Cherrier Vivace & Tograc

I suspect it may have something to do with the FCV having boost-by-gear and "Arsenic Mode". It's possible that there was some trouble getting that to work with adjustable boost in terms of which one would override which. Not sure how adjustable rev limits figure into that though.

The Bastion normally uses superchargers, so that's what its ECUs would be designed around. I've done quite some poking into the behavior of superchargers and their properties are automatically modified by the rev limit, which appears to be core game behavior as I couldn't find any reference to it in the Bastion's or Barstow's files. See here:

Thus, with the Bastion, there wouldn't be any trouble with having adjustable turbochargers and rev limiters; the adjustable rev limiters control intended supercharger behavior and none of the supercharger-related code should interfere at all. (Note that I have not checked how the Bastion's turbos and drive modes interact with each other, if "Caged Mode" and similar still work with adjustable turbos then it's possible that everything I just said is irrelevant and there's no technical reason why the FCV couldn't have them.)

A much simpler explanation is that the devs wanted to force reliance on high-trim ECUs and canned tunes as a way to simulate the tuning-hostile complexity of modern cars, though while you could argue that the Bastion is running on old tech and is thus more conducive to shade-tree modification, or that the Bastion being a fully US-made-for-US-market car while the FCV and ETKs are partially or completely made for Europe has something to do with it, this really doesn't explain the Scintilla, which points back toward technical reasons... maybe?

Possibly the simplest explanation of all is, the game isn't finished yet and the devs aren't fully sure what they want tuning to look like when it is, so they're trying multiple approaches at once.

 

Oh, I was not aware of that. Also, apparently, it's not the turbos that you directly adjust - it's the ECU that adjusts the turbo pressure. So, every Sunburst turbo's adjustable. (They just have different maximum power outputs (523 PS for the stock turbo at max pressure with the race ECU cranked to 8500 RPM and a stage 2 block, 593 PS from the Stage 1 turbo, and 664 PS for the Stage 2 turbo).) I hope the modern ETKs and FCV get a similar style of adjustable ECU, since this is quite fun, being able to use any turbo I like at 30 PSI.

Yeah, that's probably one of the biggest reasons why I barely touch the FCV. In a game that prides itself on customization, having no option to adjust the turbo pressure and rev limit on one of the most popular vehicles in the game is just...baffling, to me. The Sunburst can get up to around 220 hp N/A, which is pretty alright.

Ah, I didn't think about that, but that's probably another big reason.

Yeah, that seems to be the case for a lot of different things in the game (passenger loads, for instance). I think the Sunburst's tuning approach might become the norm going forward (and possibly being retrofitted to the other modern cars), as it'd reduce the number of parts to maintain while offering the same customization that people want (if not more).

 

Honestly, I prefer the approach they're taking to updating legacy cars, reducing the power output of some performance long blocks while setting up the UHD long blocks to actually add power rather than reducing it (usually between the stage 2 and stage 3 NA long block). If engine internal tuning is never going to get more detailed than choosing a long-block package, I think it's better to still have some differentiation between big-turbo and small-turbo/NA builds with the same engine, even if it does result in slightly more parts to maintain. Though I will say, I think they went a little too far when they did this to the classic muscle cars, and in the process semi-ruined the lore of my personal favorite 378 Moonhawk build. I also don't like how they fixed the SOHC (now OHV) Miramar problems you mentioned in the 0.19 discussion thread by simply removing performance long blocks from those engines.

 

Understandable. I suppose that I still have the Piccolina on my mind, because the devs didn't want to add a 900cc engine to that car (despite repeated requests to do so, and me proving that it wouldn't affect gameplay that much). If they didn't want to add one part to the Piccolina, I genuinely think that they're probably going to start cutting out Stage 3 turbo packages and just using the adjustable ECU for turbo tuning. That'd save them around 10 parts to maintain.

Yeah, base-model engines tend to not receive very many tuning parts (if any), and I kinda expected the devs to do that. At least you can still do slightly more with the Miramar engines (they have tuning ranges of ~10 hp) than with the Burnside 313 V8 (5 PS) or Moonhawk L6 (0 PS EDIT: 10 PS). The Nine's L4 engine has a whopping 16 PS tuning range (47 to 65) and two tuning parts, compared to the decent number of tuning parts and 260 PS tuning range of the flathead V8 (68 to 328).

I do understand why that's the case, though - fewer parts to maintain, especially considering not many people would bother using the lower-spec versions of these vehicles.

 

I mean, you sort of can tune the Moonhawk I6 by using the derby stacks (you have to remove the normal exhaust pipe separately to get the extra power) but it's still not that much. As for tuning lower-spec engines, it's mainly because I like to spin up about 4854643694691757 customized versions of everything, with lore for some of them, and the lack of variety really kills that quickly, especially since the wheel & tire selection gets thin quickly as well. For example, the Moonhawk I mentioned - it was supposed to be "fairly healthy, but still built on a budget with room left to grow" and for that purpose, a stage 2 4-barrel 378 putting out about 415-420HP with a redline somewhere over 6000RPM was pretty much perfect. Now the same engine needs either stage 2 + dual quads or stage 3 + 4-barrel just to not quite hit the same peak number (only around 400), with also a lower redline in the case of the S2+8bbl combo, which then messes with both the lore and its top speed (I was already using the 2.64:1 axle ratio in an attempt to squeeze some top end out of the previous combo).

And while we're on the subject of losing parts, the remade Covet and Sunburst both lost their carbon-fiber hoods (Sunburst only has painted CF now, Covet only has fiberglass), which is too bad because carbon fiber looks amazing in PBR. On the other hand, the remade Covet also only has carbon-fiber headlight scoops for some reason (I had a custom build of the previous version that used the painted one)

 

The Covet also lost the cut rear bumper with the round speed holes that made the Drag variant a bit more aerodynamic and faster on the dragstrip. They made it look cool and purposeful too! And the bumper itself didn't even last two years - it was introduced in the 0.21 Update of December 2020 and got axed with the 0.26 Covet remastering of September 2022.
It also had a carbonfiber tailgate, which also lasted the same. Shame, really...