Hey everyone

Just had a discussion tonight with several lfs people. Topic was: "Engine damage cause people to cheat by pulling the plug or switch off their router".

Edit: We were doing some aftermath on the last moe race, where several suspicious disconnects occured. In this race and other endurance races you will be penalized with a lap if you have to do the shift-s or shift-p, giving you an advantage if you simply pull the plug and get a time-out as most races doesnt penalize you for that.

To summarize our findings:

"When cheating gives an advantage, someone WILL cheat, causing others having to cheat too" - all agreed.

So discussion went on by how to remove the cheating possible.

One said, that making the engine repairable in pit, taking about 15 mins would make it bearable and certainly more realistic than shift-s or shift-p. Widely agreed, but then again it makes it more attractive for cheaters to do the "pull-cord"-thing.

Discussion went on about completely removing engine damage. Widely disagreed, goes further away from the sim aspect.

Then a two min repair and then go? Again widely agreed, but you have to count the factor of possible worn tires, refueling and other damage in. Which lead os back to the "pull-plug" thing...

Finally we agreed, that to keep sim aspect but make cheating indesirable, we would have to compromize:

"Engine repair should be possible, but the amount of time it takes should NEVER exceed the time you loose by having a fake disconnect"

What do you think?

EDIT: There is an other, secondary point with this poll. What do you think is most realistic, sim-wise: To warp your car into the pits, being brandnew? Or to drive into pit, getting damage fixed? Those are the two options atm.

How could pulling the plug be considered cheating? Wouldn't that simply result in a DNF? Unless, of course, you have some sort of league-specific rules. Then perhaps it's those rules you have to discuss rather than "cheating" in LFS.

It will look like a "time-out" In some leagues that gives zero penalty, while doing shift-s or shift-p does give you 1 lap or other penalty.

EDIT: There is an other point with this poll. What do you think is most realistic, sim-wise: To warp your car into the pits, being brandnew? Or to drive into pit, getting damage fixed? Those are the two options atm.

how does this cheat work?

Quote from Zachary Zoomy :

how does this cheat work?

Very simple - you pull your ethernet plug or power down any crucial network device in your home. You will get a time-out, just as if your isp resets the equipment or other failures. With penalties in the race for doing shift-s or shift-p, it can be worth doing in an endurance race.

Engine damage? Can't say I've ever noticed this...

a new cheat to try. hmm. close thread?

Quote from jtw62074 :

Engine damage? Can't say I've ever noticed this...

Try "overflip" your downshift from 6. to 2. gear - or take your h-shifter too soon in 2. gear, coming into a corner in the.. hmm.... FXR? Then watch acceleration and topspeed go down

Quote from Zachary Zoomy :

a new cheat to try. hmm. close thread?

Why? Its a wide known trick, and nobody admits doing it. Closing the thread wont cease it to exist I'm just trying to figure out if people want this trick to be cured - as I do

I'm fairly certain that the league in question here is MoE, as there was some discussion going on regarding events from the 24hr race. This problem pertains mainly to endurance races, as they are the only ones that allow for shift-p/shift-s or disconnects and re-joining the race.

The MoE admins will have a statement on this matter soon, as regards its use in the league.

Correct me if I've misread the situation, but I'm not sure if it's possible to recognise the difference between a random disconnect and someone just disconnecting on purpose Maybe you'll just have to trust people to do the right thing. I know, it's a horrible thought...

Quote from Hankstar :

Correct me if I've misread the situation, but I'm not sure if it's possible to recognise the difference between a random disconnect and someone just disconnecting on purpose Maybe you'll just have to trust people to do the right thing. I know, it's a horrible thought...

It's certainly possible to recognize suspicious circumstances and investigate them. Coming up with hard proof is difficult.

In short, a disconnect should never save a team time. That's a pretty good rule of thumb.

You must be talking about endurance events…
Well I can’t see a “soft” way to prevent this.
Disconnections should count as a major car failure that don’t allow you to continue racing (obviously) and reconnecting should take the same time or lap penalty as shift+P

Don’t think that I never face connection problems so I don’t care… in fact I have too many of them… that keep me away of full grid league racing.

Pulling the plug cannot be called a cheat. I race on my laptp, its all i have... I also use wireless... which gets disconnected when heavy traffic kicks in the Dormitories i live in...

you are making an unfair accusation of D/C

As for changing how engine repair works... leave it to the Devs... they have probably tested your idea, and not implemented it for a reason

trust me, the team behind designing this game knows about engine repair, its been discussed before

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

...In short, a disconnect should never save a team time. That's a pretty good rule of thumb.

Exactly! By not being able to pick up time and in fact lose time, this topic would never exist

I agree with the person above. I think that a disconnect should retire you from the race. If you really have issues with getting disconnected, that's your issue, not everyone else's. It should just count as a mechanical failure and retire you from the race...

Quote from hsshoura :

...you are making an unfair accusation of D/C

Now am I? If we just change the rules, so that you get a lap penalty for a real disconnect, it would be people like you that got caught and got a pretty unfair penalty. Besides I think the other disconnects would minimize a lot

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

I agree with the person above. I think that a disconnect should retire you from the race. If you really have issues with getting disconnected, that's your issue, not everyone else's. It should just count as a mechanical failure and retire you from the race...

Doesnt sound fair to me. Think of all those hours a driver can have practiced for an event? Then, perhaps being in top three in an endurance race at the last hour of a 4 hour race, your ISP just resets your connection... I mean, thats not even in your hands? - Also remember, in an endurance race you must be able to do driver change.

I think the only resonable way to settle this, is to make it inattractive to get a purposed timeout, by either:

1. Give no penalties for shift-s or shift-p (making people wanna do that more often, minimizing reality)

2. Make damage repair possible, but maximum repair time including refueling and tires, must be less than or equal to the time you could gain by imposing a timeout

3. Remove damage - minimizing reality even further

Considering LFS doesn't have "random" mechanical failures like real racing does, I don't see what's wrong with treating a disconnect as a DNF caused by mechanical failure It may not seem fair if you get punted from a race by something beyond your control, but having your engine explode on the grid at the Le Mans 24hr isn't fair either. It would certainly cut down on intentional disconnects and, for some people, add to the realism

But then, this is all academic for me. I don't race enduros or leagues and this has and will have absolutely no effect on either my real or virtual existence. TBH I'm killing time because work is doing my head in today and I'm thoroughly over it

With NR2003, some players put a switch on the router (or equivalent device) to turn it off and back on (these come back on quickly) to avoid a pile up. For the player that does this, all the other cars just dissappear for a while, and to others, that players cars just dissappears for a while, but almost no one will notice, because they're stuck behind the pile up which creates some lag effect and other players in front of the pile up aren't looking back.

Another solution would be to maintain the car state and allow reconnect in a given (server-defined) time margin. If the user reconnects then to find himself stationary in the nearest pre-defined run-off area with whatever damage his car had to start with. Gives the effect that "marshalls" pushed it off to the side and he was finally able to restart it. Ofcourse since the server will keep track of his last position it means that he'll be losing real racing time in the meantime.

Quote from MZWiZard :

Try "overflip" your downshift from 6. to 2. gear - or take your h-shifter too soon in 2. gear, coming into a corner in the.. hmm.... FXR? Then watch acceleration and topspeed go down

yeah i did a flat in 2nd to 1st "upchange" on the fbm the other day and it damaged the engine. however i must admit the engine sound was pretty cool when the revs went into orbit

in case your wondering how i managed to change down rather than up with a sequential change it was total brain fade

I would just make the penalty of a disconnect 2 laps (1 for long tracks). Just enough to make it not worth doing.

I'm personally in the 'disconnects = DNF' boat. As is Shift-Fing.

LFSs built in lap counter is "The Law", and there shouldn't be any other lap or time count.

Im presuming that these leagues use insim?, does insim packets show engine damage, if so can the server not stop a reconnecting user that had damage at the disconnect time from 'joining' for 2 mins?

Simon