- 443
- GrahamTurismo
So I come on the boards tonight and I have a PM from a new member with no posts. He compliments my 80 golds and asks how I do it. I started with a simple response with a couple tips and ended up with a long response and an even longer write-up. So instead of helping him through the PM, I figured I would just post it here and link him to this thread. So here we go:
Second; practice, practice, practice. The best thing I've found for licenses and missions is to just keep doing it over and over and over. You'll eventually get it if you do it enough. For most of the licenses the ghost is the most helpful thing you can have, because it's the fastest you have gone. Just give it a good run and then keep trying to top your ghost. At first it's a trial and error thing, as you are learning the course and how it feels and learning the car and how it handles.
Do different things each time; try going really fast through a certain turn, then try going really slow... find out at which speed the car is at maximum grip. Then try taking a really tight turn, then a wide one. Try taking an early apex, and then a really late apex. Play with every corner as if it were a new toy, and then once you get sick of that new toy, that means you've learned all the ins and outs of that corner. It no longer holds any mystery to you, you have mastered that corner. After a few good runs you'll start to see where you're faster/slower and where improvements can be made by watching your ghost. If your ghost gets ahead of you on certain turns you'll know that you're not going as fast as you can, if after a certain turn you see him in your rear view then you know that you can run that corner quicker than you have been.
Take for example the long dipping left-hander leading into the tunnel at Trial Mountain. This corner can make or break a good lap because it leads onto a long straight. Take it to slow and you won't get much speed for the straight, take it too fast and you'll likely scrub the outer wall and still go slow on the straight. Once you find the perfect speed and perfect turn in points, perfect braking zone and the perfect spot to get back on the throttle (for your given car) you can get great exit speed and have much quicker lap times by reaching higher speeds on that back straight.
It's all about persistance with this game, strive to know the little nuances of every course and every detailed aspect of the car(s) you are driving and you can achieve all golds and whatever else you want.
Now on to the write-up of my most recent experience:
I am in the Pro hall and I was going to try the Tuning Car Grand Prix, but I didn't have a decent car to run in it. My GT-R Concept has a P/W of about 3.4, which is not good enough for that series. My Gran Turismo Skyline has a P/W of about 2.8 which is too powerful (I wanted an even amount of competition cause I like the challenge). So I determined that the cars running in that series were around 3.0.
I continued on in search of a car better suited to running this competition because I didn't want to have to dump a bunch of money into a car to get it up to par. Alas, I went on to the NA series and won an NSX-R Concept, this ended up being way to heavy and didn't have near the P/W I was going to need. So the search was still on, I went through the Race of Turbo Sports and won a D1GP FC RX-7. I go to the garage and check it out; 3.0, perfect! The Sports tires were too hard so I opted to get R2s for more grip.
So I took on the TCGP; there I was pitted against the likes of a Mine's Evo VI, a Nismo Skyline R-Tune R34, two S2000s (Spoon, and Opera), and an baby blue '86 RUF BTR (bluebird?). Anyway, the pack is fairly easily taken care of except that damn BTR. It gave me a run for my money every race. The S2000s were even creeping up on the points chart, beating the BTR in a couple races. After a few tries at the first race I decided that I wanted to tweak some settings... the FC already has sport suspension, so I messed around. I turned the front springs down from 11.0 to 10.5, I also brought the car down to 125mm f/r, then I tweaked the camber to 1.4 front and 0.7 rear. Leaving everything else I then went and bumped the front downforce to 11 to reduce oversteer, after all, I'm racing... not drifting.
First race: Apricot Hill Reverse
Ugh! I love this course, but reverse sucks! It took me many tries to get those esses mastered going the other direction, I'd always go too fast into the first one because it's blind. However once I got it down it was a thrilling race. I passed the Spoon into the first bend, and then shot past the Evo with late braking into the chicane. Coming out of the hairpin the Opera and I passed the Skyline and I chased him for the remainder of the lap. Waiting until the chicane again I passed him with late braking and he stayed on my ass the entire time I chased down the RUF. Finally on the third lap, at the last S turn before the J turn leading to the finish... the RUF must have lost his tire grip, and he understeered onto the grass. Cutting back on and swerving right in front of me he continued past, and off into the sand trap of the J turn he went. I won with the Opera about half a second behind me.
Second race: Fuji Speedway 90's
I remember this one was pretty easy. I took 4th by then end of the straight, 3rd after the first hairpin and then 2nd at the chicane. Coming around the last big bend I got a better exit speed and was ahead of the BTR before the end of the first lap. Since that was such cake I figured I should have a bit more fun than just slaughtering him, so I let off and tailed him for the lap. I passed him again at the same spot on the second lap, and let off to chase him for the third. I passed him again at the end for the win.
Third race: Tokyo R246
I don't remember much special about this race other than the fact that again, the pack was easy to pass but I didn't get past the BTR until the final straight on the last lap for a small margin of victory.
Fourth race: El Capitan reverse
I don't remember too much about this one either. I do remember that half way through the first lap I was in second and that I passed the BTR in the 3rd lap, coming off the final U-turn with better exit speed and overtaking him on the long straight but not winning by much more than a nose. I think my margin was less than a quarter of a second.
Fifth race: Tsukuba Circuit
After many tries at this the BTR was killing me every time. I could get 2nd pretty easy, but EVERY checkpoint his distance kept increasing. After a while I thought that maybe some suspension re-tweaking would help. So I tweaked it a bit: I bumped the shocks from 6 to 7 (both), and I also increased the camber again... f 2.2 / r 1.0. I went to practice and ran a couple laps and did really awesome. "Okay," I thought, "I'm ready for this now." So I go back out to the pre-race screen and... what's this? I'm at pole position?! sweet! I knew that some races in GT4 had qualifying but a lot of them didn't. I just never thought that "Practice" was qualifying now. I always thought that there would be an option that said "Qualifying" when I finally got to that point. So I'm a goober and didn't realize that I could qualify for any of these races. Oh well, that made it more fun and challenging. So anyhow, I started at pole and just drove. The suspension tweaks worked much better for the tighter course and I constantly pulled away and never saw anyone else. I put more and more distance at every checkpoint and I won with something like an 8 second margin.
10k x 5 races = 50,k + 20k bonus = $70,000 and a free Option Stream Z. Life is good.
First thing you should do if you haven't already is go get a Driving Force Pro wheel. best 150 video game accessory I have ever bought. At first you will suck with it and want to switch back to the controller, but if you're determined enough you'll get used to it. I'm so in-tune with the DFP now that I simply suck with a controller.peter74
Second; practice, practice, practice. The best thing I've found for licenses and missions is to just keep doing it over and over and over. You'll eventually get it if you do it enough. For most of the licenses the ghost is the most helpful thing you can have, because it's the fastest you have gone. Just give it a good run and then keep trying to top your ghost. At first it's a trial and error thing, as you are learning the course and how it feels and learning the car and how it handles.
Do different things each time; try going really fast through a certain turn, then try going really slow... find out at which speed the car is at maximum grip. Then try taking a really tight turn, then a wide one. Try taking an early apex, and then a really late apex. Play with every corner as if it were a new toy, and then once you get sick of that new toy, that means you've learned all the ins and outs of that corner. It no longer holds any mystery to you, you have mastered that corner. After a few good runs you'll start to see where you're faster/slower and where improvements can be made by watching your ghost. If your ghost gets ahead of you on certain turns you'll know that you're not going as fast as you can, if after a certain turn you see him in your rear view then you know that you can run that corner quicker than you have been.
Take for example the long dipping left-hander leading into the tunnel at Trial Mountain. This corner can make or break a good lap because it leads onto a long straight. Take it to slow and you won't get much speed for the straight, take it too fast and you'll likely scrub the outer wall and still go slow on the straight. Once you find the perfect speed and perfect turn in points, perfect braking zone and the perfect spot to get back on the throttle (for your given car) you can get great exit speed and have much quicker lap times by reaching higher speeds on that back straight.
It's all about persistance with this game, strive to know the little nuances of every course and every detailed aspect of the car(s) you are driving and you can achieve all golds and whatever else you want.
Now on to the write-up of my most recent experience:
I am in the Pro hall and I was going to try the Tuning Car Grand Prix, but I didn't have a decent car to run in it. My GT-R Concept has a P/W of about 3.4, which is not good enough for that series. My Gran Turismo Skyline has a P/W of about 2.8 which is too powerful (I wanted an even amount of competition cause I like the challenge). So I determined that the cars running in that series were around 3.0.
I continued on in search of a car better suited to running this competition because I didn't want to have to dump a bunch of money into a car to get it up to par. Alas, I went on to the NA series and won an NSX-R Concept, this ended up being way to heavy and didn't have near the P/W I was going to need. So the search was still on, I went through the Race of Turbo Sports and won a D1GP FC RX-7. I go to the garage and check it out; 3.0, perfect! The Sports tires were too hard so I opted to get R2s for more grip.
So I took on the TCGP; there I was pitted against the likes of a Mine's Evo VI, a Nismo Skyline R-Tune R34, two S2000s (Spoon, and Opera), and an baby blue '86 RUF BTR (bluebird?). Anyway, the pack is fairly easily taken care of except that damn BTR. It gave me a run for my money every race. The S2000s were even creeping up on the points chart, beating the BTR in a couple races. After a few tries at the first race I decided that I wanted to tweak some settings... the FC already has sport suspension, so I messed around. I turned the front springs down from 11.0 to 10.5, I also brought the car down to 125mm f/r, then I tweaked the camber to 1.4 front and 0.7 rear. Leaving everything else I then went and bumped the front downforce to 11 to reduce oversteer, after all, I'm racing... not drifting.
First race: Apricot Hill Reverse
Ugh! I love this course, but reverse sucks! It took me many tries to get those esses mastered going the other direction, I'd always go too fast into the first one because it's blind. However once I got it down it was a thrilling race. I passed the Spoon into the first bend, and then shot past the Evo with late braking into the chicane. Coming out of the hairpin the Opera and I passed the Skyline and I chased him for the remainder of the lap. Waiting until the chicane again I passed him with late braking and he stayed on my ass the entire time I chased down the RUF. Finally on the third lap, at the last S turn before the J turn leading to the finish... the RUF must have lost his tire grip, and he understeered onto the grass. Cutting back on and swerving right in front of me he continued past, and off into the sand trap of the J turn he went. I won with the Opera about half a second behind me.
Second race: Fuji Speedway 90's
I remember this one was pretty easy. I took 4th by then end of the straight, 3rd after the first hairpin and then 2nd at the chicane. Coming around the last big bend I got a better exit speed and was ahead of the BTR before the end of the first lap. Since that was such cake I figured I should have a bit more fun than just slaughtering him, so I let off and tailed him for the lap. I passed him again at the same spot on the second lap, and let off to chase him for the third. I passed him again at the end for the win.
Third race: Tokyo R246
I don't remember much special about this race other than the fact that again, the pack was easy to pass but I didn't get past the BTR until the final straight on the last lap for a small margin of victory.
Fourth race: El Capitan reverse
I don't remember too much about this one either. I do remember that half way through the first lap I was in second and that I passed the BTR in the 3rd lap, coming off the final U-turn with better exit speed and overtaking him on the long straight but not winning by much more than a nose. I think my margin was less than a quarter of a second.
Fifth race: Tsukuba Circuit
After many tries at this the BTR was killing me every time. I could get 2nd pretty easy, but EVERY checkpoint his distance kept increasing. After a while I thought that maybe some suspension re-tweaking would help. So I tweaked it a bit: I bumped the shocks from 6 to 7 (both), and I also increased the camber again... f 2.2 / r 1.0. I went to practice and ran a couple laps and did really awesome. "Okay," I thought, "I'm ready for this now." So I go back out to the pre-race screen and... what's this? I'm at pole position?! sweet! I knew that some races in GT4 had qualifying but a lot of them didn't. I just never thought that "Practice" was qualifying now. I always thought that there would be an option that said "Qualifying" when I finally got to that point. So I'm a goober and didn't realize that I could qualify for any of these races. Oh well, that made it more fun and challenging. So anyhow, I started at pole and just drove. The suspension tweaks worked much better for the tighter course and I constantly pulled away and never saw anyone else. I put more and more distance at every checkpoint and I won with something like an 8 second margin.
10k x 5 races = 50,k + 20k bonus = $70,000 and a free Option Stream Z. Life is good.
100+ views and only 1 reply? 
did I not do a good write-up?
👍 but people are to lazy to post 
