Let’s Talk About These Default Setups…

Let’s start by asking why are so many of the default setups so random? In ACC for example, the default setups are well thought out, you can jump into any car and the handling is superbly neutral. You can then choose more elite setups, or go in your own direction from there.

In AMS2, there’s so much tweaking to do, just to get most cars competitively drivable with the a.i.
Now you could tell me to simply ‘get gud’, and there would be some truth to that, but I think every car should have well-sorted baseline dry and wet default setups.
If there’s understandably zero time for Reiza to create these, then why not enlist some of the most loyal, early-backers, etc from the community to create these(with accreditation obviously). I’m sure many setup gurus would be more than happy to do this.

For example, I just ran the Formula Classic Gen 1 model 1 car at Adelaide 1988(race and full qualifying boost), and I was baffled as to why there was sluggish acceleration out of the lower gears, by default.
I lowered the final drive and the ratios, but I eventually learned(after a hour of tweaking), that I had to raise the final drive to the maximum, and lower the gear ratios, to get that low-end punch out of the slow corners. The default had it set as the complete opposite.

Not all of us have the knowledge/desire/wherewithal to mess about with setups. A lot of drivers just want to jump into any car, knowing that its default setup will be excellent.
I skip many cars, just because I don’t have the time to go through this with every unfamiliar car.

 

I assume people go to the TT board and download a setup for the relevant car (this obviously doesn't work very well at the moment, given the substantial physics changes many cars have undergone since launch, but it would be an acceptable alternative if TT times included an indication for whether they were set using the most recent build).

Ideally default setups would be neutral and competitive, yes, but the TT boards seem to be another means of allowing members of the community to provide useful setups.

 

I'm pretty sure ACC provides default setups per car, per track. They're not perfect but that's the reason why you feel the car is decent all around. In AMS 2 defaults are provided as is, with no particular track in mind (they might have a method for doing this, I've never read about it). But with such a widely variety of tracks, cars and weather in this game, with a reduced dev team, imagine the infernal effort required to provide good setups for all cars/tracks combos... It's unfortunate, but we'll have to make our setups ourselves.

I good place to look for setups is in the Time Trial tables, like mentioned, but I also like Steelcast27's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Steelcast27-GamingNetwork/videos

There are some videos where he explains the process and provides a lot of great insight into how he goes about tweaking his sets.

 

Didn’t Renato touch on this some time back? I think it was, as BadEngineer says, the sheer number of setups required for the volume of different tracks, track layouts and cars available.

Maybe once it’s a little more settled there’ll be time for Reiza to look at this. On the up side, I’ve learned a huge amount just getting cars settled for use.

 

My personal oppinion is that there is no reason to make getting a reasonable setup for each track a problem.
As you rightly does mention its possible to grab a TT setup for free .
And if you are not satisfied with the 1st setup then just grab another.

ByTheWay: You often see that specially people too lazy or too buzy to cook a setup themselves does believe that very speziale custom setups is a magic bullet to drive alien laptimes.
Hehe they are not. And the differences in the mentioned TT setups is a proof of that.

 

Bump; agree with the OP. Default setups are bad on many cars. The ones that were released lately like the Group C's or the GT1's show that it can be done; they are good and driveable out of the box but there's a ton of cars that handle like a pig and I feel like I need half an hour or so on each one to be able to sort them out.

Take into account that a lot of people do not have the knowledge or patience to tweak setups, so as first impressions go this is hurting the franchise big time. Case in point; Jimmy Broadbent and his first video on AMS2 with the classic F1's.

 

Out of curiosity, which cars do you think have poor default setups? I would have said the Group C's have poor defaults as well - they are too nervous out of slow corners, tend to snap sideways under hard braking, and take flight when going over crests.

I know Steelcast27 does his setup videos, but he tends to focus on the most popular cars. Maybe this thread could be used by people to share tips on how to tame those less popular cars that people are having trouble with?

 

That's realistic behaviour

 

I went through a ton these past days and switched as soon as I felt they needed work, a lot of the classic F1's going up to the early 2000 models for starters. I can't recall specifically as I was doing car roulette basically haha, but I can note them down from now on if needed. I feel like it's half of the entire car lineup that suffers from dodgy setups if not more.

 

The F1s are tricky because the wings need to be set for each track separately, and that affects the suspension and ride height settings. Otherwise you are either painfully understeery and slow, or completely out of control in fast corners. Those probably need at least three default setups (max downforce, min downforce, intermediate).

 

It wasn't the wings as much, just weird suspension configurations making them feel odd on turn in.

 

Creating an setup for car and track its probably the best, but quite sure it will not happen due the amount of cars in game. An alternative solution will be create 3 default setups, like baseline, low, medium and high downforce, for cars that allow to do setups like this. Quite sure it already help a lot.

 

To help those people who think that special setups to each car is the ticket to fast laptimes then Reiza could just make some kind of "official" Setup LB.
A Setup LB for each track and for each car.
And a Setup LB where people could upload setups and then let other users test them out and rate them against each other.
Or maybe let a selected group of testers test and rate the setups - to get away from personal bias in the rating

ByTheWay: As Reiza allready know how to create TT LBs such kind of new qual and race Setup LB wouldnt need much extra work by the team.

 

I'd be happy if all cars came with 1 decent default setup, no need to to be greedy

 

The reason I does propose an official Setup LB grandprix like above is that instead of the gimme gimme mentality from users against Reiza - then instead the user community could by themselves create and select/rate the setups that could be offered as default setups.

ByTheWay: So instead of wanting Reiza to do even more work than now then the more gifted (or less lazy) users could offer some of their own time.

 

I think your proposal is a good one. It's more worthwhile for Reiza to create a framework to crowdsource the defaults than for them to do it for each track. We'd mostly prefer for Reiza to continue focusing on adding cars.

What is there for time trials has been helpful for me, but a good default setup would be oriented around a 30 minute race than a hot lap.

 

Thanks
Eventhough my way of presenting this proposal could have been a bit more clear then I honestly dont understand why other racing sims have not developed this idea.

ByTheWay: Such a qual/race setup "harvest" from the community to Reiza could also up the common community feeling - and an urgent discussion and exchange of knowledge about setup creation.

 

A lot of the default setups feel very twitchy and unstable. Take the F3, its wing settings feel completely wrong on default. They induce snap oversteer and completely make the car tail happy. Once you balance the F/R wings it's a joy to drive.

Or the Caterham 620R which by default has too much unrecoverable slip angle. Once you dial it in it again is great to drive and can be powered sideways through corners and one of the most fun cars in the game IMO.

In general the default setups seem to be very unstable and have a tendency to randomly snap into unrecoverable oversteer or low speed slow spins.

 

Sorry to say this but IMHO I look at AMS2 as little more than a demo program. Some of the cars are fun to play with but as a serious racing sim it falls very short. Reiza would rather add a couple cars to a new class here and there rather than concentrating on the core game, solid default setups and full classes. Yes, I'm one of those default racers. I just don't spend that much time in AMS2 anymore when there are other far superior sims. I will say this. Graphics in AMS2 are awesome!