some setup help for newcomers, etc. [KS2]

Martin Hussey wrote:netKar will always have a small number of players because its learning curve is akin to slamming face first into awall, and there is generally not a great deal of help for new players.
I'm not going to go into why (i think) this happens because its not the thread and nobody cares anyway

You're right, after so many years I got finally a bit sick too of this speechless kind of manner NKPro drivers keeping their setups so secretly (no offence to all the guys ! ).
So here are some tipps and hints to set up a well balanced car that might help 'slower' drivers.., because I think they really aren't so much slower really, they just use imperfect setups.. :

We first simply should share our basic setups to newcomers or people, who have not the knowledge which points in the car setup are improtant and 'have' to look like.
I was driving years with an imperfect setup -especially with KS2- until Mika supplied me a basic setup and out of this one I noticed that spring stiffness should be always set in a way that the
HZ-values (car-body stiffness, it's shown at the bottom of the setup-screen) in front and rear are equal for best balance (always set front value 20 N/m less than the rear for KS2 then you get eqal HZ !),
that was the main thing that I did always wrong in my past setup.
Also set the km/h gaps between the gears s.th. like 35 km/h (difference gear 1 to 2), 32 km/h (difference gear 2 to 3) , 30 km/h (difference gear 3 to 4), 28 km/h (difference gear 4 to 5),
22 km/h (difference gear 5 to 6) to get a better balanced acceleration-power out of the gear box. Differencial just needs to stay not too high (coast) and (power) even less / quite half of that.., of course you will
need good suspension settings and also for the preload and rod (+-xx mm preload at rear is fine and (a bit more than) half of that value for the front +-xx mm preload is fine.., use/try even less values for
a quali-setup: -I found out I can then brake a little later for quali-lap, but for a longrun it is not stable/useable enough), then just set the rod in a way that you get most possilble less ride-high for the car
(less ride-high = more downfoce / in real also called 'ground-effect') without scarping on the ground too much -don't set the rear too much higher than the front.. to keep good balance, just 5-10 mm higher
at rear (for me).. -. For the wheels don't try too high camber values at front and just very less at rear / only real looking ones, like quite in reality... . I used -0.9 deg. to - 1.1 deg. at rear in the past, which
was much too high (it would result in less grip for this setup..). Wheel's toe need only a very low - value at the front and a three times higher + value (stabilizes rear) for the rear wheels with this setup.
Finally the aero (by adjusting difference between front and rear wing, etc.) needs to be set like in a way that this aero-calculator in the 'setup'-tab is something around "3.0% (rear)" for this kind of setup, that's
mainly everything you should follow (edit: regarding brake balance a value around 60.000-62.000 % is good for this setup, but I used quite the same values still before with my old style).

edit no2: I now -just today during my practice for the singapore event- discovered that the packers indeed play a big role also: I set them up in a simple way before, for the front axis that way I used before was already good, but I could much improve today as I experimented with the rear value in the "( xxx )". I won't reveal the way (values) I found out, ..do some testing and realise the car balance, you might recognize that it can quite much improve the car-handling and stability of the car's rear also.. .

Maybe some 'slower' drivers could try that things for themselfs out -just maintain all this described way of settings and you'll notice that you'll be faster-, I'm sure they will discover to be much more confident
with the car, because it will be probably much more balanced than with their previous setups.
Personally I gained 2-4 sec. ! each lap compared to my old setup-style [I'm using the new setup since the last KS2 Hungary event], by finally setting up the car balance in that described way.

I think it can be just an advantage for the races itself to have maybe some more quick guys on track (or isn't it.. ?), if they might discover some better balance and speed out of this tipps. I thought about
guys like PC Structures, who is a good driver I guess and could learn s.th. out of this to not struggle with his setups that very much anymore.

edit: "Unfortunately" I now removed some specfic values written before in my original posting* to not causing Mika to be angry about that (he conatct me after reading this help ), because much settings were
his own setup-work, he spend much testing to figure out.. to find the best way for him with KS2 (*like diff. setting, preload, camber and toe, athough I still used the same toe values before in my own setups as
in his setup, but to not reveal his whole kind of setup in an explicit and direct way, I now removed those values).

thanks a lot for the tips, could you upload a setup for the 1.3final version though?
either to the ranks page or just posted here.

thanks in advance

Thanks for posting!!

most of this stuff has been rendered useless due to the new netkar release whereby pretty much every aspect of the car has changed - tyre model, suspension settings, aero, differential settings and the impact of bump / rebound. although most of the information is correct, some of it is now completely off balance due to the new physics models. unfortunately we all have to start again and setting the car up in the way described above will be completely out of balance

Well, once I made a good setup for me for Target using this little app: Race2Play Setup Tool

It used to be only for Race2Play members, but now it is free. Following the tips and doing *several* laps to test changes, led me to a very good and consistent setup. Then v1.3 final came and I need to do it all over again. Too bad that the tips at the first post aren't valid anymore - was about to test them! Maybe someone could repost some tips like these once they discover it again?

Thanks, this thread is good for those that doesn't have much time to fiddle with the sim, but like to drive. I wouldn't mind to share my base setups, if I have good ones.

There's always BoNI's setup guide a load of us helped translate: http://www.mediafire.com/?sxouesr357ono6o (it's a tad complicated though ).

Great topic Waechter, very well put it and thanks for the tips.

MikaRaymond wrote:most of this stuff has been rendered useless due to the new netkar release whereby pretty much every aspect of the car has changed - tyre model, suspension settings, aero, differential settings and the impact of bump / rebound. although most of the information is correct, some of it is now completely off balance due to the new physics models. unfortunately we all have to start again and setting the car up in the way described above will be completely out of balance

For me that kind of setup seem still to work, at Monza I was not miles far away from aliens it went out even a little bit better than @ Spa -just 1 sec. away from aliens best lap in practise, wow, personal record -.
Of course the suspension values and its display/look of the bars chagned in final, you have now to look at the values itself in more detail.
Downforce of KS2 changed in final in a way that you might get more topspeed advantage with lower wings now, so I guess lower wings will now be used more often and not mainly just high values as in the betas.
I don't think the balance of the car itself changed to s.th. totally different in final, so the car can be balanced still in the same logical way as before. Of course you can't stick to the diff. values for example at every track, it needs some very little adjustment and testing at each track for the personal matter, same is for suspension (personal matter) and spring-stiffness as usual all the time before.

edit: I understood what you were trying to achieve with this comment , I'm not that stupid at all , but let's not be too much childish and share some basics, I think you'll stay the fastest guy anyway, even if some might know your setup.. .
I also now removed all that specific values, I think now the descrption should be ok for you, why not motivate drivers to test around a bit, maybe they figure out such best values
on thier own (like I did with my old kind of setup as well regarding best diff., camber, toe and aero (wing) settings, which has been just too stiff in front spring compared to the much too less rear spring stiffness, so
I simply was far away from an equal Hz car-stiffness.. and as a conclusion of this the camber, diff. and aero had to be set in an imperfect way too to achieve a driveable + not understeering balance with that wrong Hz setup).

please can this thread be deleted.

you can put 2 drivers with one setup and they won't necessary do a lap with the same laptime, even in a formula X car, just an example, JP. Montoya set up his formula 1 car in a different way Ralf did and they could not drive each others car as fast as their own car.
and in terms of a sim it also depends on the wheel and pedals, ffb preferences, so it's ridiculous not to share setups since it will not make you faster if you can't adapt to it.
For LFS there a website with lots of WR holder setups to download, and not every one is setting up a record after downloading it. it takes time and practice to adapt to a car, specially in netkar pro. i've tried setups from other faster than me guys and cannot drive better or faster with their setup.
Of course this has been discussed over the years and over the different sims

That's why I think that a good *base* setup is better than an alien setup. An alien setup will fit only for pilots that have the same driving style of the one that made the setup, and even then, it will require practice to adapt.

Tips *like* the ones on the first post are usefull for people trying to figure out a quick "rule of thumb" for a specific car, and then evolve from there.

Regarding *specifically* to the tips on the first post, if they were made by Mika, I agree that they should be removed, as requested by him. But let the thread live, maybe other pilots can share their findings, and this can result in a "quick tips" for every car in NkPro. I think it would be nice.

i agre with you Leonardo!!
MaiDireSetup 1.1.2 give you same info,so i dont know what is a secret in those numbers.
Waechter thx for info im sure lots of people need this guide.
and like Fernando siad Race2Play Setup Tool is a cool tool to setup base of you car
chears

the maidire box gives us some decent base setups for every car, i´m just waiting (as much of us are) for the newer version to come out, i know Boni is working on it, so we have to be pacient since a lot has changed in the new version in terms of suspension values, etc.
There are of course dedicated guys that even adjust camber for each wheel for a specific track in order to get the most of the tire, which is of course the best option to tune/setup the car. but for us mortals some general/symetric options are just fine to keep the car on the pavement and try to do some decent races without being too slow

Fernando Zart wrote:That's why I think that a good *base* setup is better than an alien setup. An alien setup will fit only for pilots that have the same driving style of the one that made the setup, and even then, it will require practice to adapt.

You and Leonard are right -it has to fit to your persinal matter of driving-style-, but I think since this sim is also more like 'a game' in the end, it is maybe only a matter of practice to get used to some alien-setups, (but you are right, some may always stay undriveable, I noticed in the past very much.., but maybe I did just not try to drive them long enouigh to get used of, don't know).
But you'll be still slower than aliens because they are just better , also I think they finetune the setup even more sometimes, adjusting the gears to fit to the corners on track better for example.., which I never did
so far and will not do I think (would take too much parctice-time / not motivated enough), I just drive thorugh corners with the best gear that's available at the moment when I setup the gears just in the described
way.

I tried also mainly to give some advice to try out less camber (and toe) setting, because in the past I saw so many setups, even fast ones with -2.6 deg camber in front, -2.1 deg. camber in rear for example and
those strange (unreal) stuff, which I never understood why they set up this in such a way, maybe it keeps the car more easy to drive with certain setups (when it is not balanced well, like with my past setup's crap
Hz values), but the disadvantage is that you lose too much tire-grip (and reaction) with those high values.
It depends on the car-type as well of course I have to add.., in real F1 they use probably more negative camber sometimes, because the corner speed and g-force is much higher than in FF cars
for example. When they then drive through a fast corner the rubber-surface of the tires that are on the corner-outside move to a quite middle position, because of the forces dragging on the rubber/tire, and so they have more grip in fast corners.. .