Future Rally Club suggestions

[Warren Dawes]

I have opened this thread to collect any ideas / suggestions for future Rally Club Events.

We have already had many good suggestions for events so far, and we have tried to include them in past Rallys, so keep them coming. We appreciate your help.

If you get a good idea, just throw it in here, we will always consider them, maybe not always immediately, but you never know. Whenever we are planning future Rallys, we will come here to see what you have thrown into the ring.

A few thought starters, some already suggested to me by Club Members:

1. Use some BTB Tracks. I have been testing many of them, some are good, but many are not very suitable for the style of Rally we wish to use at Racedepartment. I'm not a great fan of Tarmac in RBR, it is not modelled very realistically, and the majority of BTB tracks are tarmac. However, some are quite acceptable, if we can match them up to the right cars.

2. A Rally Challenge, Europe vs Australia. Maybe we pit the Euro's vs the Aussies using Australian and European tracks. Maybe even include Americans if we muster some USA members.

3. Run a RBR Rally League, similar to a WRC Championship. This would have to fit with Racedepartment League guidelines. I'm not keen to make the Rally Club overly competitive though, we still want it to be fun.

4. We all run the Volvo 240 on a suitable set of Stages.

5. Run the lower powered cars, the 2WD cars.

6. Are we brave enough to try the Group B monsters?

7. Try a Rally with full realistic damage.

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Over to you guys. :work:

 

[Senad Subasic]

Europe vs Australia sounds nice.
Lower powered cars also get my vote. I presume it would take more skill to gain (or not lose) time, and there would be fewer retirements.

Maybe a team event, two car teams (dibs on the Impreza!)? Full rain or night events.

 

[Rick Bamford]

I am all for the league idea. I think TOUGH competition IS fun, but thats me. I'd like to see a set of events (6 maybe) that form a championship where you gain points over the series. Makes the contest last longer. If you run it as the Australian Rally championship (ARC) then it's 6 rounds, if you want it could be ALL gravel or one tramac 5 gravel.

2 car teams with points awarded like the Constructors C'Ship.

Something I've been thinking of for a while, we start a championship or league with A8 group A cars (from 95'and before) then the next one we start with the cars avalible from 96 and so on.

And I am REALLY all for the realistic damage idea. Keep it neat, on the road or youré OUT. Love it, love it, love it.

 

[Warren Dawes]

Just to clear up any misunderstandings about my doubts re BTB addon Tracks.

I have no problems with most of the new gravel stages that have been developed, in fact some I love eg. Pikes Peak is a classic IMO.

However, I am not a great fan of Tarmac stages in RBR, it doesn't seem as realistic to me as Gravel or Snow. This becomes worse when driving tracks that are very bumpy, the bouncing is almost ridiculous and totally unrealistic. Smooth tarmac stages are ok, but still need to be matched to suitable cars, some cars are very unrealistic on tarmac.
Unfortunately, the majority of BTB addon Tracks that I have tested so far are tarmac, and some are more drift exhibition or stadium stages, so for the style of Rally we use, I prefer to keep these limited.

Others may disagree, just my opinion.

 

[Ondrej Kapal]

why is tarmac unrealistic?

 

[John Low]

Am all for a championship type thing over a number of rallies. Would love it to be in not too powerful cars to start off with maybe, as I, hopefully there's some other people like me, just can't setup the stupid things to do anything but spend the whole rally chasing their own tail and never even see 4th gear, let alone 5th or 6th. I imagine this is why it gets exceedingly frustrating and I uninstall the thing and don't play it for a year or 2. I'd really not like that to happen again this time round.

 

[Senad Subasic]

I never even saw the setup screen, always default :o. Don't know the tracks well enough for anything anyway.
Also, I don't think I ever hit 5th gear in the two rallies I've been in so far. But I wasn't that far off the pace, so not concerned about that.

 

[Warren Dawes]

Just because the cars have 5 or 6 speed gear boxes, doesn't mean it is a problem not to use all gears. In WRC cars, I seldom hit top gear, and often never get past 4th, depending on the Stages. So what, it's all about driving the best time you can under some sort of control. Trying to go too fast will only result in crashes and frustration.
The only set up changes I normally use is gear ratios to suit a stage, but even then, I am happy to use whichever gear is appropriate, I never worry if I never get to the highest gear.

 

[Warren Dawes]

why is tarmac unrealistic?

I'll try to explain my view:
First up, the grip level seems excessive. You can throw most of the cars into turns (In Tarmac) and they stick like they are on rails, quite an arcade feeling compared to gravel and snow.
In default set up, they are extremely twitchy, very small steering input results in instant, excessive turn.
I don't feel the progressive loss of traction and and therefore giving the ability to counter any loss of traction. It seems to be excessive levels of grip, followed by instant loss of traction, you lose the sense of feel. Driving other Racing Sims designed for tarmac (GTL, Race On, GTR2, rFactor) seems much more realistic.
Again, in default set up, the bumps are exaggerated, often on bumpy stages, the rear end will bounce like a pogo stick, not at all how I would expect a real car to behave.

All of the above is based on driving many cars using default set up. Sure, with lots of set up adjustment, these can be improved somewhat, but I believe that most sims should be close to believeable with default set up. I believe that RBR was built around gravel as it's primary base, and the conversion to tarmac is not nearly as realistic as gravel or snow.

Just my personal opinion, but I have spoken to many others who share my view. However, as explained previously, by matching the right cars to the right tracks, tarmac can be reasonable.

 

[Rick Bamford]

Warren, I have to disagree with you. In a REAL tarmac car, you don't get the gradual loss of grip you do in most games. On the limit is VERY sudden when it lets go..........trust me, you get little warning. Its the law of phyisics.

As for the bumpy stages, remember, games like rFactor etc are track games (I will be honest, i have not played the games you mentioned. They are not rally games so why bother.) Public roads are not billiard table smooth, they are bumpy. And defult set-ups in a SIM should allow you to drive, but not be fast. Part of the fun of a sim is setting the car up.

Please don't think I am trying to start a fight or anything. These are just opionions and I am opinionated

P.S. I'm not a fan of tarmac anyway

 

[Ondrej Kapal]

well about setup, as Warren said and I agree with him, with default setups you should be able to drive everything cause of people like me I am all the time using everywhere default setups with some little changes, or I am downloading setups from other guys.. because every technical situations are out of me, I dont understand them and why this gear this rear front wing splitter anti roll... etc. for example this image

(http://www.racedepartment.com/europ...wtcc-08-vitus-gp-sunday-13th-june-2010-a.html)
how the hell can it helps me?

 

[Warren Dawes]

This is precisely my point re setups. They are quite complex in RBR, and whilst it may be great for "experienced" guys to play around with them to improve the results, we are trying to build a Rally Club here at RD with lots of newer Rally drivers. I want new, inexperienced drivers to be able to join in and have fun, and therefore we need the cars to be "driveable" in default set up, or they will just be disappointed and leave with a feeling that cars are unrealistic.
To demonstrate my point about many cars and tracks in Tarmac, go try England, Harwood Forrest, Tarmac mod, and the current A8W-05 Cars. On many of the undulating sections (not necessarily the pothole bumps) the rear end of the car will bounce totally off the road like a pogo stick. Hardly realistic to me. I don't expect our Rally Club guys to have to spend hours trying to fix the setup to make the car stay on the road.

However, as I have said many times, there are some ok tarmac stages (eg. default France), especially when used with selected cars, that are ok.

I plan to organise a Tarmac Rally in the near future, so people can decide for themselves. As I have said, purely my personal opinion.

 

[SpazZ]

2 CAR teams sound like fun! Team points and braqging rights......maybe even an in-team squabble like Jenson and Lewis/ Mark and Seb

 

[Senad Subasic]

Get licenced SpazZ, and join us

 

[Steve Emmons]

At the moment I pretty much like the structure of things the way they are now. I'm just getting started and every event has all new stages to learn, each new car has handling differences to decipher, different surface types to figure out, and weather conditions to adapt to. I haven't even looked at setups yet... Adding full damage seems like it might add to the frustration factor... When I get more of the basics mastered I might be game for a championship, but that would be down the road a ways. I'm finding that there's plenty to keep me entertained for the time being...

 

[Ramon van Rijn]

Same as Steve here. We met in Teamspeak last night and together with Mark Warmington and Nigel we had some laughs and good fun.
Beginner here also, please leave the damage as it is now for a while; it helps newcomers to enjoy and even then I see enough retirements

The events were cool; I like whatever you popup Don't know if the 05 cars are mandatory since people need to choose a different car for every event. Other (newer/older) cars would be cool too... Lancia Delta or the high tech new cars.

Uh, since I am new here; don't take my words too heavy. Learning all the time and so far it was 99% enjoyment. Only downside (also a pro) is you don't met each other on track and Teamspeak is almost not done because you need to follow the pacenotes with care.

Still a smile here

 

[Warren Dawes]

Only downside (also a pro) is you don't met each other on track and Teamspeak is almost not done because you need to follow the pacenotes with care.

Thanks Ramon, one comment on the Teamspeak.
We use it regularly in the Aussie Rallys, but we don't talk during a Stage. Basically we use it to chat, share stories of our runs, between each second Stage, then go quiet while we run the stage, and then wait for everyone to finish before chatting again.
It adds a lot to the fun.

 

[Ramon van Rijn]

Good tip; now it was silence from stage 01 till 08 and then the chat started again. Would be nice to wait for each other to finish each stage etc.etc. Cool.