PC2 Formula C career trouble. It's no fun.

[bezierspline]

I am currently stuck with my first Formula C race at Brno. The car behaves terribly, I have to crawl through corners. It's probably mostly because of that bug where slicks (sport tyres, too, it seems) don't heat up, which seems to be present still ...? Wet tyres work somewhat better, but it's still horrible given that the AI does seem completely unaffected (position 1 is lapping at slightly above 2:07).

When doing time trial (rank 83 at ~2:05.800), private testing or a custom race the car feels so much better (that is, like around 10+ seconds per lap better than in career).

So, on to my questions:

1. Is there a way to make Formula C in career mode more fun? I am thinking of just setting AI to 0 and moving on. I have had fun in the car in non-career mode, but I think I just want to get over with that.

2. Does this only occur on Brno or other tracks, too?

3. I have gathered that similar problems may exist in other classes, possibly Clio Cup and Formula Renault ...?

 

[bezierspline]

This is weird: I did give it another try and this time qualifying and race seemed fine. I am close to my times in time trial. I was quite sure that previously qualifying was having problems, too. The difference seems to be mostly when doing practice in foggy conditions and low temperatures. AI does not seem to be affected at all, but slicks and sport tyres become unusable while wet tyres are acceptable (at least if AI would feel the same effects). Let's see what the other races in this series bring ...

 

[hotak]

in pCars track and ambient temperatures are quite important, use the brake ducts to control the temperatures, my rule of thumb is:

-Tamb<15° and Ttrack<20° -> ducts< 35%
-Tamb 20-25° and track 30-35° -> ducts 65-75%
-Tamb 28+° and track 40+° -> ducts 90-100%

It can make quite some difference, expecially with extreme temperatures

 

[bezierspline]

in pCars track and ambient temperatures are quite important, use the brake ducts to control the temperatures, my rule of thumb is:

-Tamb<15° and Ttrack<20° -> ducts< 35%
-Tamb 20-25° and track 30-35° -> ducts 65-75%
-Tamb 28+° and track 40+° -> ducts 90-100%

It can make quite some difference, expecially with extreme temperatures

Thank you very much! I will look into the difference those make. Do brake ducts affect anything but brake temperature? Does brake temperature affect tyres, too? What brake temperatures should one strive for? Is there some guide covering these questions?

Brno practice seems to be the first time where temperatures are close to 0°. So far there has also been no need to modify car setups to be sufficiently fast. This seems to be the first time that it is required.

The issues of the AI not being affected noticably and only wet tyres getting enough heat are still there, but I can live with that if it does happen only on a few occassions during career mode before moving on to human opponents.

 

[hotak]

The thermal model is quite complex: brake ducts mainly influence the air temperature inside the wheel, this makes the brakes cooler, but also the rim and the air in the tire, and this influences the external tire temperature. Also the brake temperature is divided between "core" and "external", the latter is the one you see on the telemetry screen, somewhere in the official forum a dev posted the brake temperatures to aim at during braking depending if the brakes are carbon, ceramic or steel.

Anyway most of the times i adjust the ducts just aiming at the correct tire temperatures and never had problems with braking performances.

EDIT: also for almost all categories the soft/hard tires should be used depending on temperature more than distance: soft is for cold track and hard for hot one.

 

[Damage Inc]

As Hotak says it's not a bug, depending on the conditions the harder tyres are unusable....which if there is no soft option causes a load of trouble. Also Ai does not use the same tyre physics (as we would need supercomputers to run the game) so is not affected by the dynamic track and temps. Which makes things even harder. I'm currently (on hold because of a smegged shoulder) in the Clio Cup and the first round at Brands was proving very difficult for me for much the same reasons. Looking how modern tyres need to be "switched" on and any driver/rider that cannot do so struggles in the real world it's not far off reality. Could do with a bit of tweaking or more tyre options!