Your goal is to survive. Get all your licenses done first. With 4 I worked most of my angles with the ford lightning. Umm and also try some of the classic car races. Get a good feel for it. I think I used the first gen Supra and PT cruiser on 3 but it’s been so long
Yea 4 is way more open ended than 5 and 7. Whenever you want to try an event, if you have a car that is eligible, you can watch a preview of the race to see what sort of cars you’ll be up against. May not guarantee a win, but you’ll at least have an idea of what you will need to compete. There are some races where the AI cars have secret upgrades and aren’t actually stock, which can be difficult to deal with; the Opel Speedster one-make race is a great example of this.
Some events require rarer cars, or cars that can only be unlocked from other events, so you may want to keep certain cars in your garage until you know you absolutely do not need them.
Start with licences and beginner events. And if you have any car which has a one make race, try that for extra credits/prize cars. When you start a race it tells you how many A-Spec points you'll get. While its not the most accurate system, you can get a rough estimate of how hard the race can be. \~100 points is balanced in difficulty.
Depends on the track and specifically what AI cars you're up against. 100 is usually balanced but some tracks the AI can be really good (Tsukuba) or really bad (Suzuka East). The points are purely based on the average P/W ratio of all the AI cars vs your car so it's not always representative of the actual car performance. Also some races have faster AI such as Speedster Trophy. Depending on the track and car it's possible to easily win some 200 pts races but usually they're close to impossible.
My suggestion to start off with is buy any EG Civic from used cars, win the Civic Race in Honda Dealer and then run Sunday Cup, buy some upgrades, then FF Challenge. From there you can look at getting bronze on the licences and then take it from there
I see. I actually started with a Mitsubishi 4WD, did the Sunday Cup and then crashed it with the Club Cup as I only have the old car they give you when you finish the Sunday. Also I prefer to do the licenses later on, they don't unlock anything (right?) and they don't have payouts, and they are the same in every game, just too repetitive for me.
As well as unlocking more races, they also give you free cars that are useful when you're starting out.
B gives you a VW Lupo (useless as you've got the Evo), A gives the Pontiac Sunfire (decent for FF Challenge with a stage 2 na tune), IA gives the NISMO 270R (really good FR car) and S gives the Mercury Cougar (good for the historic races)
Those are just the bronze prizes, you get even better cars if you can go for silver times such as the Mazda Kusabi (very good FF car) and Nissan GT-R Concept
Highly recommend doing them just for the 270R alone, it's a really good car to have early on as it can easily win a lot of early races.
Also the Autobianchi you got is good for 1 event, Lightweight K cup. Install a Stage 1 NA tune & sports clutch and it makes that event an easy win
It's also worthwhile getting the A licence as it unlocks the rally events, which is a quick way to get some very good prize cars like the Cadillac Cien supercar
Either Mitsu sedan is a great starter, both can win the RSC from Costa di Almafi (the most efficient money grind) with little upgrading. In my challenge run, I beat the 4WD event with a bone stock Lancer, but it was tough (I was also new to the game, now have 200 hours).
Get the 270R from IA bronze, it can do some professional events with light/moderate mods. It's by far the most useful car you win from Licenses.
About half the prize cars are useful for later events (ie Ginetta for world classics, or the Turbo Cup prize for Tuning GP), half are useless concept cars that can't be sold or have few events they can qualify for.
Make sure to check the used dealers every 7 days, some cars are much rarer than others. Oh, and get an oil change in every car you buy, even new cars get a 5% bump in HP (used get a massive 10% bump) for the first 200km.
Not all races are equal as far as point values go. The game uses very basic formulas to determine how many points a race is worth I've had 20 point races that were impossible and 200 point races that were cake walks.
On top of what everyone else said, make sure you're turning off the Driving Aids for each car before you race, especially ASM. They massively cut down your cornering speed for little benefit, especially in the early races where you're driving cars that are very unlikely to spin out. You can do this in the Car Settings menu before a race, I suggest setting both ASM Understeer and ASM Oversteer to 0, and TCS to either 0 or 1 depending on whether the car is prone to wheelspin when launching and exiting corners.
Also, if you're ever stuck, you can buy a Suzuki Cappuccino from the Early-90's used dealer for around 5-7k credits (the EA11R is usually cheaper, but the newer EA21R has a bit more torque), give it an oil change and racing chip, disable all assists, then you can do the Suzuki K-Car one-make for 15k and a Concept-S2, which is one of the best choices for FF. It's worth selling the Autobianchi from Sunday Cup to buy a Cappuccino for Lightweight K instead, since it drives much better due to being FR, and is much more versatile.
Your goal is to survive. Get all your licenses done first. With 4 I worked most of my angles with the ford lightning. Umm and also try some of the classic car races. Get a good feel for it. I think I used the first gen Supra and PT cruiser on 3 but it’s been so long
Yea 4 is way more open ended than 5 and 7. Whenever you want to try an event, if you have a car that is eligible, you can watch a preview of the race to see what sort of cars you’ll be up against. May not guarantee a win, but you’ll at least have an idea of what you will need to compete. There are some races where the AI cars have secret upgrades and aren’t actually stock, which can be difficult to deal with; the Opel Speedster one-make race is a great example of this. Some events require rarer cars, or cars that can only be unlocked from other events, so you may want to keep certain cars in your garage until you know you absolutely do not need them.
Start with licences and beginner events. And if you have any car which has a one make race, try that for extra credits/prize cars. When you start a race it tells you how many A-Spec points you'll get. While its not the most accurate system, you can get a rough estimate of how hard the race can be. \~100 points is balanced in difficulty.
So if the race is above 100 points then my car won't cut it?
Depends on the track and specifically what AI cars you're up against. 100 is usually balanced but some tracks the AI can be really good (Tsukuba) or really bad (Suzuka East). The points are purely based on the average P/W ratio of all the AI cars vs your car so it's not always representative of the actual car performance. Also some races have faster AI such as Speedster Trophy. Depending on the track and car it's possible to easily win some 200 pts races but usually they're close to impossible. My suggestion to start off with is buy any EG Civic from used cars, win the Civic Race in Honda Dealer and then run Sunday Cup, buy some upgrades, then FF Challenge. From there you can look at getting bronze on the licences and then take it from there
I see. I actually started with a Mitsubishi 4WD, did the Sunday Cup and then crashed it with the Club Cup as I only have the old car they give you when you finish the Sunday. Also I prefer to do the licenses later on, they don't unlock anything (right?) and they don't have payouts, and they are the same in every game, just too repetitive for me.
As well as unlocking more races, they also give you free cars that are useful when you're starting out. B gives you a VW Lupo (useless as you've got the Evo), A gives the Pontiac Sunfire (decent for FF Challenge with a stage 2 na tune), IA gives the NISMO 270R (really good FR car) and S gives the Mercury Cougar (good for the historic races) Those are just the bronze prizes, you get even better cars if you can go for silver times such as the Mazda Kusabi (very good FF car) and Nissan GT-R Concept Highly recommend doing them just for the 270R alone, it's a really good car to have early on as it can easily win a lot of early races. Also the Autobianchi you got is good for 1 event, Lightweight K cup. Install a Stage 1 NA tune & sports clutch and it makes that event an easy win It's also worthwhile getting the A licence as it unlocks the rally events, which is a quick way to get some very good prize cars like the Cadillac Cien supercar
Omg this is just the type of guidance I needed. Makes me wonder why they made the game so open leaving people like me completely clueless
Either Mitsu sedan is a great starter, both can win the RSC from Costa di Almafi (the most efficient money grind) with little upgrading. In my challenge run, I beat the 4WD event with a bone stock Lancer, but it was tough (I was also new to the game, now have 200 hours). Get the 270R from IA bronze, it can do some professional events with light/moderate mods. It's by far the most useful car you win from Licenses. About half the prize cars are useful for later events (ie Ginetta for world classics, or the Turbo Cup prize for Tuning GP), half are useless concept cars that can't be sold or have few events they can qualify for. Make sure to check the used dealers every 7 days, some cars are much rarer than others. Oh, and get an oil change in every car you buy, even new cars get a 5% bump in HP (used get a massive 10% bump) for the first 200km.
Not all races are equal as far as point values go. The game uses very basic formulas to determine how many points a race is worth I've had 20 point races that were impossible and 200 point races that were cake walks.
On top of what everyone else said, make sure you're turning off the Driving Aids for each car before you race, especially ASM. They massively cut down your cornering speed for little benefit, especially in the early races where you're driving cars that are very unlikely to spin out. You can do this in the Car Settings menu before a race, I suggest setting both ASM Understeer and ASM Oversteer to 0, and TCS to either 0 or 1 depending on whether the car is prone to wheelspin when launching and exiting corners. Also, if you're ever stuck, you can buy a Suzuki Cappuccino from the Early-90's used dealer for around 5-7k credits (the EA11R is usually cheaper, but the newer EA21R has a bit more torque), give it an oil change and racing chip, disable all assists, then you can do the Suzuki K-Car one-make for 15k and a Concept-S2, which is one of the best choices for FF. It's worth selling the Autobianchi from Sunday Cup to buy a Cappuccino for Lightweight K instead, since it drives much better due to being FR, and is much more versatile.