The online racing simulator
Proposal
Okay, first off: The admininstration did a great job with what they were given this week. Chat was a bare minimum but obviously there were some flaws. I will deal with that. Wrecking under cautions was also interesting, and I have a solution for that, and my final solution considers restarts.

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Restarts
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Okay, on restarts:
I have 2 suggestions, one of which I went over with Astra. Everyone seems to speed up as they come to the green, about ten miles per hour over the speed limit. It doesn't matter how many warnings people are given, it's still going to happen. What if we keep the safety car out on the track, and the green flag is signaled by the spectation of the safety car. He spectates (IE: just before the line), and the leader knows to accelerate because the safety car is gone. All people in line will notice "Safetycar has joined the spectators" and know to accelerate.

2. No matter what path is taken in the before situation, something needs to be done about the passing. Both weeks people have been penalized for passing. Ken was penalized for passing because he took advantage of a situation and backed off, letting the cars in front get ahead. He then made sure he was accelerated before the green dropped in an effort to pass the cars as soon as possible. This is a strategy outlawed in NASCAR, but is not defined in the rules. He was penalized for passing before the s/f line. This week Niki and I passed before the s/f line due to the fact that the vehicles in front of us were so slow that if we had attempted to stop it would have resulted in a huge pileup that would have made more work for the admins, more work for the safety cars, more laps added onto the race, and long story short: more work. I believe that the law should be in effect that restarts are free game to an extent. You can pass when the green is thrown, but if you are caught laying back to an extent (determined by admins) then you are going to be penalized. This allows people who have spent time on their gears to prevail, it also allows faster cars to get by lapped vehicles. Most importantly if the leader accidentally shifts to fifth gear, everybody doesn't lock up into 5 o' clock traffic and rear end him.

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Chatting

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Long live no chatting. It was hard for me to do at times, but even I, a super-chatter enjoyed a race with no chat. However here is something I would like to try, and personally I think it would be a great idea. We had three admins last race. A safety car (2?) and Race Control (Also 2?). Some people have questions regarding the incident and what started it etc. SOme people wish to know what lap the leader is on (IE: if they're a lap down). There is some general information, as well as different questions, perhaps a small debate that might need to be handled. If there is something that is totally relevant and not stupid, you should be able to ask/tell an admin. (IE: toddshooter is driving eradically under cautions). However, something like (IE: OMG TODDSHOOTER IS A NOOB WTF HE JUST WRECKED ME!!!!!) would be considered biased spam and you may be asked to clarify and/or get a penalty for spamming the admin. The idea is still to get a no-chat atmosphere. To talk to the admin you would do this

N. Đaković: #42 to tower, requesting permission to (ask a question/correct an error) regarding (situation)
Race Marshall: Permission Granted N. Đaković, you may speak.
N. Đaković: Thank you Race Marshall, what is the cause of the last caution?
Race Marshall: The driver of the #29 merged into a lane that was already occupied resulting in a racing incident involving the #28 as well.
N. Đaković: Thank you Race Marshall.
Quote from TomShanK :Okay, first off: The admininstration did a great job with what they were given this week. Chat was a bare minimum but obviously there were some flaws. I will deal with that. Wrecking under cautions was also interesting, and I have a solution for that, and my final solution considers restarts.

==========
Restarts
==========

Okay, on restarts:
I have 2 suggestions, one of which I went over with Astra. Everyone seems to speed up as they come to the green, about ten miles per hour over the speed limit. It doesn't matter how many warnings people are given, it's still going to happen. What if we keep the safety car out on the track, and the green flag is signaled by the spectation of the safety car. He spectates (IE: just before the line), and the leader knows to accelerate because the safety car is gone. All people in line will notice "Safetycar has joined the spectators" and know to accelerate.

2. No matter what path is taken in the before situation, something needs to be done about the passing. Both weeks people have been penalized for passing. Ken was penalized for passing because he took advantage of a situation and backed off, letting the cars in front get ahead. He then made sure he was accelerated before the green dropped in an effort to pass the cars as soon as possible. This is a strategy outlawed in NASCAR, but is not defined in the rules. He was penalized for passing before the s/f line. This week Niki and I passed before the s/f line due to the fact that the vehicles in front of us were so slow that if we had attempted to stop it would have resulted in a huge pileup that would have made more work for the admins, more work for the safety cars, more laps added onto the race, and long story short: more work. I believe that the law should be in effect that restarts are free game to an extent. You can pass when the green is thrown, but if you are caught laying back to an extent (determined by admins) then you are going to be penalized. This allows people who have spent time on their gears to prevail, it also allows faster cars to get by lapped vehicles. Most importantly if the leader accidentally shifts to fifth gear, everybody doesn't lock up into 5 o' clock traffic and rear end him.

==============================================

Chatting

=================================================

Long live no chatting. It was hard for me to do at times, but even I, a super-chatter enjoyed a race with no chat. However here is something I would like to try, and personally I think it would be a great idea. We had three admins last race. A safety car (2?) and Race Control (Also 2?). Some people have questions regarding the incident and what started it etc. SOme people wish to know what lap the leader is on (IE: if they're a lap down). There is some general information, as well as different questions, perhaps a small debate that might need to be handled. If there is something that is totally relevant and not stupid, you should be able to ask/tell an admin. (IE: toddshooter is driving eradically under cautions). However, something like (IE: OMG TODDSHOOTER IS A NOOB WTF HE JUST WRECKED ME!!!!!) would be considered biased spam and you may be asked to clarify and/or get a penalty for spamming the admin. The idea is still to get a no-chat atmosphere. To talk to the admin you would do this

N. Đaković: #42 to tower, requesting permission to (ask a question/correct an error) regarding (situation)
Race Marshall: Permission Granted N. Đaković, you may speak.
N. Đaković: Thank you Race Marshall, what is the cause of the last caution?
Race Marshall: The driver of the #29 merged into a lane that was already occupied resulting in a racing incident involving the #28 as well.
N. Đaković: Thank you Race Marshall.

I like your suggestions!

Just a couple of points/questions......How the hell do you propose to type all that and control your car at the same time?
And Toddshooter only drives erraticly under caution when others infront of him or behind him do...ie to avoid getting taken out
A simple InSim for tower<->driver communication is a far better solution. Like !t to send a message to the tower (all marshals) and !pm name to send messages to a player.
Your suggestions are accepted. I'll post the rules update
Life made easy, thank you morpha!!

if that can't be done...its just a simple quickchat away

if you have time to curse out an opponet, i'm sure time to talk to the tower wouldn't be a problem

(Todd, just using you as an example :-P )
Quote from TomShanK :Life made easy, thank you morpha!!

if that can't be done...its just a simple quickchat away

if you have time to curse out an opponet, i'm sure time to talk to the tower wouldn't be a problem

(Todd, just using you as an example :-P )

Well done with constructive criticism

I'm a sensitive soul and I could see how it would look like my driving was crap if they were following under caution. But trust me when I say it was all reactions to others.
I spent many a minute under caution bitching to my teammates on Ventrillo about FUC*ing people driving like twats!!!

It shouldn't take more concentration to drive under caution than it does to race.
I've been following the post-race discussion because my guys were in this race, but have been silent so far. Now, there are some things that I see that I feel I must make comments on. I know there are some of you that will say "why are you commenting on a series that you don't even run?". I am doing so because I have significant racing management experience, both in real life with karting and online with LOTA, and I want to see leagues that my guys race in be managed at least somewhat well.


Quote from TomShanK :I have 2 suggestions, one of which I went over with Astra. Everyone seems to speed up as they come to the green, about ten miles per hour over the speed limit. It doesn't matter how many warnings people are given, it's still going to happen. What if we keep the safety car out on the track, and the green flag is signaled by the spectation of the safety car. He spectates (IE: just before the line), and the leader knows to accelerate because the safety car is gone. All people in line will notice "Safetycar has joined the spectators" and know to accelerate.

"It doesn't matter how many warning people are given, it's still going to happen." What the hell is this about? You give a warning...and if it's done again, you send the perpetrator to the rear of the field. Simple. To the point. If you warn people more than once, then you will never have authority. When the pace car leaves the track before the green, it should be just prior to showing the green, and the lead car should not be accelerating until the green is shown. The admin that is flying the flag should be spectating the leader, and if he goes more than a couple mph over the pace speed, don't throw the green. Rather, show the yellow again, explain what happened, send the leader to the back, and indicate a start attempt on the next lap.

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Quote from TomShanK :
Long live no chatting. It was hard for me to do at times, but even I, a super-chatter enjoyed a race with no chat. However here is something I would like to try, and personally I think it would be a great idea. We had three admins last race. A safety car (2?) and Race Control (Also 2?). Some people have questions regarding the incident and what started it etc. SOme people wish to know what lap the leader is on (IE: if they're a lap down). There is some general information, as well as different questions, perhaps a small debate that might need to be handled. If there is something that is totally relevant and not stupid, you should be able to ask/tell an admin. (IE: toddshooter is driving eradically under cautions). However, something like (IE: OMG TODDSHOOTER IS A NOOB WTF HE JUST WRECKED ME!!!!!) would be considered biased spam and you may be asked to clarify and/or get a penalty for spamming the admin. The idea is still to get a no-chat atmosphere.

No way should you be putting in place a medium for driver to start chatting. Inevitably, there will be people that won't follow the rules regarding this, and then you'll get into a situation where if you don't penalize, you'll get questions on why they weren't. That leads to all kinds of bad opinions of admins, whether it be consistency, incompetency, or partiality. When a yellow comes out, have the admin (that is NOT driving the pace car) indicate why the caution came out, who is the leader, what lap he is on, etc.


And never never never never send messages out that could in any way be confused for a restart command. Never. Change the color of the pit lane message if you have to...but never make this mistake again.

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG