out of this game.
The 92 Supra we have may not be the exact model that was homologated and run in Group A, but based on FIA regs, so long as the minimum were manufactured, that car would have been fine in Group A. As such, it certainly would make more sense for T10 to include it with their group A division (which includes vehicles that wouldn’t have been legal in that category) than the division containing the 89 MR2 SC.
As for there always being a meta, I don’t think that’s as strong of a point that people think it is. We aren’t expecting perfect balance, just trying to find ways to narrow the disparity and improve the wheel-to-wheel racing.
We need longer races aswell. I’d love one hour endurance races with pitting. Surely they can give a race length option like in FM7. It’s pants what they’ve stripped out so they can drip feed us once a month.
If I was MS I’d sack Greenwalt and Esaki and get some proper people in to sort it out.
Problem is, Homologation never worked that way in Motorsport 7. If anything, it was more along the lines of a strict Spec series. You really couldn’t change parts without the game yelling at you to put them back on, even if you chose to run an Open series. In some (well, most in my experience) cases, you wouldn’t even be able to start races without putting their formula back on. Didn’t matter if you found a better formula that stayed within the stated parameters or you willingly chose to downgrade your car for a challenge. Homologation in FM7 did a lot to stifle creativity, because it was their way or no way.
Yes, that’s the point of homologation. I’m with you in that it was not implemented well in F7 though.
Keep in mind, T10 is our sanctioning body.
Homologation anywhere else still permits creativity. It just has to be creativity within the stated regulations. If anything, I’d argue that the older games, Motorsport 4 and 6 in particular, fit the definition of Homologation more than Motorsport 7 did.