Scott Woodwiss’ Guide to BATracer (for Sidepodcast)

Starting Off
Our game will be a private game using the F1 2008 carset. To join the private game, someone first has to create it and find out the game number. This is then given to all players taking part, or a link is provided to the game joining screen.
To join a private game using the 5 digit game number instead of the link, go to GAME, then Private Games, and type the number in the box under Join Private Game and hit Submit.

Joining The Game
Once in the game, you will need to go through a sequence of pages in order to complete the joining process. First off, you’ll be on the Create a New Team page. Here is where you pick which team you want to play/drive with by choosing one from the list of available teams or joining a team that’s already been picked but has a space free. If a team has already been filled it will be in the Completed Teams part of the page. Let’s use Force India as an example.

· To join Force India as a new team, scroll down until you find Force India and click the team name. To join Force India when someone has already picked them but needs one more person to finish the team, simply click Join Team.

Next you’ll be in the Engines section. To progress, click the name of the engine.

Tyre suppliers is next, so click Bridgestone in the brackets.

Home race – To select a home race, click the date of that race to advance. Your home race can either be the place you live or simply one of your favourite circuits. Either way, you stand a better chance of succeeding at your home race than at any other in the championship. But be warned, you can only pick one.

Nationality – Whichever nationality you picked is what will appear at this stage of joining the game. Check that it’s the correct flag and click Default Flag to proceed.

Driver Traits/Characteristics – This is what can make one player’s game different to another’s. What ever you pick as your two driver traits will affect different aspects of the gameplay. Popular ones in BATracer are:
· Speed Demon – This gives you a speed boost and makes you generally faster.
· Pole Sitter King – This improves your chances of getting pole position. This combined with Speed Demon is one of the most popular combos.
· Thinker – This helps you get a 100% spot on car setup quicker.
· Charisma – Same as above but not quite as effective, although it does also allow you to put your pit stop sliders to 100.
· Aggressive – This lets you put your aggression sliders to 100 without the risk of increasing your chances of driver errors.
· Mechanical Sympathy – This one lets you put your Mech. Sympathy slider to 100 and eradicates the threat of mechanical failures. (I personally love this one!)

At the end of the day, it’s up to you what 2 traits you want to pick, but if you want to take the easy way out, pick two of the above. Any of them in a combination will work nicely.

Final Step – The final part of joining is to simply input your account password and the game password in the appropriate boxes and hitting Submit. That’s it – you’re in the game!

What To Do From Here
Once you’re in, the first thing to do is to start doing some Practice runs. To do this, go to Garage, then Car Setup. Here, you’ll be taken to a page with a lot of slider bars. Here is where you make adjustments to the setup of your car depending on the feedback given. But where to start on the setup? That’s where the Engineer’s Advice comes in.

Engineer’s Advice
This should always be the starting point in finding the perfect setup for a race weekend. Click Engineer’s Advice on the Car Setup page and you’ll be taken to the advice page. Look at the Engineer’s Report and note what it says to do with the setup as a base. If you’re confused on how to work it out, use this method to work out where each set of sliders should be places to start off with:

Low/Soft = Set slider to 25
Medium = Set slider to 50
High/Stiff = Set slider to 75

Brake bias – This one is a little different. If it says Loose, then move the Brake Bias slider to 60. If it says Safe, move it to 40. Medium, put it to 50.

Once you’ve got your initial setup, pick a set of Soft tyres (tyre choices will be explained in a bit) and choose where you want to put the Experimentation slider. Be warned, if you don’t have Charisma or Thinker, only put it at 100 at your own risk. Without either trait, the higher your slider is, the greater risk there is of either making a driver error, being over enthusiastic and losing a run or crashing and losing several runs. A tip from me is to try it at 75. Yes it might seem high, but 9 times out of 10 it will give you substantial feedback without any kind of error. If you’re not that brave, then go for 60.

Also, if you set it too low, it will take longer for you to find the spot on value for each setup parameter. So while higher values might be risky, they can work in your favour by helping you get to the Spot on setup quicker.

Once all runs are done, save your current setup, and post a message in the Team Talk area to let your teammate know you’ve finished and they can load your setup to help find more spot on values. To do this, go to GAME, then Team Talk, write your message and click Submit.

HINT – When moving the sliders, initially move them by 8, then 4 and then 2 and 1. By doing this you can find the Spot on values quicker than normal.
e.g. Brake Bias slider is at 60, you do a run and the estimate says 60-100. Move it up to 68 and do a run. Now the estimate says 68-76. Move it to 72, and do another run. It now says 72-76. Move it up 2 to 74 and do a run. It now says 74-75. Move it to 75 and do a run. It should now say “Spot On - 75” but if not, do a couple more runs if you can to get it there. If need be after moving it by 4, do so again until you get to the stage where you only need to move it by 2 and then 1.

Driving Style
Here is where it can get complicated, but can help greatly towards your chances of winning. How you place them and what driver traits you have can affect how you perform in the race. Note that any values are merely recommendations. How you place your sliders is up to you.

Overall Speed/Pace – This means how fast you will drive the car. I would say put it no higher than 85 regardless of Speed Demon in the dry and 10 less for the wet. If you have Wet Weather Warrior, you should be able to put the wet Pace slider to 100.

Aggression – If you have Aggressive, then put both sliders to 100. If not, then have them between 50 and 60.

Use of Tyres – The only tyre you should really use in a race is the hard tyre, so you can put this very high. I would recommend between 85-100 if you use hard and less than that if you plan to run softs or are only stopping once or so or running long stints.

Mechanical Sympathy – Whack it up to 100 if you have the Mech. Symapthy trait. If not, keep it around 50-60.

Pit Stop Speed vs Mistakes – Charisma will let you put both at 100. If you don’t have it, put both again between 50 and 65.

Race start – If you have Spatial Awareness, this can be at 100. If not, put it no higher than 65.

Qualifying Strategy
This is quite simple. Pick your pace for your runs and choose a set of unused tyres, preferably softs. In qualifying, your pace slider can be higher than it would be in the race, so for each run you should be able to put them between 70-90. The 2008 carset uses the knockout qualifying like in real life, so be sure to set up your runs for all 3 parts of qualifying in case you make it that far.

Warmup
Once Qualifying’s done, repeat the process of finding the setup for qualifying. :P

Race Strategy
This is where you choose how you run your race and can make or break your chances of doing well.

Start tyre – this is the tyre you will start the race. You will want a “green”, unused set of tyres to start with.

Pitstops – Where it can be won or lost. My regular strategy is to run the race in 3 equal parts on the same type of tyre, since the rule requiring both compounds to be used in the race does not apply here. My recommendation – go with the hard compound for the whole race.

Tyre Use in Changing Conditions – This is where you can choose when you use which kind of tyre depending on the conditions and also when you decide to switch to it depending on how the weather is. Keep the dry tyre sliders at 0, the Intermediates slider between 15-20 and the Wet Weather Tyre slider between 35-40 or 45. Also remember to uncheck the Soft tyres if you do not wish to use them. Otherwise you will find yourself changing to the soft tyres in your first stop instead of continuing on the hard compound all race.

Changing Tyres – This determines how soon you will switch to the appropriate type of tyre as the conditions change. I would keep it around 30 to be safe.

Team Co-Operation – Leave it ticked. I always do. No point in doing an Alonso-Hamilton and fighting with your teammate.

Target Track Position – This is where you indicate to the game where you want to finish. P1 is obviously the main target but anywhere in the points and the podium places is logical.

Main Rival – If there’s someone you really want to beat either in the championship or for the heck of it, choose them from this dropdown menu. You will push harder when behind them during the race.

Safety Car Reaction and Pit Stop Reschedule – Have these between 8 and 10. You can go sooner or later but these decide up to how many laps you want it to be until your pitstop before you decide to pit if a Safety Car is called. PSR is in the event of a problem and you need to pit, whether you reschedule the stop or not.

This all seems complicated, I know, but after the first couple of races you should get the hang of it. If not, just ask me in the comments for any advice.

Weather and Tyres
Weather plays a big part in this game too. If for example, it’s Bone Dry for Practice but Heavy Rain for Qualifying, you will need to change your setup accordingly. This can be very complicated if you don’t have Kool Tools (a kind of upgrade for your account which costs £10, but it is worth it primarily because some of the features do help make the gameplay a bit easier) and the Wet/Dry setup tool. How I’ve worked it out for changing the setup for weather is this. If you have the W/D setup tool, you can make the setup more wet or dry to a maximum value of 50. How I work with it is this – adjust it to a certain value depending on the type of conditions as such (the positive value is when making it wetter and negative for making it dryer from that value to Bone Dry):

Bone dry – 0
Greasy – 5/-5
Moist – 10/-10
Drizzle – 15/-15
Light Rain – 20/-20
Rain – 23/-23
Wet + Slippery – 27/-27
Steady Rain – 30/-30
Heavy Rain – 35/-35
Treacherous Rain + Spray – 40/-40
Monsoon – 45/-45
Storm – 50/-50

Without KT, it is very difficult. I will make a request on how to change the setup for different conditions without KT on the BATracer forums so that we can all use it.

Here is a quite difficult to understand but very useful way to convert your setup accordingly without KT (although I won't have so much trouble converting it ;) )
Wet weather setup conversion guide

Tyres
Practice - Use a single set of soft tyres throughout the entire session.
Qualifying – Use the other 2 sets, in any combination you like (if that makes any sense). If you're in one of the fast cars such as the McLaren, Ferrari, BMW or Renault for example, you can get away with using a hard set of tyres in the first knockout session.
Warmup – Use any of your 3 soft sets you want.
Race – Always go with hard tyres for the entire race. Untick the Use This Tyre option for softs on the Race Strategy page.

That should be it! The game will advance every 24 hours so that means you have a full day to get your runs done and strategy set for either qualifying or the race. Any questions regarding anything in this guide or anything which isn’t in this guide, just let me know in the comments and I’ll help. See you in the game!