What’s the story with ignoring weight? Weight reduction is something I always do almost by habit.
My experience is like one would guess…, a heavier car will take turns wider, slower and require more effort to keep traction… and to get traction back. And braking farther ahead is needed. Instances where you need to suddenly brake is where a lighter car would have an advantage. In my opinion racing is all about how well you take turns.
Here’s my quick analysis using the 84 Ferrari… my S1 rally car
No Weight Reduction
544HP
504ft-lb
3082lbs
AWD
rally tires
3.260
7.813
202mph
Weight Reduction
456HP
422ft-lb
2665lbs
3.315
8.101
191MPH
A difference of 417lbs traded for 100HP. A negligible acceleration difference is seen with the heavier car. So it doesnt make up for the worse handling in this case.
Another example would be my 599GTO and F12 Berlinetta. Both weighing a considerable amount after full weight reduction. Something like 3,400. My F12 accelerates very fast… 0-60 in under 2 seconds but that is the extent of it. It looks awesome and I spent a lot of time on liveries but It can’t compete with my lighter cars. My 458 weighs 500lbs less and has better accel so I can’t even use that as a reason.
I can only think that people using no weight reduction have sprint races in mind where max HP and top end is what matters. IMO not very useful overall.
By contrast I had to restart the heavyweight one 15 Times to get a good run because the extra weight was hard to handle… grr. Anyway I managed to shave a second off my time with the heavy one. Was Not worth it. I can say for certain I prefer better handling if I’m not trying to break records. I mostly play online and there’s no restart or rewind. I’m assuming anyone that runs no weight reduction also run stock tires on everything for max HP.
What the car is naturally good at factors, too. That F12 not only gets off the line fast, it has great top end. In S1, it’s very strong at higher speeds and is most competitive in Street Races. For those, it’s best to not sacrifice power for weight, given where the car starts. If you do, the F12 ends up “meh” at everything. If you choose power, the F12 is one of the better S1 Street Race cars, but struggles a bit on tight circuits.
it all depends what you’re doing. The vast majority of the time weight reduction is better than more HP. For sure when it comes to rally… any extra weight you definitely feel.
For some cross country tracks in this game the extra weight can keep the car settled more.
I believe your comments made sense up to FH2 and maybe FM6.
This games PI system is so warped that it is time to think outside the box and test.
Trust me I have tested some cars to an insane amount of detail and found a fair bit of the time that heavier is better.
Depends if you are judging by feel or laptimes. I judge by laptimes and for that I suggest you stop theorizing and get testing and do so against leaderboards.
And more weight is better for rally courses. Keeps the car stable when landing.
Awd swap + max power is better than weight reduction. If you can fit weight reduction, great!
It’s obvious you’re assuming every class is like S1 and even in that class you’re better off using 1 or 2 tire upgrades instead and maybe knocking back the power to like 800hp
Logic cannot be used in FH3 builds unless you want slower cars.
The people who are using cars with no weight reduction are doing so because they know it’s faster.
I disagree completely that a heavier car is better for rally. You need all the handling you can get because you’re making so many steering adjustments. A heavier car is not as responsive and more susceptable to bouncing out of control. My best rally car is 2600lbs and I’ve killed almost every route in blizzard mountain on unbeatable my first time. Compared to my heavier cars I dont do nearly as well.
Theres considerable debate on the internet if you search for “Heavier car better for rally” … While nothing was absolute, It just further reinforces my opionin. I’ll stick with my lighter rally cars.
Regarding bounce - poor tune, possible. Getting the suspension right on a heavy car is something I haven’t spent a lot of time with. Mainly cause I’m not into heavy cars for a multitude of reasons. But I can say my GTO handles bumps extremely well. Out of curiosity what would be the ideal spring settings on a 3400lbs car?
Ok now i see the problem, you are using real world logic. Not only is this a video game but the pi model in FH3 combined with insane grip levels is why things work here that do not follow real world logic nor what worked in previous games.
Here power is king. You can get more power if carrying more weight. Through tuning and driving you can make up for a lot of the extra weight.
It is actually not a hard and fast rule but in a recent hotlap comp i was quicker when carrying a little extra weight.
My points in no way are based on the real world but on what works in FH3.
But I don’t Need more power on mostly technical courses as seen in this game. And often times too much power is a bad thing. And I’m confident I have equally impressive straight away speed.
How about you or anyone else give me your best times in a +3000lb rally car on any technical course on Blizzard Mountain.
We are not saying get the weight as high as possible.
We are saying that going for max weight reduction is not always the best, particularly for cross country.
We are also not saying using more weight / more power for the tightest course on Blizzard Mountain.
If you look at the CC courses on the main map there are a couple which are tight and technical but definitely not the majority. Most of them require speed and not much else.
Also remember when this thread started it was not in the context of Blizzard Mountain and not in the context of “for the tightest, technical tracks”.
To be honest I have not yet tested enough on Blizzard Mountain to know what works, my comments have been about Cross Country in general in FH3.
Also until we know the car, class and track we have no idea what the build will be. If the car with max power for the chosen motor can fit weight reduction on it then go for it.
I recently improved my time by a long way (River Rush) by adding Intercooler and Oil Cooling to a Raptor. It did not change pi a lot if at all. It added power and weight in a way that in previous games was not worth it. In this game it worked. It added enough power to improve acceleration a bit but also made the car more stable over the bumps and through the water.
If you pick the very windy track in Blizzard Mountain that resembles this track:
then sure do not add weight.
But the majority of tracks are not that tight and in a lot of cases the car will be quicker with extra power even if it comes with extra weight.
If you want to compare times lets go for it. You set a time anywhere and let me know how much your car weighs. But at the end of the day what is more important is a controlled experiment eg someone builds a car 2 ways and tune it well both ways, then someone runs that car at the same track a few times. I am happy to do it.
It still baffles me that you asked the question but don’t want to accept any answer other than what you think is right. Why ask in the first place if you know it all?
The reason why people in FH3 often use more weight is so they can add more power and they get enough handling out of tuning and driving to make sure the extra power helps more than the loss of handling. And yes this still applies to most CC tracks in the game (on the main map).
You are talking a lot in your OP about S1 and maybe S2 Ferraris. Do you run any other cars / classes? If not it is possible you have found a car that already has enough power and in fact enough weight to be settled.
It is always possible that a certain car already is in the sweet spot. But when upgrading cars more than a class or so you have a bigger decision to make regarding power and weight.
Wanted to briefly comment back again to a heavier car being more bouncy… actually not true for the most part I know… But do you know what a rouge wave is? I think heavier cars are more susceptible to “rouge bounces”. That’s what I had in mind
“If you look at the CC courses on the main map there are a couple which are tight and technical but definitely not the majority. Most of them require speed and not much else.”
I have all courses unlocked and I’d say the technical ones outnumber the nontechnical ones actually. But this goes back to my statement it all depends what you’re doing.
And when you’re dealing with Rally / Snow Ice or Dirt with lots of elevation changes and bumps even moderate bends can feel very technical. Wouldn’t you agree?
Alright so here’s my results
I wanted to try and prove myself wrong in a way because I think you believe what your taking about and a small part of me wants to agree(I said small). And I don’t consider myself an expert.
I took 3 cars to Ice Lake Cross Country Circut and you will notice there are no sharp turns to speak of except one. It has a lot of elevation changes and deep snow. So ideal conditions for your power heavy car I would think.
And in fact my heavy power car gave me a run for the money.
I ran a 77 Aston Martin Vantage over 5 times till I felt like I did my best. I ran a 1:16 in S1. You can try it yourself to see what you get. This has 926HP at 3,305lbs
I then took my Ferrari 360CS and ran a 1:17 after several attempts. This has 537HP at 2,825lbs
But then I took my Ferrari 288GTO and ran a 1:15 Off The Line… Meaning I didn’t need a second lap. This has 495HP at 2,650lbs
So since I’m going First and you know what you have to beat, if you want to run the same trial runs and claim lower times I would like to see proof. I have screenshots of mine.
But isn’t it interesting to see that on a nontechnical course I did Just as Good and Better than a max power rally car in my lightweight rally car.
Which also goes to say it would smash it on a technical course.
You can download my tunes for all 3 cars, and run the same course with them if you want. Just search my username. they are great cars and the GTO is fantastic.
But run whatever you want I just want to see which power build is so much better than anything else
I get a 1:15 as my best time with all those and that was using rewind to get the best possible line. Wanted to get closer to your times but if those are your times, I’ll just say well done…
Driver differences aside, what this says to me is the same thing I’ve been saying, more power at the cost of weight was not a significant improvement. And we are talking about some rediculous HP in the RJ Pro for S1.
No. What it’s saying is you’re an ok driver and unable to take advantage of superior cars.
The HP isn’t rediculous. You’re just uninformed on what is normal for FH3. 1,000+ HP is common in all classes and for most tracks are the cars that are tops on the leaderboard. All of your builds are way underpowered except the aston. That’s a good hp number for grippy tracks in S1.
The problem I see with this discussion is you’re comparing results against the AI.
We are talking about leaderboards where the AI can’t even keep up.
In addition every car I’ve tried does the rouge wave (I like that analogy btw) bounce. Not a lot you can do about it but generally heavy cars are better at most of those bumps and can help make up for poor line choices over bumps. There’s a reason in the hot lap competition Satnite mentioned everyone was using Ram and Raptor trucks…they were faster than every car.
You really need to drop the realism stuff. It doesn’t provide the best builds in this game. It’s annoying for sure, but it’s just how it is in this game.
There was originally a typo in my times. They are now up to date.
The Rally Fighter time is an anomaly. It was the first time I had run this track and after running it I realized my tune was for flat dirt trails not for cross country.
This experiment has various flaws. - Some vehicles are better than others. It may be due to weight / power or it may just be that car is better. A more controlled experiment would be a car that has 3 build options at a given pi level - max weight redux plus engine parts that do not add weight. build 2 would include intercooler and oil. build 3 would include maxed motor and less weight redux. I have done build 1 and 2 in the Race Raptor on River Rush and was quicker with the intercooler and oil than without.
You do realise we can see your ghosts yeah? Your Aston seems to suspiciously slow down when heading for the finish line - is the data being manipulated?
Leaderboards don’t lie. If I had to pick 1 car to run on every CC track on the main map ie I had to run the same car on all of them, I would use the Rally Fighter or the new truck. I believe the Rally Fighter has the record on enough tracks to suggest it would be the overall winner.
Although it is still early days on Blizzard Mountain I am not sure what can be done other than the truck set the #1 and #2 times on the leaderboard to prove that the extra hp is beneficial.
Good luck in your travels. I won’t be taking part in this thread any more. Experiments have already been run by many and the results are on the leaderboards. I won’t be wasting my time any more here.