The online racing simulator
Quote from DevilDare :Anyway, yes S2 is milion times better than demo in every way you can think of. But its not perfect. end of

That's more like it

I'll drop it now, you're from the town i was born so I'll let you off
Anyway he has s2 now anyway good luck aswell, ctra rules!
#53 - SamH
Quote from DevilDare :yes i joined the server but never raced cos i saw no point with that kid ramming everyone..... ask S14 Drift he saw me yesterday.......

FTR, this happens when you file a report. I believe this is the character you're referring to.
Quote from VoiD :http://www.raceauthority.com/stats/?licence=Rudy+van+Buren :banned

LOL, surprised to see he was allowed back on after a banning when I reported him, ID 18409.

But yes S2 isn't a noob detector, it just means you're more serious than demoer, so most servers treat it that way - like in real life you find idiots you also find them in S2 servers - the difference being stupidity isn't tolerated.
i mean why do people buy a game and ruin it for others who try to race seriously?
#56 - VoiD
Just two words: Social incompetence!
S2 servers are generally better than demo servers in terms of quality of racing. Some S2 servers are better than others. You need to get to know racers who you know you can trust and race fairly with and add them to your mates list in LFS world and join them when you see they are on.

However, there will always be idiots in LFS and any online racing game because there are no licence requirements, no global system for penalising poor driving, no age limits and no risk of personal injury.

So anyone who expects to race against exclusively clean racers in public servers is fooling themselves.

The best way to ensure clean racing is to join a league with clear rules and a system for penalising bad driving.

If you are rammed off by someone at T1 in a race don't let it get to you. Often you don't really know the full circumstances of the incident so it's best not to say anything to the driver either. He may have been rammed himself before he hit you. Unless you watch a replay and can see someone has actually rammed you intentionaly it's probably best not to say anything.
Quote from Gentlefoot :Often you don't really know the full circumstances of the incident so it's best not to say anything to the driver either. He may have been rammed himself before he hit you. Unless you watch a replay and can see someone has actually rammed you intentionaly it's probably best not to say anything.

Hear hear, I was effed at yesterday on CTRA by a guy who chose to blame the person that took him out rather than the instigator of the crash. In the heat of the moment some people rush to judgment. Best to stay cool, select first gear and rejoin, assuming your car is still driveable. You'll probably find the other guy in the hedge round the next corner. Also you can see when you arrive on a server, if there are lots of accusations flying around in the chat, that relationships between some drivers are "somewhat strained" (to put it mildly) and hence stress levels are likely to be high, which can in turn lead to more shunts as the red mist descends, so take extra care and give everyone lots of space.
I'll find out when I get my full licence but I suspect that it has more to do with people's personalities than whether or not they have a licence. One tends to believe that those that have paid for the game will behave better in general but of course one should expect exceptions. But it's their loss. Nothing beats a tight race with fair drivers. But of course "courses for horses" so I suppose it's a matter of finding the right group of people to race with.
Quote from BlueMile :<snip>it has more to do with people's personalities than whether or not they have a licence. One tends to believe that those that have paid for the game will behave better in general but of course one should expect exceptions. <snip>

QFT!
#61 - VoiD
QFT or QFT...?

Both seems to match.
I suppose I am in the same boat as some, and not so much as others here. I don't want to sound like a whiny little girl here, but, I will anyway...

I tend to spend most of my time behind the wheel in a REAL car and don't find alot of time to race on LFS all that much and at the beginning (early S1) I was thrilled with TBO class racing, it was AWSOME!! But as time went on and LFS gained popularity, licences got bought up by alot of people, and overall, the more serious racers I used to enjoy a good battle around Fern Bay with dissapeared (moved to CTRA and such).

I'm not trying to knock CTRA here, but, it's useless for ME (not saying anyone else here) to get any further than 6th or at best 5th place in the "race1" server, hence making it pretty much impossible to get anywhere near racing my beloved TBO class cars (with clean fun drivers) as I enjoyed so much years ago.

Sure I can join a quick server for some TBO action(and it's nearly impossible to find one!), but, it's just not the same as 20 something cars rubbing panels leaving turns, trying to control the wild (to me) turbocharged power of the XRT and giving it my all to keep with the turbo shod FXO's and RB4's. Nobody is doing this outside a sanctioning body within' the community of LFS like they used to.

If you have time to dedicate to this type of thing (sim racing) of course the S2 purchase is totally worth every penny, but, if your just a "here and there" racer as I am, it gets more and more dissapointing to see all the "good" racers move further and further away from you. I have lost alot of interest in LFS aside from the Tweak mods, and the fact the AI have become alot better than most pick up server racers are.

I'm not saying it's not worth a purchase, just understand you need to be serious to get anything near prefect out of this. I try my hardest, but, obviously I am not that good of a driver, and more so not that dedicated to being part of a team/community like DMR or CTRA.

When the TBO class was open to entry with CTRA, it was the best racing I had ever found. And go ahead and look up my stats on CTRA, you will notice my level of frustration with the race1 servers as I have quit all but 1 or 2 races (since X-system) because of the fact I stand no chance at gaining a single point. I suck, big deal.


Sorry this is such a long rant here, but, just figured being around since near the beginning and loosing touch with LFS all together due to the formation of really dedicated racing community's within' LFS that have taken away the good racers or the ones that made TBO class racing fun, I would add my two pennies. It probably don't matter a thing, but, if you have something you can suggest to get me back into the TBO class races that are worth it, I am all ears!

I never cared if I finished last in the TBO events, it was about the good fun clean racing you could have and the nearly uncontrollable power of turbo cars on street tires pushed to their physical limits. The improved physics and the bigger community would only make pick up server TBO races more fun than ever had the same racers stayed. Am I missing something here? Probably, and plenty of people will let me have it for this.

Considering a new hobby,


Ben
There was a pretty good TBO server a while ago, called BTCC 2008 or something along those lines. It was very popular for a short while, but it seems to have died. I haven't bothered to search for it recently, but maybe you can find it using the filters and join (if it's still online). I'm sure it'll fill up once there's a few people on.

Of course, seeing as you're american you're kind of in the "wrong" timezone, I think. Not much you can do about that, aside from playing LFS in the middle of the night or whatever, depending on what timezone you're in.

As for you not being able to gain points on CTRA Race 1, I am 100% sure that that is solely due to you not persisting. You do earn points for finishing 5th or 6th or 7th. But if you don't have the motivation to finish races in the first place, well.... then you'll never get anywhere. That being said, CTRA Race 2 (the TBO server) has been pretty much dead for quite a while now if I'm not mistaken, so even if you did get your Silver license you probably wouldn't find much good TBO racing on CTRA either.

I think your best bet is to find that BTCC server and join it, do some laps on your own. From my experience I remember that it never took long before enough people joined to have some fun races. However, it seems to me that you're almost only interested in racing the TBO's. Nothing wrong with that in itself, there's plenty of people who only ever race one particular car. It's just that the TBO class isn't hugely popular at the moment. Or so it seems if you look at the server list. There seem to be plenty of people wanting to race the TBO's on this forum. Maybe there just needs to be some organized way for all the TBO fans to get together
Quote from obsolum :...That being said, CTRA Race 2 (the TBO server) has been pretty much dead for quite a while now if I'm not mistaken, so even if you did get your Silver license you probably wouldn't find much good TBO racing on CTRA either...

I agree with the rest of your post, however I do not think that Race 2 is dead at all...
Attendance is variable but once a few are in it magically fills up.
I had a few races there last night (endurance day, 14-19 laps on BL1) and apart from finishing my races 30 seconds later than the leaders (G25 effect! still 1.5 seconds off my mouse pb for BL1/XRT ) it was as good and clean as usual, with above 50% drivers finishing the races.
Stick to it and the silver license will come by itself. Seeing how (not)fast I am, I'm pretty sure a majority of racers can reach silver easily.

CTRA grants points for speed but also cleanliness granted you finish high enough in the grid, better concentrate on this first! Speed (or some of it) will come eventually. Just race on race 1 and try to fight (fair) each race, even if out of points.
Thanks! It helps to know I am not just terrible at driving in general, I'm just not persistent enough to see it through. My issue, not LFS's of course. I crashed my motorcycle a few months back and just lately have been getting back into re-learning LFS with a wheel, online, and it's latest and greatest physics developments (raced off and on for the last year) and just re-discovered how great the XRT used to be.

Some time ago I was waaay into a server when the FBM came out, for the life of me can't remember which, that was running at an SO course and had ALOT of fun with that and getting back into LFS once again rediscoverd the TBO class to be alot of fun but was dissapointed to see that there were not alot of TBO races around.

Sorry to thread jack, but, I can't justify starting a whole new thread just to say what I said. Seems 50 new threads pop up every day here in the forums!

Again, thanks for letting me know the TBO class is still getting some lovin' from the community and I just need to keep at it to get there! You guys here at the LFS Forums are some cool guys!
#69 - VoiD
Quote from Mille Sabords :...I had a few races there last night (endurance day, 14-19 laps on BL1)

Argh :chairs: Missed that!
Also, if you have a Bronze License, the CTRA Baby UFR server is great fun, if you manage to catch it with a few racers on.
#71 - Guy
I would Reccomend you CTRA servers which are well controlled by mods , and there is always few crashers on server

I reccomend you to get used to it and don't get nerved...


Or..you better pwn them in first turn,how about that ?
about proper racing & road cars / tbo-class
YES, there are proper races with clean and sound racers to be found in S2.

No, not nessecarily at all times on CTRA anymore, I'm afraid.
I think it's got something to do with the points-measurement & reward-scale and, of course, with the jumped-up popularity this X-systen has seen in the last couple of months.
I started racing on there when still named "STCC" ...public something. And it was a huge difference to what you see "nowadays".

Reason? I see it as this:
when solely run with touring cars (i.e. near-stock-standard cars with road-tires) and the prospect of eventually qualify for that STCC racing-league - which unfortunately didn't live long enough to take off and lead the way to a strong following outside the reach of S2 - license holders, this was the best way to have fun in the standard-cars provided in lfs. There were virtually no servers on permanently running STD and TBO class anymore. Worse still, the beautiful lrf-class cars didn't seem to drag any attention to them outside the drift scene.
->Everybody was power-hungry, going straight to the GTR-class of cars and messing around mostly on the beginner-friendly and comparatively short-and-wide high-speed tracks such as Aston National
(as3). My team used to host such a server when S2 came out. Until encountering some tech-related problems that one was like bursting from within - with near 20+ racers being constantly on in the evenings. Yes, we are a fun-team and not into any form of professional server-hosting. Thus we had a few wreckers and -when one of us was on- so we gave out warnings and kicks time and again - making a fun environment for clean racing possible. And the overall popularity of that specific track grew by a huge margin - with new servers appearing out of nowhere.

THAT you see is the problem today:
As soon as with the x-system those new CTRA-servers got introduced and the licensing system was enlarged to the higher car classes, everyone and everything started to go rank-crazy. Thus relieving the CTRA-2 with it's TBO-class cars of the majority of its racers -> they are competing with the higher-ranked on CTRA3, now.

That's because there they get to race all the already-proven-to-be-fast competitors and -hopefully- some cleaner racing than on the newbie-grade CTRA-1. AND only on the higer servers they can effectively collect points to move up in the ranks, since holding e.g. a platinum license means _significant_ shortage of the received points when scoring some good positions racing in a beginner-grade car.

And there you have it: As soon as the license allows one will strive for getting points even faster -> thus moving to a higher car-class and joining most-likely the Racing-3 - given the almost-empty state of the tbo-class server.

Interestingly, some higher-ranked CTRA-users seem to join even the Racing1 for some pedal-to-the-metal fun here and there - so am I. I't simply because racing the road-cars is fun. And it's most fun with a large number of competitors. Only there is one catch: The Racing1 is beginner-grade. And today this doesn't mean you can expect clean racing all the time. Not even half the time, to be honest 'cause minor mistakes happen much too frequent and mostly all over the place on that one. Then there is the misconception of a lot of new ones how to behave plus the somewhat "nosy" atmosphere when things get chaotic...
...resulting in me leaving that place after a couple of sprints.

That said, the races sometimes are and still CAN BE MUCH FUN. It's simply a matter of WHEN to join a server and meeting the right people.

PLUS - simple but true:
most casual racers - who make up a large proportion of the CTRA "heavy-users" - just go by the 'not-empty' filter in the built-in server list. And there most of the time the Racing2 just doesn't sho up, due to a lack of racers. I have been joining it and started a race a few days back and it took about half an hour until some of the "lost sheep" that appeared on there (and some of them leaving straight-away again) settled for some good racing action. But, yeah, that takes some dedication and some time to come by.

Happy Racing
Heiko aka [D-R-T] Dr.Ben


PS.: shame the CTRA ditched the lrf server.

And here another tip: sometimes when not over-loaded with ppl the Jump'n'bump can be fun, too. Just try to stay out of it when the "cracks" go for time-attacs in the middle of the race. To be honest: that can confuse an acutal race as much as some newbies crashing on the first 2 corners
If you want proof that S2 gives some of the best (if not the best) online racing there is, then just watch this replay of the first round of the RSWC.

Absolutely awesome . IMO this is LFS at its best. Proper racing.
Attached files
rswcsmall.mpr - 1.8 MB - 203 views
Quote from ColeusRattus :Also, if you have a Bronze License, the CTRA Baby UFR server is great fun, if you manage to catch it with a few racers on.

This was looong ago, since at least 4-5 month its free for copper as I told on

different places a couple of times before. So instead of spectating

a full grid in race 1 just join Baby-UFR and have lots of fun.

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG