The Bench

[Fit4aking]

Uuuugh!  The storefront thing is rackin my brain.  I doubt very much that I'll abandon either the Free Tune List or the Vehicle Balance thread.  I have the drive to power through the VB thread, I'm this far along at least.  The List isn't a big deal, creating links is easy and simply editing a post doesn't take much effort.

The storefront endeavor...I can see why garages exist.  Groups of people handling different jobs to help each other out has to ease stress.  Its a multi-faceted fail in my head.  I don't have the patience to do "real" lettering so I can imagine the flame war from any "would be" replica's, Fantasy liveries are fun and enjoyable but quite time consuming and even more subjective than real cars.  I'll do a few but not a ton, my motivation for painting wanes.  The Brera was fun, my Z4 was fun, heck the Hyundai was fun but nothing special in either case.  Tuning is what I would consider my specialty of the games facets but the recent beatings I've taken in the public eye have left me degected.  In all honesty I don't know how to tune for other people so why bother.  I'll make cars for me and post them without fanfare.  The advertising aspect has to be nearly as time consuming as actually tuning the car and has a bigger effect on sales than anything else.  I'm sure several mediocre tunes have had decent sales on hype alone.  I don't buy into the hype, I don't generate it well so .... meh.... yet another area to underwhelm me. 

Anyway, enough of the pity party, I need a pick me up!  Where did I put my dang cup?

[Blooze]

There's a fresh pot (well, minus one cup) and a box of them Lil Debbie Brownies in the kitchen.  Help yourself...

Did you know SEAT is pronounced say-aught?  I didn't until I heard it on the BTCC races the other night.  Boy, I am going to have a hell of a time getting over pronouncing it like the English equivolent of a chair.

I have been looking all over for a couple good pictures of the new Camaro SS Grand Am GT paint job - the one for Stevenson Motorsport that has the Red, White and Blue eagle.  I haven't been able to find a thing.  It must not have had its official coming out - holding out for the 24 Hrs. of Daytona.

I have decided to let the P2P stuff go in favor of finishing the first pass through the Circuits.  I just about have the X class done, which I am putting no effort into at all.  What a stupid class, and stupidly placed within the scheme of things.  Man, I wonder sometimes...

R3 is going to be a bitch - so many enticing sub-groups.  And so many S Class cars reach the top of R3 easily.  It could get really crowded.  Kind of like B and A have for me.

Well, I am off to work on the serious deficit my lack of self control had imposed on the ole bank account.  I suspect I'll be buying a 2010 Mustang and Comaro and a piss-pot load of parts pretty soon anyways.

You say we have a Comaro gifted to us already, besides the VIP car we just got.  Oh, let me tell you the sad tale.  I downloaded the VIP car Tuesday and immediately thought.  Aha, now I don't need the one I got from leveling up so I ran right out and sold that one.  I spose it was about an hour later when I got the thought about the Grand Am cars on Sunset Pennesula Full...

I wish there was an Undo button for stupidity... 

Need a heater on that coffee?  I'm gonna get me one...

$

[Blooze]

February 1 - a new month.  I always got lots of book keeping on the first day of the month - getting my spreadsheets zero'd out and ready for the new month.  260,000 new accounts for January...  about 8300 a day.  All them folks throwin' a tizzy about how Forza III is dead already aren't payin' too much attention.

So as I am looking over the end of the month numbers I see that my S Class garage and Leaderboard are in absolute sucky condition - that's it.  S Class for the rest of the month, or however long it takes me to get it squared away...

Hey, is that 08 Viper that I see at the top of all the leaderboards in S Class the one that everybody is bitchin' about 'cause it got 4 wheel drive?

I built out the Muira Concept this morning.  Damn, I like that car!   I put a pretty good Toon on it, and I can drive the hell out of it.  A little more time in the seat and I'll start breaking into some of those Viper piles, or at least nudgin' them a little...

Damn, out of cat food.  Got to go to the store.

It occurred to me last night as I was calculating how much time was going to have to be wasted on sleep before I get back to forzacating, that I really like this game.  To hell with the Naysayers...

$

[Spiny Anteater]

Hey, is that 08 Viper that I see at the top of all the leaderboards in S Class the one that everybody is bitchin' about 'cause it got 4 wheel drive?

$

Sure is.

I also found the Miura Concept a fun car to drive. Which was a big surprise after the suckiness of it in Fm2.

No comment on the Naysayers - I fear I may be turning into one after the gearbox glitch episode. Here's hoping T10 have a rethink on not doing anything about that one, even if it does mean a scoreboard wipe.

[Blooze]

I haven't heard anything about the gear box glitch except in the last few days.  What is / was it?

I probably wouldn't mind a scoreboard wipe - I could use a fresh start from where I am at right now.

$

[Drift2XL]

It involved the A-M Lola. Something with choosing an automatic and it going 300 MPH. Check the oval leaderboards in R1 to understand. Maybe check the YouTube on how to do it. I don't know the exact specifics.

I was in a party with RenoWrench. He was racing on Sedona oval, turning around 40 sec times in a normal R1 car.
#1 was around 29 secs.  

They are committed to a full year of DLC. (Rumor is the 'Ring GP track is coming soon.) But aren't committed to keeping the scoreboards legit. I think they have learned a bit of customer service from SimBin/Atari and the RacePro debaucle.

[Spiny Anteater]

No Drift, that's not the one causing all the fuss. The glitch they're on about has been known since November and basically seems to mean that you can tune the ratios on your race gearbox, then go back to the stock box and keep your set ratios (I've no idea how you do it and don't want to know, but apparantly it's really easy to do, even accidentally). That gives you up to 15Pi to play with on other things. Hellbringer tested it and got almost a second faster with it in F Class around Sunset Short than a car not using the glitch. And worst of all, it's pretty much undetectable on the replays without trying to build out an idential car. Also, it seems as if almost any car in any class can be affected which means almost any leaderboard is suspect.

I don't think it helped matters that Che said it wasn't a big deal either...

[Blooze]

Oh wow...  I guess it helps to know that there is a bunch of cheating going on from a personal standpoint - I was wonderin' why I couldn't get anywhere near some of those guys...

Yeah, I agree...  A wipe is in order.  But, they are using those numbers to sell sponsers, they don't want to wipe them down to nothing.  I bet Hyundai is really starting to wonder what they got for all there money - that Championship thing isn't even seeing a 1000 users.

Oh well, I can still work on my perfect garage...

$

[Blooze]

I was thinking this morning as I was deciding what task to undertake for the day, "I sure do have a lot of cars that I like to drive."  And last night I got another one.  That Porsche GT3 RS is a neat car.  I wonder if Turn 10 finally calmed them down or I was finally able to lay a Toon on one that worked like I hoped it would.  Anyhow, I can pretty well horse it around as hard as I do the AWD cars, in fact - I beat my Peugeot S2000's time on the Amalfi Coast with it.

So there is the new Porsche, and the new Miura, and then there are the DTM cars, and the Northstar and all the BTCC cars...  I could jump into anyone of them and go have fun.

That's sort of cool...

$

[Fit4aking]

The first month of the new year is behind us and I have to say that I had a blast Forzacating in January.  Admittedly I didn't put as much effort into the challenge as I could have but I did learn a bit about Kaido.  It really wouldn't have mattered much how I built out the car I still don't know that track well enough to really sit down and do well there.  Whatever comes up this month will get more of my attention as I've gone and removed all of my distractions.

No more daught net competitions, aside from the official ones if they strike my fancy.
No more constant storefront attention or hype building of my "upcoming tunes".
No more hourly check of the Tuning Marketplace to see if anyone has questions about anything.
No more wasted time trying to take appropriate pictures of cars and then edit them as fast as possible.
No more playing into the whole daught net mentality!

It really does drag me down and some days even effects my opinion of the game when, in fact, I couldn't be happier with it.  February I'm going to enjoy Forza my way. 

I'm with Blooze on the whoel Porsche realization.  Of the one's I've tried, the 993, 996, and 997 models, I do like the way they drive.  Handling is on par with most cars but they tend to have a lot more top speed, specially on La Sarthe.  My 993 is 6mph faster on the straight than my fastest top speed car (8c) and once it was tuned correctly, can roll through the sweepers and tight bits as nimble as my grippier cars.  They are currently my A-class go-to cars but my Daytona Coupe is close on their heels.

I hope to knock out some more of the F-class tracks in the coming weeks but I need a couple of more specialist cars to help me with that endeavor.  Once they all have a few laps in I'll go back and see if there are any more low hanging fruit tracks that I ran early in career.  Once I'm overall happy with that I'll move up to E class and start building.  I only have a handful of cars there and only two are tuned.  Lots of work to move up the ranks in my garage but that is likely, no actually, due to me allowing all of the above distractions to get in the way of my original plan.  Start at the bottom and then work my way up. 

Looks like my parts haul for the day just showed up so I'd better go and get back to work..... and it was so close to lunch time.

[Blooze]

Good for You!   All that self imposed responsibility can be such a drag - it can actually make you sick.

I noticed that also - over that last week or so I spent some time sort of baby sitting your world tour thread in case there was a question or something that I could help someone with.  I would see the titles of a lot of those threads in the Tuning Marketplace, would even read some and after awhile I would be just sort of bummed.  It struck me that one of the things that everybody is crying about is something they are doing to themselves.  They don't like the store fronts, nobody buys finished cars from the Auction House... boo hoo...

Anyway, glad you got the decks cleared.

$

[TheJohnNewton]

Fit - We're here so you don't have to bother with the .net thingy.  Why were you abusing yourself so?

In C class I played around a bit with the older 911 (is it a 73?)  I like it but it's not one of the cars I'm using for my initial C class run.  In FM2 I really didn't like any of the Porsches.  Once I set my initial C class times I might see if I can better any of them with it.

[Blooze]

A few months ago I managed to pick up one of those ZR1 Vettes.  I got it back to the shop and started tearin' it down.  Then I rebuilt it with a new suspension, some bigger brakes, a sequential transmission and a big assed wing - swapped out the stock rubber for a set of racin' slicks.

Boy Howdy!  Now the thing runs like it's on rails.  I been runnin' out to the Snakes to get some practice time in and the car is settling in really nice.  So now I've got the rig trailored up and I'm takin' off for Atlanta and the start of the SCCA S Class World Championship.  Before it is all over and done with, I'm going to have raced all over these United States, in England, Spain, and Italy, and two or three tracks in Japan.  The whole thing is going to finish up in Florida for an endurance race at Sebring.

Busy times, but man o man - am I havin' fun!

$

[Fit4aking]

Sounds like your passport will have plenty of stamps in it by the time your all said and done.  Fortunately for me I've been staying close to home and hiring a driver to do the lions share of my driving recently.  Wrapped up Season 6 on Saturday and let the box run while I did errands for the rest of the day.  Netted me over 1.2 Million by the time I went shopping on Sunday.  All told I had just under 6 million in the shop account and I had my eye on a couple of auctions for high dollar collector cars.  Turns out I needed a small loan to be able to win the auctions but managed to get a 250 GTO into the shop for just over 6 million.  Needless to say I'm broke and very happy the car came with some upgrades so I had enough to put a decent C-class tune on it.  Back to the grind of my Events list to capitalize on the event bonus cr's and start to build up the account again. 

No major purchases planned for a while but there will be plenty of F-class racing going on to make some leaderboard headway and try to chase Blooze down.  I'll make my money back against the AI while I hotlap my way up the leaderboards.  Better get to it before Spanky realizes I've spent his vacation money.

[Blooze]

Congratulations Fit!  Getting one of those cars is a real treat!   I think that is a cool thing that Turn 10 has done, making some of those cars almost unreachable.

A friend gifted me a 330 P4 and I certainly am proud of it.  Specially when you read the History/Biography of the thing.  And now I have one.  I have promised it a good photo session one of these mornings and the Premier spot in my Meuseum.

Enjoy your car!!

$