Quote from March Hare :

Simple answer: Make demo offline only.

Yes, seems to work great for nKPro
not

I don't see a problem with demo with better and "harder" damage model... there are far more important things that are not quite so good in the demo (e.g. car line up). I bet someone who blows up his engine or destroys it in T1 for the 10th time in a row is would be far more impressed with the game's realism than with the current demo where you just get no punishment. If someone thinks it's too hardcore, then it's probably not the right game for him. Pretty simple...

I think the demo should be more focused on the great physics model rather than online racing. Unfortunately the LFS demo (through no fault of it's own) has a reputation for being full of d1ckheads.

I think that most people who own S2, made the purchase based on physics rather than online experience.

That might be true, but being able to test how online works (lag handling, stability, etc) is a crucial part for a sim that mainly focuses on online racing. Without an online part in the demo we wouldn't have nearly as many S2 racers as we do now.

Quote from AndroidXP :

That might be true, but being able to test how online works (lag handling, stability, etc) is a crucial part for a sim that mainly focuses on online racing. Without an online part in the demo we wouldn't have nearly as many S2 racers as we do now.

Totally agreed. I probably would not have bought LFS without being able to first test its online capabilities (especially since that is the games biggest strength). The nKP demo doesn't allow you to try online racing and you can see how big their community is because of it (along with other factors, of course).

Eh... big difference between demo+online+wreckers than demo with no online at all?

I thought, that if Scawen could make use of one of the spare bytes in the outgauge packet to include the gforces acting on a car (something like maximum g-force noted since the previous packet was sent, or maximum in each direction or whatever) then it would be possible to use this for forced retirements after heavy crashes (those that normally wouldn't hurt your suspension and you'd be good to continue). This would require two small programs that would run on the clients and the server. The server-side app would only ensure that people in the race have the client-side app running. On the client side, the app would check the gforces and if they exceeded max_allowable_gforce it would /spectate you out of the race.
I know it is not going to be a good idea for public servers, but for league racing...

Your thoughts?

interesting me thinks

I got really hooked up on LFS since the very first time I was trying it and while I agree that the positive aspects of online experience by far exceeds the negative ones, I still think that the amount of collisions are still too high to feel like you are "really" racing. On the other side, that's what happens if you allow a bunch of unexperienced racers in lightweight 100+ HP cars ;-)

I agree that damaging the car should result in a little bit more pain for the user than it is now. I like the idea of damaging the cooler when you damage your front (like when you rear-end someone!) and losing the downforce when you damage your front or rear spoiler. I also like the idea of making it a bit harder to use shift+p after heavy crash and then magically pitting out immediately - at least it should really take a longer time than it would to repair/refuel the car during a regular pitstop. From my experience, no mid-race join option helps quite a lot on some Demo servers, maybe something similar - no mid-race pit out _option_ could help a bit too.

Another topic: it is impossible for AI to decide who is the wrecker and who is just a victim (because in many cases it is not clear for a human observer neither) ... and because in many (if not most) cases the collision happens when _both_ racers make a mistake ... on the other side, some statistics may help here (?) ... maybe some well-tuned credit-like system in which you get some number of negative points when participating in a crash and some number of positive points if there is a crash on a track you are racing and you are not involved in it? And some positive points by completing a lap without an incident (more people online - more points)? Just an idea... (I would be surprised if something similar wasn't already discussed in this forum)