NR2002 - great sim, so thanks. But I have a few observations.
(1) When you complete a championship season it tells you in a caption
and on the trophy who the champion is. But the points table (rightly)
names the champion (Marlin in this case), but the caption says it's
Kenseth (actually finished 16th), and the trophy says Earnhardt Jr
(finished 25th or so). Anyone else had this? Can this be fixed?
(2) If an AI driver retires at the end of a race while leading, even
if he crosses the line first and collects the 180/185 points he is not
shown in the championship table as having won the race (race wins
column). Can this be fixed?
(3) AI behaviour needs tweaking in terms of finishing. A car that led
for most of the way approached the finish line to take the flag but
had a suspension problem so he comes into the pits but his stall is
right before the line so he goes from 1st to last right there.
Realistic AI behaviour would stay out for the last few laps unless
they were dropping debris, right, maybe drop to the apron? I was
second so thanks for the win, but...
(4) The championship season only shows the top 64 drivers to have
scored. The 2002 season has so far had about 80 drivers trying to
qualify, and about 70 have started. Can this be fixed to show all
scores on your rota?
(5) Having a rota with greater than 42 AI drivers on it means NR2002
makes the decision on who gets entered. This is great compared to N4
which took the top numbers or names, I think. But NR2002 sometimes
drops the best drivers - not good. Scenario; championship leader goes
to the last race but does not get entered!!! Solution - perhaps for
race 1 take the top 30 rated drivers (or a %age of the runners the
player chooses) and make the rest up from random selection. Race 2
onwards would be the top 30 points scorers and the rest random. That
way no 'no-shows'. What was that about realism?
(6) It would be great to have a steering help slider to choose the
amount of help you get. I can hear the programmers sighing! The
purists don't use it but no question NR2002 is way trickier with no
steering help until you (a) get the ratio/linear settings right, and
(b) enough seat time. On or off is too severe IMHO. Maybe for NR2003?
(7) Martinsville AI goes to pieces if there is a wreck. They all dive
for the inside line and wreck even more. You can't lose at Marty if
you stay in one piece, ride high. What can we change in the lp files
or the track.ini to fix this?
(8) On the subject of ratings again - it would be great to be able to
change these other than car by car and one attribute at a time. Thanks
to Matt Hart for the N4UtilityMachine which gets the job done great
with excel imports, etc.
(9)There have been no end of posts about the lack of a save race
(after the start) feature. Sure this would be great and allow players
to get into the strategy of pit stops, track position and all that.
Instead of doing a balls-out no yellers race or having meaningless
yellows in a short race - eg, plenty of fuel and tyres to last the
distance. You can't play with your own fuel settings, but you can
change the tyre wear for you and the AI in the track.ini. I find that
a 25% race with 4x tyre wear gives you about 3 or 4 stops for the AI.
You can get by on 1 or 2 if you don't abuse your tyres. At Daytona and
I think Tally you need to make this 4x the figure in the track.ini as
the calculation there is strange - eg 3x is the default setting for
Daytona. For 20% races use about 6x, 15%-8x, 10%-8x, 5%-10x. Yes -
unbelievably the AI will pit in a 5% race with this. Forget Yellows
for anything under 15-20% distances. And for New Hampshire and other
'tame' tracks just bump down the drafting distance to get more passing
and therefore more yellows when it goes wrong.
Last - thanks to everyone out there who make tracks, cars and
utilities for this sim - you do a heck of a job.
Dan Solo