Hello.
As some of you may know from my previous topics, I’m blind so I use the auto steering to play.
I’m having a really big issue right now with making off-road builds.
No matter what I do, if I focus on handling with minimal power increases or handling entirely, I’m always finishing 8th or higher.
With road built cars it’s a different story, because I can bump the difficulty to highly skilled and I can still win.
Please tell me if this is wrong, but I have noticed a certain number that the narration reads out to me when I’m upgrading a car, for instance a road car at A class will have 1.8 or higher, but off-road cars at the same class will have 1.5, maybe 1.6 if I’m lucky.
I don’t know what this number is, but I’ve noticed that the higher this number, the better the car handles.
I’m talking about the number after the HP and before the class when you are installing upgrades.
Can someone clarify why this is? Or do I just suck at tuning lol.
I’d appreciate some advice, do I put front and rear aero on and upgrade tire profile and chassis reinforcement, even though it lowers speed and pie?
I just want to know what the deal is, I can’t even beat off-road races on above average, I don’t want to lower it more because I do like a challenge, but it’s no fun coming 9th all the time.
I’ve also tried both ways changing final drive ratio, that didn’t work either.
I use forza tune pro to tune cars because I can’t use the in game telemetry, could that be making cars worse?
Not sure what builds you get from that app, but based on some reviews, I’d say app is probably useless.
While its easy for me to say, to test and feel what car is doing, that is no use to you.
One thing I would reccomend is using Offroad tires and not rally tires for any kind of dirt or offroad races. Rally tires work well on tarmac, not so well on other surfaces, also cost plenty of PI.
I have tried to work out where you are in the menus. I think it’s the “buy and install” menu, the point where any selected upgrades are applied to the car. If that’s right, the number is “lateral Gs”, it’s after “peak power” and before “performance class”. This relates to turning; a higher number means the car can maintain grip at a higher speed for a given turn. Is that any help?
With off-road racing, there is a LOT of braking and steering the auto-settings will do for you when you are able to control the direction of the car with the throttle – like the Cars movie lol so you are likely fighting the settings to an extent and losing some time
You may need to tighten up your gears on your off-road configs, as you likely wont get the room to let the car stretch its legs! This allows you to have more “meat,” down low and can acclerate whilst sideways.
Unfortunately those lateral g numbers are only useful on tarmac. You will want to stick to offroad tires, or sometimes stock tires on vehicles that are already offroad like a 4 by 4 for example.
It could also be an issue with auto steering.
Generally for offroad builds, you don’t want to care about grip, since maintaining it is a fool’s game. You mostly focus on power. You also don’t care about weight. In fact it can be a positive, as it can help maintain your momentum as you smash through obstacles and water hazards.
Good luck! Hopefully I wrote this well enough for a text to speech program to read it easily. I have no idea how blind you are.
As others have mentionend the number between HP and class describes the maximum lateral acceleration the car can endure before it breaks grip in turns. The higher the better the car corners.
Some general tips for building off-road vehicles:
Always use offroad tires. They are better than rallye tires. Always install maximum rear tire width and rear tire size if available. If you are building the car for dirt races going with maximum weight reduction is a good start. For cross country it may vary.
You won’t make a mistake with installing street chassis reinforcement (the first upgrade), especially on older cars.
Regarding front and rear aero: Can you use the fine tuning menu? If you can’t then going without aero will be better because the stock values can lead to unbalanced and slow cars.
As an alternative - and please don’t take this as patronizing - I could build the cars for you and you could install the tune if you can access that menu.
You could tell which car in which class you want and I would make a tune that works well with auto steering.
I forgot to make a note of that in my post, I was going to but then had to go out for a while and forgot. Quite right, it doesn’t mean as much off-road where grip is a different animal.
Thank you all for the replies 
To answer some of your posts, yes I am referring to the install parts menu, so it must be the lateral G number, it would definitely make sense based on what I’m saying.
Until now I have always been upgrading tire compound, both front and rear width, both track widths, and front profile size because rear would always have a big decrease on pie so I thought it would be bad, why? I don’t know, maybe because of the added weight?
I would always try reducing weight via reduction or other means, my reasoning behind this was that I still thought the lateral G number was the handling, so I thought the bigger the number the better because I found that cars don’t brake so much when they have a higher lateral G number, at least for road racing anyway.
@TheWarmWind76, I am fully blind, but I get along
You’re reply is fine, I am just a little confused when people say off-road or rally tires, I don’t have rally tires in my game, are you referring to off-road race tires?
Also, compared to Rayne_SE’s reply, what is the right thing to do? More or less weight for off-road builds?
I can use the tuning menu, I assume you mean custom tune in the upgrades menu?
I just don’t experiment is all, I take the FT pro app for granted thinking that it would make some improvement at least; but as I said before I can’t use the telemetry menu so that limits me in what I can do.
For aero, I tend to use front bumpers and rear wings that increase speed if available, they’re only very small .1 to .5mph gains but it’s worth it because they don’t affect pie much especially with cars that already have wings etc.
Does this have a negative difference on handling?
Maybe I should leave aero well alone.
By now I’m beginning to think that there’s no right way of doing things, people say track width helps with handling, others say that it can mess with the suspension.
Some people say don’t use off-road race tires for rally cars because they’re not good for tar surfaces, others say off-road race tires, or rally tires, are better, I don’t know which is which.
Also I appreciate your offer @Rayne_SE, and would appreciate it especially if you can share some advice for tunes that work well with auto steering.
I also wanted to ask, why do off-road cars have this thing in common where there’s a bonnet that you can equip that adds plus 15kg?
I guess the logical answer would be to reduce pie, but I just think it’s quite odd.
If you chose a body kit preset, this heavier bonnet will get added automatically and depending on the car it will be 100 or so KG heavier.
I can answer some but not all of this. It’s difficult to ensure that I’m giving proper context for everything, but I’ll try my best.
Lowering the p i of the car isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If a car can be better without raising the p i then it’s actually a really good thing. Not everything does make a car better, but rear tire width does mostly make the car better. It gives you more grip, and the only cost is that it’s slightly harder for the engine to spin the wheels.
There are both offroad and rally tires in the game, but they might be described as something different with the audio description accessibility feature.
I also unfortunately have no idea what might be good for auto steering. That’s something I’d have to test before I could have any confidence giving advice. Won’t have much time to do that in the near future. I only have tonight free.
Lights, light bars, and bash bars.
Lights and light bars are probably useless to you, but bash bars can help when smashing through obstacles.
Regarding the rear tire width, it adds weight and some drag and friction. It can be noticeable when going through water. Because it usually drops the PI a little it’s generally better to have it. You can usually add a little extra power. It’s one of those forza things that works in the game.
The increase in rear wheel diameter also adds weight so it usually drops the PI allowing more power. When your car has momentum the power is usually a better tradeoff.
Not all cars have rally tires available so maybe that’s why it’s not coming up for you.
One other thing I would add is the rally suspension does help many cars in driving off road. If you are tuning a Ford Raptor I wouldn’t necessarily add them but if you are trying to use a road based car or an older off road car they may help.
I have off-road; and off-road race tires available.
I’ve been doing some research and it would seem like the normal off-road tires are the rally tires with more grip; and the off-road race tires are particularly better for off-road dedicated vehicles.
I have to admit though, I’ve been playing FH5 since launch and I have never came across any bar other than ARBS, so where can I find these light and bash bars?
I’m thinking of creating a video where you guys can look at what I’m doing; perhaps there’s nothing wrong with the cars and I’m doing the wrong tunes, I don’t know.
I tried something different, putting off-road race tires on a series 3 Landrover and more than doubling the peak HP to 145 without reducing weight. The result, I’m still coming 9th! yay! no joke.
Also this happens with any car, tried it with the 1999 Evo 6 and the Aston DBX, I’m always coming between 8 or higher, myabe 5th if I’m lucky.
Maybe the problem is not your builds, but something entirely different: You use auto-steering in your races. Thus, the game is trying to keep you on the “ideal” racing line unless you are too fast in some corners. However, the drivatars are using the exact same racing line. They are mostly driving in a queue one behind the other. The drivatar system is not very sophisticated and will hopefully get much better in the new Forza Motorsport. Now, how are you supposed to pass the drivatars if you are using the same line? I imagine that you will constantly bump into their rears and that you can only pass if they make one of their rare mistakes… Do you feel or hear that you repeatedly crash into the car in front of you? I guess showing us a video would be an excellent idea…
Of course, my theory is debunked by you saying that you can win road races on “highly skilled”. But you should know that the drivatars in off-road races are much harder than on tarmac. They are constantly defying physics and getting grip where there is no grip like on wet grass. They are basically “cheating”.
@@PhantomiumX, regarding the auto steering, you’ve hit the nail on the head because that’s exactly what happens.
If I’m in a particularly grippy car, I just do little manual touch turns to the left and right if I hear myself crash into a drivatar, I’ll usually know because of the obvious crash sound but also my car will slow down if I’m pushing them along with me.
Who needs a train for a showcase when you could just get a blind person to do the forza Conga with a line of Drivatars? hahaha.
All jokes aside though, it gets very, very annoying at times.
I’ve virtually given up driving in offline free roam because the auto steer doesn’t avoid anything making head to head races impossible and just about everything else.
I will definitely make the video, even if I do humiliate myself by coming 9th, at least there’s a chance we can sort the problem out
Also I thought there was something off especially in rally adventure events, now I know why. For instance, on the races where you had to drive the car the game gives you, I had to do all of them on new racer apart from the asphalt rallies.
@Lens00788814159 159, thanks for the advice! I will give it a shot and see what happens.
Tires.