What he said really. LFS should keep state of the laps, car damage etc. in case of disconnection. Maybe make it serverside option with some added options, like allow rejoin after one has connected back.
I was a bit saddened when I learnt that in MoE, for example, you can get out of sandtraps and avoid engine/clutch damages simply by "doing a disconnection". This is imho one of the bigger gamertype problems in any sim and as far as I can see it could be 90% solved with the server keeping state of the cars/drivers during disco (what xao said). People are so dedicated and careful in racing sims that everything is done so that no one gets no possible gain from anything and anyone gets punished from small mistakes. I'm not saying the judging isn't fair, nothing like that. I'm saying that it is really going over the board if you get rid of all that non-pleasent stuff and just make it pure endurance in the meaning of going as fast as possible all the time, for a longer time. LFS lacks a lot on the side of the "negative" effects, like random engine failures, proper engine and drivertrain stresses that may escalate into broken parts over long time. There is not much reason to "nurse" the car which makes even some of the longer races pure tests of speed.
And the other thing. Imho it isn't fair either to treat discos as DNF. It is imho a bit strange to compare a disco with engine/other failure. Surely in real life you get "random engine/other failures" but if you look at it in LFS, I'd guess that very small percentage of teams would actually finish a long race (like in moe, for example) because of the disconnections. Disconnections have nothing to do with real life and disconnections cannot imho be used to overcome some flaws or missing features in LFS.
On the other hand, the people (like in moe, for example) are really doing good job with what they have .
I have to agree with this. If you treat disconnetions as DNF, you´ll need to do the same regarding accidents and getting stuck on the track, not allowing Shift+P. But that way, a race like the 24h of Aston would loose all interest because after some hours you´ll have 5 or 6 cars on the track. For example we had 2 disconnets during the race that problably cost us 2 laps, so I think we were already penalised enough. If there were times when a disconnet work as an advantage to the team, the admins can have a look at those situations and issue a time penalty in order the restore the unfair advantage that was gained.
I as a spectator to the event find all this most disheartening, I thought it odd when Mika said all but five teams had experienced some disconnection.
But then I thought that being penalised for one lap was fair under the circumstances, but now I find that even this is used to cheat and negate a more severe penalty of poor engine performance etc.
This has really taken some of the enjoyment out of the event for me, and will certainly now make me suspicious when it happens at the next event - which I will surely be watching, but with tempered feelings now.
I hoped the guys taking part were of a more sporting - rather than cheating nature .
I also hope that something can be done to prevent this sort of thing in future races - or I might just not bother watching anymore - shame on you guys.
Presumably we all want more and more people to take part in our sport which will lead to more events that can be watched as a spectator.
Mika said that there was around 6000 people hooked into the livestream to watch the race - which I found very impressive.
But I have to wonder how many of them 6000 would have watched if they knew that it was likely that cheating was going on - and the cheaters were getting away with it?
Exactly. Patch Y is still relatively new, but it isn't patch Y that is giving the team an "advantage". It's the ruleset that haven't been updated to match recent changes.
Sad to hear that some teams may be using this exploit to gain an advantage in the longer races.
But i'm not sure the disco=DNF is the best penalty, unless there's no other work around.
I like Oxo's and Hyperactives suggestions, but how easy would something like that be to code ?. Or as an alternative, is it possible to hold a driver in spectate mode or in the pits for 15 mins after reconnection ? While having engine damage repaired in say 10 mins ?
That´s the point: Getting engine damage fixed is unfort. not an option anymore since Y.
In case of, I´d vote for option 2, of course. It´s cars, not Captain Kirk and Star Trek.
We can´t say at this moment, that anyone got away with it... After all, the final results ain´t out yet, and I´m convinced that these kind of situation will deserve some kind of attention from the MOE organisers and admins....
I wrote something like that in the MoE board because there this discussion makes more sense imo:
Every shift+p is benefical for a team in the same way.
"get stuck n the gravel and don't use it - your race is over !!! ",
"engine damage and not use it - your race is over (well or better completly senseless)
"DC and not drive on - your race is over"
(there will never be a proof if someone does it on purpose or if it happend randomly - all you can do is speculate about it.)
Anyway all has the same result - "the race is not over" for no one
So why should there other or different penalties for the same thing.
If that would be treated diff. then the MoE admins also have to check in what part of the track and gravel a driver was when he shift+P to drive on etc. etc. etc.
Ayway without the MoE shift+p rule we would have 4 cars finishing a 24 hours race and hey this is a game to have fun with others and your team and not reality - because in reality their are no drivers that magically dissapear from the track and wake up at home all alone .
Engine can not be repaired on pitstops (which is good). I'm guessing it is the same with the clutch (which is good). Imho, engine and all other repair times should be realistic, not some 10minutes per x .
I don't think it is any "harder" to code that anything else. It is quite pure programming problem and doesn't involve any physics changes. In fact it could be a compatible change but what do I know .
All in all, it could solve huge amount of league race discos, after all, a disconnection is just a gameplay feature (or a bug) and should be treated as such. Obviously it doesn't solve the "cheating" with manual disconnection but it kinda makes the judges' life easier when the system could be more automated. Deffo something I'd like to see Scawen to work on, even if it doesn't add really anything to the racing experience directly .
In a long endurance event sure make the rules that a disconnect brings you a lap down. In shorter events lots don't let you rejoin if you disconnect, and thats how I feel it should be. MoE is a different story though being a 24hr event disconnects will probably happen, so a 1 lap penalty isn't bad...
As far as you question of what is more realistic shift-p/shift-s or forcing the car around the track - please watch a few races on TV and tell me when you see a car telepit... I mean are you really asking what is more realistic? I would like to see this become a server option in the future so that cars that crash need to find a way to get around the track and deal with their issues... But generally in a real race there is a flag, the yellow flag, which people obey in real life. In the game however people don't - I try but people behind me usually slam into me due to poor driving (ie not slowing for yellow).
Thanks for all the feedback on this. I agree a lot on Hyperactive's proposal - that car state should be remembered by server. But it should all be an automated process to avoid the need for looking through an entire race afterwards. Like when you rejoin the race, your engine is still bad and a repair would take 10-30 minutes? It will also keep things more realistic than warping your car into pits.
+1 here
On the other hand, r4ptors proposal is quite simple and effective for now (i would prefer penalizing 5 laps at DC or shift-p, shift-s). Only problem will be the unlucky guys that are on an instable ISP, which clearly is not their fault.
I'm against rules that arise from thinking that everyone is or possibly could be cheating, especially when it will affect (IMO more so than you think) innocent teams/drivers.
We already had a - in a way a - similar case with first MoE round, where allot of the drivers qualified in such a way that apparently wasn't allowed, however the rules didn't state that. The outcome was that the first qualification round was nullified - thats not drivers cheating or wanting to cheat - it's the league organizers not doing their job.
If league organizers really want to get rid of cheats, they should consider more severe actions such DQ or even ban from rest of the season, but only when there is no doubt that the driver/team had been cheating and done so delibrately. But introducing penalties that punishes too much, and even the innocent ones is over the top and would possible lead to no one wanting to waste time in such races anyways.
I agree widely on you - and sorry, youre right - it wasnt your proposal
However at the moment there is no way to see if you get a real or a faked disconnect, not that I know off, anyway. The only good way as I see it, would be to implement server memory of the car state and repairing possible while disallowing shift-p or shift-s. That would improve the sim-feeling and bury the "time-out-cheat"
EDIT: Forgot to say, that irl the car would often not be repairable, causing the team to retire from a 24h race. That sounds fine, but looking at the enjoyment aspect it would quickly put an end to enduranceraces, I'm afraid. Leaving engine repair as a server option will make the hardcore guys happy, while others could go for the pit repair option - This would in both ways enhance the race feeling and eliminate the need for shift-s or shift-p
Shift+p's are a generally good idea to allow considering certain cars can get stuck in the gravel and others can't. And none of the generic penalties I've seen suggested really work. Like ~2/3 through we had a disconnect that lost us about 3 minutes, but we also had engine damage that was losing us ~1 second a lap on average (thought it was 1.5 at the time to the MoE people I was talking to then, average pace over stints says differently). On a track like aston gp where you only make 21 laps an hour, that's 168 seconds gained from not having engine damage over the last 8 hours vs. the ~180 seconds we lost to the disconnect.
My point being that you can't apply a broad penalty to this and call it fair in the least. (What about the people who disconn and have 0 engine damage, which happened to us and many others earlier on in the race?) The gain/loss from disconnecting and repairing engine damage is so variable when you consider race length, engine damage, where the disconnect happened, and lap length. Sure, there is definite potential for abuse, but you can't penalize everyone for what a few a**es are doing.
And on the other hand, this won't even make much of a dent in smaller endurance events. (The uninentional disconnects that is.) Most people had very slight amounts of engine damage, only really showing because the lap's so long in the first place. (Ours comes out to .35 lost per minute due to engine damage.) And you tend to lose about a lap on a normal disconnect once everything pans out, with the slight panic and attempting to get the replacement driver in. And it takes a long time to make up a lap of a normal endurance track at that pace.
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