The Purfekt Garage

[Blooze]

I fergit what it was I was posting to, but right in the middle of it, it dawned on me what I do in Forza.  There's folks that race online to the exclusion of all else.  According to the GB on Forza.net, there's folks that count pixels and look for "jaggies" so they can bitch.  I've caught on to a number of the cronic bitcher's scam... they are looking for a job.  They are hoping that if they find all sorts of dim bugs, Turn 10 will admire their prowess with video games and offer them a job.

There's others that haunt the leaderboards, got to be number one.  They can recite the names (and the times to the thousandth) of those who are near them.  I would probably be one of those if I could drive that good.  I have settled for every time in the upper 1000.  At the very least, the time should put me in the 100% leaderboard level.

No, there is something else that intrigues me, that drives me, that captures and enamours me to the point that all forms of normal existance are compromised for the sake of...

... The Perfect Garage ...

Each car tuned to within .001 of its life.  There are 10 D cars.  There are 10 C cars...  there are...

The only time the population varies for a given class is when a car is trying to break into the top 10 - to be included.

Each car painted -perhaps not a racing livery, maybe just Friday Nite at the Sonic flash.  There will be more on this later.

Each car is documented, with notes, in a spreadsheet.  This includes a paint shop picture, or track side for the cars that do not offer the paint menu.  Each car has a decal for my shop, BBB Racing Ltd.  This is a professional looking decal, unique like the Hooker decal.  Recognizable...

"Hey man, is that a Blooze Ride?"  

"Yeah."  

"Cool, I wish I could catch one when he is selling them.  They're sposed to be tuned pretty good.  How does yours run?"

"Like it is one rails.  You can feel it pull in your gut..."

"Oh man, I gotta get me one of those..."

That kind of logo.  At first there are just 5 per class, but the eventual limit is 10.  Ten classes, Ten per class, with recognition that the R# ranks may be limited.

Each car has a build sheet.  Each car has a time for every track in the Real World Tracks.  The riff raff and flotsom from winning races in the career are sold, either on the Auction House or back to the game.  A car in my garage is either one of the Elite, or striving for it.

I have looked in the Auction House.  I will buy my paint.  That in itself is a "game".  I will create a logo or two...  but I will search and monitor the Auction House looking for a particular car with a decent paint job, hopefully unlocked.  Either that, or I will have traded tuning for paint.  In some cases, the paint will be a gift.   However it gets done - each car will be painted.

In the end, at the end - 10 cars, ranked, run up to Level 5, tuned to the max, documented and painted.

The documentation is not helter skelter or catch as catch can, either.  It is organized, with common documents.  These are all linked to the class time sheet.

...the perfect garage...

That is what makes Forza such a fantastic game... that a dip shit like me can find a weird assed hole like that and spend most every waking hour trying to accomplish...

...the perfect garage...

This latest MInc Challenge has brought my lack of grafic art design to the fore front.  I have determined that rather than me put in what is required to turn my complete lacking of talent and gift into something presentable, I will contract with those that have the skills, they have the eye.  We will dicker and cajole, just like you were a body shop and I was trying to figure out how to get my car repaired for teh damages minus deductable.

Right now, I have snazzy paint jobs from friends that tickle me.  I look at them and remember where and why I have this paint.  Those sorts of stories are infinitely more intrigueing than, "I was just noodling around and just came up with the design..."

Like yesterday.  I built out my A class with 10 AWD cars.  I have the RWT completed and am sitting at position 520 based on these cars.  My ranking is based on a rollup of 29:46.338.  All tracks have a time.  I am scrambling for the tenths now, for the hundreds...

The perfect garage...

There will be the Porsches, the Ferraris, the ALS Muscle cars all vying to be one of the top ten spots.  The population will change.   Right now, if you were to see my A class time sheet it would be very obvious that the Corvette GS is not going to lay down and let these damned Jeeps run him off the track, no Sir!

The perfect garage...

I get sort of excited about that.  I have mucked around in a murky area up until yesterday.  Now I know what it is, what I am striving for.  This is why I played Sega GT 2000, why I played Forza I, why I play Forza II.  To organize and create...

...the perfect garage...

I think one of the most significant changes in my personality due to older age and a reality check is that I am soliciting help with this project.  There was a day when I would be fully determined to do it all myself or not at all.  Now I recognize and can live with the idea that I canNot do it all.  I need the help of a painter type cat.  If any of you have painting skills and would like to enter into a symbiotic relationship with a tuner... let's exchange PMs.

Okay, where was I.  Brain has run amok here...  

Bimmer's tight track Scooby holds the road real good, it also holds 2 or 3 of my top A Class times.  I got to build it a transmission, then I think it will be a major player in the hierarchy of my garage.  The biggest surprise is a Nur drivetrain S15 reject from B Class.  When I finish tuning that, it may run over everybody.

At any rate... I'm excited.  The Garage revelation.  And more "proof" for the Wb build.  The Mines Evo displays a 58% Wb, but the springs are set to a 53% bias.  It keeps popping up, 53% - 55%, this is what the game sets cars that it wants you to think are the result of a Pro "tuner".  I think we have something here.  It is not a plug an play short cut.  You can use this to delicately balance any vehicle - the way YOU want it balanced.

So now I look at the class timesheets... I am building virtual task lists.  I ramble through my garage.  Lots of Flotsum.  I want to get rid of them, but I can wait until it is varified that a car has no place in my...

...perfect Garage.

In between washing dishes and laundry today, I hope to improve my Camaro SS MInc Car in the latest challenge.   I am also going to add a second horse to the challenge, my Boss - I have a reason.

But most of all, I will be watching for opportunities to improve my garage, opportunities to take yet another step toward the...

Perfect Garage.

$

[Blooze]

Some of you may recognise the preceding post from the Bench.  I decided to pull it out here and give it it's own thread.  It is something that keeps popping up in my mind now but the picture of it is out of focus, not quite clear.  Just what constitutes the perfect Forza garage?  I am quite sure the answers to that question will be equal to the number people that answer it.  Pretty personal that, the makeup of the perfect garage.


Reserved for Inventory


So what I thought is that we'd kick this around a bit.  I know a number of you are interested in your "Garage".  Perhaps we can help each other get a clearer picture of what it should be like and therefore help each other on our way to the Nirvana of a Perfect Garage.

If this interests you, you may want to grab a post at the front here for your own inventory.  Or, if you have your own garage you may want to start a similar thread there.

$

[Blooze]

So, when is a car done.  When do you dust off your hands and say, "That is Done."  When do you declare that anything further will be done to another instance of the car?

Here are a few of my thoughts on it. 

• The car is leveled off at 5.
• The car is painted.  Someone else's paint job is easier to declare than one of my own.
• The car has been fully ranked (all nine tracks).

Like everything else it seems, this is not quite written in stone - Spiny's thing about tuning to the 3 track types within the same build has me intrigued.  Up till now my rule has been build the best car and run it where it fits.  I am going to play with this some, but right now I am looking at the first total re-write of the Car Sheet so that it can support a one to many relationship of setups to builds.  A means will also need to be devised to flag which setup set a time in the leaderboard sheet.  The idea of an entry in the stable for each setup doesn't set well, but may be required if one wants to track the times set by the different setups.

(lol - now that I am 'retired', you don't know how close I am to moving this whole thing, car sheets and leaderboards to an Access DB with a C# .Net front end)

On discounts - I wonder if Turn 10 is aware that they have the Michelin discount tied to a single car.  You have to have 5 Clios run out to level 4 to get a 50% discount on those tires.   

And under the heading of Super Anal Retentive...  the only stickers allowed on a car are ones associated with the actual parts on the car.

Just sitting here typing this out, I get sort of excited.  It changes the approach to building a car.  You have to plan it somewhat.  Building a car becomes a project - almost as it would if you were building one in RL.  And with the Regional locks, it becomes even a bit more realistic for some cars in that you must hunt for the car, and maybe pay a premium for it.  The Honda Snorkle comes to mind, or the 911 Turbo.

Man, I love this game...

$

[Blooze]

Discussion on the Bench lately gave me the idea of trying to locate this thread - I knew it was somewhere - I had to go diggin' around in the Archives to find it.

It was originally written in November of 2007.  It is going to be fun going over it and seeing what all has changed with and because of Forza III.

I am more or less bumping it right now, there are warnings popping up about how old it is.

$

[EXOR Warpedo]

It is interesting that I pop in here today and find this as last night I just started my "Elite Garage". The best of the very best of my cars, their builds and tunes.

What fits the criteria of an "Elite Car"? First they must mean something to me, this is a subjective criteria and it may very. They can be cars I like for some reason, cars I particularly enjoy driving, cars that I have a history with from other racing games or FM2, or cars I like to look at. You know the cars I am talking about, the ones that brings your blood to a boil. This will be different for different people that is why it is "my" Elite.

Other criteria echoes some of Bloozes, each car must be painted and I have a preference for unlocked paints so that means they are mine or given to me. The paints must be realistic and applicable to the car, I have developed several EXODUS race paints and they will all have that at the bare minimum.

They must be tuned within an inch of their very soul, explored and known to me, their builds, their parts and how they work together. This is a tough criteria as there so many cars that I get distracted. To counter this I tend to work with fewer and fewer cars, trying to get to know my favorites even better. In FM2 I was making tuning/build changes to cars even a year and half later and making improvements to them. Tuning is a never ending endeavor. They must be adaptable through numerous classes and track types but if in using only these cars it excludes me from being competitive on some tracks then I guess that is what must be. I can see a future garage of less than 35 cars, maybe even the perfect garage.

They will be documented in the Elite Garage.

[EXOR Warpedo]

Day 4 WDE(06/29/2010) - The first member of the "Elite Garage" is announced. The 1972 Lotus Elan Sprint

[Open2nd]

I've always wanted to go through my Forza garages and prune the list, going back to the first game.  My problem is, I acquire cars so early in the game.  Then, months later I'll get the hankerin' to clean things up some but I can never pull the trigger.  Part of that comes from the fact that I've not once fully completed the single player aspect of any Forza game and in doing so, find it hard to rid myself of cars that may potentially be used for later SP races.  For this, I fully blame multiplayer.  For me, it just brings a much more fulfilling experience racing other humans, especially when its a crew like the EXOR boys.

Which brings me to my first question.  When you're clearing out the undesirables, do you auction them off or do you sell them back to the game?

Secondly, what do you guys do with cars that are maybe not quite as competitive, but still they hold some sentimental/other value?  I tend to throw mine into a group that sits at the back of the shop, and will bring them out from time to time but they're not used with any real frequency..

[EXOR Warpedo]

I usually auction off the more expensive cars as I can usually get more than 50% for them that way, a few of the gifted cars cannot be auctioned and so I have sold them back to the game. The cheaper cars I sell back to the game as they are not worth the trouble of auctioning. You can also get more than 100cr for the in game prize cars, you just need to check to see how many are in the auction house.

I keep cars that I like, most are competitive but not all are top level cars, I keep cars to be used in different racing situations.

[Blooze]

Unless I am in a hurry for some reason, I will sell them back to the game after I have won an amount equal to half the value (car and parts). 

I don't mind taking a beating on the Prize cars in the auction house because anything I would get will be better than the $100.

If I am in one of my OCD induced rushes, I just sell them back to the game and let fiscal responcibility be damned...

$

@ Warped - congrats on your first choice!

[Blooze]

...
Secondly, what do you guys do with cars that are maybe not quite as competitive, but still they hold some sentimental/other value?  I tend to throw mine into a group that sits at the back of the shop, and will bring them out from time to time but they're not used with any real frequency..

My solution to this issue, which is big with me, is sub-classes.  I keep my own leaderboard sheets, one set for each class.  Within those sheets I have Subclasses that divide the population into more specific groups.

• All of the classes F-S have an AWD subclass.

additionally...

• Class B has a BTCC subclass
• Class A has a S2000 subclass
• Class S has a subclass for Forza II R4 cars.  This class is continued in R3 as well
• Class R3 has subclasses for Supercars, GT2, GT3, and National cars
• Class R2 has subclasses for Supercars, GT1, GT2, and DTM cars.
• Class R1 diffentiates between Forza II and Forza III LMP cars.

Cars that do not fit into one of the subclasses mentioned above are assigned to a Misc Cars catch all...

To top all that, I have another class - Class M.  This Museum class is reserved for Vintage1 Sports Cars and Vintage2 Muscle Cars.  The times in here are not competitive except with the car itself.  The Museum class is currently "Home" to 25 cars, including the Big Four.

So, as you can see, every car has a place, a competitive Class, in my little FIL world.

In Forza, the Leaderboards appear to be about only one car, which ever is #1 and in Vogue at the moment.  Not surprizingly, the LB cars are usually the ones that have identified the latest Glitch as well.

So, that is how I handle question 2.  It is a bit time consuming, but as I have said before - my spreadsheets and FIL are easily 50% of the game to me.

$

[Open2nd]

I think I'm going to have to break out my second monitor again (I share my main monitor betwixt the 360 and PC) so that I can do some spread sheetin' of my own. 

I managed to trim the fat down to 108 cars from 120+ and netted myself somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter million through the AH.  I've still got projects to build though, which identifies another... I won't say problem, but issue, with how I roll in this game.  I start projects and don't tend to carry them fully through.  That, hopefully, will change as I try to bring order to my garage.

I have a parting question for now.  Outside of all of your subclasses, what do you do with cars you find yourself attracted to, but they just fail to impress?  I waffle between sinking in even more credits to try to bring them in-line and selling them off in fits of disgust.

[Blooze]

Are you familiar with the term, "Fish or Cut Bait"?

The Mazda 3 was such a car.  I really like the way it looks and I wanted it in my BTCC project.  But I just couldn't get the thing right.  Or, I got it as right as I could get it and it just wasn't cuttin' the mustard.  I had run it until I had covered its cost so I just changed it from a car in my garage to cash in my bank account.

That sounds funny, but there is a view that I have taken concerning the car shoppe.  Those are all my cars.  They can stay in the shoppe and I can look at them there - I can drive them in the Hot Lap.  If I want to pay the fee to have one of them moved to my garage so I can work on it, I conduct that business, but, it is still my car whether I do that or not.

As far as the Mazda goes, I got a few pictures of it, I have it's QR time, I even have the Toons and the Build sheet.  The only thing it isn't doing is cluttering up my garage and setting on cash that I could use elsewhere.

The only car I have sold and wish I hadn't is the new Camaro.  I will have to replace it when I get to a little project I have in mind - at least it wasn't expensive.

how I roll in this game.  I start projects and don't tend to carry them fully through.  

Boy, I know that one by heart as well... I have a Round Tuit list that runs from here to the kitchen.  I'm getting better - but not by much...  


$

[Open2nd]

Funny you should mention a new Camaro, I just failed to sell one on the AH two days in a row.  I'll send it over your way once I get back to the apartment.

[Blooze]

Cool!!  I guess that means that not all my Karma has been out screwin' the pooch...

I appreciate it!

$

[TheJohnNewton]

I think I experience Warped's elite garage Elan the other night.  It was WAY faster than mine.  Of course he's a way faster driver as well.

I'd like to have the perfect garage but I'm almost never happy with any single car.  I aways have the feeling I could improve this or that.  I got close in some classes in FM2 but just haven't spent the time in FM3.