Elise '000 beats 350Z. Glitch or what?

[redrick]

If you reset your game, go to Beginner's Hall- Spider and Roadster, enter the race, quit, pull out and enter again, the (new 2nd) lineup will include

Nissan 350Z Roadster (Z33) '03
Toyota MR2 GT-S '97
Opel Speedster '00
Fiat Barchetta Giovane Due '00
Lotus Elise '00

Unless whatever you enter (A-spec or B-spec) is seriously in the running, the Elise will win! And it starts in 5th place! Against much better cars!

If you buy a brand-new Elise, don't do a thing to it and perform the above scenario (including reset) having B-spec Bob drive, the game's Elise will win. Bob's will come in sixth.

If you watch the replay focusing on the other cars, you'll see that nothing disastrous occurs to the 350Z or the Toyota or the other cars. The Elise just powers past everyone like it's got a #3 turbo installed.

Anyone have a theory as to what happens here?

 

[Austin343]

Yes. AI cars are modified in nearly a majority of the races in GT Mode. This particular Elise has 198HP according to the race preview, and at only 700-some kg, the Elise becomes the fastest AI by far.

Edit: Going through jdw's list, in 1/3 of all the events in GT Mode (47 out of 141, although I may have miscounted somewhere), at least some of the AI cars have power upgrades, and that figure is quite distorted by the 33 Special Conditions events and the numerous stock-AI-car manufacturer events. Well over half, perhaps 2/3, of the events that use road cars in the beginner, professional, and extreme halls, contain modified AI. Crazy, huh?

 

[redrick]

Thank you for the info. It explains a lot. I must have a careful look at the Preview for the New York race in the MR Challenge I was doing last night. It too had some cars going faster than seemed possible.

The super-Elise does seem to have been taken into consideration re the A-spec points given for the race. I was able to add enough weight to my BMW Z4 to make it a 60-pointer, which is the rule I've set up for myself. It made for an interesting race, knowing all the time that the real competition was the #5 car right in front of me rather than the cars up in the lead throughout.

 

[redrick]

...This particular Elise has 198HP according to the race preview...

Only, how do you do that? When I look and Preview it only gives HP and tire information for one car. I can cycle through the other cars but it only gives their names. And no matter how many times I stop and do Preview again, the Elise never comes up as that one car.

 

[Austin343]

Well, I know that from the enormous sheet of data compiled by jdw, but he found out by doing the preview over and over again. If you don't reset the console each time you enter and exit the preview, it will give you a different lineup each time, and the Elise will eventually be the sixth place car. It can take an awfully long time to get the desired car in the spot where you can look at its tires and power, but cycle through enough times, and sooner or later it wil appear.

 

[redrick]

...from the enormous sheet of data compiled by jdw...

That sounds like a monumental achievement! Is it accessible?

 

[Austin343]

Sort of. It's not publicly available, although a kind member sent it to me, but on the specific condition that I don't pass it on to anyone else, since it's not his work. It's actually written as a guide to getting A-Spec points, but happens to include tons of information about opponent cars that's helpful for anyone.

Edit: Name removed at moderator's request. Sorry!

 

[redrick]

Thanks. I will try. It would be perfect for what I do, which is spend much time trying to find a car for a each series of races that is challenging but doable. I try to make them all 60-points but as has been pointed out by many, A-spec points alone are not always a good indication. I'm still pretty new and not a very good driver yet (how I sweated IA-15 just to get the bronze!) and won't get any better by just choosing a car that will win by 5 seconds or more even after spending time on the grass.

So I look up the specs for each car in the opposing lineup. But now I find some have secrets lurking under the hood. This game gets deeper and more fascinating by the hour.

 

[SportWagon]

Well, I know that from the enormous sheet of data compiled by jdw, but he found out by doing the preview over and over again. If you don't reset the console each time you enter and exit the preview, it will give you a different lineup each time, and the Elise will eventually be the sixth place car. It can take an awfully long time to get the desired car in the spot where you can look at its tires and power, but cycle through enough times, and sooner or later it wil appear.

The lineups actually appear to be chosen from a big long list of individual cars, broken into sets of five or six depending upon whether you are previewing or racing. If you enter-and-exit a Special Condition Race, it will actually bump the "list pointer" for other events two cars. That way a different car will end up sixth, somewhat under your control. Actually, I'm not certain how many different races I have verified this precise behaviour for; there's a chance that two car "bump" depends on the race in question.

A gotcha is that when the list is used by the game to generate an actual lineup, duplicates are avoided by making an alternate selection somehow. So when you shift, some cars will change to avoid duplicates, and other cars will change because they are now no longer duplicates. Another gotcha is that the featured "sixth place" car in a preview is actually the first from the list, with the next five being started in positions 1 to 5.

I attempt to describe this here...
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showpost.php?p=2839063
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=77601

But, in any case, I'd guess someone trying to compile stats on all entrants might make use of such a trick to more easily access other AI competitors (see them as sixth in previews).