So I started the first road series with the Corvette, set my fuel, switch to soft tyres, like I always do, because for almost a year now I’ve been using soft tyres and there’s never been a question that I should even consider anything else. Then always through the race I get a notification that my tyres are shredded, and I know something is up because that never happens in career.
At that point I have to decide to either I want to get kicked down the order from 2nd to 20th, or if I want to have driven for most of a race and get zero credits for it.
As it turned out there was a x6 wear multiplier. Now I know there’s someone who’s going to be tempted to reply “hurr it’s written in the screen where you set fuel and tyres”. And that’s the problem. Maybe it’s the fact that this line hasn’t existed for 8 months, or that it has never mattered in career since it was added. But there’s nothing attracting attention to the fact this series was run in tyre-shredding mode.
What makes it worse is that using medium tyres for the next races, I didn’t have to pit at all. So it’s not like it’s there to do anything interesting with regards to pitting strategy, it’s just a trap that feels specifically designed for people like me who mechanically go through the fuel and tyre menu.
Yes, it does feel as though some sort of warning would have been sensible here, as a greyed out tyre multiplier is not going to be something everyone looks at.
It does make the races a bit more interesting as you have to use mediums and they do still suffer on the last lap of a couple of the events, so the AI is more competitive than if you could use softs. It does (again) emphasise that the AI does not have the same tyre wear issues as players though, as they will happily run their best laps at the end on supposedly very worn tyres. Will have to see if this is more of an issue in later races in the series.
There isn’t in-game but you can fudge something with UDP. It does require you to run 2 laps in qualifying though and then make some assumptions with math.
I’ve tried a thing that measures tyre wear every 100 meters and averages it to guestimate how many laps before hitting 69% wear, and there are a few improvements I can think of, but I’m always on the lookout for a smarter way to do it.
The game spits out “Last Lap Tyre Wear” for each wheel (usually after you’ve done 2 laps on-track), or to be more precise, SimHub spits it out as I don’t think it’s native to Forza UDP.
Take that, and count up how many laps until you hit 60%.
Whichever tyre gives the worst tyre life, that’s your stint length prediction.
After that, it’s a case of extrapolating across Soft/Medium/Hard.
From my testing across multiple cars and classes:
Mediums last 1.5x as long as Softs
Hards last 2x as long as Softs
I’ve been running a dash for about 7 months now, and the tyre life prediction has been reasonably accurate. I don’t need precise accuracy due to the dynamics of racing and the fact that you can push a car a little beyond 60% wear before it screams at you.
I always run Soft in Qualifying, ans use that as the basis for figuring out everything else.
It is displayed in-game but not defined well (you can see it in the strategy screen after doing practice/quali where you can no-stop on fuel but have one or more stops by changing compound), the problem is that the game probably calculates it off 100% tyre wear and we all know that once you hit ~60% grip falls off a cliff.
My general procedure for MP is to do the following given enough time (once I get a hang for the car and the type of race)
Do at least one (if not two, since the out-lap wear isn’t consistent) laps in practice with race fuel load and either Hard OR Medium tyres and then calculate number of laps to get to 60-70% wear on the worst tyre (this will determine if it’s a 0/1/2/etc stop race)
Do at least one lap with race fuel load and the other med/hard compound to see if you can mix up compounds (no point doing a HH race if you only need one extra lap over a MM for instance)
Do quali with 3 laps of fuel and softs (unless it’s Le Mans or Nord) and see how long the softs will last (can be worthwhile for a short final stint in the race).
First is the ridiculous 6x tyre wear that doesn’t seem to apply to the AI drivers. I don’t know who thought that one up but they need to have their worked reviewed.
Second is the cost. I can’t come close to breaking even having to buy all these cars even with the VIP bonus.
Tyre wear does seem more challenging for the Ferrari events. One of the road races my mediums were dead with over a lap left and similar for the first race event. Possibly it’s the way I’ve set them up though.
The trick is to unlock the 25% manufacturer discount for all cars by upgrading 5 cars of each manufacturer to max level 50. I did this for all bigger manufacturers like Ford, Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini etc.
Now you might think it’s not possible to fall for that same trick twice. But… well… I started the first 458 race, set my tires to soft as I always do, and realised at the start of lap 4 my tyres were pretty low. Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that x6 thing. And there’s still nothing bringing attention to it.
I wonder why isn’t tire wear simply equal everywhere? I can see that a player might want to change it for private lobbies or freeplay but everywhere else it , it should simply be the same.
Or maybe it’s their way of artificially augmenting the effects since the mechanic itself isn’t as complex as people might’ve thought.
I can see it for endurance races, where you expect to do some pitting. But for these races, I really, truly, don’t know. The AI doesn’t pit. A set of hard or medium will do the job. It doesn’t bring any value.
I sussed this fact out last week.
Anyone know a fast way without grinding races to gain enough credits to buy 8 cars to complete the 32 race season and still have credits for the next season?
