Polaris, Storm Chaser, and EFN management

[TwistedSailor]

As the name of the thread indicates, I'm working on two new coasters: Polaris the giga coaster, and Storm Chaser, an intamin blitz.

My main issue is EFN management. When I'm working on Polaris, the EFN is fine until I make the drop. As it stands while i'm working on it, the EFN is normal, until I make the drop and smoothing it out. It's a normal B&M drop at 81 degrees, but the second I try to make anything else such as an airtime hill or a banked turn or anything and smooth it out, Nausea and fear are still high. Any advice with that?

The problem with storm chaser is the same thing. I try to make the 138 degree drop and that actually has the EFN in the normal ranges, and the vertical/lateral g's are just fine. Again, can't make anything else without EFN going through the roof. Either it will teeter on just right or too high.

Any help? My biggest gripe is that I want to make storm chaser like Maverick at Cedar Point. If any of you have ever ridden it, you know it pulls 4 or so G's, and I want Storm Chaser to behave similarly. How can I make it pull those Gs without driving EFN through the roof. I'll have to make it brief, but do you guys have any advice for managing EFN when using the 4m smoothing??

 

[Bullethead]

Well, 1st thing to keep in mind is that the final EFN rating of the coaster is the average of the whole track. The faster a coaster is moving, the higher the numbers but the less time it spends at those numbers. And vice versa. So it's OK to be too high in the various elements because this ends up being balanced out by the brake run and similar slow areas.

The 2nd thing to keep in mind is that a "green" overall fear rating (4.0 or more) is actually a bad thing if you actually have peeps in your park. 4.0 fear is too scary for essentially all families, about 1/2 of adults, and even about 1/4 of teens. As a result, coasters with "green" fear have a potential customer base of only about 1/3 of all peeps in the park, so don't do much business. If you're playing for money, it takes a pretty large park to support even 1 such ride. The sweet spot for fear is about 3.5, which gives you about 1/2 the families and nearly all the adults and teens. This is especially important if the coaster is one of the few that allows kids on it at all---you definitely want to keep their fear no higher than 3.5.

With that all said, you then have to know where the ratings come from. As best I can tell, its like this:

Excitement: Speed, vertical Gs between -1 and +4), and height above ground. Being upside down doesn't seem to matter. You get about 1.0 excitement per 10mph or 0.1 for every 1mph. You get 0.1 excitement for every 1m above the ground surface under the track at that point. And you get lots of excitement at -1 and +4 vertical Gs (-1 is much more exciting than 0), with lesser amounts in between. But beyond those limits, you get much less excitement and a lot of fear instead.

Fear: Speed, vertical Gs < -1 or > +4, lateral Gs < -2 or > +2, axial Gs < -1 or > +1, height above ground, having high nausea on the ride, and headchoppers (but not footchoppers). The fear for speed and altitude are on about 1/2 the scale as excitement for the same factors.

Nausea: Mostly comes from excessive lateral Gs. Fear and nausea work together in that if they both reach too much, they pull down the excitement that part of the track would otherwise have.

So in general, the key to getting good overall EFNs is to manage your Gs. Especially the lateral Gs. If you're getting high fear in a turn, it's usually because of lateral Gs > |2|. Either slow down before you get there, increase the turn radius, and/or increase banking. If you're getting excessive fear when pulling out of a dive, it's probably because you're exceeding +4 Gs. Slow down before the pull-out or increase the radius of the pullout so the transition isn't so abrupt.

Some time ago, Brothgar made a series of videos of experiments on how the EFN numbers work. Here are some of the most relevant:

The effect of headchoppers: https://youtu.be/8sDLBOp2bdA

How negative vertical Gs affect excitement (airtime): https://youtu.be/KOkWTeqYBnc
NOTE: The hill profile that gives the highest excitement in-game is not used in real life.

Various G forces and their effects: https://youtu.be/H76bI_8oOco