Difference between revisions of "Cart Racing"

Revision as of 07:37, 13 August 2012

These races are run every half hour down Suicide Hill (except at reset, ex. 12:00 AM HBW time). Carts and parts can be purchased using Tokens instead of cash. When you first start out, you will have 1,000 tokens with which to buy a cart and some parts if you wish. Only a cart is required to start racing.

There are thousands of different cart/engine/wheels/shell combinations. The general rule of thumb is that the more expensive carts and parts will make you go down the hill faster. The initial 1,000 tokens that you have are not enough to purchase a cart that will win first place, but they are enough to get you started until you have enough built up to buy your next upgrade.

There are three ways to gather more tokens: racing, sponsors, and the token market.

Racing

You have to sign up for each race individually and are only allowed to compete in six races per reset. Every time you compete in a race, you will win tokens no matter what place you finish. Even in class 1, finishing 10th nets tokens. After the race has been run, you will see a message in your Living Area telling you what place you came in, how many tokens you won, and skill gained.

Since you earn tokens every time you race, you should sign up for all of your allowed races every reset. This will put you closer to being able to afford that brand new part.

Don't get discouraged if you never place above 9th or 10th place. In no time at all you will have good enough parts to be in the middle of the pack and earn tokens twice as quickly

For a listing of the class, click on the Winnings Table on the right.

Sponsors

Sponsorship is the next way that you can earn tokens. Each reset your sponsor will give you the agreed upon sum to help you out in your quest to be the greatest. In class 1, only the 7/11 will sponsor you. They will give you 50 tokens per reset. New sponsors are not available until you go to the higher classes. The great thing about sponsors is that they never take away their funding if you under perform.

Token Market

The last way to collect more tokens is to buy them on SGHM. The token market is where your fellow hobos come to buy and sell tokens. Tokens in HoboWars go for much lower prices then points do. Tokens can currently be had for around $20 to $25 each. This is a great way to quickly collect enough tokens to buy your next cart as long as you have some spare cash laying around.

Later in the game when you have more tokens than you know what to do with, or you are consistently coming in the top of your class you may want to sell those tokens to buy some new weapons or armor. The token market is the place to go to turn those tokens into cash.

Even with the cheapest cart, if you use all of your races a day (12) and come in last in every race (125 tokens), you will be making 1500 tokens a day when you add in the amount that your sponsor gives you. If you sold these tokens on the market at $20 each, you would be making an extra $30,000 a day. Not bad for level 15.

Now What?

Now that the tokens are flowing like water, you may want to buy upgrades for your cart. These parts are a good investment for two reasons. First, every part you buy should help you to place higher in your races, which will earn you more tokens. Second, you can sell your old parts for 50% of their original cost to Ben's Parts, or you try to get more by selling parts on the SGHM. You can also sell your old carts for 75% of their original cost, although not on the SGHM. When buying carts and parts try and save up for the very best one that you can get because chances are that you will be using it for a long while.

There are three types of parts that you can buy: Motors (AC), Wheels (Handling), and Shells (Speed). Each part may not only effect the stat in parenthesis.

Parts

Each part has a main area in which it helps your cart. Motors primarily help AC, Wheels primarily help handling, and shells primarily help speed. I say "primarily" because every part other than the cheapest ones also has an effect on the other attributes of your cart. It can either help or hurt those other areas. This means that as you buy the more expensive parts, there is no clear-cut best part. It all depends on which area you want to improve your cart. The high-end parts all involve trade-offs such as the shells shown below.

How do you decide what version of the same part is the best one for your cart? Well, you need to know what each of the part attributes do for your cart.

Attributes

The racing in HoboWars does not quite happen how you would expect. Each cart has a minimum speed at which it runs the course. This is the AC for your cart. The speed is then the maximum speed for your cart. During the race your speed will be somewhere in between these two. How close you stay to your maximum speed depends on the hardness of the course, the handling of your cart, and your skill as a driver. The higher both your handling and your skill are, the larger percentage of the race you will be moving at your maximum speed.

In the early classes, the hardness of the course is relatively low, so handling and skill do not play such a large role in the outcome of the race. As you progress through the classes and the courses get harder, driving skill and handling become much more important. Handling can be bought, but skill must be earned.

Tips For Finishing Higher In The Standings

There are a couple of ways in which you can increase your chances of finishing towards the top of the list. The most popular way of increasing your standings is to take advantage of the limits of the races. Each race can only have 10 hobos in it at a time. If the number of hobos signed up to race in your class is not a multiple of 10, then there will be one race that does not have ten racers. In these races it is impossible to come in 10th. If you find yourself in one of these races, you are guaranteed to win more tokens. Since you are put into races in the order that you sign up, signing up in the last minute before the race is set to run will mean that your chance of being in one of these smaller races increases.

There are three problems with doing things this way. The biggest problem is that a lot of hobos know about this trick and use it. This makes it hard to be in a small race, because there is an influx of hobos signing up just before the deadline. If you are caught in this situation, you are likely to be in a full race, and it is more likely that the hobos that you are racing against will be experienced and have fast carts.

The second problem with signing up for a race just before the deadline is that there is a chance that you won't make it into a race. While there is a maximum number of hobos that can be in a race, there is also a minimum number. This minimum number is 5 hobos. If there are not enough hobos to race, then they are automatically signed up for the next race.

This is the reason why sometimes you will not race when you thought that you had already signed up. There just weren't enough hobos signed up to run one more race. This also happens a lot in the very top classes where there are few hobos that are even eligible to race.

If you race at times that are not the peak playing hours, then you have a better chance of missing the rush to sign up before the deadline.

Another problem with last second sign ups was recently added to the game. To prevent people from signing up to multiple races at once by exploiting a glitch, Andy made the sign ups for races end one minute early (??:59:00, ??:29:00) and made the sign ups not start until three minutes after the races were held (??:03:00, ??:33:00).

The second way to improve your place in the standings is to be selective about which races you sign up for. You will notice that when you go to sign up the length and hardness of the course is listed. Knowing what your cart is good at, you can choose to only compete in the races that you will do well in. If your cart has lots of handling and a lower top speed, then go for the courses that have a higher hardness. If your top speed and AC are your strong points, then enter in the long and easy courses.

In the first class, the races are very easy. In these races, speed and AC are much more important then skill and handling. As an example, in the following table, cart 1 always beat cart 2 even though cart two has a higher skill, AC and handling. The speed is what matters.

Cart	AC	Speed	Handling	Skill
Cart 1	19	66	15	08
Cart 2	23	63	19	26

Note that this is only true for the first class. As the classes increase, so does the difficulty of the courses.

Cart Settings

After going to Suicide Hill and then clicking your garage you will see a newly added link. That link is Cart Settings. If you click that link you will see that you can modify your cart parts along with your cart.

Currently it will only allow you to raise one stat once, if you click the [+] link second time it will reset the stats back to default settings.

Options for modifying your Cart Parts

The following is the results of clicking the [+] beside Acceleration.

• Acceleration: +2 [+]
• Speed: -3 [+]
• Handling: -1 [+]

The following is the results of clicking the [+] beside Speed.

• Acceleration: -1 [+]
• Speed: +6 [+]
• Handling: -1 [+]

The following is the results of clicking the [+] beside the Handling.

• Acceleration: -1 [+]
• Speed: -3 [+]
• Handling: +2 [+]

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The formula is different for modifying the Cart. Currently it will only allow you to raise one stat up to two times, if you click the [+] link third time it will reset the stats back to default settings.

Options for modifying your Cart

The following is the results of clicking the [+] beside Acceleration.

Clicking Once

• Acceleration: +2 [+]
• Speed: -3 [+]
• Handling: -1 [+]

Clicking Twice

• Acceleration: +4 [+]
• Speed: -6 [+]
• Handling: -2 [+]

The following is the results of clicking the [+] beside Speed.

Clicking Once

• Acceleration: -1 [+]
• Speed: +6 [+]
• Handling: -1 [+]

Clicking Twice

• Acceleration: -2 [+]
• Speed: +12 [+]
• Handling: -2 [+]

The following is the result from clicking the [+] beside Handling.

Clicking Once

• Acceleration: -1 [+]
• Speed: -3 [+]
• Handling: +2 [+]

Clicking Twice

• Acceleration: -2 [+]
• Speed: -6 [+]
• Handling: +4 [+]

Racing Classes

There are different classes for you to race in. Everyone starts in the first class. Higher classes are much more difficult and will require a better cart and more racing skill. A new addition to the game has made it so in the first 2 classes if you have 4 times the amount of class points it takes to move up you are automatically forced into a higher class.

The required class points needed to advance to the next class are as follows:

-Class 1 - 100

-Class 2 - 150

-Class 3 - 250

-Class 4 - 400

-Class 5 - 600

-Class 6 - 850

-Class 7 - 1150

-Class 8 - 1500

-Class 9 - 1900

-Class 10 - 2350

-Class 11 - 2840

-Class 12 - 3400

Winnings Table

Here is the complete table showing the amount of tokens that you receive for each finishing place: (Note: classes are across the top and places are along the side)

Place	Class
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
1	500	850	1200	1550	1900	2250	2600	2950	3300	3650	4000	4350	4700	5050	5400
2	450	750	1050	1350	1650	1950	2250	2550	2850	3150	3450	3750	4050	4350	4650
3	400	660	920	1180	1440	1700	1960	2220	2480	2740	3000	3260	3520	3780	4040
4	350	580	810	1040	1270	1500	1730	1960	2190	2420	2650	2880	3190	3420	3650
5	300	500	700	900	1100	1300	1500	1700	1900	2100	2300	2500	2700	2900	3100
6	250	425	600	775	950	1125	1300	1475	1650	1825	2000	2175	2350	2525	2700
7	200	350	500	650	800	950	1100	1250	1400	1550	1700	1850	2000	2150	2300
8	175	305	435	565	695	825	955	1085	1215	1345	1475	1615	1745	1775	1905
9	150	265	380	495	610	725	840	955	1070	1185	1300	1415	1530	1645	1760
10	125	225	325	425	525	625	725	825	925	1025	1125	1225	1325	1425	1525

Race Reports

A new update to the game is the ability to purchase A Detailed Race Report. A Detailed race report will be saved when you order a report, it will be placed in race view. Only one person per race has to order it. To see a report that has been purchased for 2,500 tokens Click the "I want to look at the CSCR database" link.

To Purchase a report be sure to click the "Yes" bubble beside where it asks if you want to purchase it. Then sign up for the race. After the race is over you can view the report.

A Detailed Race Report

At the top you will see the race information including ID, Class, Hardness, and Length. Just under that is the racers in order with their Hobo ID's and Race times.

Below that is the race details. The easiest way to explain this is basically each race is broken up into 'X' amount of checkpoints. Each checkpoint is numbered 1-50+.

You will see Hobo ID's across the page, under that you see a decimal number and a percent.

The decimal number is the time the hobo's cart to reach the checkpoint.

The % is the percent of maximum speed that the cart is going. The higher the AC the higher that percent will be.

The current leader's data is displayed in Red.

Northern Fence

You may enter once you reach class 11. For more information, click here