John Romsay medal 5000 6 years 238 days ago
James
No need for fighting we all know Hard tyres are a little too fast and need slowed a little. Most tracks they are 0.3 or 0.2 slower than Medium tyres. That's why Joey's help guide says to avoid Meduim tyres.
But SS & S are faster than Hard until they burn up and wear out.
I think SS need slowed down and given a little extra life, But everywhere I look, I see the likes of this. Hard tyres better than the rest.
Hello! it's not a fight away from that I'm just stressing that this concept of hard being is faster than SS or S so change that. The wear is good but the discrepancy between the tires is absurd.
James Greer medal 5000 6 years 238 days ago
Overused SS & S are slower than H.
Overheated SS & S are slower than H.
It's different each race because of temperatures.
Round 1 Medium wear track
SS 1:25
S 1:26
H 1:27
Round 2 - High wear track.
SS 1:33
S 1:34
H 1:35
Round 3 - High wear track.
SS 1:32
S 1:33
H 1:34
Round 4 - Meduim wear track
SS 1:30
S 1:31
H 1:32
Can you see a pattern emerging?
Fabio Peluso medal 5000 6 years 238 days ago
I don't understand your concern, each track is different, different weather conditions, different settings. I even won some races using only hard tyres and doing fewer pit stops than other competitors. You can have the fastest car in the world, but if you have tyres out of temperature it's useful. Try the Hard ones in Monaco with low temperature and you will find that they are very very slow!
John Romsay medal 5000 6 years 238 days ago
Fabio
I don't understand your concern, each track is different, different weather conditions, different settings. I even won some races using only hard tyres and doing fewer pit stops than other competitors. You can have the fastest car in the world, but if you have tyres out of temperature it's useful. Try the Hard ones in Monaco with low temperature and you will find that they are very very slow!
same time to S 10º in Britich GP
https://igpmanager.com/app/d=resultDetail&id=46491090
Duc Anh medal 5000 6 years 238 days ago
Welp.This thread has become a curse-fest.I'm gonna go before it becomes worse.Also this is a game about learning new things,you have just learnt that Hard are faster than SS and S (even though your S was overheated and used).If you learn it,use it for the future.Not just spam your problem on the forum about Hard tires being faster.Everyone knows that for months now and no one (above lvl 10) has complaint about it.And I've atleast seen 2 posts this month talking about Hard being overpowered.So Jack should nerf Hard tires to being 0.1 to 0.2 seconds just to make the Hard "realistic"
Pola Pola medal 5000 6 years 238 days ago
Aye. As someone's who's played the open beta last year every day testing tyres, having written some lengthy posts about them on forums in open beta as well as here, spectated and competed in some of the top leagues and seeing various strategies as well as studying how they work, esp. the different results from different track conditions, I'll take my "nonsense" somewhere else and leave the tirade-ing guy who's resorted to personal slurs be. -w-/ And "favored inside the game"? Well, I wish I was, then I can do stuff like field 3-4 cars a race with 1 team, auto-leveling to level 20, and implement cut-scenes with grid girls and Mark Webber doing podium interviews.
I've reiterated my points about how tyres work in this game countless times, expressed how I appreciate discussions on tyre balance, and even expressed thoughts on what I'd do about tyre balance (speed up meds a little, slow down Hards a bit, maybe make it more difficult for Hards to get temps in colder weather), even though I'm used to it as it is right now. But when you bring a whole luggage of "I don't understand how this strat can work! Clearly it must be wrong! The game is wrong, all wrong! Unrealistic! A mistake! Your talk is all a mistake! Oh but I'm the helpful one, for the good for game! And I'm not mistaken one bit!" (yes, that's how you sound like to me, Jordon Ramsay) without even taking time to acknowledge other people talking about aspects of the game, helping you to learn about strats here, & discussing with them respectfully, surely you're not being as productive as you imagine.
Jack Basford medal 5073 
CEO & CTO 6 years 238 days ago
^ What he said. Keep it civil, please. There is really nothing that has been said that warrants cursing.
Here is the developers perspective: Our aim was to make all of the tyres equally competitive in race conditions. That means I wanted it to be really a difficult decision whether to use SS, S, M or H on as many tracks as possible, with some exceptions like Monaco which tend to favour soft tyres by their nature.
Observing which tyre sets the fastest lap of the race is really not important. Fastest laps are set in a totally different way to F1. To imagine our system in F1 would be to imagine a car doing an entire lap with an extra 160bhp every time it's accelerating, an amount that is easily going to overcome what tyre they are using. Our KERS system is even slightly more powerful than this for effect in a game environment.
Unless you're using Hard tyres to get pole position in qualifying, the statement that "the hard tyre is faster than SS" is quite misleading. What is really being observed are all the other factors that go in to setting a fast lap. That said, perhaps the harder compounds handle overheating well with all the extra acceleration/wheelspin which makes them better for a fastest race lap. I haven't played in a long time, so the experienced players could confirm that one. But at least in my mind, it would make sense that the SS tyres in particular would be prone to overheating with all the extra acceleration KERS can introduce, and this could make them fade by the end of a fast lap, whereas hard tyres might not have that issue.
That said... if everyone feels any tyre is very OP in races generally, we will look in to it, because that goes against our aim: to make all tyres competitive in a race. We want it to be so that if one team does three stops with SS and another one stop with H, they will end up on roughly the same piece of tarmac. A choice of strategies is what makes an exciting race and an exciting strategy game.
John Romsay medal 5000 6 years 237 days ago
First of all I must apologize for my behavior, sorry.
What could be done about it would basically change the wear vs speed system and yield did a table that might help to get a better sense of how this could be solved:
<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3GPBEvePZ4Henh3VnRqUzhVT0k/preview" width="640" height="480"></iframe>
As far as I can help for the improvement of the game I will be here at the disposal of the programmers, I work with web design, java, javascript, PHP, webGL, PS and Unity3D
Thank you in advance for your attention.
Vance Sim medal 5000 6 years 237 days ago (edited 6 years 237 days ago)
Hello, Jack! Here’s a long, 2k word post of me detailing some general knowledge on tires and how they affect strats in this game, with me ending it with my recommendations on how to possibly balance Hards if needed. There is a TL;DR at the end:
NOTE: My examples are predominantly for 50% distance races. While I race 100% distance too, it is easier to simplify my points with 50% distance strats, as anything from 2-7 stops can work in 100% distance depending on the track.
First off, an introduction and reply to some previous posts. Yes. Hards starting behind in qualy is definitely the main cost to factor when you decide to start the race on Hards. Which is partly why I definitely don't believe Hards are overpowered (as in dominates every race); all stint Hards don't dominate every track and on any condition, far from it. Still, I believe one of the main concern with Hards is how they seem to be a tire that suits all conditions (not necessarily dominate), even in cold weather. Once again, this does not mean all stints Hards strats dominates every race. I finished 10 seconds down doing 1 stop H/H in Hungary last season in 16C, and another manager with 2 cars that just pitted for softs and thus on much higher fuel (Esteban Alonso, one of the 10k rep managers in the game) could easily stay in my rear and get DRS off me (Hungary is a relatively easy track for cars to follow each other and get DRS), eventually finishing way ahead of me even though he did 1 more stop.
Still, you can incorporate at least one Hard stint in a 50% distance race, even on a cold track, and still be competitive if you do it well. So rather than 1 stop H/H, you might have 2 stops SS/H/H or SS/SS/H on certain tracks for example, sometimes 1 stop SS/H (which works in Bri, Bel, and Jap) or S/H (for the hotter tracks), there are many combos; don’t forget the S runners too: SS/S/S, SS/S/SS, and so on. You can incorporate a few Hard stints and mix them up with Supersofts or Softs in 100% distance races too.
Here’s an example of a race on a cold track with multiple strats in play, from The MJL league. I chose this race because I spectated it recently even though I came on with only few laps to go, and thus will mostly be hypothesizing. However, I have and am competing in competitive leagues against top managers employing many different strats and thus more or less know what goes into making a strat work:
In the MJL, they ran German iGP at around 10C weather (important to remember this considering the strats that will be used). Our protagonist, Kevin Bissell, split his strats, even though both his drivers started on SS: One car was on standard 2 stops SS (laps done each stint: 11-10-9), the other car was 2 stops SS-H(!)-SS (laps done: 8 on SS (so lighter fuel and won’t be as worn by end of the stint) - 15 on H - 7 on SS). His main competition when I joined the viewer was Marcel Smid, another one of the few 10k rep managers in the game (Kevin's pretty high on the HoF too), whose 2 cars were on 2 stops all SS (10-10-10 and 11-10-9). Another manager in contention was Hannu Vallin, whose both cars were on SS-S-S
The SS-H-SS driver of Kevin’s won the race. However, from the results it was close with Marcel and Hannu throughout the race. 1-4s gap all the way till the end.
On the initial 8 lap stint, Kevin’s eventual winner was stuck behind, and pit for Hards. Throughout the 15 lap H stint, Kevin’s driver was behind the top SS and S runners, and at one point got to 8 seconds behind the leader.
But this is the winning move: His stint was longer, thus as the SS and S runners pit earlier, the Hards runner can do a few more fast laps on lower fuel, gaining 2-3s a lap during this period over the heavier cars. This is called the overcut, and is particularly useful when there is refueling unlike current real life F1. If you want to watch an open wheel series with refueling and more than 1 stop a race, watch Indycar; overcuts mostly work on road and street courses in Indycar, not necessarily ovals as the importance of grip is drastically more crucial on a good number of ovals.
Back to iGP: When Kevin’s winning driver pit to put on a final set of SS, not only was he just behind the leader (which was Marcel’s 10-10-10 SS driver, meaning Kevin got a 3 lap overcut), he was on fresher Supersofts. Kevin’s winning driver got rid of an 8 second deficit thanks to the overcut. The 3 different strategies, SS-SS-SS, SS-S-S, and SS-H-SS, ran close throughout the race until the end, with the top drivers of the 3 different strats finishing within 6 seconds of each other.
This shows that there is what I believe to be a pretty good tire balance in this game, giving a wide range of competitive strategies. It’s not just finding the right strat–good tire choices and fuel loads, it’s also about executing it well.
The only issue I find is that the Hards worked at 10C. Something that to the casual or inexperienced player will find doesn’t make any sense.
Important to note: experienced, competitive managers will play by the rules and use whatever they can find to their advantage. If something in this game works, they are sure to use it, and as the top managers keep using what works, this filters down to the rest of the players in the game. The main concern of competitive managers is to be competitive regardless of the formula, and this is true in any game (short shifting in the top leagues in Codemasters’ F1 2016 game due to the game’s poor driving model) and any real-life competition (undercutting in real life F1 due to the advantage of having fresher tires, with everyone’s fuel loads being more or less equal).
Hence, the “Hards obsession” got passed down in the new iGP. However, while experienced managers know how they work and why, others may not understand, and gut logic or gut instinct will tell them that this is absurd. But there is an explanation to any winning strat. In Kevin’s case, the Hards would not work if he started on it, as if he started on Hards, he will start so far down the grid and so slow in the initial few laps, that he’ll end up like I did when I did 1 stop H/H in Hungary in 16C temps, 10-12s behind the winner. Hence, Kevin started with a softer tyre, found the right stint to use hards, and got an overcut that completely eliminated an 8 second deficit. He put on supersofts fresher relative to the competition, making the driver the fastest in the last stint, and won with his good execution of strategy. As you can see, there are many factors in play in managing a winning race. I didn’t watch the KERS tactics though as I spectated late into the race but that is very important as well: Getting DRS and using KERS at the right times, positioning yourself well, managing push levels and tire wear, and taking battles when necessary. Kevin’s winning driver may have gotten some DRS on the latter part of his Hards stint contributing to chopping that 8s deficit.
But still, Hards working in 10C? Most won’t understand that. Not talking about careful preparation, but just simple gut instinct will tell you that Hards should not work in colder temps because it should be so difficult to get in the temperatures for them to run well on a cold track.
So, before thinking about balancing the pace of the tyres, which I believe is pretty good but can have some tweaking done if it doesn’t break what good we already have, I think we first need to think about tackling the notion that “Hards work in every track”. The following solution comes to mind: making Mediums relevant again. The Mediums have a drastic pace deficit to the Hards, even in colder weather, and they wear faster too, making them worse all round in pace. However, the “balancing factor” of Mediums right now is that they start higher than Hards, giving Mediums a starting track position advantage. Most top managers who use Mediums only use them on the first stint to get a track position advantage over Hards.
There are two main ways to make the Mediums relevant again: the first is pace, but balancing this can get very complicated. The second is a simpler solution that can form the foundation for further pace balancing:
Tire warming. Make it more difficult for Hards to get into optimum temps on colder tracks, while Mediums will be able to do so easier. This will make it so that if a manager like Kevin wants to do one long stint on a cold track, track temperatures become important not just in using a tire that doesn’t overheat too much, but also a tyre that doesn’t grain due to cold temps. Currently, only tracks like Monaco and Aus have Hards being obsolete due to the difficulty in getting in the temps for Hards to work, as it should be, but this could extend to other tracks too depending on the conditions. Remember, Kevin won with Hards on a 10C Germany track. If that were deemed too cold for Hards to work, he may pick Softs or Mediums instead of Hards as Hards will not be useful when it’s in the blue.
Once the tyre warming is sorted out, then we can perhaps think of balancing the pace of the tyres. Either give the Meds some pace, reduce the pace of the Hards a tad, or both.
While I’m used to the tire balance of the game, it’ll be nice to have Mediums come back into play, taking the role of the Hards in certain tracks, especially cooler ones. Still, I understand that balancing the tires’ pace will be difficult, and this is why: The balancing factor of Mediums is that they start higher than Hards. However, the track position advantage of Meds over Hards comes at the cost of less pace and more wear than Hards.
This is why in some of the top leagues, while you see a lot of people using Hards, some of their initial tires to start the race will be the softer tires in order to start with a higher track position and better initial pace. In my league, International GP Championship, you have 20 cars starting on Softs in Malaysia even though Hards is the better tire there pace-wise. Starting on Softs gives track position over starting on Hards. If you start on Hards with 20 Soft runners ahead of you, you’ll be stuck behind so much traffic, and traffic that is on pace as the Soft runners are often lighter in the first stint. Good luck if they’re running in optimum temps as well, though you can push harder on Hards especially on a hotter track. So there is a trade-off between track position and pace that has to be factored into the strategy.
TL;DR: there are so many strats that can get you the win if you know how to execute it well, but Hards working in colder weather goes against the gut instinct of many players, especially casual and less experienced players, so work on tyre warming first before deciding on whether to focus on balancing pace.
Bonus info: In 50% distance, 3 stops all SS (as Jack mentioned) works mostly on only 2 tracks atm: Eur iGP, and Bel iGP. This is mainly because these two tracks have the shortest pit straights relative to the length of the track. It also depends highly on traffic, however. If your driver on blistering fast fresh SS is stuck behind a DRS train of 10 cars, and some of those cars are on harder tires and/or heavier fuel, you really have to fight to get a competitive result. However, 3 stops SS work as the sheer pace of fresh SS gives you an undercut and a number of blistering laps before they get worn.
Apologies for any mistakes or if any of my points are not clear. I'm not a programmer, computer techie, or whatever. As a competitive player who thrives on the race management aspect of this game, things like tyre balance and how it affects strategies has always been interesting to me.
Kevin Bissell medal 5001 Super Mod 6 years 237 days ago
Wow... didn't I do well. Crediting me with a well thought out strategy instead of "more by luck than judgement" LOL
Seriously, in that race the reason I could be so fast at 10 degrees on Hards was that I was on PL5 almost continuously for the three/four lap overcut on low fuel. If you're going to do this, because of the high PL remember to add an extra litre of fuel over what you would normally calculate. I pitted after 15 laps and had 0.2 litres remaining, if I had gone with my normal calculation I would have pitted a lap too early and also carried a little too much fuel for the entire shortened stint.
Duc Anh medal 5000 6 years 237 days ago
Wow,never though that Hard would be easy to get to the optimal temperature in cold weather.Getting the temp up for Hard tires is always my issue.At Hungary,like 16 degrees,I had to use PL5 like for 4 or 5 laps just to get the hard out of the cold zone.
Vance Sim medal 5000 6 years 237 days ago
Well, luck will always be there, giving you opportunities when it goes your way, but you have to be able to take them!
Running higher push levels especially for long periods of time don't just require more fuel, it wears your engine down more, which could reduce your pace a tad as the race goes on. That's another cost of running Hards that require you to put your cars on higher push.
