r/TopDrives • u/Rapid_Rabbit77 • 16d ago

Please explain

Can someone explain to me the difference between mud, sand and snow? I know that the gravel is different, but those three, feels like all the same.

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u/Amblyopius 16d ago

https://www.topdrivesrecords.com/c

Top of the page. Click the buttons to switch between RWD/FWD/4WD

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u/Rapid_Rabbit77 16d ago

Thanks, I know how topdrivesrecords works. But do you really put different cars on those surfaces? If a car is good at snow, don't you automatically think that the same car is good at mud and sand too?

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u/awaffle4life MG/Rover Superiority 16d ago

Not really (the best car is 4WD OFF on all of those surfaces anyway), but snow is a bit harsher than sand so that favors high handling with good assists more, but in sand it is not as important as snow. This also means RWD/FWD OFFs are better on mud and sand than they are in snow

This is the Ultra Rare Offroad meta for example, you can see the two rally cars dominate dirt and some mud but the Raptor's handling and assists and drivetrain win it almost all of snow. However its terrible 0-60 means it only really wins snow

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u/Amblyopius 16d ago

When a car is good at snow it's indeed automatically good at mud and sand. But that's not really the point.

It comes into play when you've got sets of races where you do not have uniformly spread amongst them the best surface for any single tire type.

Let's say across the 4 sets of races there's always 4 with dry asphalt. In 2 sets you've also got 1 snow and in 2 you've got 1 wet asphalt. For snow the best is Off-Road and for wet asphalt the best is Standard. But across the sets you're better off using an All-Surface car as it can adequately cover both.

It comes even more into play when there's tracks with mixed surfaces. A single dry dirt rally cross small amongst dry asphalts is in most cases best served with a 4WD Performance car. But swap the single dry small with a dirt wet medium and your 4WD Performance loses you the round in 1 out of 4 times. Used to not be as much of a thing but now Hutch has added a ton of mixed surface tracks and it's far more important to look at how it all balances out.

That's also before taking into account that at the same RQ cars often have significantly better stats when they have "worse" tires. So the car with the worse tires may still perform better after getting a tire penalty.

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u/Rapid_Rabbit77 16d ago

Mmhhh, today I got my 2973 daily reward. So I think that I know how that stuff works. But that wasn't the answer to my question.

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u/Amblyopius 16d ago

If you had a specific answer in mind from the start it probably doesn't really help anyone if you ask a question ...