My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Tue Feb 9, 1999

Hey! Now I can win the Sunday Cup without a lot of extra tuning!

Well, yesterday I spent more time than I should have playing Gran Turismo.

First of all, I took out my old MA70 Supra Turbo Limited and took off all the extra parts except for Weight Reduction Stage 1. I then proceeded to win each Spot Race and sweep the Sunday Cup (except for poles). Most Spot Races took only one try to win, but Deep Forest took me two attempts; I really do have problems with that course, don't I?

After that I went and bought the cheapest used MA70 in stock, something under Cr8000, and won High Speed Ring and Sunday Cup with it. So I proved you can get the game well under way with practice or talent and only a B licence. Besides that, when I bought my first MA70 I chose one which was more expensive because I thought, although I now do not think it is the case, that different used cars might show different signs of wear. Besides that, the more expensive one was red. Parenthetically, one strange feature of Gran Turismo is that you can buy multiple instances of the same used car.

It had seemed to me that the two MA70 had different gear ratios; my old one seemed to have a big jump from second to third which was annoying, but consulting the figures suggested that the two setups were identical.

When I look at the cost of weight reduction and stabilizers, you can afford both in addition to the cheap MA70 with your initial Cr10000. Semi-racing tires seemed expensive, and were a big help when less skillful, and racing tires even more so. But if you have the skill to easily afford them, you probably don't need them. When I first played, I would save my Cr100 last place money and carefully save up for extra turbo so I could win the High Speed Ring, and then use Cr1000 to buy racing tires and stuff, but that all seems so unnecessary now. But then, it actually took me a little while to get my B license.

But a "good" or "natural" player should just get their B license, buy the cheap MA70, win the Sunday Cup a few times and begin buying and modifying cars which can win the FF,FR,4WD, and Lwt series. They might even want to go straight to their A license which opens up the Clubman Cup and GT Cup for more money, not to mention the International Series and Mega-Speed Event. (And really skillful players have a reasonable chance of winning the very lucrative Normal Car Series, which is just an excercise in frustration for me).

In addition to that, I won a purple Chrysler Concept Car. I spent a lot of time losing the JPvsUS series with the Viper GTS-R. Gee I hate that car now. I finally discovered that a slight reduction of front aero makes it a lot more handleable, but after three or more losing attempts to win that series I decided to take a Cerbera and try and win the UKvsUS instead.

I've decided that I never go cold into an International Series now, but take the car to Clubman or GT Cup, depending how much time I have, for warm-up and extra cash. So, I took a maxed purchased Cerbera, not the LM Edition, to one of those series (can't remember which) and won handily. I came very close to breaking records (which had probably been set by the Cerbera LM), but didn't actually break any.

The useful performance difference between a maxed Cerbera and the LM edition seems negligible. The problem is, for 145 extra HP you get 360 more pounds. Power-to-weight ends up .292 to .268 in favour of the LM edition. Gosh, the stats for a maxed Viper are better than a prize Viper GTS-R; well, the prize car has much more horse power, but a lower ratio. Too bad you can't transfer that 7 speed gear box to a maxed car.

I began to suspect that the Viper was a handful when I observed how, even though it would win the two GT League series, its times would be very far away from records--especially on Grand Valley II. In contrast, the Cerbera times were close to my records.

During the course of the days's Viper racing I saved one fun replay. On Trial Mountain II, part of JPvsUS, there is a vicious bump going into the last tunnel--the one with the corner in it. This causes lots of cars, especially the Viper, to flip their tail up higher than their nose, It can look quite strange. But taking it too slow up that hill is not a good strategy either. The really interesting thing on the replay was that an AI car went up into that corner, off onto the outside apron, and spun out. That's the first time I've ever seen an AI car spin out unassisted. I've seen them go off course, but not spin out.

One thing that makes the Viper bad within the game parameters is that its co-efficient of friction with walls seems much higher. I wonder if this is because the computer model has its wheels actually sticking out the side so they contact the wall before the body panels? In contrast, the Cerbera slides along walls quite nicely. Not only the external walls bother the Viper, but it can also get hung up on the inside rumble strips. In similar contrast, on SSR11 the AI Cerbera, which usually leads, makes a habit of going over the inside rumble strip on corners and flipping itself onto two wheels.

So then I entered UKvsUS with my maxed purchased Cerbera. I won the first three events--Trial Mountain II, Special Stage R5, and High Speed Ring--quite handily. I had a little problem with the fourth event, Grand Valley II. I have difficulty with that high-speed corner after the long straight. They really should have an exercise like that on the A license test. So I was in a nervous third coming up to the end, wondering if I could make one or both places up on the final hairpin, and instead I lost it and settled for fifth.

So, instead of entering SSR11 with an unbeatable 36 to 24 lead, I only led 29 to 27--the Corvette had consistently come second in all races, leaving no other car in contention. So, essentially, I needed to finish ahead of the Corvette in the next race.

I saved the replay of the Final race, because it looked reasonably exciting. In typical inelegant, cavalier, wall-bouncing fashion I worked my way from my sixth place qualifying to third, and followed the other Cerbera (luckily blue, not raspberry like mine, or the replay would be quite difficult to follow) and the second-place Corvette around for most of the first lap looking for good passing opportunities. I eventually got past the Corvette, but was really cautious about passing the Cerbera, since I didn't need to pass it. The central hairpin, turning onto the straight which leads to the tricky turn into the underpass with the chicane, is a place where I should learn to gain a consistent half second or so. But during a race is not a time to learn that, so, since the Cerbera, but only the Cerbera, would go by me, I let it by.

I passed the Cerbera into the lead at the beginning of the second lap, that is, after the acceleration through the finishing straight. At the end of the second lap, I accelerated cleanly past before the finishing line. At the end of the third lap it looked like the Cerbera waited for in the middle of the final corner. This was somewhat annoying because I was planning to accelerate through the corner. But there was actually room to squeeze by on the outside and so I won the race.

When I watched the replay I was shocked to see the Corvette about two car lengths behind me for most of the race. If I had known it had been that close, I would probably have got nervous and flubbed the race. The chicane in the underpass is the most nerve-wracking part of the course--too fast and you might hit a barrier and lose a lot of ground; too slow and the AI cars are liable to get by, and quite probably ruthlessly knock you out of control in the process.

And then I discovered that it was UKvsUK which awarded the Concept Car prize. All the time I'd been trying to win JPvsUS in the Viper, I had been going after the wrong prize! In JPvsUS, it seemed that the game was trying less hard to let the Viper win than in previous such series. The Rally Edition Subaru tended to walk away with all the races the Viper did not win. But, given how slow the Viper is (it seems totally unsuitable to me on the SSR11), I guess perhaps I cannot categorically say that the game is making the series actually more difficult than the first times I tried it. (Those times were with the 900hp monster Skyline).

Oh yes. I observed that the Toyota cars seemed to offer no FF used cars, although some of the new versions of old FR models do seem to be FF. I drive in real-life a FF 1985 Toyota Tercel Station Wagon, and find its handling a little squirrelly, since presumably in the interest of weight over the driving wheels, the Tercel engine is far too far forward to create desirable handling characteristics.

So based on that I would not have been suprised if Toyota offered no FF cars as performance cars in the game, but in fact under the new car offerings there are a few.