Hello racers!
Welcome to the IGTC 2008 Season, juuuust a little bit early. With any luck, we'll see all of you on-track in two weeks for the first official round of the season.
In advance of Saturday's race I would like to discuss a few points that we should all be aware of going into the event. Most of these are simple reminders of things present in the rules. (I know I keep telling you to read them, but they really are important.) This series has a lot of rules, and a lot of artificial (i.e., not built into the game) constructs/concepts, which means that it takes a lot of co-operation between the admin team and the drivers to make things run smoothly.
1. In-server behavior. Drivers should come to the server ready to race, not to play around, chat, etc. We treat this series seriously, and we expect the drivers to as well. This doesn't mean it shouldn't be fun, but when we ask for your attention, or to keep the chatter down, please play nice.
Chatting is strictly forbidden in qualifying and race sessions and will be penalized, so be attentive.
Personal attacks and unsportsmanlike behavior in general are of course strongly frowned upon. We don't currently have a rule regarding this because we have faith that our drivers have respect for one another and are here to have fun, but we will legislate penalties if it becomes a problem. Most likely, the offending driver will be put on probation or suspended from the series.
2. Qualifying session. As stated in the rules, IGTC will use a "hardcore" qualifying format this season. No shift-p/shift-s can be used during the qualifying session, which means that if you wreck it, go out of bounds, run out of gas, you are done for the session with whatever time you have recorded at that point. It also means that only one driver per team can qualify, and that only one setup can be used (of course certain setup options can be tweaked in F11 and F12), so choose wisely.
This also means that there is extra importance on driving carefully in qualifying and being respectful of other drivers on the track. Incidents due to carelessness will be heavily scrutinized.
3. Race start. The actual mechanics of the race start are covered very well in the rules, so I won't reiterate them here. However, I do wish to remind everyone to please give plenty of room during the pace lap. There is absolutely no reason to ride someone's bumper, weave to warm tires, or do anything else to make it more likely to cause an accident. Even two hours is a pretty long race, and there's plenty of time to make up a few meters lost in giving someone a sufficient buffer.
4. Intentional disconnects. As most of you know, this ugly beast has raised its head in MoE recently. We're still in the process of dealing with it there, and we don't yet have a policy for preventing it. We do have a rule on the books (K1.2) that states that a team "must never gain time from a disconnect," but obviously this is a difficult thing to quantify. So until a solution is reached for this issue, we ask here for your honesty and sportsmanship in NOT intentionally disconnecting in order to get rid of engine damage or clutch heat, even in this test race.
5. New drivers and teams. Only 10 of the entered teams this season have driven in the IGTC before. Many of the new teams have extensive experience in league racing, and even in endurance racing... some do not. Some returning teams have drivers that are new to IGTC, and even the returning drivers have a lot of rules changes to deal with.
The sum total is that there are going to be a lot of fresh faces out there on the track on Saturday, and a pretty wide variance in experience and possibly skill. We have specifically asked teams to bring their new and inexperienced drivers in order to break them in. This means that there needs to be a lot of give and take and understanding between everyone on-track. Over the course of the season we will come to know what to expect from one another in various situations, but it's all going to be new this time. Just be on your toes and be prepared to give.
I think that about covers it.
Remember that the admins will be available during the race on both IRC (#IGTC on Gamesurge), Ventrilo and TeamSpeak (see rules), as well as here on the forums. Drivers and team leaders are encouraged to be available in one or more of these to communicate with us.
Race session information:
Track: Blackwood GP
Weather: Cloudy Sunset
Wind: None
Qualifying Time: 19:00-19:30 UTC
Pre-race Break: 19:30-19:45 UTC
Race: 19:45-21:45 UTC
See you on the track!
Welcome to the IGTC 2008 Season, juuuust a little bit early. With any luck, we'll see all of you on-track in two weeks for the first official round of the season.
In advance of Saturday's race I would like to discuss a few points that we should all be aware of going into the event. Most of these are simple reminders of things present in the rules. (I know I keep telling you to read them, but they really are important.) This series has a lot of rules, and a lot of artificial (i.e., not built into the game) constructs/concepts, which means that it takes a lot of co-operation between the admin team and the drivers to make things run smoothly.
1. In-server behavior. Drivers should come to the server ready to race, not to play around, chat, etc. We treat this series seriously, and we expect the drivers to as well. This doesn't mean it shouldn't be fun, but when we ask for your attention, or to keep the chatter down, please play nice.
Chatting is strictly forbidden in qualifying and race sessions and will be penalized, so be attentive.
Personal attacks and unsportsmanlike behavior in general are of course strongly frowned upon. We don't currently have a rule regarding this because we have faith that our drivers have respect for one another and are here to have fun, but we will legislate penalties if it becomes a problem. Most likely, the offending driver will be put on probation or suspended from the series.
2. Qualifying session. As stated in the rules, IGTC will use a "hardcore" qualifying format this season. No shift-p/shift-s can be used during the qualifying session, which means that if you wreck it, go out of bounds, run out of gas, you are done for the session with whatever time you have recorded at that point. It also means that only one driver per team can qualify, and that only one setup can be used (of course certain setup options can be tweaked in F11 and F12), so choose wisely.
This also means that there is extra importance on driving carefully in qualifying and being respectful of other drivers on the track. Incidents due to carelessness will be heavily scrutinized.
3. Race start. The actual mechanics of the race start are covered very well in the rules, so I won't reiterate them here. However, I do wish to remind everyone to please give plenty of room during the pace lap. There is absolutely no reason to ride someone's bumper, weave to warm tires, or do anything else to make it more likely to cause an accident. Even two hours is a pretty long race, and there's plenty of time to make up a few meters lost in giving someone a sufficient buffer.
4. Intentional disconnects. As most of you know, this ugly beast has raised its head in MoE recently. We're still in the process of dealing with it there, and we don't yet have a policy for preventing it. We do have a rule on the books (K1.2) that states that a team "must never gain time from a disconnect," but obviously this is a difficult thing to quantify. So until a solution is reached for this issue, we ask here for your honesty and sportsmanship in NOT intentionally disconnecting in order to get rid of engine damage or clutch heat, even in this test race.
5. New drivers and teams. Only 10 of the entered teams this season have driven in the IGTC before. Many of the new teams have extensive experience in league racing, and even in endurance racing... some do not. Some returning teams have drivers that are new to IGTC, and even the returning drivers have a lot of rules changes to deal with.
The sum total is that there are going to be a lot of fresh faces out there on the track on Saturday, and a pretty wide variance in experience and possibly skill. We have specifically asked teams to bring their new and inexperienced drivers in order to break them in. This means that there needs to be a lot of give and take and understanding between everyone on-track. Over the course of the season we will come to know what to expect from one another in various situations, but it's all going to be new this time. Just be on your toes and be prepared to give.
I think that about covers it.
Remember that the admins will be available during the race on both IRC (#IGTC on Gamesurge), Ventrilo and TeamSpeak (see rules), as well as here on the forums. Drivers and team leaders are encouraged to be available in one or more of these to communicate with us.
Race session information:
Track: Blackwood GP
Weather: Cloudy Sunset
Wind: None
Qualifying Time: 19:00-19:30 UTC
Pre-race Break: 19:30-19:45 UTC
Race: 19:45-21:45 UTC
See you on the track!