I used to snatch up any cheap race cars, but the market is so glutted with them now. Getting 400K for a million plus car is pretty good given there's 100 of them on the AH at any given moment. That's why I love the buy out. Get it gone quick and turn some coin.
The AH freezes up for two reasons that I know of... There may be others, but these are two that are fairly consistent across the board.
One is loading the list, it only loads so many at a time. Narrowing searches helps a bit. This was part of the same fix that made only the top 1800 designs and decals pop in the listings, that massive effort to control bandwidth and try to make everything run smoother. It's also tied in with the reason you don't always see custom liveries when racing other people.
It's the kind of things you do as a company when adding servers to handle the load isn't a wanted option and sending useless emails is your top priority...
Speaking of useless email...
The second reason the AH hangs up is the goram mail trying to constantly send you outbid notices.
I REALLY wish there was a way to turn that off. It is such a drain on the system it can add another 10-30 seconds to your lag times when the AH is really busy.
I don't ever read them, so for me it's a total waste of T10's precious bandwidth. You'd think they'd like it if you asked them to stop having to do that for you and use that server time for something else...
But alas, they don't, at least I haven't found a way yet to stop the mail.
Maybe if I make less "postage"..?
IF you're the sort that marks their territory with 20 or 30 cars, and then just works within that group in your "my bids" screen, whenever waiting for your bids screen to pop a refresh after a bid, one thing you can do is to hit the left trigger to go to the mail and then hit B to pop right back to the bids screen. Don't worry about any of the mail, don't read it or anything, just pop in and out.
99 times out of a 100 the bids screen will pop back up right away. It'll still take a few seconds to actually let you do anything, but you can use that time to take in the info on the top four or five cars so you can go to the bottom of the list where the one's are you really need to bid on are now hidden.
It's not the best way... If you let it refresh it will place you in the right spot and save you time scrolling down.
But I've lost cars waiting on the thing. I don't lose cars when I pop out and pop in and force it to put the screen up. The few seconds wait till I can scroll is hardly the same as waiting for the screen to refresh all the data on it's own. Your connection speed and how busy the AH is usually has something to do with this. Sometimes it's more effective than others. I use it as a last resort, or when the screen hasn't refreshed by the count of 3 for a couple consecutive bids. In other words, if it's consistently hanging, I use it. If it only hangs once in awhile I wait it out.
Why they do the cars that need bids backwards is beyond me, but it would REALLY be nice to have the list be ordered by most urgent need of attention first, not last. That would make the trigger jump 100% more effective...
But that's probably too simple...
At least I know if I do it I have a much better chance of keeping track of those last 5-10 cars I'm frantically trying to keep track of.
Normally it's not something I worry about when shopping for bargains.
But when bidding on Unicorns or special one offs or real masterpieces, it can save your proverbial bidding life when there's a real last minute cat fight going on for a car.
Happy hunting everyone.
See you on the battle field.
And if you'd be so kind, save me a table scrap or a crumb once in awhile.
Doc
(edit...)
You are so dead on about the drag rivals too BTW. I always do a stock car for a few days, take it as far as I can. Then I do a mid tuned car or a car not on the top of the leader board just to see if I can make something else work and get some tuning practice to stay sharp for a week or so. I only unleash the real car 1/2 way in or later, when there's a solid 1,000 plus 25-100K names on the list to make money on. I cleared 4 million in the drags with a good car in an afternoon with the Hockenheim 4wd drags and a decent Bora setup. That was a good day that was.
It is a big sad though when I hit the proverbial wall and can advance no further, or I hit the wrong pedal and gaffe my way past 300 cars. LOL. I do so love the drags. Easiest money there is by far, especially the 1/4 mile. When you get into the 25/50/100 grand races, you can run one in about a minute to 2 minutes including load times until you reach the plateau. I can usually fine tune another few spots out of the car, but it becomes more time than the $$ are worth to me. I could go buy a tune, but I just prefer to play around and make it as best I can on my own if I can.
With a super good tune, you can make monster cash in a very short period of time, even if you have to spend 50K on a tune. I hate buying tunes, so I make my own way as far as I can. I can usually be quite OK with ending up in the low 1000's. By then I've made more than enough. Not so good when I can only crack the 5000's, but still worth the time for the $$$ you can make.
The only time I bought a tune was for the flying mile. I had no affinity with the car, and it cost me an arm and a leg to get it set up. I had level 4 by the end and netted a nice million or so after paying back all the car, parts and the tune costs. Could have been more, but I wasn't as Johnny Deppe Savvy back then about keeping the other car close and went up the ladder too quick.
That tip alone should be heeded by anyone wanting to play milk man in the drag world. Get to the top too quick and you lose thousands of potential race matches. As far as rivals go, drags are THE race of choice for me by far.
Odd that the other favorite of mine is the Radical on the N Ring... It takes way too long, the payouts are hardly worth it. But it's a whale of a good drive, and the money paid for 2 laps and the XP awarded are comparatively huge even if you miss your rival bounty. Just the fun of that car on that track, getting paid is just a bonus and anytime you make the bounty it's gravy... ?B)
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