I'm not posting in the "Suggestions" section because I'm not sure whether it's a good idea or not. ( And I'm sure that it's not the right time for the devs to take a look at this. )

In some long races it's really annoying if you time out and lose everything. It may be much better if your finished laps are saved on the server even if the connection is lost. When you reconnect, you start from pit but your laps are still there, and on average you lose only about 0.5 lap, not the whole race. ( If you timed out on lap 165, when you get back you still have 164 legal laps recorded. You start from pit but you're still in lap 165, not lap 1. )

I know this is feasible with InSim. But if it's built inside the sim itself we can lock things like setup, fuel, tyre temp/wear and damage. When you get back into the server everything is still like it was.

What about damage, fuel, "timing-out" during a spin.

Timing out is timing out.

It's an interesting idea, but I can think of many bad ways how that system could be exploited and used the wrong way

If it's feature of LFS itself, damage and fuel can be recorded. You won't have your car repaired or fuel tank refulled if you cut the connection on purpose.


But if someone cut the link because his/her car is crashing into a wall, there's nothing the server can do. The connection will be dead immedietely, and no damage will be recorded. Any way to prevent people from doing this ?

Actually, going back to pit and have your car repaired by the pit crew may not cost you more time than this kind of cheat because LFS pit workers are really good at repairing. It's another story if you're going to be a red-white barrier rocket, though.

I agree on this idea =) and like it very much. Let's wait to hear the voice

Quote from Keling :

I'm not posting in the "Suggestions" section because I'm not sure whether it's a good idea or not. ( And I'm sure that it's not the right time for the devs to take a look at this. )

In some long races it's really annoying if you time out and lose everything. It may be much better if your finished laps are saved on the server even if the connection is lost. When you reconnect, you start from pit but your laps are still there, and on average you lose only about 0.5 lap, not the whole race. ( If you timed out on lap 165, when you get back you still have 164 legal laps recorded. You start from pit but you're still in lap 165, not lap 1. )

I know this is feasible with InSim. But if it's built inside the sim itself we can lock things like setup, fuel, tyre temp/wear and damage. When you get back into the server everything is still like it was.

The huge majority of endurance leagues are using trackers(this, for instance), in order to count laps for each car, no matter how many times it times-out. They're used in order to establish the official classification, and LFS' results are just ignored.

But yea, your suggestion makes some sence I guess. Having this kind of stuff inside of LFS would make it simpler to everyone.

So why not implement some limitations to discourage the misuse of this feature. Something like a time/lap penalty or a limited number of time-out recoveries (absolute, per time, per number of laps...).

On the other hand, you are playing an online sim, so having a good connection is essential for you. I have a shitty one so I don't play online untill I change my ISP. Compare to F1: some teams simply have better resources, sponsors, dealers, manufacturers on their side, so they are more likely to win. If you have a cheap and low quality connection, it's your problem. Tough, but fair.

On the other other hand, people have suggested in the past that random failures might be a good idea, like your engine giving up on you in the last lap (which surely must be a lot of fun) or tyres popping randomly, like as if you drove over a peace of metal or something. Take this random timing out as such.

Quote from GreyBull [CHA] :

The huge majority of endurance leagues are using trackers(this, for instance), in order to count laps for each car, no matter how many times it times-out. They're used in order to establish the official classification, and LFS' results are just ignored.

But yea, your suggestion makes some sence I guess. Having this kind of stuff inside of LFS would make it simpler to everyone.

Thanks for the link. I didn't know that there's a system like this.

Is there any problem like drivers intentionally cut connection or do other bad things when this system is used ?

Quote from breadfan :

...
On the other hand, you are playing an online sim, so having a good connection is essential for you. I have a shitty one so I don't play online untill I change my ISP. Compare to F1: some teams simply have better resources, sponsors, dealers, manufacturers on their side, so they are more likely to win. If you have a cheap and low quality connection, it's your problem. Tough, but fair.

On the other other hand, people have suggested in the past that random failures might be a good idea, like your engine giving up on you in the last lap (which surely must be a lot of fun) or tyres popping randomly, like as if you drove over a peace of metal or something. Take this random timing out as such.

I have good Internet connection at home. But accidents happen, you know.

Pure random failure sounds terrible to me. If the engine or something else becomes less stable ( not the unrealistic "engine damage" we have now ) when you push too hard, it's really interesting. Engine failure, gear box damage, brake failure, tyre pop, etc. Things like those do happen randomly irl, but the possiblity increases significantly when you're not gentle with your speed mechine.

Quote from Keling :

Thanks for the link. I didn't know that there's a system like this.

Is there any problem like drivers intentionally cut connection or do other bad things when this system is used ?

Well, it's always a risk indeed, but admins generally make investigations when they think a time-out is suspicious. Anyway it's impossible to get a big advantage with this system, since it only counts finshed laps... Unless you have engine damage or something like that of course.

all the potential exploits are easily fixable with an ini setting for

reconnect_minimum_time = 60

to set how long until a disconnected car can rejoin, with their laps intact. I'd o a bit further...

reconnect_refuel = no
reconnect_tyres = no
reconnect_damage = no

I mean exploits like wrecking/accidents and such.

Example 1: Driver knows he is ****ing up bad now, and will trash his car, he fakes "time out / DC / link dead". Even if he do join back after some minutes, that time he can save by doing quit/join benefits him compared to the accident.

Example 2: Wreckers. They crash someone, and the second before they hit their target they quit the game, making it look like a DC/lag-quit something.

It's a great suggestion indeed and I think many of the endurance racers in the community will agree when I say that time outs are annoying.

So it would be nice to have a feature in lfs which records your laps and when you reconnect you can leave the pits with the same lapcount like before.

@TVE: Giving them +extra lap on their account or +2 does not worth it, i'd say. If it would happened under blue flag, +3 laps should be given

What about server being able to pause whole game, till user reconnects? (Selectable via bit and being able to "ignore player's LFS_USERNAME disconnects")? Solution has been found
"The victory is mine!" :rolleyes:

Suddenly pausing an on-line MP game is also annoying.

Besides, It takes the server several seconds to know that somebody's connection is lost. So there will be a X sec gap if you suspend the game when a user time out, which still causes trouble.

I think I suggested it a couple of time now, so I have no hopes of ever seeing it inside lfs...

At first I think that the DC problem is only relevant for endurance racing or races that are above the +1 hour mark and secondly that you'd have to prevent people gaining an advantage from having a sudden timeout and rejoin with a fixed car, new tires and a full tank.
On the other hand it is quite confusing for the driver once he rejoins that he can't tell anymore where he is and which cars he is racing as he'll always get a blue flag when he is near an other car.

I don't know how "easy" it would be to store the car state (fuel, tires, damage) via the server, concidering that in endurance racing not always the driver that timed out will rejoin and continue but his teammate...

An easy start would be to add an admin command like

/addlap <number of laps> <name>
/dellap <number of laps> <name>

which could be used for other stuff as well like penalties.

Just my 2 cents.

Quote from three_jump :

I think I suggested it a couple of time now, so I have no hopes of ever seeing it inside lfs...

At first I think that the DC problem is only relevant for endurance racing or races that are above the +1 hour mark and secondly that you'd have to prevent people gaining an advantage from having a sudden timeout and rejoin with a fixed car, new tires and a full tank.
On the other hand it is quite confusing for the driver once he rejoins that he can't tell anymore where he is and which cars he is racing as he'll always get a blue flag when he is near an other car.

I don't know how "easy" it would be to store the car state (fuel, tires, damage) via the server, concidering that in endurance racing not always the driver that timed out will rejoin and continue but his teammate...

An easy start would be to add an admin command like

/addlap <number of laps> <name>
/dellap <number of laps> <name>

which could be used for other stuff as well like penalties.

Just my 2 cents.

I think it would not be that hard to take once/twice data during lap (for example on splits actual data about tires, fuel and damage and storing it into variable(s) (maybe only mine naive imagination))

And about pausing, I know it's harsh sudden pause, so it should be gradually stopping and gradually starting when PAUSE is enabled/disabled.
If dsc will be happening too many times, you can choose to ignore this guy...
But I think pausing is not the best solution :-( /ruins fun/

E: Rejoining with other teammate would be possible if server knew which driver belongs to which car ;-) so Team roster would be needed to fill in before race. Whole tracker implementation.. hehe

E2: Yey, it worked, thanks TVE :-) /magic/

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