And again: help me figure out which vanilla "modified" configs correspond to what

Once again I am attempting to determine if there is any rhyme or reason to customized configs with similar names.

Street - Tuned used to just be called "Custom" but eventually that name was replaced on all non-American cars. So, I would assume both are intended to be roughly the same level of customization. Are these cars intended to ever become "balanced" against each other at some point in the future? Any general guidelines for how they are put together?

The Moonhawk "Elite Custom" - is it a "named" car i.e. Notte/Nightsnake/Demon/Knallhart, or is it the only example so far of a new, higher class of custom car? Or is it intended to fit in with the Custom/Street - Tuned cars?

The ETK K's "Trackday" variant - where does it fit into the above? EU/JP equivalent of Elite Custom, or entirely new "class" of car?

The Autobello has a "Street Machine" variant which seems similar in concept to the Custom/Street - Tuned cars but is explicitly mentioned to have been built for straight-line performance. Is this a one-off, or the first of multiple lower-end drag racers? If the latter, approximately how quick are they supposed to be? (Personally, I'd have suggested a target 1/4mile time of about 11.80 to fit in with Hot Rod Magazine's Daily Driver class at Drag Week, but I doubt the AB Street Machine in its current form can do that).

It also has a "Baja" config; should this be considered the equivalent of the Hopper/D/H/Roamer/Sunburst "Off-Road" configs or, again, a separate class?

Some vehicles have "Track" and/or "Rally - Gravel" configs; will these ever be balanced? I know they couldn't really all fit into one historically-accurate race class, but which different classes are the different models based on? Pessima Mk1 is probably supposed to be old Group A (minus any air restrictors), Sunburst is roughly a 2000cc WRC car (also minus air restrictors), but what about the rest?

The Ibishu Hopper has a config labeled "Off-Road", and then another, more hardcore config labeled "Custom". Will this name ever be changed to make it stand apart from the many pavement-oriented "Custom" variants in the game? If so, to what?

Named customs i.e. Notte/Nightsnake/Demon/Knallhart/whatever - is there any specific formula for these or are they true customs? Are more coming at some point?

Which staff members would be both a. available for comment and b. know the thoughts behind these configs?

 

I do know that the Moonhawk Elite Custom is a nod to Ryan Gosling's car in the movie Drive. The names of its pc and image files suggests it too.

That's just about all I can add to that.

 

I'd heard that before, though "Elite Custom" sounds like a fairly generic name if that's all it's supposed to be...

Honestly... I have my reasons for wanting to know this stuff. On and off I keep wanting to learn to mod, and while I may not have any skills, I do have a fairly well-developed plan for what I want my finished products to look like. And by that I mean I have a 10-landscape-page table detailing which cars will get which cars will get what. 10 pages, only because it isn't even close to done yet (I'm using an also-totally-unfinished Access database to make a list of real-world cars and each new car is actually somewhat of a bother due to using Wikipedia to help keep track of which cars are related to what and what the exact model years are for a given domestic market, etc.) However I would want said finished product to be fully congruent with both current and future vanilla content where possible - adding on, rather than conflicting with - but also try to integrate vehicle types from other video games that tend to use completely different systems. That is why I need to know what the "standards" are for a given class of config. Here's what I have so far.

Street race configs:

Street (Custom/Street - Tuned): A basic street custom, able to handle just about any paved road but biased towards the mountain pass. May not be much for dirt roads. May or may not have nitrous and jazzy paint. Aimed at roughly where a Street spec car would be in The Crew if you 100%'ed the entire game and then went out and bought a level 1 street kit for a car you'd never had before. Unfortunately I don't know the number... [S ]321 or something? That works out to be about it by my quick head math. Among current and known-future vanilla cars, only the Wentward DT40L won't have at least one of these by the time I'm done; several vanilla cars already have them though not particularly well-balanced (so not an issue, or just a result of some cars not having many engine parts yet?)

Elite (Elite Custom/Elite - Tuned): A more heavily altered car, still made for pavement, set up to strike a balance between agility and stability so it can handle both the passes and the highway. Equivalent to [P]529 in The Crew, so still very much a road car, with a full (and possibly customized) interior. Just like in The Crew, lots of delicious glossy carbon fiber may be evident here, depending on the specific parts chosen. Among current and known-future vanilla cars, only the Gavril T-Series, Ibishu Hopper and Pigeon, and Wentward DT40L are not planned to get this; the Moonhawk already has such a config assuming that it is, indeed, intended to be a new class and not a named custom.

Trackday: A middle ground between Elite and the next level, equivalent to about [P]749 in The Crew. Severe mechanical modifications but the car will still remain fairly usable and presentable. Among current and known-future vanilla cars, I believe the Bruckell Moonhawk and LeGran, Civetta Bolide, ETK 800-series, I-series, and K-series, Gavril Barstow, Hirochi SBR4 and Sunburst, and Ibishu 200BX, Miramar, Pessima '88, and Pessima '96 would be appropriate for this treatment.

Pro (Pro Custom/Pro - Tuned): A full highway bomber, equivalent to about [P]1497 in TC. At this stage, the suspension tuning is definitely biased towards stability and aesthetics start to take a back seat; expect partial interiors, "all business" exterior modifications, and questionable street legality. Top speed is way over 200 MPH, backed up by plenty of grip. Among current and known-future vanilla cars, take the Trackday list and add the Gavril D-series and Grand Marshal and the Soliad Wendover, then remove the Ibishu Miramar and Pessima '96.

Off-road race configs:

Rally: A baseline off-road config roughly equivalent to the Street level but sacrificing some dry-pavement performance for the ability to not kill you if you so much as look at an unsurfaced road. Note the lack of "- Gravel" in the name; these are meant to be somewhat balanced rather than corresponding to any specific historical race class.

Off-Road: A lifted and toughened machine aimed to be the rough equivalent of [D]419 in TC; this should fit fairly well with the Off-Road configs already in the game... or at least the Gavril ones. Nasty jumps and severely rough roads are in the design brief; beelining across open ground maybe not so much.

Baja: A pre-runner type of vehicle intended to roughly equal an [R]639 vehicle from TC, though unlike many real-life pre-runners it may be converted to AWD or 4WD where possible. This is the one you want for completely ignoring roads and crashing across trackless areas at speed, at least to the extent that's possible in this game (Utah riverbed might be one example). Considering that the only vanilla vehicle to have a vanilla Baja config is the Autobello Piccolina and to the best of my knowledge it's nowhere near one of The Crew's raid vehicles in terms of either outright speed or thoroughness of modification (some of those were outright trophy trucks!) there may be congruence issues here.

Specialist configs:

Track: A club racer just like the vanilla ones. If I can conclusively identify the vanilla ones as belonging to specific historical race classes, however, I may dispense with this and just use the actual class names for my own stuff (this is in fact why I didn't bother to put "Rally - Gravel" on this list).

Touring Car: See also LM Edition, [C]749, or the Touring Car category in The Crew 2 from which it takes its name. May also be removed from the list if appropriate classes for this config's other-game inspirations can be conclusively identified.

Hill Climb: Massive power and ridiculous aero, just like the vanilla ones. I'm pretty sure there is no specific race class here, so these will likely stay.

Drift: Tuned to go around corners the completely wrong way. Inspired by both BeamNG's 200BX Drift and a [Df]321 car from you-know-where, but with the capabilities of the former taking precedence in terms of performance balancing. Not that it matters all that much anyway.

Gymkhana: Think Speedcross from NFS Payback's DLC, and you've just about got it. Rally + Drift = this thing.

Street Machine: A low-end drag vehicle, built with common parts and not likely to go much faster than the 12's if that. Intended to be daily-driveable as well as raceable.

Drag: You should know what this is - a machine built to go as fast as possible in a short, straight line. Inspired by both BeamNG's "Drag" configs and a [Dg]321 car from guess where again, but with the capabilities of the former again taking precedence.

Trail (Custom, as applied to the Ibishu Hopper): An off-road beast which sacrifices all forms of speed and a lot of A-to-B driveability for the ability to conquer any terrain - as long as you're willing to approach some terrains slowly. Stability isn't the best, but for clambering over rocks and climbing things that shouldn't be climbable, you won't find much better.

Monster: Inspired by an [Mt]321 car from oh whoopty frick wouldn't you know it, and also by the original Bigfoot. Thus, this is not a tube-framed professional creation for Monster Jam, but a hillbilly deluxe with tractor tires and enormous torque.

Courier: Inspired by NFS Payback's Runner builds. It combines all-around decent power and handling with some impact protection and maybe or maybe not some ballistic protection as well - it's all a balancing act, in the end. Visuals may be sharply turned out, but probably not necessarily flashy. May include some anti-pursuit devices if I/anyone willing to help can make them play nicely.

Beater configs:

Beater: You know, like the Covet. A car with pre-existing wear and damage, in case you need a prop for a recording or just want The True Poverty Experience from your drive.

Ricer: That's not a race car, dude.

The Derogative (The Terrible/The Awful): A car which is in perfect running order but not necessarily roadworthy, with things like lights, bumpers, fenders, glass, passenger seats, etc. hacked off to go faster more dangerously, plus a grab bag of cheap/common aftermarket and higher-trim OEM speed parts, and a welded differential in pure RWD cars. Not what a cop would want to see coming the other way, but perfect for larking about anywhere they aren't.

Drift Missile: Drift, but without any pretense of professionalism. Expect low-end tires, excessive power, and welded differentials, along with haphazard removal of anything that might get damaged or lost because apparently the whole idea of the objective being to not hit the wall got lost along the way somewhere.

Police configs:

Patrol (Police Package): Your basic police unit, based on most cases on a specific (and, often, not initially available to the public) trim package.

Unmarked (Police Package Unmarked): Your basic police unit, but sneakier and more aerodynamic!

Interceptor: Think the Patrol cars from NFS Rivals or indeed the police vehicles from Hot Pursuit 2. These are fully marked police units tuned for a slight boost to acceleration and top speed.

Enforcer: Another Rivals import, these are once again fully marked police vehicles but with some impact (and possibly ballistic) protection for ending pursuits "the old fashioned way".

Undercover: Yet one more Rivals import, these are unmarked police vehicles tuned for increased cornering grip. Menacing black paintwork optional, and probably not helpful.

Ranger: Patrol and pursue in hostile environments with this hybrid of Off-Road and Patrol configs.

Police Custom: Actually three configs under this heading, depending on the level of modification, which is keyed to one of the street race configs. Terminology is Special Pursuit Unit for the Street level, Street Racing Unit for the Elite level, and Rapid Response Unit for the Pro level.

Miscellaneous configs: (they don't really fit any established pattern)

Beam Edition: Remember NFS Hot Pursuit 2? Remember the NFS editions? They had jazzy paint and noticeable, improvements to straight-line performance. That's what this is - take an existing sports model, paint it up real nice, and give it roughly an Interceptor's level of underhood work.

Powerglow: A E S T H E T I C version of a 1970s, 1980s, or memetically technological car. Performance tuning is approximately "whatever".

Furious (working title): A car built and tuned in the flashy mid-2000s style, with eye-catching graphics, aero kits made more for looks than speed, and maybe even neon chassis lighting (even though no one's really been able to get them to work correctly in this game so far). Nitrous is a given. Performance will be roughly around an Elite or Trackday config, but it will probably need more power and more intensive suspension tuning to get there due to the extra weight/drag of all that flash.

 

Is that 10 pages of cars or 10 pages of configs?

 

10 pages of cars. The configs go across as a simple yes/no in each box. I'm well aware that I've already got several lifetimes worth of cars on the list and it's not even close to a quarter done, but I have to have the list in order to begin the process of figuring out which cars are most important.

I have no idea how I'll do that either. Especially since utter rank n00biness and extreme self-nitpickery don't often go well together. But in any case, extra parts for vanilla cars will come first; that should give me an opportunity to get used to how things work in a situation where self-nitpickery is less relevant (because if all the cars and parts involved are made up out of whole cloth in the first place, then "getting it right" just means plausibility. Well, and congruence with official lore, but there's precious little of that at this point). The first page and most of the second are all vanilla cars with some of the higher-quality mods sprinkled in, on the assumption that the authors wouldn't mind someone making a big pile of ricey bumpers and chrome taillights for their car. But those would be after the vanilla ones anyway.

And then the lore angle... when 50 different video games all have their own set of fake cars and they all overlap, trying to make all that play nice sounds cool until you actually try to figure it out.

Having ideas is fun, figuring out how to do them not so much.

 

You mean creating your own mod cars or parts?

 

Parts to start, cars much later after I've had time to learn and get comfortable with the modeling process. The reason I'm going through all this now is that, while it will be a long time before I can do anything at this point (everything I've heard about modeling software indicates it's not only painful to learn but also painful to buy and I can barely afford to keep a real car running right now), I eventually want all of those cars and parts to coexist under the same sort of "system", and all without stepping on or clashing with dev content. That's why I posted my excessive disorganized list of config types - to sort of show why I need all this nitpicky information about what the devs were thinking when they made certain vehicle variants. I want anything I eventually do to mesh well with what they've already done instead of sticking out like "Hey look, here's a low effort mod! Why did you even bother to download it? It's just clogging up your vehicle selector and slowing down the game!"

(The other reason I'm going through all this now is because I tend to just sit around being lazy and letting ideas stagnate until Judgement Day and trumpets sound. I figure that even if I'm not in a position to actually take action right now, by posting things like this I'm keeping myself in contact with the idea and thereby increasing the chance that I'll actually take this plunge at some point.)

(This is also why I'm so worried about paid DLC wrecking base content modding.)

 

Paid DLCs will likely be like "files only working for buyers, but accessible and moddable". That's how it works on Mafia II.

Also, can you share at least parts of that list?

 

Base content is 1.0, everything by that is probably going to come free, but with DLC after that they could fund more content, can't see any issues with that.

They could maybe also make some concept art and background stories of each config available as support the devs package

 

Skipping in and saying that the configs need adjusting overall. Race isnt race worthy and so on. Thats all.

 

Not much worth sharing right now, unless you enjoy reading page after page of boring 70s/80s USDM trashmobiles that everyone is perfectly happy to not remember! Like I said, adding is slow going, and I seem to have started with the stupid cars first in my motley assemblage of source material. But I can PM it to you if you think you can stay awake through it.

 

I do enjoy it. PM?

 

The only way I could be able to put that much thought into configurations is if I took like 13 adderalls. I never even thought of this, there is definetly some imbalance in the configs.

 

I would think that when all cars are done, configs will get some balancing and tuning, they probably are not bothering with such before whole package is out, so maybe right now configs are like finding their shape?