Engine Over Torque Needs to Go...

I suppose it would be easy enough to have an unrealistically strong engine in the parts selector that would only be available in free roam or an official mod or something (sorta like how Cities Skylines has a couple of cheats as official mods). I must admit I was disappointed that the tiny 4 cylinder in the SBR4 handles a 200kW shot so well right up to the point where it doesn't. It isn't far from being able to do the entire straightaway in the WCUSA track.
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Yes there are parts that should be adjusted/changed, but I haven't experienced any "this is unplayable"
issues. It's a new system in an overall rushed update, of course it will have issues that have to be addressed.

 

In real life putting nitros in you car is really temperamental and puts extreme force on the engine which is why you need to tune it just right to get that butter zone.

 

Further note: According to some other people, the car in my avatar can handle a 65 HP shot just fine. Of course, the people I was hearing from may have only used it for 1/4 mile at a time, so who knows. That would put it just about even with the 89-91 Grand Prix Turbo, which had a turbo version of the same engine but apparently used different (stronger) metal for the block. So put those two things together and it would seem that a typical real-life engine block has a much larger "safety margin" than some of the blocks in the game.

 

The pigeon seam to take just about anything with the t-series a close second

 

I... don't really agree it should be gone but it does get annoying. In my opinion they should have put the option for stronger blocks for every engine. Yes, I know you can mod it but still...

 

Why on earth are you guys arguing with a dev about how realistic it is wether engines making way to much HP on stock internals is realistic or not? Of course it is realistic. If you take an engine that is "designed" by engineers to make only 150hp... then usually the highest you will be able to push that engine is to perhaps 220hp or maybe even 250hp safely early in its life with no stress bearing part modifications. Its called a factor of safety. Most times, they will design something to a factor of safety of 2 or a little more. However... there is also a thing called Cyclic Stress. Most times, when something has to overcome many cycles, the object will be designed at its cyclic loading lifespan with a factor of safety of 1.1 or 1.2. That way the thing in question will last at least as long as it is designed to operate as long as it is operated within its design parameters. Going past these thresholds will ensure definite damage to the item in question.

So having said that, why on earth would you all want something this awesome removed?! This is so real that most simulators haven't even considered adding something in like this as a feature. I think that this is an awesome addition to the game! Great work Diamondback and other devs! I can totally appreciate this feature!

 

The reason is probably that similar cars in real life can often withstand far more power than the ones in the game, and in the real-life cars, the block is usually not the first thing to break. As I said, 700+ HP 1.5L Honda (made less than 100 to start with), 1200+ HP Vortec 4800 (made somewhere in the low- or mid-200s stock), and so on. Not that there aren't weak engines out there, and sometimes they're not the ones you expect (automatic versions of the 5th-generation Camaro SS didn't just have a slightly less powerful state of tune, they had a block that was made out of inferior metal, probably for reasons involving the word "cheapskate", and weren't even officially designated LS3s that I can recall), but I'm going to guess that in many cases, the real-life engines can take more punishment than their in-game equivalents.

 

Well, that's going to make modding difficult. I had an idea kicking around in my head that if I ever got a computer that could run this game, my next step (beyond Utah canyon time attacks in anything with a manual) would be training myself to model and mod by making visual & performance part booster packs for the official cars. Of course, I never would have done it anyway, because I would have wanted to hold off on tuning stages until I found a (nonexistent, so far as I can tell) computer program that could take an engine's data and engineering specifications, run a simulation, and spit back that engine's exact torque curve, RPM tolerances, pressure tolerances (from data on the block's material and design) and so forth with pinpoint accuracy, accounting for whatever level of production variances would be expected for the engine in question. I'm just that much of a stickler for exact accuracy that I literally wouldn't bother modding until I found something like that, and that extends to making mods of real cars too (for example, the 2000 Honda Civic Si had an official peak power figure of 160 HP, but what if it was actually closer to 162 HP and they just rounded it for convenience? I'd want to know that in the interest of making the most accurate possible mod.) The original plan was to model the tuning stages off Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3, but with 15 stages per tuning path instead of 9, set so that something like a Gavril D15 5.5L, a Barstow 423, or an ETK Kc6t would have about 670-700 horsepower at stage 9 on the default tuning path (so EFI N/A for the first, carb N/A for the second, and EFI turbo for the third), with stages 10-15 giving significantly more peak power gain per stage until the biggest engines are getting figures in excess of 1500 flywheel horsepower at stage 15. If the Covet can take 600ish HP, that should be enough for just about anything, except building a Drag config; considering the popularity of Honda drag racing, I wouldn't want to leave it unrepresented, and competitive balance dictates that it must be able to keep up with existing, dev-made Drag configurations. Unless they themselves never really intended the drag cars to be balanced against each other, but I'd have to hear that from them. Nevertheless it would seem from what you said there that some engines might not need to be adjusted as much as I'd thought (though if the NA 3.8 LeGran can't take a 50 shot without the block going, that probably does need to be looked at).

Also, is it just me or are cars constantly getting nerfed and buffed without much mention? I could have sworn the Bolide 390 GTR had over 400 horsepower at one point, and that there was a variant between the normal 390 GTR and the actual Group 4 race car, but it's not in the performance chart and when YBR released his video on the Bolide Corse mod, I didn't see it in his vehicle selector either. Meanwhile the Drag versions apparently used to have more around 1200 HP, rather than the 1500 they have now... apparently. How much of this is editing errors and how much of it is car data being changed in updates?

 

That's exactly what I've been saying, and since failures of those things aren't really simulated yet, it would be easy enough to say that higher stages included these parts, then adjust the prices (in an eventual career mode) to match. But the block, I assume tuning stages have nothing to do with, and therein lies the (possible) problem. Even though I have heard of people filling their water jackets with concrete to try to get thicker effective cylinder walls in a stock block, though the extra weight and ruined cooling efficiency means that this is probably a drag racer's mod only.

 

My problem with this and the mod is that i really like it but would have liked different stages of block strength which the mod doesn't give. Something that would fix this would be staged internals with different strengths. But since nothing was planned like this short term i guess I'll have to use the mod.
I even changed my covet build to a stage 3 turbo from a stage 1 that makes more power but lasts longer (might be a bug haven't really tested it much).

 

I like this, it adds some nice detail and just that bit more depth to the realism and immersion. I was messing around with a drag tuned 200bx earlier (no mods), I maxed out the boost and managed to blow the block, though I only managed it once :L I think it was because I caught some dirt at the end of the drag strip on the new map, which might have put the engine under too much load, but I'm not entirely sure.

I also think it would be cool to have the ability to upgrade the block and internals for more power. Maybe add another engine option to vehicles that's essentially the same as the top engine, but with stronger construction (and maybe a slight increase in power).

Ofcourse, I would really love to be able to change each of the components within the engine (pistons, cam shafts etc.) and have multiple options for each, maybe with an engine builder in the main menu a bit like the garage, so that you can build engines to put in any car that will fit it. Hell, it would be cool to have this for any component (drivetrain, running gear etc.), but I think it would take a hell of a lot of work. Probably too much. Hey, a guy can dream

In terms of nitrous, I think the largest injection I have managed so far without blowing at all was about 300kw on the 5.5l V8 in the D15, which makes sense. It's pretty crazy, the speed boost is huge and the torque twists the chassis like crazy. I haven't tried anything bigger, so I'd imagine the big rig would be able to take more.

As a side note, are there plans to add functionality for different units for nitrous shots? I've used HP all my life, I have no idea how a kW compares to it xD I could google it, but I think it would be nicer to have it in the game. I might have missed it in the settings somewhere, but I'm fairly sure I have the game set to HP.

 

I know it's possible and will probably use it but you can't disagree that having the option in the parts menu is more user friendly and look more complete.

 

The thing I only just now realized that the torque the engine blocks can handle is that it's the same regardless of which intake intake it has, while it seems pretty obvious that the intake isn't part of the engine block and internals I always assumed that the high end intakes(notably the variable boost turbo for the 200bx and the stage 4 superchargers) had improved internals to deal with the extra power. That assumption lead to slight frustration when I was trying to figure out why these 700-1500hp engines can hardly handle/can't handle an extra 300 or so extra horsepower but the little I3 in the pigeon can handle over double it's power without a problem, after reading through this thread I realized it was dependent on the engine alone and not by the intake(on the stock vehicles at least) this lead to me realizing all I needed to make over 900 horsepower in the barstow was it's biggest engine and a two barrel carb because apparently the drag versions of the cars use base model engine blocks and internals.

 

Well that isn't really true. When i was testing the covet with the fuel injected SOHC engine the stage 1 turbo would break it but the stage 3 turbo tuned to roughly the same HP/torque would last longer. I haven't tested with superchargers yet but i would guess the higher the stage number the stronger the engine becomes. This increase is only very little and maybe even unintentional but it is there, it just needs some tweaking or changing with previous suggestions.