B-spec: The effect of your commands

[snowgt]

As I've done a fair bit of b-spec driving, or rather 'coaching' now, and I'm into the Endurances and loving it, I thought I'd share my experiences about the effects of the commands you can give your driver. Feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong on something or add something that I haven't found or didn't mention.

The commands:

• Slow down
• Maintain speed
• Pick up the pace
• Overtake

The first three commands influence the emotion bar in the obvious way. Be aware though, that this is not the only influence on the state of your driver's emotion.

Being in the vicinity of other cars invariably makes the bar go up, and thus making your driver try harder. This makes sense insofar as he will fight back when being attacked from behind or attack the ones in front when running close to them. This works exactly the other way round when no other car is nearby. The bar will drop until your driver practically falls asleep, relatively speaking.

The period of time your command has an effect is different for each command. I found that it also increases the better your driver gets. I've noticed approximately the following durations on my current Level 26 driver:

Slow down, Speed up: ca.31 seconds
Maintain pace: ca. 48 seconds
Overtake: This seems to have only an effect during the 10 seconds where you can't enter any other command.

For the 3 speed-commands, the bar will drop immediately after these durations when running alone.

Although it seems that the Overtake-command also raises the bar, this seems to be incidental, because there's usually other cars close by. I found that it really only makes the driver try harder to find a way past.

The durability of your commands rises with your driver's level, as I already mentioned. I found that the Maintain-command for a rookie driver lasts about 30 seconds. At this point, I cannot say how long it lasts for a level 40, but the tendency points to 1 minute maximum. (Can someone in those higher 30-regions confirm?) The same is true for the Slow- or Fast-commands with shorter time-spans, although I haven't counted how long they last on Level 0 drivers.

How fast the bar goes up and down depends on your driver's basic temper.

Important: A higher emotion bar does not necessarily mean your driver will be faster on a lap. Depending on his abilities, the car and the track, if the bar is over a certain level, the lap times will not get faster, but slightly slower again. I found that a lot of times going with the bar in the middle (50-65% range) will yield the best overall consistent laptimes.

One area I can't say anything reliable about is the correlation between emotion bar and depletion of strength. I found that the driver's strength is decreasing in a very similar rate whether he's emotional or cool, although I'm not talking about 0%/100%. I haven't done a comparison yet between constant Faster-commands and no commands at all while running alone. Maybe someone can enlighten me with what they found about this subject.

One difference is does make, is surely that you will save tires, if you're running with a low emotion bar, because there's less sliding.

That's it for now. If you want me to add some facts to this post, PM me, and I'll be glad to.

 

[Negrumir]

Commands? lol I think they're taken as suggestions or hints.

I'm pretty sure that strength depletes faster when your driver is around other cars. I think mental strength only depletes when he's around other drivers. As far as I know, strength and mental strength only make him more likely to make mistakes when pushed too hard. Because of this, it seems like there's no point in bothering with other drivers as one guy (if he's good enough) can run forever with no strength or mental strength without issue.

I sure wish there was some kind of indication of how long the commands lasted for. I generally just keep pounding on them until I get the desired result. I didn't know they lasted any longer than when it allows you to input another command.

 

[BWX]

I've noticed that if you give overlapping commands too fast, like pounding 'increase pace' every 5 seconds or even 'overtake' too quickly- his strength and mental strength go down faster.

If you give conflicting commands by accident too quickly (like pace down and then pace up, then pace down again) the mental and physical strength depletes quickly.

Also if you give overtake command by accident when he's not close to anyone it seems detrimental to his mental strength.

No measurements or testing done, just telling what I have noticed.. I could be completely wrong.

One thing I'm pretty sure about is that the more commands you give, of any kind during a race, the faster his mental strength depletes. I'v done back to back identical races where in one race I gave a lot of commands and the next gave no commands and there was a difference in how much mental strength he had left at end of race. Of course there's other variables going on so it's hard to be 100% sure what exactly is going on.

The way his condition changes between races seems pretty random sometimes too. It seems like if he is repeating the same race three times and easily winning, he'll be in better condition than if he runs a really hard fought championship battling every race and maybe not winning some. It's as you'd expect, but it seems there is a 2 or 3, maybe even 4 race lag time until those things "Show up" in his condition indicator though. I'm thinking how and when and at what frequency you give commands also has an affect on his condition indicator too though.

These are all just things I've noticed, I haven't read or seen anyone else's findings yet except this thread. Hopefully when enough people compare enough notes, we'll have a better understanding of exactly what does what in B-Spec.