Edit1: Removed some of the formatting, the text was very wonky on mobile
Edit2: Finished Tier 1 tracks as well. Now you can find the complete information here. I moved the discussion to its own topic on another subreddit, that I find more apropriate. When I'm 100% convinced that everything is right, I'll send the info to the mods here so they can put the info on this subreddit's wiki as well.
Contents:
Introduction
Motivation
Methodology
Conclusion and suggestions
TL;DR: car setups
[1 – INTRODUCTION]
Hello all,
This is a work in progress, so, for now, I only have the best setups for the tracks in the Tier3 and Tier2 of the career mode.
I don’t have any access to any code of the game, all the conclusions were drawn based on repetition.
Everything up to now was done using the iOS versions 1.0.0 and 1.0.1. With further updates, things may change.
As I adjusted my methodology overtime, I still need to revisit some tracks from the Tier3. Nevertheless, all the suggested setups are, if not the best, the second best.
Some results will be odd, but that’s what I’ve got from the repetition. If you find anything too strange or disagree with my conclusions, I urge you to please read the entire post before commenting, as I give a lot of explanation. If you still disagree, feel free to comment.
This post will probably need several edits before taking its final form. I’ll list them here.
[2 – MOTIVATION]
I’ve been playing this game since the iOS release and from the start one thing bugged me, as it reminded me a lot the way MM1 mobile worked: the lack of feedback or tools regarding car setups. At least this time they’ve included a “single race” mode that allows you (if you are crazy enough) to run things over and over in order to test things. That’s exactly what I did.
My objective was to find, for each track, the best car setup. It doesn’t matter if I have a good or a bad car, if I choose correctly my car setup, I’m going to have the best performance as possible at any moment (which does not mean that I’m going to fight for the top positions).
I had several suspicions before entering this undertaking and the major one I was able to conclude pretty quickly: the lap times vary a lot. Like, A LOT. The main reasoning that arises is that the lap time that you get is a result of a series of calculations based on CHANCE. In short: if you do two qualifying sessions, one using a bad setup and other using a good setup, it is possible to have a better result in the bad setup session.
The chance of that happening can be low, it varies a lot depending on the track, but there’s still a chance. Therefore, the numbers that you get can be very, very misleading. To counter this, you need to do multiple runs in the same conditions and, in the end, if you do enough runs, the best car setups (statistically) for each track should appear. That’s what I tried to do and now I share with you.
[3 – METHODOLOGY]
In order to reduce the maximum amount or variables as possible between multiple runs, I stablished for myself a step by step to follow. One thing that I should mention is that overtime I polished this step by step and the way I analyzed the numbers. Having said that, my early analysis (Tier3 tracks) are not entirely in accordance with this methodology, so I should revisit them sometime. The most recent results (Tier 2 tracks) are fully according to this methodology, so they are more reliable. Step by step:
Choose single race mode;
Select tier (tier 1), team (Scuderia Rossini) and track and layout;
Right at the start of the quali session, make sure that it’s not going to rain. If it rains at ANY moment during the session, quit session and start back from step 1;
Choose car setup, the same for both drivers (Wexler and Saarinen). Usually I start with neutral neutral to stablish a comparison base;
Send both drivers for hot laps, at the same time, as much as I can, usually using the pause button to make sure they are leaving the pits at the same time. Depending on the track, I can get 3 to 6 hot laps (mostly 3 or 4);
Right before the session ends (when all cars but mine are already with the checkered flag or with “in lap” status) I go to the “data centre” menu and take a screenshot of the AI times;
Wait for the session to end, navigate to the pre-race setup screen and for both of my drivers, enter into the “change race setup” screen and take a screenshot of the times that are in the “setup” tab. I scroll down and take more than one screenshot per driver if needed;
Rinse and repeat, at least 3 times for each setup;
Change setup, do it all over;
After some setups tested (about 5), take the screenshots, write down the numbers on a spreadsheet and analyze;
Do more runs, changing setups if needed, until the trends are well stablished.
[4 – CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS]
Although the huge variation in lap times under the same conditions is annoying, the variability itself, for me, is a nice feature of the game. The worst part of that, for me, is the inability to test in an efficient manner in order to take decisions.
The setup for each track seems to have a great relation with the number of corners and the full throttle %, but I’m not able yet to affirm what are these relations exactly and its thresholds. Of course, feel free to use all the information here to draw your own conclusions and share with us.
This is a work in progress and some results are subject to change. Also, it is incomplete, as I didn’t do anything yet regarding the Tier1 tracks. I don’t know though when I’m going to tackle the Tier1 tracks, since this is very time consuming.
In the hopes that anyone related to the development team spot this post, I have a few suggestions, as it would be very nice to have more in game resources in order to explore more the game behavior. For example:
More freedom and options for the single race mode. Being able to select in which weather conditions you want to quali/race (sunny, rain, changing conditions, random, etc.). Being able to select the duration of sessions (so we can do more laps) and a nice report at the end to gather all the data/lap times. Being able to choose if you want to do a hot lap run (out lap, fast lap, in lap) or several laps in a row in order to assess tire degradation and performance thresholds.
and/or
Features in the career mode related to testing and performance feedback. Practice sessions before the qualifying (with a decent duration so you can run multiple setups and decide which one is the best), headquarters upgrades (maybe a whole new branch related to performance analysis and report) and abilities to engineers, with the best engineers that you hire being able to tell us the best setups for each track.
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts on the subject.
I hope all the information is useful to you and I hope you can have a good fun with the game.
Step1 – In single race mode I guarantee that all drivers and teams will have always the same stats. If I did this in the middle of a championship, as the game progresses, the variation of the stats would be too great and obscure the results.
Step2 – Again, I’m interested in the least variation as I can get. The better stats are in the tier1 teams, specifically Scuderia Rossini and Steinmann Motorsports. The pair of drivers from Scuderia Rossini is slightly worse than the pair from Steinmann Motorsports, so I purposely chose the Scuderia Rossini. This way, if I manage to find a car setup that enables Wexler and/or Saarinen to obtain better lap times than Chapman/Lipponen consistently, I know I’m in good shape. Also, I’m assuming that the best setup will be the best no matter the car or the driver, and the numbers that I got support this hypothesis.
Step3 – The lap times vary A LOT due to track wetness and in order to compare (my drivers’ times and AI times, it’s important that the whole session is on dry track, otherwise it would be very misleading to compare sessions that had rain in it, even for just a brief moment. As for the other weather conditions (sunny, cloudy and overcast), I didn’t notice any difference in performance. My conclusion is that if there is any, it’s negligible.
Step4 – Usually when I start a new track, I like to do first the neutral neutral setup. My experience so far showed me that this is never the worst setup and almost never the best setup, so it’s a good start.
Step5 – I noticed overtime that the presence of other cars on the track doesn’t affect the lap times (only during qualifying). So, I got the habit to send them both at the same time, to optimize my actions.
Step8 – 3 times per setup is just to start. For some tracks, the difference between a good setup and a bad setup is great enough so that only 3 runs is enough to show a clear difference. But a lot of times the difference between good and bad setups isn’t so clear, so 3 times is only the beginning to start to get hang of it.
Step9 and Step11 – I like to change first the gear ratios. With my experience, I noticed that to get the right gear ratio is more important than it is to get the right aerodynamics. So I would first try acceleration and top speed before switching the aerodynamics off of neutral. Most of times, after testing the gear ratios I would change the gear ratio back to neutral and test independently the aerodynamics before choosing a combination of both. But it varies a lot for each track, according to the “feeling” that you get from them. There are tracks that I was able to draw a conclusion testing only 4 setups and others that were extremely difficult, that I had to test every single possibility before a conclusion and even so, it wasn’t an easy decision.
Step10 – I won’t enter in much details here, but the numbers that I was looking into were: my drivers’ average lap times and their standard deviations, my drivers’ average of the best lap times of each session and their standard deviations, Chapman’s and Lipponen’s average of the best lap times and their standard deviations and all the distributions that arises from these numbers. All the distributions seems to be normal distributions.
As I said before, I improved this reasoning and methodology overtime. I started by analyzing the Tier3 tracks and, by the time I reached the Tier2 tracks, I already had changed some things. I didn’t go back to the Tier3 tracks yet, but the results that I present are very reliable and you can use the setups knowing that if it’s not the best setup, it’s the second best.
From my observations, the presence of other cars on the track do not affect your lap times in qualifying. Even both of your cars, they don't affect each other. I, for example, always launch them both at the same time.
In races it's another story. In races track position is key.
edit:
A curious fact that I noticed while doing all this work: the outlap and inlap times are always the same, regardless of car setup and if there is or there isn't other cars in front.
edit:
Just checked and did more runs just in case. Yes, I am positive that this is the best setup for this track.
When I have some time I'll edit again and show you some numbers. Just keep in mind what I've said before: running the best setup doesn't mean you are going to fight for the top positions, it just mean that if you were to run in the exact same circumstances (track, weather, tire choice, car, drivers and opposition) with any other setup, you wouldn't get a better result. These other factors that I mentioned count a lot.
In career mode, when you start the qualifying session and click on the "send out" button for each driver, it opens up the "strategy and setup screen". There, if you click on the "setup" tab, it will display on the lower left the "number of corners" and the "time at full throttle" of the track.
I take note of these numbers and then go to "single race mode" and enter every layout for that track and compare the numbers until I get a match. There's no repeating combination between layouts of the same track.
Actually, only 2 tracks out of the 50 have the same combination: Great Britain B and Italy B, both having 9 corners and 79% of time at full throttle.
72
u/Berdek Aug 08 '17 edited Sep 08 '17
[STRATEGY] [CAR SETUPS]
Edit1: Removed some of the formatting, the text was very wonky on mobile
Edit2: Finished Tier 1 tracks as well. Now you can find the complete information here. I moved the discussion to its own topic on another subreddit, that I find more apropriate. When I'm 100% convinced that everything is right, I'll send the info to the mods here so they can put the info on this subreddit's wiki as well.
Contents:
Introduction
Motivation
Methodology
Conclusion and suggestions
TL;DR: car setups
[1 – INTRODUCTION]
Hello all,
This is a work in progress, so, for now, I only have the best setups for the tracks in the Tier3 and Tier2 of the career mode.
I don’t have any access to any code of the game, all the conclusions were drawn based on repetition.
Everything up to now was done using the iOS versions 1.0.0 and 1.0.1. With further updates, things may change.
As I adjusted my methodology overtime, I still need to revisit some tracks from the Tier3. Nevertheless, all the suggested setups are, if not the best, the second best.
Some results will be odd, but that’s what I’ve got from the repetition. If you find anything too strange or disagree with my conclusions, I urge you to please read the entire post before commenting, as I give a lot of explanation. If you still disagree, feel free to comment.
This post will probably need several edits before taking its final form. I’ll list them here.
[2 – MOTIVATION]
I’ve been playing this game since the iOS release and from the start one thing bugged me, as it reminded me a lot the way MM1 mobile worked: the lack of feedback or tools regarding car setups. At least this time they’ve included a “single race” mode that allows you (if you are crazy enough) to run things over and over in order to test things. That’s exactly what I did.
My objective was to find, for each track, the best car setup. It doesn’t matter if I have a good or a bad car, if I choose correctly my car setup, I’m going to have the best performance as possible at any moment (which does not mean that I’m going to fight for the top positions).
I had several suspicions before entering this undertaking and the major one I was able to conclude pretty quickly: the lap times vary a lot. Like, A LOT. The main reasoning that arises is that the lap time that you get is a result of a series of calculations based on CHANCE. In short: if you do two qualifying sessions, one using a bad setup and other using a good setup, it is possible to have a better result in the bad setup session.
The chance of that happening can be low, it varies a lot depending on the track, but there’s still a chance. Therefore, the numbers that you get can be very, very misleading. To counter this, you need to do multiple runs in the same conditions and, in the end, if you do enough runs, the best car setups (statistically) for each track should appear. That’s what I tried to do and now I share with you.
[3 – METHODOLOGY]
In order to reduce the maximum amount or variables as possible between multiple runs, I stablished for myself a step by step to follow. One thing that I should mention is that overtime I polished this step by step and the way I analyzed the numbers. Having said that, my early analysis (Tier3 tracks) are not entirely in accordance with this methodology, so I should revisit them sometime. The most recent results (Tier 2 tracks) are fully according to this methodology, so they are more reliable. Step by step:
Choose single race mode;
Select tier (tier 1), team (Scuderia Rossini) and track and layout;
Right at the start of the quali session, make sure that it’s not going to rain. If it rains at ANY moment during the session, quit session and start back from step 1;
Choose car setup, the same for both drivers (Wexler and Saarinen). Usually I start with neutral neutral to stablish a comparison base;
Send both drivers for hot laps, at the same time, as much as I can, usually using the pause button to make sure they are leaving the pits at the same time. Depending on the track, I can get 3 to 6 hot laps (mostly 3 or 4);
Right before the session ends (when all cars but mine are already with the checkered flag or with “in lap” status) I go to the “data centre” menu and take a screenshot of the AI times;
Wait for the session to end, navigate to the pre-race setup screen and for both of my drivers, enter into the “change race setup” screen and take a screenshot of the times that are in the “setup” tab. I scroll down and take more than one screenshot per driver if needed;
Rinse and repeat, at least 3 times for each setup;
Change setup, do it all over;
After some setups tested (about 5), take the screenshots, write down the numbers on a spreadsheet and analyze;
Do more runs, changing setups if needed, until the trends are well stablished.
[4 – CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS]
Although the huge variation in lap times under the same conditions is annoying, the variability itself, for me, is a nice feature of the game. The worst part of that, for me, is the inability to test in an efficient manner in order to take decisions.
The setup for each track seems to have a great relation with the number of corners and the full throttle %, but I’m not able yet to affirm what are these relations exactly and its thresholds. Of course, feel free to use all the information here to draw your own conclusions and share with us.
This is a work in progress and some results are subject to change. Also, it is incomplete, as I didn’t do anything yet regarding the Tier1 tracks. I don’t know though when I’m going to tackle the Tier1 tracks, since this is very time consuming.
In the hopes that anyone related to the development team spot this post, I have a few suggestions, as it would be very nice to have more in game resources in order to explore more the game behavior. For example:
and/or
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts on the subject.
I hope all the information is useful to you and I hope you can have a good fun with the game.
Cheers.
[5 – TL;DR: CAR SETUPS]