I think just counting the time for the fastest driver at each combo and adding up is best.

Quote from Arrow. :

All team drivers can drive on the servers and put in their best lap but only the fastest lap from each team driver will will be count from the 3 servers
add all the 3 fastest laps together.
This determines divisions

Like the idea but this may as well be hotlap quali. Some drivers will be able to put one fast lap in but may not be able to keep lapping at that pace. I suggest 3/5 laps quali distance instead of just one hotlap.

p.s- does tracker monitor licence name or racername?

Are we there yet?

The tracker is easily done and with the correct setup it is displayed on the tracker website without any work.

I suggested to Arrow that we should use a tracker system for each race, it will split up the divisions easily and say team A are good at GTI but no GTRS it will mean they actually race in the correct division, instead of being a mobile chicane driving on their own.

ESCC used this method at the beginning of the current season and it worked easily, the only problem is a team qualifying with differnt drivers they use in the race, if a team has 1 or 2 backup drivers maybe they should drive on the tracker to to ensure that whoever drives the team gets put in the correct devision.

Quote from Arrow. :

I was thinking of something similar to that but not sure how it could work with 3 divisions 48 teams.

I Was thinking...

LFS tracker running on 3 servers, each with different combo
Fwd, Rwd and open wheeler combos
The Servers will run for 2 - 4 weeks.
All team drivers can drive on the servers and put in their best lap but only the fastest lap from each team driver will will be count from the 3 servers
add all the 3 fastest laps together.
This determines divisions

example:
http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/4924/lfstrackereb5.jpg
1st place - SK
2nd place - Cyber
3rd place - 1ST
4th place - #low

Great Idea.

I agree with the simplicity of the best time for each team across 3 servers approach. It might not be ideal where a team has a large variance in driver capability, but then with a larger team even averaging the top 3 drivers from each team would not adequately reflect the capabilities of the drivers in a particular event.

However, if this approach is adopted, I am still in favour of regular movement of teams between the divisions to reflect actual race performance. As I mentioned previously, this will help to add interest to those teams who are towards the rear, or near the top, of each division. It'll provide a very real target to aim for, or to avoid if you're towards the rear of a race field. It will also ensure closer racing over the season as the division become more evenly balanced.

I actually had a chat with Arrow the other day, and suggested something very similar to what Bagbag was saying (hadnt realised he'd pretty much posted this same idea at that time) and IMO it might make things a lot easier for now and in future, and should provide guaranteed close racing.

Idea:
If you scrap divisions, and the whole promotion & relegation idea, and put all 48 teams into 1 big pot and then if this 'tracker' thing is so simple to implement then the X days before the race is to start have a server open to allow every team to submit their laps, it'd be an open qualifying server.
From there, you'd take the top 30 drivers and put them in server A. The next 30 drivers would go in server B, and the final 30 into server C (still only the fastest 2 from each team, just to be clear).

In S-A, points are awarded 90, 89, 88.... 62, 61
In S-B, points are awarded 60, 59, 58.... 32, 31
In S-C, points are awarded 30, 29, 28.... 2, 1

This means that in each server you should have the guarantee that your racing with 30 drivers of pretty much the same ability as each other. Being last in S-A would give you 1pt more than coming first in S-B, meaning the 30th placed driver gets 1 point more than the 31st placed.


Reasons why:
If the series ran in this manner there would be rounds where you had the potential to really be rewarded for a good result at a round, you wouldnt be limited to the points that division offers, you would be entitled to race with those you were equal to, not who your forced to race with in that division.

Another bonus is for the sake of future teams. Anyone that doesnt compete in any 'division qualifying stage' doesnt get the quick step up to a higher division, in future they'd have no other choice but to start at the bottom step of the ladder (Division 3, maybe 4!) and work their way up from that.
While that might not bother those already taking part, there are teams who arent involved in this season, and any decent team that could be a match for mid-division or higher level or racing would have no choice but to 'rough it' at the bottom season after season until they're in with their 'equals'. This method makes everyone 'equals' when qualifying opens, if your quick then you race with the quick guys, if you suck then hey, you get to race with me when i do the odd round!!
Is expecting some of the quicker teams to start from the bottom going to be encouraging for their future entry or is it going to be looked at as a reason not to compete? Afterall, if theres 2 seasons per year, who wants to complete in a season for 1+ year to get to those your competitive with?
Geniune question, of the Division 1 capable team guys taking part this season be willing to take part in the series if we were say 1yr on and an established series of divisions existed and it wouldnt be till 12 months time that you had some meaningful opposition to compete with?
IMO any quick team that isnt in now wouldnt look too fondly upon this measure, and as day to day leader of Mercury i dont think i'd be all that fussed about taking part, we'd want to race with equal ability drivers/teams. So does divisions make for a good series? Anyone still even reading this??

Reasons why not?
Thats the benefits IMO, but every system will have its problems, and the only 2 i can think of is one regarding driver swaps, particularly those of 'convenience'. Do you put the replacement driver in the place THEY qualified, or do you allow this possible abuse of Driver A doing the qual with no intention of racing while Driver B steps in to do the race in their spot.
The other 'problem' is that maybe some of the lower teams may feel that they dont have something to challenge for, i guess its always nice to win something and if its winning Division 2 or 3 then its a step, maybe '3rd in Div2' is considered more of an acheivement than '15th in BOTT' even if its actually the same thing.


Those are issues which people may not like to see in the series, but IMO i doubt there will be many occasions where teams abuse the last minute driver swap (intended for emergencies), particularly as usually the fastest guy will needed to race (thats where the points are won) and the ability to compete against drivers of your own ability and earn points on a complete scale not just on those in your division, particularly in future divisions if a quick team decided to take part.


Right, thats enough for me, when i started this post they were just reporting on the news that the Titanic had just sunk

I would be in favour of a 10 minute qualifying session before each event. Each of the drivers who will be in the race gets a couple of qualifying laps. At the end of the 10 min session the fastest 32 get onto server 1 etc. This would ensure that the fastest drivers in each combo drive together and teams aren't in artificially high divisions because they have a couple of quick guys who may not even race.

To save time the qualifying results could be used from this session to form the 3 grids.

It would also allow bigger grids as you can invite the reserves onto server 3 if there are no shows, and amongst 96 drivers there are bound to be.

Then award points for 1st to 96th, with last on server 1 finishing just ahead of first on server 2, perhaps with small bonuses for podiums on each server.

EDIT: Ah, I missed that mammoth post from Paul above proposing pretty much the same thing. Doing open qualifying on the day rather than on tracker would solve the problem with replacement drivers as drivers that can qualify can certainly race 10 minutes later.

oh, that was another Positive for qualifying before the race day, scrap that 25+ minute qualifying session and get some proper racing done instead!! No need to prance about for 25min deciding who goes where as the tracking would have decided that.

I can also see the benefit of the above suggestion though, however that would require 3 servers running a tracker, and the results from the 3 being merged i guess, dunno if thats possible to do automatically but doing it manually means at least 1 person sitting around figuring it out (ie Arrow at 6am or whatever) while everyone else has to sit and wait to be told where they're supposed to go for their race. It sounds messy and could mean lots of needless sitting round doing nothing. If you could get 100 people into the server and automatically shove em into a server then it'd be fine, but the organising is messy, anyone thats been in a server with a manually added reversed grid will know the time it takes getting everyone in the right order, couple in the fact that everyone needs to be told the server to be in, then the ordering one by one, waiting for the slow ones that disappear holding things up etc. Ideal world with everyone paying attention it would work, but the real world, with Pecker involved at some point? i dont think so

Quote from PaulC2K :

Idea:[/B]
If you scrap divisions, and the whole promotion & relegation idea, and put all 48 teams into 1 big pot and then if this 'tracker' thing is so simple to implement then the X days before the race is to start have a server open to allow every team to submit their laps, it'd be an open qualifying server.
From there, you'd take the top 30 drivers and put them in server A. The next 30 drivers would go in server B, and the final 30 into server C (still only the fastest 2 from each team, just to be clear).

In S-A, points are awarded 90, 89, 88.... 62, 61
In S-B, points are awarded 60, 59, 58.... 32, 31
In S-C, points are awarded 30, 29, 28.... 2, 1

This means that in each server you should have the guarantee that your racing with 30 drivers of pretty much the same ability as each other. Being last in S-A would give you 1pt more than coming first in S-B, meaning the 30th placed driver gets 1 point more than the 31st placed.

Just thinking about what you said Paul and Storm_Cloud
I think the only way we could get this method to work is have 3 servers randomly put 32 driver/16 teams into each server on the day of the event have 20min qualifying with tracker running. 5-10 min break before this race where the grid positions will be posted here the drivers will move to there allocated server and get into positions.

example from qualifying tracker
1st - Fusion. Duck (grid position #1 Div A)
34th - Fusion Arrow (grid position #2 Div B)

If we were to go with this method ideally we would need some kind of insim program so the admins can sort the grid positions. Is this possible?

Quote from PaulC2K :

oh, that was another Positive for qualifying before the race day, scrap that 25+ minute qualifying session and get some proper racing done instead!! No need to prance about for 25min deciding who goes where as the tracking would have decided that.

I can also see the benefit of the above suggestion though, however that would require 3 servers running a tracker, and the results from the 3 being merged i guess, dunno if thats possible to do automatically but doing it manually means at least 1 person sitting around figuring it out (ie Arrow at 6am or whatever) while everyone else has to sit and wait to be told where they're supposed to go for their race. It sounds messy and could mean lots of needless sitting round doing nothing. If you could get 100 people into the server and automatically shove em into a server then it'd be fine, but the organising is messy, anyone thats been in a server with a manually added reversed grid will know the time it takes getting everyone in the right order, couple in the fact that everyone needs to be told the server to be in, then the ordering one by one, waiting for the slow ones that disappear holding things up etc. Ideal world with everyone paying attention it would work, but the real world, with Pecker involved at some point? i dont think so

Quote from Arrow. :

Just thinking about what you said Paul and Storm_Cloud
I think the only way we could get this method to work is have 3 servers randomly put 32 driver/16 teams into each server on the day of the event have 20min qualifying with tracker running. 5-10 min break before this race where the grid positions will be posted here the drivers will move to there allocated server and get into positions.

example from qualifying tracker
1st - Fusion. Duck (grid position #1 Div A)
34th - Fusion Arrow (grid position #2 Div B)

If we were to go with this method ideally we would need some kind of insim program so the admins can sort the grid positions. Is this possible?

In the Vixen Challenge, when we had too many drivers for 1 server, we would qualify simultaneously on two servers and use a live tracker to merge the results as we qualified, and this would tell everyone which server they should be in at the end of quali.

With the new packets allowing external programs to position people on the grids automatically this could all be programmed quite effectively. I don't have the time to do it myself right now though, so you'll have to ask someone else .

We also used the same kind of points system as the one Paul is suggesting, which worked pretty well.

OLFSL used a grid sorting system in the last round on my pool. We just had to get on the server and join the grid then the positions were sorted automatically. It worked quite well.

So the tracker is able to compare and sort the results from multiple sources and then output the info for that itself, no manual messing about?

The only thing which would require some work would be an in-sim script to then take those results and when everyone is in their server it'd automatically grid people on the previously created results?

Sounds good if that can be done, I guess if the tracker is showing live data (or to the minute) then it wouldnt be too much for people to alt+tab out of LFS to check a results listing and then move to the correct server.

I liked the idea of being able to qualify when it was convenient, particularly as it means the 25min qual doesnt need to be done on the race day, (you could easily run 3x 30min races with breaks in under 2hrs) but i guess doing this leaves the possibility that it could be abused and this method see's to it that the person doing the driving is there to qualify.

Quote from PaulC2K :

Idea:
If you scrap divisions, and the whole promotion & relegation idea, and put all 48 teams into 1 big pot and then if this 'tracker' thing is so simple to implement then the X days before the race is to start have a server open to allow every team to submit their laps, it'd be an open qualifying server.
From there, you'd take the top 30 drivers and put them in server A. The next 30 drivers would go in server B, and the final 30 into server C (still only the fastest 2 from each team, just to be clear).

This sounds more & more like OLFSL each day that passes. I still like the original division idea but must admit the pool system does have its merits.

So they use this exact setup for their series (or near enough)?

I havent taken part since series 2 & 3 and entered into 4 when i think they were taking hotlaps for qualifying times, but its been a loooong time since i looked into what they were doing but knew they had something similar ages back.
I dont think thats a bad thing or a reason not to use it, afterall you dont reject the best option just because its been done before, but if a better/more suitable alternative is available then it should at least be looked into IMO, particularly if its less complicated and gives good results for everyone concerned. The in-sim method does sound good though, provided that we can find something to do this. I guess we have quite a bit of time its not like its kicking off in 2 weeks time or owt.

OLFSL is hotlap based and there is no qualifying. Hotlap sorts out your pool and grid position, but you can do the lap anytime before the grid is set, not in a session which is part of the event.

Quote from PaulC2K :

So the tracker is able to compare and sort the results from multiple sources and then output the info for that itself, no manual messing about?

The only thing which would require some work would be an in-sim script to then take those results and when everyone is in their server it'd automatically grid people on the previously created results?

Sounds good if that can be done, I guess if the tracker is showing live data (or to the minute) then it wouldnt be too much for people to alt+tab out of LFS to check a results listing and then move to the correct server.

I liked the idea of being able to qualify when it was convenient, particularly as it means the 25min qual doesnt need to be done on the race day, (you could easily run 3x 30min races with breaks in under 2hrs) but i guess doing this leaves the possibility that it could be abused and this method see's to it that the person doing the driving is there to qualify.

Yeah, it's all live, with a web based viewer for drivers to see how they are doing. You can merge the times from as many servers as you like very easily. Infact, I guess it could probably be viewable in-game now, with the new functionality available to programmers.

The reason I chose this system for the most recent Vixen Challenge season is that I think it's the best measure of each drivers' speed on the day. Hotlaps are no good imo, as some people may have time to hotlap 15 hours a day until they get the perfect lap, but 9 times out of 10 be slower than another driver who didn't have so much time to hotlap. Using software to track pre-qualifying servers is also not optimum as far as I'm concerned, mainly because it can be so easily abused. Qualifying on the day against 90 other drivers is certainly much more exciting than having weeks to hotlap.

I agree with Josh, this system stops people from putting in hours & hours just to get a good time & also adds a bit of pressure on the day.

Another way would be to limit the time each driver is allowed on the qualification server, that way the Pools/divisions would be sorted before the event & their would be less pressure on the organisers on the day.

Quote from joshdifabio :

Yeah, it's all live, with a web based viewer for drivers to see how they are doing. You can merge the times from as many servers as you like very easily. Infact, I guess it could probably be viewable in-game now, with the new functionality available to programmers.

The reason I chose this system for the most recent Vixen Challenge season is that I think it's the best measure of each drivers' speed on the day. Hotlaps are no good imo, as some people may have time to hotlap 15 hours a day until they get the perfect lap, but 9 times out of 10 be slower than another driver who didn't have so much time to hotlap. Using software to track pre-qualifying servers is also not optimum as far as I'm concerned, mainly because it can be so easily abused. Qualifying on the day against 90 other drivers is certainly much more exciting than having weeks to hotlap.

This sounds very interesting Josh!

If we go one step further, is it possible to have the whole race registered in time?
I mean, each driver could be ranked over a 5 lap race (with standing start and all) instead of only a single best lap? Such a rank would be alot better imo. I've used that before, in another game, to rank both drivers as well as teams.

Quote from joshdifabio :

The reason I chose this system for the most recent Vixen Challenge season is that I think it's the best measure of each drivers' speed on the day. Hotlaps are no good imo, as some people may have time to hotlap 15 hours a day until they get the perfect lap, but 9 times out of 10 be slower than another driver who didn't have so much time to hotlap. Using software to track pre-qualifying servers is also not optimum as far as I'm concerned, mainly because it can be so easily abused. Qualifying on the day against 90 other drivers is certainly much more exciting than having weeks to hotlap.

Yes I agree =)

I don't mind whats used as long as there isn't a system that would allow people to upload hotlaps or qualify days before a race.

can't we take different combos, i mean like those which are not going to be driven durin the season?

we could do that... (thats was what i first came up with)
I jus thought it would be better to find the fastest teams on the combos we are going to race on. and would save arguments when picking the 3 combos.

if we are going to have different combos i'd suggest Main hotlap combos
UF1 on AS cadet
FZR on KY gp long
FO8 on WE interntl

What I miss with this suggestion is the lack of team effort.

I still prefere the three best times from each teams in each combo. Shouldn't be to hard to filter that out?

When are we going to get a definitive answer? I'm itching to get on the qualifying combos!