Notes on Maximising A-Spec Points

[GTsail]

I don't understand how the middle car (or third car) in this list has a "significantly improved A-spec points tally" than the forth car despite it having 5 less A-spec points than the forth car. If anything the middle car has a worser A-spec point tally than the forth car and can't be described as having a "significantly improved A-spec points tally".

Kool Mode D -
Famine's post is from 2005, when we were all still trying to figure out the game's A-spec point calculations. As such it was a partial and preliminary step to a better understanding of the A-spec point system, which is something that is still not fully understood.

Do you have a specific race where you are trying to maximize the points, or are you trying to calculate how the game awards A-spec points?

Respectfully,
GTsail

 

[Kool Mode D]

Kool Mode D -
Famine's post is from 2005, when we were all still trying to figure out the game's A-spec point calculations. As such it was a partial and preliminary step to a better understanding of the A-spec point system, which is something that is still not fully understood.

Do you have a specific race where you are trying to maximize the points, or are you trying to calculate how the game awards A-spec points?

Respectfully,
GTsail

No I'm just asking if anyone agrees with me about what Famnine's written in the part I quoted off his post is wrong.

 

[dylansan]

Um, no. The points he listed are the points earned in the race. The tally he is talking about is the actual number of points the car is "worth". Because it got less points than the fourth car, the game clearly calculates it to have better performance, therefore is worth more points. (take a look at this thread to see how each car is given an "A-Spec Tally" that can be used to determine the A-Spec points earned in the race. Note that they are not the same thing)

The main point he's making there is that the fourth car should have gotten lower points because it has a higher Power to Weight Ratio and is therefore more able to win the race, but the game awarded higher points for winning, meaning the game thought it would have less of a chance of winning than the third car.

Make sense? I feel I rambled on a bit here.

 

[Andy GT]

Can someone explain the A-Spec point bug on the Dodge Ram? (Buy that truck and go to a Family Cup +10 - you will get a 200 A-Spec point race even though the field is no match for you). I want to know why the CPU gives out a crap field.

 

[GTsail]

Can someone explain the A-Spec point bug on the Dodge Ram? (Buy that truck and go to a Family Cup +10 - you will get a 200 A-Spec point race even though the field is no match for you). I want to know why the CPU gives out a crap field.

This is really a question for Polyphony Digital and the game's developers (K.Yamauchi, et.al.).

The Dodge Ram 1500 is a "glitch" car because the game thinks that is should drive worse than it really does. In other words, the Dodge Ram actually performs much better in the game than what the game developers expected.

If you look at Wild Cobra's list, you can see that the game "values" the Dodge Ram at "671". This is a very low value and ranks it between the 1963 Honda S500 and the 1990 Fiat Panda Super (two cars that the Dodge can destroy on just about any track).

As to why the game has such a mis-match between how well the Dodge Ram drives in the game compared to how badly the game felt that the Ram should drive, we can only speculate.

My guess would be threefold:
1) the Dodge Ram's weight has an exaggerated detrimental impact on how the game value's a car.
2) the Dodge Ram gets better grip from whatever tires it uses, and therefore accelerates, corners and stops much better than it really should.
3) there was a "typo" of some sort when the game's developers where calculating its value, and it should really be worth something like "871".

IMO it just makes things interesting. No game is perfect, and this is just one of the mistakes that we see after so many players have spent so many hours trying various cars in the game.

Respectfully,
GTsail

 

[suarez7]

i can't stand people who think they are better than everyone else.

this person is great

 

[jbrennen]

Spent some time this Xmas vacation doing some A-spec point racing on the NTSC-J version of GT4.

I think I found a weird glitch here...



The glitch is that with 157 race wins, I should have at most 39,900 A-spec points. That's 8,500 for the missions, plus 157 races at 200 points each for 31,400 points, for a total of 39,900.

And yet the game is showing me with 1,000 extra A-spec points that I can't explain...

I don't have a recent backup of this game to compare against -- the last backup I made was at 63 wins (having finished the Special Conditions hall). So I don't know when the extra points showed up.

Anybody ever seen something similar? (If anybody's still around, of course. )

 

[BobK]

Wow, that's strange... the only ways to acquire A-Spec points is by winning a race, for a max of 200 pts each, and completing a Driving Mission at 250 pts each, unless I'm seriously forgetting something. So your arithmetic checks out -- you should have 39,900 A-Spec points. Yet it clearly shows 40,900... I'm baffled.

 

[jbrennen]

I think I figured it out. The NTSC-J version of the game must have some sort of bug that results in double-counting of A-spec points in the Opel Speedster One-Make Series.

I took my game backup file which had only the Special Conditions races completed, and put it on a different memory card. I then proceeded to win the Opel Speedster race at Infineon for 200 points, but my reported A-spec total jumped by 400 points.

It remains to be seen whether this is a simple double count of those points, or whether it's actually substituting the Opel Speedster points for a different series (one that I hadn't run yet). I have to assume this bug is known in Japan, but among the Japanese language A-spec blogs that I can find (and read with machine translation), I haven't seen it mentioned.

 

[BobK]

I think I figured it out. The NTSC-J version of the game must have some sort of bug that results in double-counting of A-spec points in the Opel Speedster One-Make Series.

I took my game backup file which had only the Special Conditions races completed, and put it on a different memory card. I then proceeded to win the Opel Speedster race at Infineon for 200 points, but my reported A-spec total jumped by 400 points.

It remains to be seen whether this is a simple double count of those points, or whether it's actually substituting the Opel Speedster points for a different series (one that I hadn't run yet). I have to assume this bug is known in Japan, but among the Japanese language A-spec blogs that I can find (and read with machine translation), I haven't seen it mentioned.

Interesting. Please keep us posted on what you find.