Thanks all. I'm feeling better about it with each reply. Today I've steered clear of the CTRA servers and again found more good and helpful racers than the alternative. Had much fun again. So, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said I really need to get some more experience before getting on CTRA.

BTW, I came up with StraightLine because I can go fast straight, but those dang corners slow me down. ;-)

Rubber side down and see you around.

there is a reporting sytem on the CTRA. type $help ingame and look for the report button. I've never had to use it though. I almost never find noobs when I'm online at CTRA

StraightLine- it's a shame that you've not had a good first experience on the CTRA servers. I do hope you'll give it another chance, when it'll hopefully be better. Don't forget that with the reporting system (guide in my sig) you can do something about wreckers/bad driving on CTRA servers.

Quote from PRMLSCRM :

Yes, the ctra servers are a jungle run by blind autoritharians.

Who said that?

I dropped into CTRA Race 1 last night and found a lot of harshness towards Straightline post race. I wasn't paying attention to it as I just joined and was selecting car/setup etc. But I did notice that there was quite a bit of harshness of "noob" talk going on and idi talk as well. Well, Straightline probably doesn't know who or what idi was, but the majority of us here do...

Anyways, Straightline, don't give up on the CTRA, as being S1 licensed, it is about all the choice you have. Normally, there is some fantastic racing on there in US peak times. I did watch you for a bit after I rolled it and I didn't see any problems you were creating. I did see problems that other drivers were creating. I also noticed that the CTRA server had quite a few drivers that normally are not on there at our peak times.

I have no idea of your driving skill or experience with LFS, Straightline, so I can't comment on if you are ready or not for online racing with LFS. To join a server, it's ok if you are slow, but you do need to have a bit of awareness and track knowledge so that you don't hinder the other drivers too much. But then again, it was Blackwood, and you said you've been running demo for 6 months or so until you recently purchased the license. For sure, you should have plenty of knowledge of the Blackwood track, even if you were an XRT driver in demo. It takes less to adapt to a different car than it does to adapt to an unknown track.

Definitely don't give up on CTRA. It is generally very good racing by some very good folks both fast and slow. Good luck and hope to see you on there again.

I agree with what the guys here have said...stick with it! It sounds like you had a bad day with the LFS online experience, which happens to us all. But I think most will agree that the good days far outnumber the bad ones, and there are quite a few really great days in there too!

I have been racing on the STCC/CTRA servers for about a year now, it seems as though the misconduct has actually gone down now with all the rules being displayed on every join. However, the pattern, on CTRA Race 1, or the old STCC stock server, that has occured to me is, the farther back, the "greener" , as in greenhorn, the drivers. So most of the people are, as yourself, new. They are either new to the CRC rules (clean racers club),section 9 of the manual http://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/Main_Page or, have not read the rules upon entering the server. In contrast the racers in the upper positions are, most often, aware of either of these rules of conduct and act accordingly out of experience. Then there are those who refuse to catch on and act like they are given "the right of way" all the time.

Quote from legoflamb :

In contrast the racers in the upper positions are, most often, aware of either of these rules of conduct and act accordingly out of experience. Then there are those who refuse to catch on and act like they are given "the right of way" all the time.

That's actually a good point. I hadn't really noticed it until yesterday evening. I had done 5 or 6 races on SO Town, always being in the top 6. Great racing, clean drivers making clean passes, waiting until they had a good chance and leaving enough room when making the pass Then I got caught in the pack further down the back because of someone spinning me on T1 and it was like I was on a whole different server. The contrast between the level of racing in the middle/back part of the grid and the top positions was like night and day. I guess the nature of SO had a bit to do with that, with the amco barriers leaving hardly any margin for error, plus there was high wind on for the entire session. Fortunately it's not always like that, I've had many great and clean races in the lower positions as well.

Quote from StraightLine :

The CRTA servers have this long list of rules dealing with code of conduct and it sounds great to me; I'm all for it. What I found on the track was much less than I was lead to belive it was.

quite right...
I have started racing not so long ago, and I found the CTRA servers quite nice...
the problems are
1) there are some people who really dont know how to drive
2) there are some people who really didnt bother to read the rules

those people are usually at the back of the field...
when you get to top 10 position in a race - it's a different race!
Everyone knows where you are (mirrors, DUH), and races cleanly, and responsibly

Example (I was hit in the back on blackwood reversed while late brake overtaking in a battle for 8th place, by a lapped person... the guy that hit me didnt even apologize for destroying a great battle that lasted for 2 laps...)

Quote from gohfeld23 :

Well the horn is useful if you know how to use it.
I always beep it once when I'm side by side with someone as I might be in a dead spot.

Remove the horn and those people will learn to look where they're going.

Quote from p5srono :

i got beeped at loads today on a cruise server, came in handy sometimes cos i just didnt kno they were there,

I don't care what happens on "cruise" servers, frankly. This is a racing simulator.

Quote from Greboth :

On the topic of horns: They serve some purpose at times if used correctly. I generally use them if people are moving over and they aren't clear of my bonnet for example.

I generally lift if people are moving over and they aren't clear of my bonnet. I bet that avoids more accidents than your horn-banging does.

Quote from PRMLSCRM :

Can you stop calling other people trolls ...
Just respect and be respected.

Trolling again I see, and still nothing nice to say about anybody. Perhaps Jack will stop calling you a troll if you stop trolling. Interesting advise on respect, I suggest you begin to follow it if you ever want to find any around here, although I rather suspect you already lost it with your S2 account and have had to resport to this username to try and find some - and failed again.

@Original Postee:
So back on the topic raised by the original postee. I'm glad you found our servers, and I hope that you dont meet too many PRMLSCRM's in your racing, we have apparently banned him anyway, hense he has a lot to say about us.

We try to educate the 'not up to standard' drivers before banning and sometimes this results in a period of 'still not getting it' unfortunately, but otherwise I hope you'll find the CTRA servers are right up there in terms of clean racing.

Running public servers has a lot of problems, at the end of the day we are only as good as the community who race on them. To this end we provide 24/7 admin coverage by way of our $report system which lets you report any bad driver at any time of the day and then be safe in the knowledge that even though we're sleaping and not on the server the driver will still be dealt with appropriately.

Public racing can be very good and also very bad, league racing is generally where the cleanest racing is, although even then the leagues are only as good as the competitors ... the CTRA servers try to aim for the middle, attempting to draw the best out of both the accessibility of public racing and the cleanliness and competitiveness of league racing.

Certainly at the higer tier we think we are very lucky to have a community of highly talented and clean racers. We dont often have trouble on our higher tier. On the lower tier we are as open to abuse as any other server. We do deal with these people when we are informed of them though.

I hope you find greater enjoyment on our servers with another try .

PRMLSCRM - Once AGAIN you are bashing *something* with no proof or explanation other than "it sucks".

Please stop trolling (again!)

Quote from PRMLSCRM :

but what is this S2 account obsession you guys have? This is my account. Demo users are trash to you? Seems like it.

If you are genuinely a Demo racer, then you have no right to comment on server you have never driven on do you?

Personally i think you just another terrible S2 driver (i have my suspicions as to who you are) who got banned from CTRA very quickly for being a wrecker, and you haven't got the balls to post with your S2 account because you know your talking out of your backside.

If i'm wrong about you being an S2 racer then as i said, you cant have ever driven on any S2 servers therefore your comments on any of them are worthless.

Quote from The Moose :

If you are genuinely a Demo racer, then you have no right to comment on server you have never driven on do you?

Personally i think you just another terrible S2 driver (i have my suspicions as to who you are) who got banned from CTRA very quickly for being a wrecker, and you haven't got the balls to post with your S2 account because you know your talking out of your backside.

If i'm wrong about you being an S2 racer then as i said, you cant have ever driven on any S2 servers therefore your comments on any of them are worthless.

go moose

Quote from andybarsblade :

he aint got s2, if he did have it why would he want a free copy?

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=533834#post533834

:bananadea:bananadea:bananadea:bananadea

so he could do some more wrecking on the servers his other s2 name is banned from

Quote from PRMLSCRM :

I am a licensed racer and i post on this forum with this account and no other. I have no other account to post here either. I have raced ctra obviously else i would have no opinion on it.

jakg i can't stop what i never started.
I just expressed an opinion.

if you have s2 then you must have another account to post here.


above: an idiot talking out his ass

Thats the thing - you don't make yourself a resoned argument

Ie - "You suck! I hate you!" is not a worthy opinion, and mindless trolling, however "You suck! I hate you BECAUSE your a mindless troll" is a reasoned argument.

Try it some time, you might not look like an asshat next time.

So far out of all of your posts, about 18-19 have been bashing SOMETHING. And not "i hate CTRA because of this and this..."

My appologies to the original poster, this guy has been causing a few forum issues over the last couple of weeks, I see under his name though that the situation has been resolved. Aside from the odd remnant of neolithic society we're actually a pretty cool bunch, I think.

To the Original Poster: Welcome to LFS

Uh to be completely honest, In our time slot (the Americas)
you can get away with having only an S-1 license for now as
it seems only the CTRA is the one that is populated. But for
the most part it is a very good server - FOR THE MOST PART.
I've baled from it when there are @ss holes on. and they show up from time to time. All I can really tell you is to be patient and it will pay-off

Erm, i wouldn't say BioShock is a better game than LFS if your into racing sims....

So you're basically here, to advertise against LFS? I dun like it

Oh and being a demo racer, you don't have a clue what you're missing, do you?

Well I just drove a couple races on the CTRA whatever server and only 30% of the people there could be called drivers. 30% were just as slow as my grandma, and the other 30% seemed to have most fun driving against walls and other cars. After a while I really thought I clicked the wrong icon on my desktop, launching a slalom simulator rather than a racing simulator. What I did mostly was driving slalom around all the wrecked cars that were baisically all over the place.

After my 1 year break from LFS racing, I must say the quality of racing has decreased a lot. Now S2 racing is like demo racing used to be. About 1,5 years ago I drove the same combo (FE club GTI/GT) also on a public server, which was full all the time, and the racing was brilliant - lots of cool and close fights with many random people, clean racing in general.
But today people wrecked me in the last turn in order to win, or - of course - I got wrecked mid race by people that seemed to have no brakes mounted at all.

I guess most people dont realize that their nickname is always visible. Some even left the server, and rejoined with another name, telling weird stories of their so-called lives.
Maybe it would already help to put a big sign somewhere telling the user that his lfsw nickname is always visible. Otherwise we will need a system to track wreckers and cheaters soon.

Quote :

Otherwise we will need a system to track wreckers and cheaters soon.

Do you mean the $report system by chance? Please tell us who the poor drivers are via the reporting system, otherwise we cannot make the servers a better place for you.

Quote from What I said earlier in this thread :

So back on the topic raised by the original postee. I'm glad you found our servers, and I hope that you dont meet too many PRMLSCRM's in your racing, we have apparently banned him anyway, hense he has a lot to say about us.

We try to educate the 'not up to standard' drivers before banning and sometimes this results in a period of 'still not getting it' unfortunately, but otherwise I hope you'll find the CTRA servers are right up there in terms of clean racing.

Running public servers has a lot of problems, at the end of the day we are only as good as the community who race on them. To this end we provide 24/7 admin coverage by way of our $report system which lets you report any bad driver at any time of the day and then be safe in the knowledge that even though we're sleaping and not on the server the driver will still be dealt with appropriately.

Public racing can be very good and also very bad, league racing is generally where the cleanest racing is, although even then the leagues are only as good as the competitors ... the CTRA servers try to aim for the middle, attempting to draw the best out of both the accessibility of public racing and the cleanliness and competitiveness of league racing.

Certainly at the higer tier we think we are very lucky to have a community of highly talented and clean racers. We dont often have trouble on our higher tier. On the lower tier we are as open to abuse as any other server. We do deal with these people when we are informed of them though.

I hope you find greater enjoyment on our servers with another try .

Overall standards in public racing on LFS are better than they where a year ago, but you will always get bad races on public servers and usually when you get one race that is bad everyone gets frustrated then the next race is bad too until enough fresh blood is in the server without red mist.

I personally find the standard of driving on the CTRA servers to be very good indeed, so much so that I practically always choose to race there these days. Plus add to that the rotating combos stops everyone just hammering the same tracks again and again, and it's the best place to go for racing in LFS.

Of course one bad driver can still wreak a whole race at the first corner, and all of us even the best have had bad nights, but in comparison to any other sim LFS has the best standard of multiplayer racing I've ever seen. That really is the main reason I'm still playing it after three+ years and why I will keep playing for the foreseeable future.

Also remember most of us are still racing the entry CTRA servers (with the riff-raff ), when more people get attuned to the 2nd tier servers there will be even better racing there, I'm sure.

Since CTRA servers launched i found some great space for racing!I am learning alot basically cause its bumper to bumper racing!Most of the guys i personally raced were nice and polite enough!There were also some exceptions of racers who simply didnt care about anything but points and places,so that was leading in chaos!Every time i have a close call(almost run off track cause of a behind hit) i always try to be patient(not working everytime though!)I think that is the key cause otherwise u get angree and easilly out of control spoiling ur race and the rest of the grid.

For me patience is the key!

Quote from DarkTimes :

Also remember most of us are still racing the entry CTRA servers (with the riff-raff ), when more people get attuned to the 2nd tier servers there will be even better racing there, I'm sure.

I'm starting to find Tier 2 to be more entertaining more and more every day, seems people start to drive there more as of late.