@dh-kim thanks for your input, seeing as you’re well on your way to getting liter karts I would appreciate your opinions on tuning strategy.
Right now I focus all upgrades on the things that matter. Top speed, yes, handling, yes, the rest, not so much of a bother, since my driving techique is to manage energy and reduce speed loss if at all possible. As AE86s or other ‘underpowered’ cars tend to do in touge.
This should help reduce upgrade costs as I progress.
For gameplay progression @mvnla2 it seems to be triggered by character recruitment. If you stay in Seedway and do not complete Stella’s unlock sequence you would have unlimited energy for quite a while and are able to grind your way up the minor events for bird coins. Since you would have only one bird, the game shouldn’t activate its energy meter at all.
The minor events and bonus challenges are not required for progression but they will allow you to earn crucial bird coins and allow you to boast to Facebook friends for scoring just that much higher. And that little bit of score can be ‘unbeatable’ if the champion of your friend’s list chose the optimal kart for the race series.
For instance Seedway is based of course on classic speedway events thus top speed is the most important feature. Handling… not so crucial, so long as you are already used to managing the transition between normal traction and oversteering (drift control), and planning ahead your racing line to minimize steering inputs / travel the shortest distance to the finish.
No matter how good my tape roll’s handling is, it won’t beat DH Kim’s top score on Seedway as his kart has a higher max Top Speed rating. As @altla-darkwinder tends to say, my tape wheels are sticking me to the ground (better tyre grip) but slows down the kart. Pretty realistic, considering traction aids (like increasing downforce, fatter tyres) in a real race car may retard top speed or acceleration respectively.
Thus with this tip, a fruit smacking session with a competitor shouldn’t be so challenging so long as you are out top on the Top Speed advantage and work to maintain that high speed. The AI has its limits and while it’s actually somewhat smarter in wheel to wheel race tactics than many PC racing sims, it has the same limitations in outright top speed vs a human opponent.
For many racing games on the PC the AI is programmed to cheat if its left behind by a human player going flat out on a straight or hitting the nitrous. It is given a speed/power/traction boost to keep up with the player. But there’s always an Achilles’ heel to this type of game design… there’s a delay before the AI’s preprogrammed “rubberbanding” activates. So maintaining wheel to wheel position up to the finishing straight then ramming the opponent into the wall is a good tactic!
By the way, you can win a race easily so long as you are wheel to wheel with an opponent, even if you are stuck behind him.
At the next corner, come up inside the opponent in the corner and ram his back wheel. He will spin out – just like the effect of the PIT maneuver during real life cop chases. Unlike real motorsports… there are no penalties in crashing your opponent in a race here!
Also you can be a jerk and wait for the opponent to turn into you and shunt him into the nearest wall. Or block off his racing line and force him to either slow down or take a slower outside line. Lots of BBC Top Gear style foolish crashy fun to be had in this game, although I hope there would be some sort of system to penalize ‘race trolling’ when ABGO goes multiplayer in future :)
