I was surprised not to see this in the Suggestions Log, or in the related threads (very clever btw).

Basicaly, in addition to the single race mode, you can choose from some default championships using varied tracks and layouts. These championship schedules could use more or fewer tracks, or longer or shorter tracks, depending on the car you choose. You could also create your own schedule, choosing any track and combo you want.

I think that once the AI is updated (patch Y I think) this could really add to the immersion in offline racing. It might work for leagues too, if a way of counting points online was implemented.

Yes, it will be great to see AI8 battle for the championship with AI12 and AI3.

IMO its not really needed.

-1

One of the best things about LFS is that it has no offline championship mode.

It is alot better having a championship with other REAL drivers and push yourself, you could beat the AI with your eyes closed and no car ^^

The fact that one sector is sufficient to cleanly overtake fifteen AI drivers in BMW Sauber F1s using only a Formula V8 should be enough to discourage you from this idea. Development time spent on the AI is development time wasted, in my opinion, and it would go against the whole point of LFS - as Gunn and GWADanny have said.

Sam

What about those who cannot go online for whatever reason?

+1, but you could always just keep score of each AI's results in a word document.

Not everyone always has the connection speed or the bandwidth or the variety of servers to play online.

Still, I think a decent ai is more important than (and is necessary for there to be) a championship mode.

One of the wonderful things about LFS is that it requires very little in the way of connection speed to play online - in fact, it is the most tolerant online game I've ever seen as far as slow connections are concerned. If your connection was sufficient to download it, your connection should be sufficient to play online - but if it isn't, for whatever reason, LFS just isn't for you...

You have to consider the impact that taking emphasis away from online racing would have on the community, too.

Sam

+1 as this would help new people get to know all the tracks while giving us oldtimers a reason to run a certain combo and maybe even like it.
It could also be turned into an online thing as well without making it a league.

Why wouldn't you have a Championship mode offline?
Sometimes people don't have access to the internet, so you want to make the game more playable... The AI is DIRE. the 'pro' FOX's at Ky Oval.... the only thing you can't beat them in is the UF1... how gay.

Quote from Gunn :

-1

One of the best things about LFS is that it has no offline championship mode.

Oh please, don't be so conservative and purist. Why would you care what people do offline, in their privacy?

Anyway, I am not against that "feature" but why don't you just race a single race, then change the track and race again and repeat until you become completely retarded from it, Championship mode is not a bad suggestion, but it is as important as heated pedals.

Quote from Dark Elite :

One of the wonderful things about LFS is that it requires very little in the way of connection speed to play online

But it does require near infinite patience if you really want to lap around AS3 in the GTRs every time you start the game up.

That's why some of us would like quality AI - because at least AI are adventurous enough to try something new from time to time, unlike the majority of human racers we've got.

Championship mode? Nah. IMHO that should be more of a "RL" sim thing, battling "real" drivers from current or past seasons.

I'll admit I wouldn't mind a functional AI. I wouldn't care if they were a bit bargy as long as they drove faster than my mum. That way I could race what & where I wanted instead of just sighing and going "fine, bloody GTRs at bloody Aston again" or "shove your bloody Cruise server, I want to bloody race ffs, what is WRONG with you bloody people"

[insert standard disclaimer about preferring improved physics & sound, better GTR cockpits and more tracks over bloody AI here]

Quote from breadfan :

Oh please, don't be so conservative and purist. Why would you care what people do offline, in their privacy?

Oh please, stop acting like you know what I'm talking about. Of course I don't give two shits what these people do in private.

Quote from Dark Elite :

One of the wonderful things about LFS is that it requires very little in the way of connection speed to play online - in fact, it is the most tolerant online game I've ever seen as far as slow connections are concerned. If your connection was sufficient to download it, your connection should be sufficient to play online - but if it isn't, for whatever reason, LFS just isn't for you...

56k here for slightly more than 2 years. I connected to servers all over the world on that 56k connection. No, it wasn't sufficient enough to download. It took me 5 or 6 days running overnight to download, but was able to race nightly just fine with very few disconnects. As long as it was less than 18 racers, which is easy to do in the US, all was fine.

Wow. It really took 5 days to d/l 120MB? Was that continuous? Only took me a day and a bit when I had a 56k connection...

Quote from mrodgers :

56k here for slightly more than 2 years. I connected to servers all over the world on that 56k connection. No, it wasn't sufficient enough to download. It took me 5 or 6 days running overnight to download, but was able to race nightly just fine with very few disconnects. As long as it was less than 18 racers, which is easy to do in the US, all was fine.

That reinforces my point somewhat, if a connection that takes fifty-ish hours to download 120MB is capable of racing against a large field, I really can't think of any reason why anybody with a connection who has the game can't play online. If your connection is down for some reason, go practice until it comes back up again... Without AI in your way.

To be honest, I just don't think that this is a meaningful addition to LFS. It is centred on being a real racing simulator, and you cannot simulate real racing with computer-controlled opponents. Simple.

Sam

Quote from Dark Elite :

...if a connection that takes fifty-ish hours to download 120MB is capable of racing against a large field, I really can't think of any reason why anybody with a connection who has the game can't play online.Sam

There are precisely four servers where I get a ping in to 100-150 range. After that it jumps up to at least 450 for every other server. This is with a 256/64 connection. The reason there are so few servicable servers is because I live in Perth . It's basically really far from everywhere else in Australia and Australia is really far away from europe and north america. The 100-150 ping servers are on the east coast, every other server in the world is at least around half a second away. Downloading from overseas is no problem as throughput is fine, but playing on overseas servers is impossible with such high latency.

I think Championship mode for playing offline against the AI might be a good idea but I wouldn't place a priority on it. Its always better and more exciting to play against real opponents but some of those still learning to race might benefit from an AI opponent and a championship mode to race while they improve enough so that they dont mess up and piss people off during a real race.

Quote from McTaggart :

Downloading from overseas is no problem as throughput is fine, but playing on overseas servers is impossible with such high latency.

oh really I've been playing LFS since 2004 on all types of connections from Perth including 56k dialup, 128k ISDN and now 8000k/384k ADSL almost exclusively on european servers without too much problems

All were good but on the slower connection types I just had to watch that I didn't connect to full servers, and disconnect if a server filled up too fast .

56k dialup could handle 8-10 connections well
128k ISDN - 12-15 connections
And I find with ADSL that 15-20 is best for European servers.

With Aussie servers it could handle more obviosly, but with the limited server choice and my odd hours I always ended up on European servers.

Quote from Gunn :

Oh please, stop acting like you know what I'm talking about. Of course I don't give two shits what these people do in private.

I can see you getting your Mod status getting revoked.
And don't get annoyed with me, I'm helping you out.

Nor do you need to start 'threatening' him publicly. Save it for PMs, gentlemen, so we don't have to read it.

Sam

Fair enough, but It wasn't a threat. I don't have anything against anyone on here, I was just saying to him, I know Gunn doesn't like me so much, so a PM he wouldn't of read I assume, So publicly was a more suitable option at the time... ok... maybe i should PM'ed him

Quote from BlueFlame :

I can see you getting your Mod status getting revoked.
And don't get annoyed with me, I'm helping you out.

AFAIK, you dont lose your right of having an own opinion when becoming a mod.

Quote from zeugnimod :

AFAIK, you dont lose your right of having an own opinion when becoming a mod.

It was the attitude in which it was portrayed, but. Lets just leave it.