Career-beginners questions

I just started to try career mode and have a few questions for beginners (I have beginners settings with automatic pit limiter and so on, but manual gearbox):

1) At the beginning of career I had to enter my name (mandtory field) but I didn't enter names for driver 2 and 3, as I play alone (single-player) and didn't know what those fields mean. Now I sometimes see the name I entered, but also "Unknown driver" or something like that. Now I think I understand that there is a virtual driver-swap, so that I play 3 drivers in Career Mode instead of one player as it's usual in other games with career mode. Is it possible to enter names for driver 2 and 3 now during a career, or do I have to restart the whole career to be able to enter the missing names? Can't find any settings for my career-profile... I don't understand why the names for driver 2 and 3 are not mandatory fields too and can stay empty. Doesn't make sense and leads to my problem...

2) After a session (training, quali1...) I always have to wait for some time until I can proceed to the next session. There is also a message "Don't quit the session". Is this normal? Why do I have to wait, instead of being able to proceed to next session? Waste of my real life time? Or do I miss something?

3) After a few trainings in Monza I had my first real race against AI-opponents in Zolder. While there have been good explainations/tutorial at the very beginning for noobs (speech from Bortolotti, some tutorial-text...) I felt left alone when I had this first race in Zolder. No infos about racing mode, mandatory pitstops, when I should come in, if I should do something in the pits or just drive to the red square and so on... Is there something I must do (request pitstop, do something to change tires)? Or can I just drive to the red square during the pit-window, stop there, and slam the gas-pedal when the pit-time is over?

4) When I drove into the pits at Zolder with my Porsche in the Career-Mode I wanted to drive to the red square, but an opponent right in front of me drove to that square, so I had to wait behind him, until he was ready. First I thought it was a team-mate like in formula 1 where sometimes two drivers come at the same time to the pits (bad decision, bad timing) but then I realized that it was a Mercedes. Was this a bug or did I do something wrong?

5) I already decided to only play "short time"-mode for my career. Still the race was 20 minutes. Isn't there an even shorter time-mode. For example 10 minutes only? Can I change this somewhere? Will the races in Career mode get even longer (endurance races Spa...)? This would be a showstopper for me, as I don't always have time to play long sessions...

Sorry for my noob questions and my bad English.
Thank you in advance if someone would have the time to help me though...

 

1. You have understood correctly, there are virtual driver swaps during pit stops. That is why you enter 3 names. Sprint races utilise 2 drivers, endurance races utilise 3. Unfortunately, as far as I am aware you cannot go back and edit the names once you've gone past that page.

2. You must wait. This timer is to allow all the other cars to pass the finish line and is mandatory.

3. You must go to the pit box within the pit window. During a sprint race you change tyres and driver, in endurance races you also refuel at pit-stops. You can do additional pit stops if required in order to repair damage or change from dry to wet tyres if you need to, but pitting in the allocated windows is mandatory.

4. That is strange. I've never had another car occupying my box when I've gone in to pit. That may be a bug.

5. I honestly would recommend setting up a championship rather than a career as you can adjust race times and AI strength between races. Also, the races have an accumulative points table in championship mode. For some reason this is not implemented in career. That said, I would aim to do at least 20 minute races as anything less than this is very short indeed. You will get a much more rewarding experience from the game if you can consistently drive competently for longer periods of time.

Your English is good.

 

I have to agree on NO.2 they should provide option to skip the remaining 3 or so minutes.

3rd in carrier mode go into pitstop when asked or within pit stop window. You should plan you starting fuel,refuel,tyre pressures (close to 28psi is optimum for dry and 30psi for wet) and tyre sets.

4th one must be a bug because it never happed to me(yet).

5th I don't think you can lower the time in carrier mode but you can do it in custom single race or custom championship mode.

 

Don't spend too much time with career mode.
The race weekends are not linked together and there is NO progress at all.
If you want to drive SP do single races or a championship, career mode is really not a career mode, but just a bunch of race weekends and hotlapping sessions.
With the bonus points you can earn, you just cannot do anything. They are existing without any purpose and are complete useless.
So in conclusion there is no real reason to play career mode.

 

Point 4. has happened to me on many occasions, just as @Mike1304 mentioned.

It's very distracting and made me overshoot my pit box quite a few times. I've noticed that it's more likely to happen if you opt to pit as soon as the window opens because most of the AI take that option too.

An AI opponent will pit directly in my designated box and if they get there before I do, the illuminated stop sign is completely obscured from view. You end up having to drive extremely slowly through the offending ghost car and hope you can see the sign at the very last moment.

 

2) the reason for that waiting time is that the AI cars must finish their laps. In other games you don't have to wait for them to stop but you run the risk that their final times are unrealistic, they can be both faster than normal and slower. This is because being able to make a simulation in real time the game produces results much more consistent with reality than if it has to run a simulation in the time of transition from one session to another, in which case the simulation becomes much coarser.
So according to me that time spent waiting is well spent.

4) In the pit the other cars are immaterial, just try to get over it.
In reality even in the Blancpain some cars share the slot, but in the game this should still not happen and this leads to having very close slots to make more cars stay, this could have made you look like another car occupied your slot but instead it was only near.

5) In single weekend mode there is the possibility to make saves that work reasonably well, this allowed me to do in about a week a 3-hour race (with attached qualifications). I think this option also exists in the career, but I have not tried so I do not know. The flaw is that, as I know, the saves can be done only during the sessions and not between sessions, I solved saving at the end of the stints.

I hope you understand, I translated with Google translate

 

Agreed and Championship mode isn't worth playing either unless you only do Sprint races. Endurance races are broken for anything more than 2 hours (1 pitstop).

 

When I have this issue, the AI car isn't just close. It is exactly in my pit box position. Once I've stopped, both my car and the ghosted AI car are overlapping perfectly, to the point where our steering wheels line up.

It's quite hard to ignore but not enough to stop me playing

 

Thank you all for your help!
I’m a bit sad that it seems, the career mode didn’t get that much love from Kunos.
I didn’t expect a career mode like in F1 2019 from a small team like Kunos, but I would really have enjoyed a career mode with good tutorials and motivating progress.

The first few minutes with the video-intro from Bortolotti and the first few tutorial messages in Monza let me think it would go on this way and I was a bit disappointed when this kind of “guidance” abruptly stopped, especially in the exciting and critical phase of the very first race-weekend.

Individual championships are surely good for sim racing veterans who already know what to do, how to plan pitstops, how to make setups...

The career mode would have been a good chance to guide newbies slowly through the race mechanics and learn them everything step by step in a kind of tutorial.
But it is what it is...

Can I get somewhere else infos when/how to plan and do pitstops in order to get new tires and so on.
Best for me would be (as a beginner) if everything was made by the computer itself, so that I just had to drive in and out (like real drivers do). Everything else (tactics and so on) is the job of my racing team, race engineers...

 

Ah, I forgot another question. At the very beginning of the career I had to drive in a Lamborghini Super Trofeo without any rear mirror (no mirror, no monitor). Is this normal? Does this make sense when you can’t see cars behind you?

 

The mid race save game has worked well so far for me in the career endurance events (3hrs). I generally save the lap after coming out of my pit stop on the start/finish straight. The longer races are where the game really comes alive in my opinion.

Curious as to what issues you've encountered?

 

Here's a detailed description of what happens:

https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/endurance-pit-stop-fuel-bug.59898/#post-1089389

 

Mirror is not active in hotlap mode.
So this is normal.

 

I thon you already had answers to your question.

I share the big disapointment of many people regarding the career mode.

I really would like to follow an interesting career path, but this is not possible within ACC.
The career mod is currently just a draft without goals.

I began myself a career, but i am very sceptical for the less.
I have been put in 40 minutes race at zolder, and i had a tough but fantastic middle pack challenge at zolder.
Now, at brands hatch, i should finish about last bécasse the leaders are way to quick for me. Laptime in low 1:23, myself in low 1:25.

Who really can race in low 1:23 at brands hatch ? For sure some people, but not the average player.
And as i can not choose AI speed and agressivity, it will be a tough race.

I dont know if i will keep on racing with the career.

 

I abandoned it after Zolder.
If you plan to continue career, don't worry about getting last, because there are no championship points and so results do not count.
So you just continue with next location, results from the previous locations are gone forever and are not taken for anything important.

 

Same experience here. but next races AI was at my level (even easier). I dont know if its a bug. Maybe AI difficulty is adaptative in career mode.

I agree that carreer mode is not complet as it is. But it's a good way to learn all tracks and difference between sprint and endurance race.

 

Thanks - Monza was the first of the three hour career races I completed. Luckily I didn't run into that issue, my only problem was not manually changing drivers at the stop (in all the sprint career races up to that point it had been automatic).

 

Ah! Here it is. It also happens to me, after coming second to Zolder (pro level ...) with the 991 for me there is no way to get, I don't say a 23, but not even a 24 low at Brands Hatch, while the AI is a rocket.

 

I just made the second qualification at brands hatch.
Pole 1 1:22.9 for a AI lamborghini.

I am 14th ; 1:25.4 with the AMG.

I should be a tough race I think

 

Below the real record. there is something wrong with AI