edited: 12/12/08 - Updated first post with the changes in the system.

Stars and Stripes Sim Racing is proud to announce the launch of a new tiered racing system for LFS. Each driver's race craft index (RCI) is tracked and updated for every race held on the tiered servers. Finishing races improves a driver's RCI. Causing yellow flags decreases a driver's RCI. Higher tiers require higher RCIs. Speed and finishing position are not part of the equation. The #1 goal is to ensure (as much as possible) clean racing.

A bevy of information, including the scoring system, can be found on the S3R tiered racing website. Some key points:

- Everyone starts with zero points and a basic license, which allows racing on the S3 Racing Tier 1 server.
- Racing cleanly earns a higher RCI. An RCI of 125 or greater is required to race on tier 2.
- Drivers can be kicked off of even the lowest tier with an RCI under -30. In the event that a driver goes below -30, his/her points are reset to 0 after 3 days. This is to prevent a driver from being locked out of the system forever, while still providing a period of time to practice offline.
- We plan to add more tiers and/or servers based on demand.
- Tracks rotate every three hours. Each server has it's own track rotation. The track rotation is random, but you will not have the same venue (i.e. two Aston tracks) back-to-back.
- Scoring is graded based on the number of drivers in the race.
- Tier 1 (for now) is TBO, Tier 2 is LRF.

Please direct any feedback on the system, bugs, questions, suggestions, etc, to our forum.

Interesting system. I'll try to remember to check the server out some time

Only thing I don't understand is the bit about the yellow flags. How can a driver throw 6 yellow flags in a single incident?

Quote from obsolum :

Only thing I don't understand is the bit about the yellow flags. How can a driver throw 6 yellow flags in a single incident?

LFS will keep reporting yellow flags, say for an incident where you run off track slide through the grass and pin yourself against the wall. You as a driver need to either clear your car of the incident by rejoining the track, tele-pit, or spectate.

That's odd, it doesn't work that way at all on the CTRA servers. You typically throw one yellow flag per incident. Unless the incident just happens to span two sectors; say, you spin, you throw a yellow. As you rejoin and speed up again you enter the next sector of the track, but since you're not yet up to speed and thus a slow moving (ie. dangerous) obstacle, LFS reports another yellow flag.

6 yellow flags for one incident seems a bit steep, even if it only happens in extreme circumstances. Then again, I don't know exactly how the yellow flag detection in LFS works

That is true different systems can interpret the LFS data in different ways. We will be monitoring the system, and can tweak the yellow flag detection scheme if needed.

Sorry to be a negative nelly, but LFS's way of handing out yellow flags is woefull in the extreme, to have a whole racing system balanced precariously on this is on a hiding to nothing IMO.

It's definitely not perfect. LFS yellows seem to be based more on the actual speed of the car vs. the expected speed of the car at any given point. We noticed in testing for example that some spins were almost completely ignored by LFS.

That's why we've supplemented LFS-thrown yellows with spin angle detection. The combination of the two produces pretty good results. It's not 100% accurate, but the end result is that losing control gets penalized, maintaining control gets rewarded.

Good idea, freedom fighters. Ill have to check it out when I get home. Maybe this will encourage me to come back to this game. Im getting pretty bored with the PS3.

Really like the idea

Yeah, seems a really good plan. I especially like the way the tiers don't neccesarily reward speed ( )

EDIT: Sorry, reading that back it sounds really sarcastic, I can assure you it wasn't meant to - I really do think it's a good idea

Reading yellow flags as-is reminds me of this quote from a Swedish comedy show

Quote :

.. going to the toilet for the 10th time of the day and saying "Well i've got diarrhea AGAIN" ? .. No, you've STILL got diarrhea.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

Yeah, seems a really good plan. I especially like the way the tiers don't neccesarily reward speed ( )

EDIT: Sorry, reading that back it sounds really sarcastic, I can assure you it wasn't meant to - I really do think it's a good idea

No offense taken .

Sensing iracing inspiration here. Which is a good thing. It might get people to relax a bit in T1 and leave some margin there.

To finish first, you have to finish first.

I thought the yellow flag system contained some inconsistency's in the flagging of situations. Where Yellows will be thrown, not for crashing or low speed, but for liberal and imaginative use of the track. There was quite a yellow flag discussion in CTRA I think. Which resulted in them not using the flag system in any points based judgements. I think. I might be completly wrong there.

But if you feel you have it nailed and are happy with the system I am extremly interested about how this will work. Sounds like it could be a winner. No T1 turf outs sounds promising.

Quote from Funnybear :

I thought the yellow flag system contained some inconsistency's in the flagging of situations. Where Yellows will be thrown, not for crashing or low speed, but for liberal and imaginative use of the track. There was quite a yellow flag discussion in CTRA I think. Which resulted in them not using the flag system in any points based judgements. I think. I might be completly wrong there.

That was only on one specific track, though. Some BL Reversed layout.

The BL1R path was not updated when Eric made changes to Blackwood, and so yellow flags are thrown by LFS at points of near-intersection between the old and new versions of Blackwood.

Specifically, incorrect flags are thrown at or near the Avon bridge, at the Castrol end of the long straight and also at the T1 end of the pit straight (~25m to ~75m markers).

This system sounds great but if it's using BL1R at all, anyone who races on that config will be penalised incorrectly until Scawen fixes the BL1R path. This problem arose at Patch Y and wasn't fixed at Patch Z, so I don't think it's a high priority.

On CTRA, we have excluded use of BL1R on all our servers except for the UF-BR server, which uses the tracks used by the UF Baby R series. We've specifically coded laps and yellows OUT of the CTRA on BL1R to allow that particular config to be used.

Thanks for the insight Sam, we are using BL1R on at least on tier. We may have to re-think that.

whats the server called?

Quote from major_syphillis :

whats the server called?

S3 Racing Tier 1

I've been racing on Tier 1 a couple days ago and I really enjoyed the experience.

While the system doesn't award points for speed, the races were quite quick and having a system promoting cleanliness is definitely a Good Thing. The guys from S3R are very nice and kind, and the choice of cars is interesting, too.

It's definitely a thumbs up from me

Thanks for the kind words.

We've made some tweaks to the system in the past few days. Namely
- Limiting yellows to one per 3 seconds. The "6 yellow crash" doesn't happen now (unless it lasts 18 seconds ).
- Graded scoring - both positive and negative - when less than 6 people are in a race.

We're pretty happy with the way it's working out so far, although we haven't achieved critical mass yet. It's the chicken and the egg - to get people to join the server, you have to have people on already.

I find that if I hop on the server I can draw a small crowd within a few races, but we don't have constant traffic yet. Still, it's better to have a great race with 4 people than a crappy one with 32.

just tryed your server and there is no insim... it must be down or something.

Strange. I brought it back up now. Thanks for the heads up.

Small bump.

We've made some changes to the system.

- Tracks now rotate every 3 hours.
- Tier 1 is MRT, tier 2 is FOX.

The MRT can be a handful, but the last few nights we've had some really good racing. I didn't buy LFS until S2 came out, but apparently the MRT was very popular back in S1 days.

The car choice isn't set in stone, but we do plan to stay with the MRT for a while at least to gauge community interest.

We have more updates planned. Stay tuned

Seems to be a good idea a ctra-like with other kind of cars may raise up again the interest of lfs! I hope you'll get people. I'll give it a try tonight.