rec.autos.simulators

I agree 100%.  There should be a way to adjust the maximum fuel load
that the cars can carry.  Then you could pit as often as you want
to on shorter races.

Yes, this would be a nice feature for Indycar 2 and F1GP 2, too!
Since it should be easy to implement, let's hope it's not too late...

   Herbert

--

You misunderstand my point.  The fuel load can of course be changed, but
I am talking about the maximum fuel load (size of the fuel tank).  It is
fixed at 40 gallons.  You have to run 40 gallons of fuel through the
motor before you need to pit.  When racing with race lengths of about 30%
or less this never happens.

There should be a setting in the realism menu to change the size of fuel
tanks in the cars.  This would be a universal setting and would apply to
every car on the track.

The only thing I can think of is that in the track's .txt file (for
example tracks\bristol\bristol.txt for Bristol), there is a line that
looks like:

SPDWY 0 75 92

The last 2 numbers are the pit window for the AI cars, so in this case
they will pit after 75 to 92 laps.  You can try reducing these numbers
and see what happens.  There's two factors to consider -- their need
to pit because of fuel and their need to pit because of tires.  I
believe the modelling of the AI is not very sophisticated, and I think
it makes their tires go away (reduces their lap speeds and maybe
increases their chance of crashing?) after a certain percentage of the
pit window has been reached, rather than actually calculating their
tire wear as they go along.  They never seem to run out of fuel, so I
don't think the game even models AI fuel consumption, but rather just
makes them pit in their pit window.

Let us know what happens if you try this out.

Paul

You can control how much fuel you take on during a pit stop in NASCAR.
These guys want to be able to limit the size of the fuel tank on all cars
in the race to force pitstops sooner. I don't believe there is a way to
do this in NASCAR.
As an aside though, I race several evenings a week with a friend. We run
30%-40% races which do require pit stops. These races last anywhere from
1.5 - 3 hours (3 only when there are MANY yellows! :) We have a lot of
fun and there is much typing back and forth during yellows. We haven't
found these to be to long but then to each his own!

You can control how much fuel you take on during a pit stop in NASCAR.
These guys want to be able to limit the size of the fuel tank on all cars
in the race to force pitstops sooner. I don't believe there is a way to
do this in NASCAR.
As an aside though, I race several evenings a week with a friend. We run
30%-40% races which do require pit stops. These races last anywhere from
1.5 - 3 hours (3 only when there are MANY yellows! :) We have a lot of
fun and there is much typing back and forth during yellows. We haven't
found these to be to long but then to each his own!

You can control how much fuel you take on during a pit stop in NASCAR.
These guys want to be able to limit the size of the fuel tank on all cars
in the race to force pitstops sooner. I don't believe there is a way to
do this in NASCAR.
As an aside though, I race several evenings a week with a friend. We run
30%-40% races which do require pit stops. These races last anywhere from
1.5 - 3 hours (3 only when there are MANY yellows! :) We have a lot of
fun and there is much typing back and forth during yellows. We haven't
found these to be to long but then to each his own!