When i had a disconnect while driving we didnt lose out, and possibly slightly gained from it as it happened 2 laps before i'd have pitted in anyway. With the updated engine damage from patch Y it was pretty clear some teams were suffering and that yanking the network cable out would probably solve all those problems with minimal damage done. Personally i think that the engine damage really spoils things, you can have a completely geniune disconnect and you lose on average 90sec, you get back in and have a brand spanking new car. If you shift+P you get the same deal, but lose ~3+ minutes. Neither have done anything different to their cars, but one is a get out of jail free card, the other is go to jail and dont pick up £200.
It doesnt feel fair that someone elses 'misfortune' is rewarded, while your driving a bag of cr*p pretty much pleading with your ISP for the same thing to happen to you! Wheres the realism there?
IMO the 2 need to be treated the same, then review the incidents afterwards and give a penalty based on what you effectively gained from what happened, intentional or accidental. The disconnections might not be intentional, but if you had a damaged car and needed to pit, then theres clearly something to gain, especially if its unrepairable damage like with the engine, the other aspects just delay you maybe 10 seconds and its like new again, the engines are unrepairable and will cost you about 20-30sec every single stint.
As i argued last week, the xrr cant get out of gravel, we had baggy come out of the pit-box after a disco to rooble on lap 8, he got a pop-up and ended up stuck in gravel before he'd got back into LFS again, any other car could have drove out. We went from what was a 20 second old car, to another new car, losing a lap in the process. That was punished, but a disconnection where a fresh car is awarded too, nobody bats an eyelid. It just seems a little unjust. Both gained, one benefiting (new car) from inconvenience, one by being allowed out of gravel (ffs!), but one is just fine, the other is heavily punished.
I understand one was a driver error (of sorts) but considering it wouldnt have been a problem in the slightest if it was any other car, it just doesnt seem fair, like its not a level playing field.
If these incidents were reviewed and penalised by what was gained, the there wouldnt be much of a penalty for bagbags incident, but an accidental (or intentional) disconnection where a significant gain was received should get a comparable penalty.
Likewise from Shift+P's, penalise based on what those actions have given you, like the ability to continue in the race, if you were a few laps into the stint so a 'full' tank is only +10% fuel, or if your on the last lap and a 'full' tank is +70%, likewise if you crash/disco 110sec into a lap, then that should be considered as collateral, and taken into account as a loss suffered already.
If you crash 100 meters from the pitlane and lose 2min because of it, you shouldnt lose the same amount as someone who crashed 100 meters from the line, purely because that teleport already costs them 2min to do exactly what someone else could do after 10sec into a lap, but one loses 110sec more than the other for the exact same deal.
The penalty for using the shift+P and getting a brand new car should reflect exactly what was gained & lost from it, consider all angles rather than turning a blind eye because it was 'accidental'.
Thats my honest opinion, blanket punishments arent fair, it wouldnt be for major/minor incidents (DT/SG or more), so why should it for other penalties, the punishment should fit the crime, no more, no less.
Incidently, my disco was due to a lovely BSoD, i'd spent half of Friday installing a watercooled 8800gtx into my loop and redoing all the tubing and tiding up all my messy wiring, when i came to power it all up and install drivers i had 3+ BSoD's in about an hour (1 desktop, 2+ in LFS), i then spent the rest of the day removing the card to go back to my trusty ATi 1900xtx which now refused to load the Catalyst software (gfx worked, but no aa/af and i cant drive without it) i wiped all drivers (again) and tried the drivers again but no change, did the same thing a few times over with registry & driver clean-ups and couldnt get it working, went back to the nTardia 8800 and it was running crysis cpu/gfx demo's fine for about an hour, passed 4hrs of system burn-in tests to check all hardware, and ran LFS replays fine and seemed ok for the LFS practice stints i did beforehand, but alas i got a BSoD and instant reboot where the bios *claimed* the (non-existant) overclock had failed. As easily the slowest driver had i thought it was a problem i wouldnt have driven, and would have just got some much needed sleep as i'd spent 46hrs awake with 3hrs of frustraitingly light sleep, spent the 4 days beforehand going from 5pm-9am days to 10am-2am (shorter days) so i could do the 6am shifts (also cos i had a 9am hosp appointment this morning so needed to adjust for that), and then had hardware trouble the day before. I cant say i was too impressed with how the weekend unfolded on the whole
I also dont think we can rely on the dev's to implement something that works, let alone in time for any of the remaining races. They've already 'fixed' the balance issues, lets not encourage anything else ey
anyway, some of that is on-topic...
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