Hi Karel , and all other contributors

I must just state that I rarely visit the LFS forums these days (I'm more active on the track ) , but a team-mate has told me about this thread so here I am ...

I think its a great idea to bring the teams of LFS together with this project , I like a lot of the ideas that are being proposed ... GT/GTR rotation servers are hard to get popular (I have one sitting there already not being used) , this amazes me as many people say to me they would love to see one ... so hopefully with enough committed people to help create it , a busy rotation server could become a reality

Personally I think the way it is administrated will be the key to its success , there seem's to be more "weekend racers" and "beginners" than "everyday" or "pro racers" on the servers at the moment ... so as long as the less skilled are given a chance then I think it could be great

If I can help in any way just let me know

As I told you on ICQ, the ideas here are great and it could actually turn out to be good. Our team is quite active, so we can co-operate as well. If you need any help, feel free to ask me.

The track/car configs have always been a huge problem amongst LFS racers. For example, if you look at some servers with track voting system, you'll see many racers disagreeing with the current combo, although it got the most votes. But I think that XFG + XRG and NGT + GTR sound like a good compromise and I personally like it.

I hope this project will be a success at the end.

Quote from jasonmatthews :

The problem I have with airio is I never know what ranking I have/need to drive a car

And then you have the decency to tell me off for the same thing

Oh, deer.

Quote from EQ Worry :

Two car categories, changed by rotations? Why not!

I don't want to sound lame (but I do often) but I really can't see that working. Sure it would add a bit of variance but really honestly, will it be an attraction? Now of course if there's a wide "organiser" base and the server is always populated you don't need a special attraction and masses always find the most populated server. But still, how many people went on ctra race 3 and drove a different car / class every week? Everyone just drove their favourite (albeit for the majority it was gt2) till it died.

I would actually suggest using very little rotation if possible. AS3 / GTR anyone? Even though everyone is supposed to be bored of it, it still provides a good race.

After seeing the responses above, mostly with interest and ideas, I, as the humble initiator of this experiment, feel obliged to take some real action.

Using the Genuine Racing generous offer I have created a server with some INITIAL configuration that will be hopefully sufficiently suitable for majority of interested people and the racing public as well. Note the word "initial", nothing is fixed, but we have to start somewhere.

The server is, FOR NOW, called MultiOpen GT Racing. Multi for the multi-team effort and also for the multi-class, which it will probably have to be, though limited. Open for the fact that it will be available to everyone. GT for the fact that I believe we should stick to GT cars for now, as the name of this thread suggests. Of course anything is open for discussion among the participating teams. The Racing part of the server name is obvious. I think we want to race and not to fool around.

I have created a new Airio PROS license for the virtual MultiOpen racing community and connected a clean and separate version (no stats) of the latest Airio version there. I also took the courage to prepare complete INITIAL Airio configuration, using many of the above proposed things. I believe the configuration is sufficiently simplistic, yet suitable for the intended purpose.

The configuration contains safety levels, set initially by LFS Experience Index and then updated based on performance on track, as you all probably know. The initial rating will be for any real experienced people set quite high, for example to 62.50% for experience above 300 and to 77.50% for LFSEI above 600 with many other steps.

For now I would propose to stick with 3 slower GT categories. Please remember that we are in a kind of testing phase. We test primarily the ability to reach some consensus considering server setup acceptable to the general racing community. Please note that everyone of us must make some compromises, or this whole idea will be a complete failure right from the start (as some are already suggesting).

For now I have made available the following cars: XFG, XRG, XFR, UFR. They are FOR NOW separated into 3 categores (classes): GTI (XFG+XRG), GTJ (Junior GT, XFR+UFR with air restriction something over 20%), GTL (Light GT, XFR+UFR). GTI cars are always available. For GTJ people need SR of 55%, for GTL a SR of 65% or above. I would hope these ratings will be available to many right from the start and for other they are not so far away.

The safety ratings are grouped and in effect say what highest category may the people use. Examples are GTI Open and GTL Open. There are no points for anything and no ranks. I wonder if this will be an acceptable deviation from the now-widely-accepted standard. Again, your opinions are most welcome and changes certainly possible. There are 6 levels of licenses for good average lap (several continuous laps) times prepared, but again, we may remove this in case the majority considers the feature useless. Personally, I like licenses based on average lap time.

Track rotation is defined, with basically all LFS tracks except the shortest ones. Track voting is available, for now without limiting recently used tracks, which would require Airio update. Laps are set so that the races are somewhere around 10 minutes long. Again, please note that any updates are possible if desired, nobody is trying to force anything upon anyone. But there are things that will work, might work, probably won't work, and certainly won't work. Compromises are necessary.

OK, last thing concerning the server config. All the team leaders expressing here the willingness to try this experiment have virtual admin rights on the server. (Others may be easily added.) That means they can use in essence all LFS commands, just via their Airio equivalents (instead of /msg it is !msg, with slight variations). But this is in fact the major test. Will we all be able to use the power for the good of the project? Good server administrator never solves personal disputes by these powers, exhibits restraints, shows generosity and friendliness, accepts racing incidents, does not escalate disputes, is willing to be an impartial negotiator for others, etc. Also please do not use the available commands for ad-hoc changes to server/Airio config. These need to be discussed first.

Well, OK. Maybe we could give it a try! When you feel good, just jump over to the MultiOpen GT Racing server, take a look around, read what is written, see if it makes sense, make notes about what you like and what you don't. Any constructive comment that takes into account what is in the current state of LFS possible is welcome. See you there!

I do hope you mean XFR and not FXR? Cos if u don't I say u mad!!

Ya, XFR, sorry...

I still am not happy with rotating track more then once per 24 hours, otherwise there is no way to truly learn if the track keeps changing every hour or even less.
Maybe server takes votes over the 24 hours and then that is chosen for next daily combo.
I do not like rotation as it is on most popular servers its annoying as hell to get on pace then track changes.
Or I join because i see a combo I like, so I then join and then it rotates.

Not bad 1st day from server startup, not bad at all! Some nice racing with reasonably-sized grids, though mostly in the GTI category only (for now). Time for some feedback from you, tell us please what you like and what you don't!

One thing I noticed: 90% of the drivers there were very experienced people, often closely knowing each other. On one hand this creates a friendly atmosphere, on the other it is not enough to keep any server running. I believe that we need to attract also the average and not-so-well known people, because they are always the masses that make servers populated and popular.

In no way that means the veterans should not go there. It just means that, as I see it, adjusting the server for experienced people never works in the long term (past first several days/weeks). That's why I believe having at least several car categories plus relatively quick track rotations is essential. Average people (count me among those) want choices (cars) and changes (tracks). And average people are the core of LFS public racing today. We may try to steer them towards more serious racing a bit, but there's no chance to make them suddenly love long races and static combos.

So, as I see it, and you're welcome to air your opinion, the primary task is to make the server popular, acceptable for beginners, average, and advanced people, the secondary then to attempt to raise the racing standards. That is the way that could, maybe, work.

What about being an 'event' type of server, only being open at certain times. Not sure when the masses are on, but when I went on to check it out, only EQ was there. I know the server is probably too new to suggest theat, but

Yes, and inactive as well. But at 7:30 in the European morning it is kind of impossible to have full server. Check it out again the the afternoon/evening. Events. Eh. Why not, later on. But events usually have relatively short life. At first many people are interested, but then the interest is waning and it all dies on itself...

Ah. As being a night owl in -4 GMT doesn't help either I suppose.

First time ever I had fun on a mutliclass server (tho only one category was driving )...but in some way we had some old school races (very close at times) and that was a lot of fun!

The main problem to having both advanced and casual racers on the same server is that many casual racers don't have the energy or motivation to learn to become faster and often get discouraged. It is a lot easier to race for points than for quicker lap times, that's why the point system was always key for CTRA, AA, CG and many others...that's why I think this project can be good, different teams will manage the server and attract different public.

As for the racing system, I don't care as long as it has enough racing spirit. but to comment on what we had yesterday, I think rotations were ok, not too long not too short, the quali before is great to get in the groove and the races were long enough.

Ah, thanks for the comments! Actually, I'm not sure about points. As I wrote above, for now there are no points for anything, no ranks. But will this be acceptable? The problem with multiclass racing could be that the people in slower cars have a hard time to know at what position they race and what is their race result. Race points help in this respect. Airio also reports to everyone his current position in his class, using the timing buttons. The ultimate tool could be client-side Aonio with nice overview of the people you're actually racing with on a multiclass server. Anyway, what do you think about points? Yes or no? Keep in mind that even if points/ranks are used anyone will be free to hide all this info, completely.

Personally I don't care about the points....but I am probably in the minority here...

Points are a motivation for some drivers. I really couldn't care less if there were points to be given after a race but I do know that some people have great value in getting those. Specially the less experienced, but more motivated drivers.

If there were to be a points system I'd like it to be used to earn a cirtain rank, for example whe way it's ( or used to be ) in the FOX junkies server. At a cirtain rank you would be given access to another server with faster, more powerfull cars. This wil also filter out the less experienced drivers and will make for more clean racing on that server.

I also see a down side to this, which is that because the more experienced drivers will be on that other server the prime server will be less occupied which in turn will cause less people to join the server...

I think we'd have to experiment with cirtain things and find out what the best will be in the long term!

First of all many thanks for all the work you're putting in to LFS!

Secondly, what ever you choose, its not going to make everyone happy. For me, I certainly would get bored soon if there were more than 8 x 15-min races. I think 5-races-per-combo (like CG) is optimum, but then again IHR's 8 worked. Whereas this might not suit someone like Gener_AL who'd prefer the combos to last longer...

At the moment, the car selection might put some people off (these might be the people that you're targeting). I personally am not a fan of UFB/XFJ (I'm sure they're great :razz and some might be put off by difficulty in finding sets for them (does setupfield/setupgrid have specific sets for the non-standard LFS cars?).

Points? Don't care about 'em.

If there were enough drivers to go around several servers you could, assign classes in a way that one would not get in the way of others (i.e. in TBO+LRF races some TBO drivers are faster than some LRF = chaos in some cases). So you can assign classes over several servers like XFG/XRG+LRF+(UFB+XFJ), TBO+XFR+UFR (or TBO+GT2) and XFR+UFR+GTR. But for all this to work we need more active drivers...

There needs to be more publicity for this server - get the word out by spreading the news across your team/community forums.

As Dadge suggested it wouldn't hurt to ask the public to cast their opinions about the cars/tracks/duration(race lengths) they would like to see.

Something like a survey to get info from as much people as possible.
Car/Class (first preference): TBO
Car/Class (second preference): LRF
Track Preferences (if any), AS, KY, WE
Time Zone: GMT
Preferred race length: 15-30 mins.
How active are you? Approx 2h a day.

Or maybe several forum polls with each of the above just to get an idea of what people are interested in nowadays (would be hard to get any useful data if we hold a survey and 500+ people responded! ). It might even help to publicise the server(s) and also perk the interest in those who've sunk into the shadows...

Multi class racing is fun (I've had a blast on IHR, and now on CG) its just that you need to keep an eye out for others, accept that incidents are inevitable and respect others on track.

Slightly O/T:
I think the driving (racing) standards should generally be set now - and not be left to be agreed upon later. I'm not exactly sure if what you meant by racing standards is what I'm talking about here;

For most parts in multi-class servers (with mid race join on) there is going to be a bit of an issue with people joining in with faster cars and then barging in through the slower classes getting in everyone's way. Same would be the case when inexperienced drivers like myself get in a faster class but actually is slower (or equal) to the class below and thus getting in the way again. How do you plan to resolve cases like that?

Then there will be fireworks when some aliens mix with the rest of us - for most part its all good, but I'm sure you've all seen what happens when a nub manages to ruin an alien's race...

Anyway, just my 2c - hope I've not lead the conversion astray.

Quote from EQ Worry :

Ah, thanks for the comments! Actually, I'm not sure about points. As I wrote above, for now there are no points for anything, no ranks. But will this be acceptable? The problem with multiclass racing could be that the people in slower cars have a hard time to know at what position they race and what is their race result. Race points help in this respect. Airio also reports to everyone his current position in his class, using the timing buttons. The ultimate tool could be client-side Aonio with nice overview of the people you're actually racing with on a multiclass server. Anyway, what do you think about points? Yes or no? Keep in mind that even if points/ranks are used anyone will be free to hide all this info, completely.

This is the reason.
If I am driving the slower of the two classes, and im in first place, but the faster car class group has 10 cars, I am in 11th, LFS reports this & that is the reality of the position reported on the server.
This is why I don't do multiclass, unless official events.
I understand what your trying to achieve, but this problem cannot be fixed.

I understand you are trying to create a popular server for multiclass racing, but maybe the problem is the classification and not having lots off different cars.
You could tweak so that all GTR are the same speed XFR UFR FZR XRR FXR etc.
That would be fine for me, i could drive any car and know i am fighting for a REAL position.
But as it stands, unless i Choose the fastest class, I am not fighting for a real position. in my slower class car LFS World will see me 11th, and thats important to me.

Dont take this the wrong way EQ, just my honest feeling about why multiclass will never work for myself and maybe a few others.

What happens is from what i see people Will use the slower class, only when:

A> they need to gain points to get to faster cars
B> the majority of racers are using this
C> they like the car and dont care about LFS stats too much

Like I say restricting all variations of vehicles to the speed of the slowest
Fixes A B C.

Regards
Alan

Quote from EQ Worry :

One thing I noticed: 90% of the drivers there were very experienced people, often closely knowing each other. On one hand this creates a friendly atmosphere, on the other it is not enough to keep any server running. I believe that we need to attract also the average and not-so-well known people, because they are always the masses that make servers populated and popular.

I guess the server still has to make itself a name out there. It was its first day, and most of people around either knew about it from this thread or from teammates/friends. I doubt that "average" people would jump in mass in a server they do not know, they still have strong habits(and points!) on CG and others, I belive it might take a little while(=X days while being around the top of the server list) before they would first try it.

Quote from Silverracer :

Secondly, what ever you choose, its not going to make everyone happy. For me, I certainly would get bored soon if there were more than 8 x 15-min races. I think 5-races-per-combo (like CG) is optimum, but then again IHR's 8 worked. Whereas this might not suit someone like Gener_AL who'd prefer the combos to last longer...

I quite like the track rotations myself. And I belive it is necessary in order to make a regulary crowded server.

On other hand I dislike the track vote system. First, because it usually puts mainstream and not so much interresting combos. Sometimes people have to be forced into the unknown in order to discover it and maybe like it in the end.

Second, and that's much more worrying, because there's no way to know next track choice before the vote. When I go on CG and discover there's less than 2 races to go on the track(which happens often since track rotation is set to every 5 races) I often leave because of the fear of having a dull track next, and therefore waiting for "nothing".

This is why track change every 5 races would work fine without track vote IMO, but it's simply not enough with it enabled. If it stays I'd say we should leave it to every 8 races, though we could also experiment 7 or even 6.

Quote :

At the moment, the car selection might put some people off (these might be the people that you're targeting). I personally am not a fan of UFB/XFJ (I'm sure they're great :razz and some might be put off by difficulty in finding sets for them (does setupfield/setupgrid have specific sets for the non-standard LFS cars?).

That's an issue of course, but look, GT2s are quite popular nowadays, though you'll also have trouble to get pre-made sets for it. In fact putting restriction directly to a unrestricted set doesn't put you off the pace totally, and I guess that's what the most of the average people do.

Quote :

If there were enough drivers to go around several servers you could, assign classes in a way that one would not get in the way of others (i.e. in TBO+LRF races some TBO drivers are faster than some LRF = chaos in some cases).

Agreed on the fact that LRFs can easily be hazards if given to inexperienced hands. To both NGTs(because they are faster than them in straights, which causes a problem especially at starts) and TBOs(because some can't be faster than TBOs with them).

Quote :

For most parts in multi-class servers (with mid race join on) there is going to be a bit of an issue with people joining in with faster cars and then barging in through the slower classes getting in everyone's way. Same would be the case when inexperienced drivers like myself get in a faster class but actually is slower (or equal) to the class below and thus getting in the way again. How do you plan to resolve cases like that?

Agreed, that's always an issue with multiclass, putting the fastest cars into the right hands, without being to laxist(CG) or requiring too much racing "just for the sake of points"(CTRA, IHR).

Quote from Gener_AL (UK) :

This is the reason.
If I am driving the slower of the two classes, and im in first place, but the faster car class group has 10 cars, I am in 11th, LFS reports this & that is the reality of the position reported on the server.
This is why I don't do multiclass, unless official events.
I understand what your trying to achieve, but this problem cannot be fixed.

I understand you are trying to create a popular server for multiclass racing, but maybe the problem is the classification and not having lots off different cars.
You could tweak so that all GTR are the same speed XFR UFR FZR XRR FXR etc.
That would be fine for me, i could drive any car and know i am fighting for a REAL position.
But as it stands, unless i Choose the fastest class, I am not fighting for a real position. in my slower class car LFS World will see me 11th, and thats important to me.

Dont take this the wrong way EQ, just my honest feeling about why multiclass will never work for myself and maybe a few others.

What happens is from what i see people Will use the slower class, only when:

A> they need to gain points to get to faster cars
B> the majority of racers are using this
C> they like the car and dont care about LFS stats too much

Like I say restricting all variations of vehicles to the speed of the slowest
Fixes A B C.

Regards
Alan

Totally agreed, and that's why multiclass can't work on public servers without a system putting the least experienced on slower classes, at least for a short while.

Can I make one last plea against this rotation nonsense: If you get bored of a track after an hour or 5 races or whatnot, you're playing a completely wrong game. It's a driving simulator and you should be forced to put an effort into driving and not just cruise along while the track changes every minute.

I would understand a reasonable rotation interval, one that would be measured in days and not minutes.

Quote from hyntty :

Can I make one last plea against this rotation nonsense: If you get bored of a track after an hour or 5 races or whatnot, you're playing a completely wrong game. It's a driving simulator and you should be forced to put an effort into driving and not just cruise along while the track changes every minute.

I would understand a reasonable rotation interval, one that would be measured in days and not minutes.

The same could be said more or less about having several 10 minutes races in a row with several classes of cars on track at the same time, it's certainly not realistic. But in the end you have to make some concessions with realism in order to make your server work. Sadly what is realistic isn't necessary what is popular on racing sims.

Tried the server yesterday, and in the main, enjoyed it.

However, few points.

I consider myself an average racer (meaning at AS2 I got new PB, and it was just within 2 seconds of WR, so I was fair chuffed, but this puts me easily a second or more off the time of the faster racers). On longer tracks, the disparity would be even bigger.

I'm quite happy jumping on almost any server combo (I do have few dislikes such as BL1 and FO8), but this means that although I know my way round most tracks, I do need to remind myself which way to leave the pits, and where T1 is (always get wrong at SO tracks), and although the LFS Server list might say Aston National, I can never remember which abbreviation that might be - I've found this are the norm with people who don't stay with same combo for weeks or months on end.

When I joined, a 7 lap race had just started, so by time I worked out Aston National = AS2 so I could find suitable set, then chose slowest car, and got out of pits, I was at least half a lap behind. Not an issue, as it gives me time to remember which way track goes, and with slowest car, I'm unlikely to get in anyone's way for a while; which is why I chose it.

Problem for me was that by time everyone else finished race, I was stll half lap behind, and although the timer came up for next race, everyone was in so much of a hurry that a large part of the field started SHIFT R to restart again.

If I'm going to go to the effort of doing a 7 or more lap race, I'd like time to finish it please!

I realise that if I join mid race then this could happen, but in other races, almost as soon as leaders had finished, they were voting to restart race. Fine if you're always amongst the leaders, but for us average racers who make mistakes and who's lap times may differ by 1 or 2 seconds lap to lap, this gets annoying, demoralising and ends up in you leaving.

Racing for points - If doing so many races per track rotation, an idea might be to give points per race and at the end of the track rotation, put the points table up on the screen for a while for everyone to see. Bit like a mini (track) championship. For next track, points reset back to zero for everyone.

For us average racers, we might not be quick enough to win a race, but we may be consistant enough to win a championship. And for average racers, that would be a good reason to stay on the server.

I realise that for the quicker racers this might be dumbing down in a way, but then they tend to be talented and in teams and leagues, whereas us average racers on an open public server like this, who aren't talented or good enough to get in anyone's team, need an incentive to come back again and again and again.

Lots of other public servers with things to offer us.

Quote from sinanju :

When I joined, a 7 lap race had just started, so by time I worked out Aston National = AS2 so I could find suitable set, then chose slowest car, and got out of pits, I was at least half a lap behind. Not an issue, as it gives me time to remember which way track goes, and with slowest car, I'm unlikely to get in anyone's way for a while; which is why I chose it.

Problem for me was that by time everyone else finished race, I was stll half lap behind, and although the timer came up for next race, everyone was in so much of a hurry that a large part of the field started SHIFT R to restart again

AS2 = Club, AS3 = National

And yes, although I tried to vot for restart too, it should be disabled and there should be a little break between the races.

Ha, quite a few comments and ideas accumulated here, nice, thanks! In no way I want to be the one who decides most things for others, that would completely beat the purpose of this attempt. So please always take my views as personal preferences, having about the same weight as the views of other team leaders or active members. (We need more comments from such people. :nod So, now my responses to some valuable comments above:

@ points : It seems a good idea to enable them after all, together with ranks (point ranges). Everyone who doesn't care about points and ranks can always turn off their display, completely. It takes just about 2 clicks in the !opt screen, the selection is remembered and applied on next connect.

@ ranks and other servers : I think it is much too early to think about separating people on servers with raising requirements. Of course it would be nice, but we're not there yet. And this separation did not really work even on CTRA, and they were much better times for LFS.

@ car selection : Problematic thing. I believe there must be choices, but not too many. Maybe best obviously separated by speed, I mean with sufficient differences.

@ racing standards : Well, by this I mean the possibilities to limit certain actions, such as joining late in the race, maybe for its whole second half. Easy to apply, but not now.

@ LFS stats in multiclass : Yes, true, if you race slower cars some of your LFSW stats will never improve. But these are only podium results, and I'm not sure how many people take care about this. True, Airio takes these numbers into account when calculating the Experience Index, but they are only a very small portion of the total number. LFSEI favors variability, giving higher value to people racing at different tracks with different cars. Multiclass servers are in fact ideal to raise your LFSEI. That is, if you care about that number.

@ track voting : I see two options here: 1) Disable voting, so that all tracks go in sequence, as they are prepared. If people really do not like the selected track, they may vote to end race, resulting in the next track in rotation being loaded. 2) Extend voting so that the recently or often used tracks start with a negative vote count, making it much harder to select them. In fact I'm already working on this addition.

@ rotations : My estimate would be that 75% of people currently using LFS are in fact bored after 1 hour or so on one track. Without rotations you don't have, I feel, any chance at running a popular server. By raising the racing standards I also mean that in time we may try to have a bit longer races or longer time between rotations. But not now.

@ track names : You may always type !track or just !tr to see the current track name and abbreviation. I'm not sure if this is displayed also for the upcoming track. But during track voting also both full name and abbreviation is shown.

@ race restarts : Very good point about sometimes too fast voting to restart the race. And it may get worse, if not tackled now, once faster cars are on track. We may prolong the time for which restart voting is not accepted. An interesting new option could be to disable faster restarts by voting once the countdown starts, so that people always know they have 60 seconds and be sure the race will not start earlier.

Quote from EQ Worry :

@ points : It seems a good idea to enable them after all, together with ranks (point ranges). Everyone who doesn't care about points and ranks can always turn off their display, completely. It takes just about 2 clicks in the !opt screen, the selection is remembered and applied on next connect.

What would be the point of collecting points then? I hope it won't compromise the safety rating based car availability. Or do people just race for points for the sake of collecting points? In real life I'm an awesome driver, I got 18 points in September alone but I still don't get why you would want to collect them

Yes, I guess some people love to collect points and increase their ranks. Some see no point in that, fortunately they need not to be spammed by point-announcing messages. And no, I hope there's no intention to use points to limit something...