Something has been really annoying me lately, particularly on demo servers so I thought I'd start this thread in an attempt to educate the offending drivers.

When a 10 lap race is in progress, say 5 laps in maybe, DO NOT vote to restart. Instead, wait for the race to end and then vote restart.

I was on the CRC demo server the other day and it was lap 4 of 5. One guy kept voting to restart. Another guy just behind me in the race asked him to stop. He explained that people were still racing. The response was "so what". I thought this was incredibly rude.

The amount of times I will be nearing the end of the lap, right at the front because others were involved in accidents and it gets restarted. How annoying!

Another time, I joined a race mid way through and on the last lap I was on a flyer. Thought I was about to beat my PB but just as I came through the last complex, the race was restarted and I didn't get my time. I also lost my grid position.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CAN EVERYONE WAIT UNTIL ALL RACERS HAVE COMPLETED THEIR RACE BEFORE VOTING TO RESTART

Perhaps this should be in the beginners section. It is annoying.

I find it annoying too, I don't understand why some servers don't let you vote until it has passed 1 minute, this just causes people to constantly vote to restart, flooding with vote/cancel messages. It would make more sense if it wasn't possible to vote after a certain time. Like once the leader has completed one lap, votes are automatically cancelled.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

I thought this was incredibly rude.

That's what people are.
It's always "I want to have fun and I don't care about you". Anti-social behaviour is the trademark of any anonymous interaction.
(The countermeasures would be either punishment or removal of the anonymousity, but this is leading beyond the scope of the thread.)

Being rude those people won't read this forum. So as noble as your aim is I believe the topic won't have any effect.

Vain

That wouldn't work. Example: two guys are driving shittily around the track, one completes a lap. Then five other people join, everyone wants to restart, but hey, LFS says "no".

It has the effect of making me feel better

Maybe hosts should use the /rstend setting?

For example : /rstend 90

That would disallow votes to restart for 90 seconds after the winner finishes the race.

I think he means that people vote (and pass) a restart on lap 9 of 10...

Quote from Scawen :

Maybe hosts should use the /rstend setting?

For example : /rstend 90

That would disallow votes to restart for 90 seconds after the winner finishes the race.

I dont feel this is a particularly big issue, is it / would it be possible to have something where hosts could disable the restart commands from drivers, (like taking away the kick / ban voting), and have LFS display a message like "Race In Progress!"

People tend to just not listen to hosts when the option is there and known.

Yes it is incredibly unfortunate and very selfish. Happened to me too a while back, a friend and I were starting lap nine of ten and it was still a close battle. Then two guys joined and ended our race. When I explained to them that it is a good idea to see what's happening on a server before diving in one guy said "stfu we want to race now". I said "well we wanted to race too but you ended it for us prematurely". He says "so what, four people are better than two". We disconnected and left the two of them to play by/with themselves.

Please racers, always consider what's happening before voting to restart or change tracks or whatever. If in a race you vote to restart but don't get enough supporting votes to initiate a new race, then leave it be, don't spam up the screen with restarts when the consensus is not with you.

If you jam your car into the wall at T1 and nobody else does, that's tough titties sunshine. That's the way the cookie bounces.

If you join a server it only takes a few seconds to ask "are you guys racing or practising?" A bit of latitude goes a long way towards an enjoyable session and people will respect you for it.

My 2c after tax.

yeah its pretty annoying...I'd probably have triple the number of wins without this....

Quote from Gunn :

If you jam your car into the wall at T1 and nobody else does, that's tough titties sunshine. That's the way the cookie bounces.

If you join a server it only takes a few seconds to ask "are you guys racing or practising?" A bit of latitude goes a long way towards an enjoyable session and people will respect you for it.

Totally agree with you there Gunn, seems this common courtesy isn’t so common sometimes…

i agree with everything thats been said, very annoying, maybe some form of system so that if the leader or top 3 accept the restart then the race will restart, this would stop races being restarted on lap 6/10

Definitely an annoying problem but Vain is right to point out that the people who cause this problem are unlikely to be engaging in rational discussion on the forums.

I'm generally in favour of a one-person one-vote approach to democracy, but I wonder if weighted voting could be a solution:

• For restart votes after a race has ended, everyone gets one vote, as usual.
  
• But for restart votes during a race, your vote is multiplied by the number of laps you've completed in the race. (Or let's say number of laps plus one, to avoid multiplication by zero.) So in the race described by Gunn, he and his friend (on lap 9) would get 10 implicit negative votes each, that far outweighed the 2 restart votes of the two newcomers, and the race would not have been restarted.
  
• Note that in the event that there's a lap 1, turn 1 disaster and the majority of the field agrees on a restart, OK, that still works as in the current system. Everyone's completed zero laps and everyone gets 1 vote.
  
• If two people have driven 20 laps together but they're only practicing, then 5 more people log onto the server and all agree that a restart would be a good idea, then a restart can happen although it's true that the two who have been racing get much more voting power. In other words, the two long-term drivers can completely veto a restart, but I think this is only fair. They may in fact be racing. If everyone wants a restart, of course it still happens.

I can't see any difficulties in implementing this. I'm trying hard to think of a way in which such a system could be abused: I guess we could have weird situations in which a single driver sets up a server for a 50 lap race, drives 25 laps alone, and then acquires the voting power to block restart votes by 20 new arrivals. But that seems unlikely to happen much in reality.

Hmm.. maybe this should go in the Suggested improvements forum.

I prefer no restarts at all, but I'm not everybody. Scawen's earlier post is a good solution for managed servers.

Quote from Gunn :

I prefer no restarts at all, but I'm not everybody. Scawen's earlier post is a good solution for managed servers.

me too,

also admins tend to restart because they crashed out or two of their team crashed out, but if others crash they wont.

Yes Richy that's true. I was playing on Saturday and there were these two racers (who will remain nameless) from the same team (same skins at least). Pretty sure one of the racers was admin on the server. I was spectating and the race restarted 3 times. Each time these two had crashed. On the fourth occasion both these two made it to the front and surprise surprise - no restart. I left at that point.

On the flip side of this, does anyone else get fed up waiting for the vote to be passed for a new race after one has just finished?, sometimes it can be anything up to 5 mins before enough people have voted to restart, thats quite frustrating.

Maybe an after race time limit, so if a vote hasnt passed before a certain amount of time, it restarts.

Dan,

perhaps it should be locked restart in race unless the top 3 people vote to restart or something. And at end of race if no restart after 2 minutes it could be done automatically....

I have no idea what i am talking about but today seems to be a good day to post so..

My suggestion: Adaptive restart-poll.
In the beginning of the race a 50% majority may decide to restart the race. Then the race will restart.
After the first lap is finished the treshold is raised to 75 percent.
Two minutes after the leader has finished the race the treshold is lowered to 30%.

Opinions?

Vain

Quote from Vain :

Opinions?

gets my vote!
But maybe in combination with needing the two leading drivers to vote as well as having a 75% majority for the second one...

Please keep the mechanism as simple as possible.

Vain

Or a server side option that only lets you restart in the first 10% of a race, i.e. a 15lap race you can only restart before 1.5laps. Obviously rules such as these needs overrides, so maybe a 80%-90% vote will still allow a restart.

As Scawen said, restarts can be disabled for the first 90s, but IMO you should be able to set this as a number of laps and/or a percentage of the race distance BEFORE which you can restart. However, 'the /rstend 90' command obviously does the opposite of what people are asking for, only disabling restarts for 90sec instead of the whole race.

It is a tricky balance for those servers which require these features, in my experience I only wish I had these features when I was racing with small numbers of racers.

I agree with vain,
It would be cool to have a command like "/rstend" but for all stages of the race (kinda like a restart 'envelope'), it would make setting up a tiny bit more complicated but you'll end up with a nicely balanced enviroment after a bit of fiddling/testing.

something like:

/rstmin 30,50 (time limit,majority required)
/rstmid 70 (majority required between start/finish)
/rstend 90,30 (time limit,majority required)

give it a few months and put the best settings in the default cfg script you get when you D/L the dedi server.

alternatively just turn mid-race join off, it's annoying for those who respect others but even more annoying for the ignorant, it works tho'.

While I have not as yet read every single post / reply / opinion I just had put “pen to paper” on this topic. How many posts have been made over the years about the realism of Live For speed?. Things like

• this is a SIM and not a game
  
• the physics of the sims / game are not real enough and need to be improved
  or
  
• some other comments as to the fantastic realism of Live for speed
  
  
• Why then to we have re starts at all?

Yes I know that in REAL LIFE the concept of a red flag or re start is there.
But this is for SAFETY reasons and not any other – no lives can be lost in Live for Speed – other than by raised blood pressure if some “person” keeps messing things up.:drunk:

Here my vote / opinion
Re starts CAN be made

• after the top three drives have finished a race
  
• if only one single driver starts a race (waiting for other to join)
  
• if only one single driver left in a race (other have left the server)

NO restarts if

• race has started (subject to 2 & 3 above)
  
• Top 3 positions not yet determined

Lets get really real and award the laurels to drives that get to the end of a race unscathed and not those that keep restarting until they get to a good position after turn 1