Looking at the server usage I think we're spreading the CTRA race licence holders too thin on the higher tin top licence tier. Or in simpler words: Race 2 & 3 are not that busy.

To remedy this i've done a number of things:

Originally I opened up the server to bronze licence holders with the XFG/XRG - this hans't worked.

Today I reduced the amount of points you get when you are over-licenced on a low server.

Coming soon the introduction of the weekly cup system will hopefully encourage a little more use on the servers - but it needs a better base upon which to grow or it will fall over.

So I want to run by the community the possibility of amalgamating these two servers. This would be done by time sharing the role of the server by selecting the current cars on a track change.

This would require a little gentle reshuffling of licence levels, so I propose the following:

Car combination 1
Silver: XFG+XRG
Gold: XRT+RB4+FXO

Car Combination 2
Silver: GT2
Platinum: GTR

My hope is that by doing this both servers are given a bigger community of competent racers with which to race. Of course once better established and with a larger licenced LFS user base i'd be happy to split them apart again.

So this would mean that Bronze racers can no longer race on Race2? Ya know, a few days ago when Race1 was down I found that Race2 was actually quite well populated and offered good multi-class racing. Most of the time now when I join I'm pretty much the only guy in the STD class. Which isn't bad 'cause I always "win" But yeah, it's no fun racing that way.

I think that once the higher licensed racers earn less (no?) points on Race1 more of them will move to Race2. Let's hope so...

great news! I wasn't getting any points when in 3rd and a guy in 2nd and silver lisence was getting 10+ points on a full grid

Quote from Zachary Zoomy :

great news! I wasn't getting any points when in 3rd and a guy in 2nd and silver lisence was getting 10+ points on a full grid

I'm thinking that you didn't get any points then because your fastest lap wasn't within the 108% margin? 'Cause the points system isn't that tough as far as I've experienced

I do think that if the higher license holders cant get points on the lower servers this will work.

If I use me as an example:

SIlver License holder: I have not raced the regular servers much due to enjoying the bump n jump and Single seater servers (since CTRA came back, I have not raced on any other servers!). If I know I wont get points on server 1 due to being a silver license holder, I wont race on it unless friends with a lower license want to race specifically.

I really want to be able to race the GTR classes eventually, and thus, getting the gold license is key, so the no points for a silver+ license holder will make ne go to server 2 more.

Single Seater: Again, as said above, if you get no points on the SS server 1 due to holding a national license, then this will certainly push drivers to the new server.

With three different license categories, we all have to choose which area is important to progress in.

a·mal·ga·mate /əˈmælgəˌmeɪt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-mal-guh-meyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, -mat·ed, -mat·ing.

–verb (used with object)
1. to mix or merge so as to make a combination; blend; unite; combine: to amalgamate two companies.
2. Metallurgy. to mix or alloy (a metal) with mercury.

–verb (used without object) 3. to combine, unite, merge, or coalesce: The three schools decided to amalgamate.
4. to blend with another metal, as mercury.

OK now i now what you mean

-3pts for anal retenteteveness (spelt incorrectly very much on purpose) .

I'm getting the feeling that there are just not enough active CTRAers to populate all those servers, no matter how they're arranged. Sure you can try to optimize their use, but you stated in that other thread, Becky, that 5,012 different drivers have joined a ctra-server since x went live. Wouldn't that point to the fact that we're kidding ourselves when looking at those 13,500 licenced racers on the ctra-page? Seems around 8,000 of those are not active .

It's historical data. We dont wipe licences because people havn't logged on after a period of time. Many will come back, some have put down LFS, some spend time on other servers too.

Before the system went down we had two populated 1st tier servers and one second tier, we now have 3 populated 1st tier servers and some sparcely populated second tier servers.

Frustratingly we have drivers who cant get on because the 1st tier server is full and go elsewhere for the night, and under the 2nd tier takes off they wont sit and wait on an empty server - fair enough really - but it can be hard to get a new server to take off, ask any operator or read one of the many "why is it always the same old combo" threads.

It was always ambitious to try and populate the 3 server tiers when introducing the two new licence tiers, but we tried - it didnt work, so we'll adapt.

I'm not at all questioning the adaptation, I think it's great that you guys are trying as hard as possible to get all those servers populated. I was mainly expressing my concerns, really. You built it -- let's just hope that they will come .


(note to myself: need to race more)

Quote from Becky Rose :

some spend time on other servers too.

are they mad?

I actually (personally) spend less time driving on CTRA servers, than any other server, simply because I get frustrated at other drivers being unpredictable.

I think its a great idea merging the 2 servers, however I think some of the higher licencesd drivers are going on race 1 because either Race2 &3 are not populated enough (I would rather race in a full server for no points than race with a handfull of players for a few points), or because they cannot see the server.
I found last night that CTRA 2 had dissapeared from my ingame list, (hidden in config?) after reseting all filters It was still not visible, only 1 & 3 +bj +ss ( I dont think it was trackchange) after using join specific server option, I joined it np, and there were 10 people there finishing a 14 lap race!

I had read about people who couldn't see the server and thought it must be them using filters or somthing.... until it happened to me might be worth taking a look at the server config file.

SD.

The amalgamation has ocurred, the server time shares between road cars and GT, and there has been a change to the road cars...

The UF1 returns alongside TBO as a trial.

You need a silver licence to race UF1 and GT2, gold for TBO and platinum for GTR.

Nice one! the UF is back!

Quote from Becky Rose :

The amalgamation has ocurred, the server time shares between road cars and GT, and there has been a change to the road cars..

how do they change? time, races? randomly?

btw: for the UF1!

Quote from LordBlaster :

how do they change? time, races? randomly?

btw: for the UF1!

It's random and occurs on track change.

It seems that the UF1's get lapped once around the 2/3 distance mark. So far i've seen that on the whole blue flagging has worked very well indeed with silver licenced drivers, i'm very pleased at how sporting everybody seemed to be.

As the server goes to other tracks though it may be necessary to make some combo's XFG+XRG instead of UF1 for safety reasons, as the UF1 is quite slow and so the TBO's go past at a much higher speed.

i don´t think a randomly change from GTR to TBO is good idea...

what i´ve seen so far (just 2 tracks) there was no change, lets see what happens next time.

anway, the UF1 thing worked great and i´m glad i can drive it again

All of these changes sound very good. Just wondering if the low turnout on servers 2&3 are caused by the joining problem. When joining i get a message that can't get the track info. Atleast i have had that all the time, and i'm a pretty keen driver so the server is atleast missing me .

So it would be good to correct this problem first, before you change the system too much.

Starting to miss the XRT

That sounds like an LFS dedi server crash, it's been restarted so are you still having difficulties?

Yeah still, allways had the same problem.
Can't see the race 2 server in the ingame server list at all. Trying to connect through the lfsworld and it says that cant get the track info. So is it in my end or in yours? Because every other server works just fine.

Lots of people can connect to it just fine so I dont really know what the problem is, i'll restart it tomorrow morning when there is only a few people on CTRA.

Ok sounds like a plan. I think others have had this problem also http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=29102 like mentioned in this thread. I think i have now tried to connect to it about a week, at first thought you were just testing with few drivers so didn't bother to say anything about it. So would have been good to say something earlier on .

Quote from Jouman :

Yeah still, allways had the same problem.
Can't see the race 2 server in the ingame server list at all. Trying to connect through the lfsworld and it says that cant get the track info. So is it in my end or in yours? Because every other server works just fine.

connect to it from the raceauthority website?

Quote from Becky Rose :

The amalgamation has ocurred, the server time shares between road cars and GT, and there has been a change to the road cars...

The UF1 returns alongside TBO as a trial.

You need a silver licence to race UF1 and GT2, gold for TBO and platinum for GTR.

Quick Question on the points and how that will work.

Obviously the UF1 is slow in comparison to the TBO so wont manage the same amount of laps. Does it work so that those in the lower classes still get points even if a lap down on the faster cars?