Some Questions

[Alex Enav]

Hi! This is my first post... I've been scouting around for a GT3 forum to join and after reading the posts here, I've decided to join this great community.

Some background:
Been racing on the PC, F12000-2002, GP4, NFS series, Colin McRae Rally 2, Total Immersion Racing, Nascar 2, 3, 4, Nascar Racing Season 2003, and a few others I forgot.

I finally managed to smuggle enough money out of my allowance into an "unnamed" account and bought a PS2 and got GT3. Wanted to play GT2 way back then and had I gotten my cash up sooner, I would've gotten a PS1 and GT2. Oh well, no regrets!!

I've got up to ia license now and got the first "test" of the S license after, oh, about 3 hours of trying. I got fed up with the second "test" that I decided to go back and earn a few credits.

Anyway, my first car was a Vitz, it's now upgraded to the max, as is my second car, a 4wd 3000GT. The next I got was the 350 car that looked like a Lamborghini Diablo or like that "Back to the Future" car, and is only lacking the Level 4 turbo to be fully upgraded.

I finished the FF, FR, MR, 4WD, NA and Turbo races and a few other championships, and now I'm looking for a new car. This is how I play, I look for the next car to buy, and then save up for it.

Anyway, on to my questions:

1. Why do you guys pit? Since GT3 does not have any damage model nor any fuel-consumption issues, why pit?

2. What are the considerations that would help decide on which lap to pit?

3. How do I get the other bonus cars, and do they come in different colors? I tried pressing X or the appropriate button (relative to where the car is on the TV), I still get the same bonus car. Someone told me it had something to do with how well I raced. Besides the "save and reload if you don't get the car you want" trick mentioned in some thread here, is there any other way or considerations?

4. I used to race the NFS series and when I got to NFS5 (rear engine, rear wheel drive), I had to "relearn" a few stuff, mostly how to keep the rear end in check and how to "control" a spinning car. Now is it just me or is a 360 "un-doable" in GT3? Getting to drift is hard enough as it is. Now I would like to think that if my "older" games were "realistic", then GT3 is wrong somewhere, but if GT3 is the "correct" simulation, then I've been learning the wrong tricks!

5. I'd like to run some ideas through here:

FF - front engine, front wheel drive... enter the turns slow and use acceleration to "pull" the car out of the corner. This type is hard to turn in constant or decelerating speeds.

FR - front engine, rear wheel drive... a little more forgiving than FF, enter the turn a bit faster since this type is easier to turn when it is decelerating.

4WD - the dream car... turn performance is about the same under acceleration, deceleration or when holding constant speed. Most forgiving of all types.

MR - mid-engine, rear wheel drive... new to me, never really "consciously" driven one before, but it seems like a 4WD but handles a bit like FR.

Please point out what ideas I got wrong. Thanks!

6. Is it possible to change car colors once I bought them? In relation to this, could I pick the colors of my bonus cars?

7. What logical reason (aside from wanting to collect all) would a person have to want to collect all GT3 cars?


That's all I have for now, but I'm pretty sure the answers to the questions above would lead to even more questions.

Thanks!
Enav

 

[daan]

1. You need to pit for tyres in the longer races.

2. Tyres again. When they wear out.

3. If it's a series you get a random car form a choice of 4 (usually). It is random.

4. I'll leave that for someone else.

5. MR is the ultimate drivetrain. FF & 4WD push too much under power coming out of corners.

6. No. In the garages when you're buying a cr, you can choose it's colour. Once you've bought/won it, it stays that colour. Some cars have limited colour choices. Some cars only have 1 colour.

7. Just wanting to collect them is all is the answer.

 

[Jugend]

4. Make sure you turn asm and tcs off on your car. The asmtcs on osd should be turned off when you've done this.

 

[Vasco]

Originally posted by daan
1. You need to pit for tyres in the longer races.

2. Tyres again. When they wear out.

3. If it's a series you get a random car form a choice of 4 (usually). It is random.

4. I'll leave that for someone else.

5. MR is the ultimate drivetrain. FF & 4WD push too much under power coming out of corners.

6. No. In the garages when you're buying a cr, you can choose it's colour. Once you've bought/won it, it stays that colour. Some cars have limited colour choices. Some cars only have 1 colour.

7. Just wanting to collect them is all is the answer.

And that's a wrap!

 

[Duke]

Hi, Alex, and welcome to GTPlanet! Excellent job going after your desired game system and getting it.

Everybody's given you pretty good answers, but I'll throw mine into the pot also:

1) In Beginner level tire wear is not taken into consideration. In Amateur, Pro, and the Enduros, tires have a useful life of anywhere from 15-20 laps (T2s) down to about 3 laps (T8s), depending on how soft they are. The softer the stickier, though, of course. Each higher "grade" of tires is good for about 1 second/lap faster than the grade below (as a rule of thumb).

2) When tire wear is on, there is a little diagram of how worn they are. Red tires are dead. Usually, by the time your tires are red, you are losing so much time from lost traction that you would be faster to pit for fresh tires despite the fact that a pit takes anywhere from 15-20 seconds.

4) I turn ASM (Active Stability Management) to zero in the Settings panel for every car I own. It really interferes with your driving, and causes understeer. TCS (Traction Control System) I usually set to zero as well, but some very high-power cars I leave set to 1.

Good luck and have fun - check the Writeups and Settings boards as well, if you haven't already.

 

[Alex Enav]

Thanks for the helpful replies, especially neon_duke. It's great to be here.

"FF & 4WD push too much under power coming out of corners."

Push means understeer, right? If so, it seems that FR push more, and have the tendency to spin, especially for high HP cars.


Anyway, some more questions:
8. Is there any bonus with having all cars in the garage? Or is collecting all cars just "for bragging rights"? Seems like the garage would be VERY cluttered if I collect all cars.

9. How do I determine if a car has a high/low powerband?

10. How can I tell if a car is a "highly tuned" car or not?

11. How can I tell if a car is "Class A", "Class S", "Class B" and so forth? Obviously, not all sponsored cars are Class S.

 

[Flerbizky]

Originally posted by daan

3. If it's a series you get a random car form a choice of 4 (usually). It is random.

No it's not. Hit X and you get the car you're thinking of......

 

[Alex Enav]

not sure if that works though... I've tried "strategically" hitting "X", no luck. Funny, "X"-bashing seems to work, but not too accurate.