Apologies for another long post. Hope it's worthwhile...
@ TomMK
That's useful Tom, thanks. That'll be making it's way into my cmagic4.ini file shortly. One thing that I THINK might be outdated though is desc51 and desc52. René's Braking Range Minimum and Braking Range Maximum seems (from my limited testing) to give more insight into what's going on. I'd be interested in your experiences with these values so far because you seem more disciplined in your testing than I. My observations so far are explained below.
@RHill
According to my few tests a BrakingRangeMin (desc51 aka CC aggressiveness) value of -10000 will make a car brake earlier into corners, but other cars will eventually run into it and push it off. The effect of a value of -500 or -1000 is barely noticeable but more realistic. I assign the value only to one or two back markers.
A higher BrakingRangeMax (desc52) value will make a car brake later into corners. In my tests I found that a value of up to 3000 works seems to work quite well, often leading to better CC lap times, whereas, say, 10000 seemed to lead to more offs. I've been assigning one or two drivers a value of about 2500 and another pair a value of about 1000, At that level the effect is subtle (but I'm sure it's there) and it seems to add to the game slightly in that you find the modded cars will sometimes corner faster than expected leading to some interesting overtaking-on-the-outside behaviour that you wouldn't see otherwise. I use this for one or two real-world drivers that I deem to be quick but a bit reckless!
The thing to remember though is that many circuits already have a desc51 value that's near the maximum (65536), so since I've been experimenting with this I've started to reduce the defaults in all tracks to 62526 to leave room for the increased BRMax value. It's time consuming because it can have knock on effects with things like CC grip etc, but according to my tests so far, it's probably worth it once it's done. (It's all very subjective though, so I could be wrong!).
The original request that gave rise to all this was to enhance the degree to which individual drivers could be assigned a more or less aggressive driving style. As I said, it is a bit of work to set it all up, but it seems to work quite well, ie a car with a BRMax enhanced by 2500 will often do better than expected for part (or even all of the race), but he'll just as often blow his gains by overdoing it at some point. For me, BRMin is less useful and more hidden but probably has some value too.
It's early days, but used sparingly BRMax can definitely bring a touch more excitement into a race and used in conjunction with the latest wizardry from René (Error Chance) I believe GP4 may well have been taken to a new level.
I did a couple of short races yesterday using BRMax for a couple of drivers and revised EC values for two others and one of the races in particular was definitely one of the most exciting I've ever participated in - and in both races I could see the tailored 'personalities' of the CC drivers shining through without anything seeming too forced, ie unrealistic.
For what it's worth, I'm working on a set of spreadsheets which will make the creation of performance files and certain sections of the magic data files much easier, based directly on the data from all the real-world F1 races and qualifying sessions ever driven but in a flexible way that allows the user to influence the behaviour and style of particular drivers to reflect certain subjective parameters. The project was getting quite refined at one point but things have moved on so fast recently I have no choice but to go back to square one to incorporate all the new options. Hopefully it'll be much better for it. Don't hold your breath though as it'll be a while.
A final thought - with all these advances, ie the amazing tracks that just seem to get better and better, René's outstanding developments and all the fantastic mods, aren't we squarely into GP5 territory by now? Certainly it's undeniable that today's GP4 is streets ahead of the out of the box GP4 experience isn't it? Copyright issues notwithstanding I'd like to see someone put together a default installation of GP4 (GP4.5?), which could be used as the basis for all mods; bringing together all the advances and ultimately taking the game back to more of a plug and play experience for the average user. I know that's what several of the mod creators aim to do already but inevitably this results in inconsistencies between mods which detract from that goal.
I feel like I've been studying the game constantly for over two years now and while I've really enjoyed learning how to create the ideal environment for a given year I'm increasingly conscious that it's just way too time-consuming for most people and I think it would be good if we could find a way to simplify things for the non-fanatic! I sense you might feel that way too TomMk.