So this kinda spiraled and ended up a lot longer than I intended, but whatever. As we all know BeamNG is far more than just a car crash simulator, and the many updates we have seen in recent years show the game has massive potential in all categories of vehicle simulation. That being said, it seems like the demolition derby car configurations have been neglected in trying to shed this car crash simulator reputation. For the purposes of this post, I will be considering the dirt racing configurations as if they were derby configurations because they follow the same naming conventions as the derby configurations, these dirt racing configurations are also often referred to as derby configurations (including in official update release notes, v0.20 and v0.21, possibly more), and all the vehicles with a dirt racing configuration lack a derby configuration and vice versa. This post aims to highlight the inconsistencies and general issues with many of these car configurations in game. To start, I would like to acknowledge that there are some great derby configurations in the game. The LeGran, Wendover, Lansdale and newer Pessima are all quite good and are great examples of features I will be pointing out as missing on other cars. These cars feature large simple bumpers, welded doors, bolted hoods, halo-style rollcages, fuel cells, window bars, and straight pipe exhausts that exit through the hood. All of these except the exhausts appear to be using the same standardized models across these derby configurations, and it would be nice to see them rolled out to the derby configurations of the other car models. Now that we’ve outlined what features make a good derby configuration, let’s explain why these features are so important beyond simple appearances. By far the most important are the bumpers. The bumpers should be large and simple, the tubular brush guard and drift missile style bumpers featured on many cars are very unsuitable for demolition derbies and likely wouldn’t be legal in the rulesets of many derbies. While in-game the gaps in between the bars don’t appear to functionally be present, in real life such a bumper would likely get stuck to the bumpers of other cars. These bumpers also appear to cave in quite easily compared to the thick single piece derby bumpers, presumably due to how thin they are. On the other hand there’s the good derby bumpers found on the LeGran, Wendover, Lansdale and newer Pessima. These bumpers are great for derbies both from a visual and functional standpoint. Some more options would be nice, but just rolling these existing ones out to more vehicles would more than suffice. What I would consider to be the next most important thing is welded doors and bolted hoods. These are crucial to the overall strength of a vehicle, as they take existing car pieces that aren’t doing much in terms of strength on their own and turn them all into one large structural member that greatly increases the vehicle’s performance in this metric. The trunks should also be wired shut but that isn’t as important as these others. In case anyone reading this is wondering why the hoods are bolted instead of welded, that is so that the engine can be accessed if necessary to change something such as tuning the carburetor. Halo-style roll cages are very important visually, and there are several reasons you see these in derbies and not more traditional style roll cages. Halo-style cages are easy to make and reuse across multiple different vehicles, are very cost effective, and there are specific rules about what roll cages can and cannot be mounted to in many derbies that a regular roll cage may violate. Fuel cells don’t need much explanation, obviously you don’t want your fuel in a place where the tank or your fuel lines leading to it could be ruptured. In the same vein as fuel cells though, it would be nice if we could see batteries relocated to the passenger compartment on the derby configurations, as this is common practice in many derbies for the same reasons relocating the fuel cell is, risking a punctured battery would be quite bad. Fire extinguishers in the interior like the Covet has would also be a nice inclusion. Window bars are an interesting case. While you do see window bars like the ones depicted in-game on some cars in real life, you’ll also see many derby cars with just a single metal bar down the center of the window. These tend to depend on what the rules of the particular derby are, but the idea behind the more minimal window bars is to leave another potential escape route in the event of a vehicle ending up in an awkward position when a fire breaks out, such as when pressed against another vehicle or when on it’s side. Hood exit exhausts are obviously preferred so that you maximize power and aren’t dragging around and getting hung up a damaged exhaust underneath the car, but the holes that allow the exhaust to pass through the hood serve a second purpose as well. Many drivers will cut these holes larger than needed to allow fire extinguishers to be sprayed directly onto the engine, as due to the hood being bolted down accessing the location of the fire is quite difficult otherwise. Now to discuss specific vehicle configurations. We’ll go over the buses first. Let me start this off by saying that you guys knocked it out of the park with these from a visual standpoint. The problem with these is how they actually play. If you try to have a derby with them, you’re sure to break your driveshaft and engine after only a few hits into another bus. The buses top out at a mere 11 MPH in reverse, but two buses backing into each other is often enough to break the driveshaft on one, despite the combined speed being a mere 22 MPH. It’s a massive shame that such awesome looking vehicles can’t be used for their intended purpose. Now onto the more normal vehicles. I’ll start off with the BX-Series, as this was a recently updated vehicle that received some parts I’ve discussed but not others, and was overall a pretty disappointing update to the configuration. While at first glance the window bars, halo cage, and fuel cell make the BX-Series look like a decent derby configuration, it is not without problems. It has the metal tube-style bumpers, the doors aren’t welded, the hood isn’t bolted, the window bars shouldn’t be on both sides, and it lacks exhaust stacks. The fuel cell is also too far back, ideally it would be in front of the rear axle, around where the rear seat would have been. The current location would not be acceptable in most real-world demolition derbies. The rest of the dirt racing/derby configurations are all quite poor. They don’t have welded doors, bolted hoods, fuel cells, halo-style roll cages, or window bars. All except the Burnside have tubular bumpers that wouldn’t be used in a demolition derby, even the Moonhawk which is ironically where the derby appropriate bumpers seen on the proper derby configurations were taken from. The old Pessima and Miramar also lack exhaust stacks and the Limo, Miramar, and Bluebuck all still have door mirrors installed. Many of these configurations still have some exterior lights fitted that should have been removed, like the headlights on the Pessima, Moonhawk, and Bluebuck, the front turn signals on the Limo, the spotlight on the Grand Marshall, the reverse lights on the Grand Marshall and Limo, and the third brake light on many of these vehicles. The I-Series and the Sunburst lack any sort of demolition configuration entirely. Something like the I-Series would not be a common choice for derbies, but particularly poor examples of similar real world cars have ended up in demolition derbies before and it would just be fun to have as an option. While Sunbursts would have been new cars when they were first added to BeamNG, a lot of time has passed since then. With the model years 2009 to 2014 these cars range from 12 to 17 years old, with their closest real world counterpart being even older and commonly seen in compact classes at demolition derbies. Thank you for reading, I realize this was quite the long one. To recap, all the parts I have outlined here are things that are already in-game on certain vehicles, I would just like to see them standardized. I hope you found this interesting. Have a nice night. - PrestonLK
My understanding was that the less armoured configs were meant to resemble european banger racing/folkracing vehicles rather than US demo derby vehicles; not so much intended for direct head on collisions, but rather sideswipe your opponent into a barrier on the way past.That being said, it is strange that none of the old BoF american barges are done up as proper derby cars. Also, there's an absolutely glaring omission here: the Piccolina! volkswagen beetles were prolific in demo derbies and in folkracing. Sure, it's got the wacky bathtub dragster gambler config, but no regular folkracing or demo derby variant?
Perhaps it got lost because of just how much text I wrote, so I'll reiterate it here: To clarify when I say dirt racing configurations I mean like American figure 8 racing, UK banger racing or European folk racing style vehicles. I realize they're not exactly demolition derby configurations, but I hope this quoted sentence outlines why I am treating them as if they are. If the developers where adding demolition derby configurations alongside these existing vehicles I wouldn't be making this post, but for years now every car has either had one or the other. Either you've got a derby configuration or you've got a dirt racing configuration, never both for some reason. Combined with the naming conventions being the same and the developers having referred to these dirt racing configurations as derby configurations in the past, it seems as thought they're treating them as if they're one in the same when they clearly aren't. Regarding why I didn't mention the Piccolina, size-wise it's decently smaller than a Beetle, landing close to the middle between a Beetle and a Fiat 500. A dirt racing config would be a understandable for either of those cars and I do encourage the developers to add one to the Piccolina, but a demolition derby configuration (which was the intended focus of this post) wouldn't really make sense for such a tiny car.
