Or, you just don't have a setup and spend a race or 2 testing the setup, pulling over off the track for blue flags, etc. I'm at 42% and the tracking started when I got silver and spent an evening trying to setup the freakin drift car (XRT) and couldn't get the back to stay straight. Never caused or had an accident, but would of course, throw up yellows during my waiting exiting pitroad and pulling off for blue flags, etc.
Whoops, I'm on page 3 reading and it's up to page 5......
In real racing it is a requirement to have basic control of the car. When somebody is experimenting with their setup in a real car, they dont gaffa tape a yellow flag to the back of it. Why is this different in LFS?
I'm not saying there is no control. I'm saying that you throw yellows up when slowing down or pulling off to let the racers by. That doesn't dictate that one is a poor driver. Quite the opposite in fact, we all want those just "practicing" or working on setup to move off when the racers are approaching.
Now that I've gone through the last pages, I see points brought up. I spectate until the grid is set often, so that I can be put last on start. Last night on several occasions, I moved from 30th to 7th or so in a 10 minute race. No points at all last night. Just because you don't win or place a race, doesn't mean you are a crap driver (as what some of the responses look like when read). I just feel that there should be a bit more places gaining points in a 20-30 car grid. I would say that it possibly had something to do with being a higher class license than the server I was on, but it was all the few gold and above licensed drivers getting all the few points there were.
That's just some constructive criticism and opinions. I am thoroughly impressed with what you guys did here. My hat's off to you folks. Now I must go join the fantastic servers
I do hear you, and I understand, not every yellow is valid and many are caused by other drivers and it goes on our stats - that's why it shouldnt ever be used in finite detail to discern a drivers ability - we've used it to highlight drivers we want to watch in the past, >100% ratio and lots of laps is something we want to see, and usually our faith in humanity is cut down when we do.
However we've never made a decision against anyone by the yellow flag ratio, it's just a ratio, a rough guide, and as i've said most of the good drivers i've watched have ratio's under 20% or so. That's not an exclusive club - I think it's something that anyone can aim for and achieve if they want too. There are drivers with 40% ratio's i'd happily go wheel to wheel with and not bat an eyelit. I cant think of any drivers I know who have ratio's around 100% who I dont wince when I pass though...
Thanks a lot for this!
Now that it has some open wheeler action... i"ll be damned if i wouldn't be a regular!
Just a quick info tho: (sorry about the tl;dr)
1. Is track change random? I mean totally random or are the tracks randomly chosen from a select pool of tracks?
2. How much time one could expect between track changes?
3. Does it have wind on? Is it random too? Does it show how much wind on the screen before the start of a race?
4. How much time will it pass before you guys make the races a lil bit longer? (I've read somewhere that this would be the case).
Again, thanks a whole lot for this!
Whohoooooo
Just like a player just said on a CTRA server (i went there to get me a password): "This is like S3!"
Sam, the wind is actually figured out in the same way that it's figured out in STCC, with a virtual 32 (I think?) sided die, and whatever value is what wind is set at.
Good job as far as I can see so far although theres a lot of confusion about the rb4 bump and jump track where you have head on traffic on what should be two lanes. It seems people who are getting ready to make the last jump drive on their left (should be right) and those who make the first left drive on the left (should be right) which makes it impossible to get a decent lap in if your getting hit every lap.
yes, it's ridiculous to expect those drivers to go through to the next server. The bottom line is that you've got to be fast and a good driver to get the next server - people were seeping through to silver who didn't have the skills required, and now they've tried to fix this.
Either way your still getting a good race against people of roughly your own ability
I do understand the 'rite of passage' part. No problem there. You only get a bronze/silver/gold/platinum/titanium license if you meet the required standards in relation to your fellow racers. That's fair enough.
However, things can become difficult when entry into to the other CTRA servers is inextricably linked to the licensing system, because it's only in the higher level servers where you can enjoy a wider variety of cars to drive.
I think people are keen to improve their license status, not only to aquire a 'better' license (which of course is nice ) but also because it enables them to race other combinations within the CTRA system.
Now, if you are only a novice/mediocre driver, at say the copper level, you are in a position where you really do need to score points in order to drive other cars.
At the moment however, this seems a daunting task. As people have already said, it's very hard for that level of driver to score points and two things seem to contribute to this. Firstly, there are now an awful lot of cars on the grid (geat fun though, btw!) which makes getting a clean lap and hence some fast lap time points quite difficult. Secondly, the entry level servers are also populated with silver, gold and platinum drivers which of course makes the task of getting position points much more difficult for the copper and bronze drivers.
Please be aware that this is not a complaint though, it's merely an observation. I appreciate that the idea to start off with easier cars to drive and progress to the harder ones as you improve, is entirely logical. But the unfortunate side effect is that members who lack the ability to reach the higher echelons may never get to enjoy all that the CTRA has to offer.
They may only ever be able to drive the XFG/XRG and the FOX and have no alternative but to go elsewhere to drive the other LFS cars, which would be a great shame because as we all know ...
There is no option for California, USA on the site
Anyways, I haven't driven LFS for several months now... I have had a long break period from anything related to LFS, and upon starting LFS up this evening, I decided to give this whole system a go while I come back racing again. So far I am really impressed with what you have done, and it is a big step up from any other systems you've had in the past (obviously). Impressions of everyone's driving is rather good... mixed... but still very nice. There is a good combination of fast drivers and slow drivers, and the slow ones are about 90% of the time yielding to blue flags which is also a big plus. Not often do you see such well mannered drivers online, especially under blue flags. There is the occasional accident, but no harm from what I can see. Veiti and I were having a fast race in the single seaters, until he was taken out by some traffic sliding out of control. A shame, but it's not the end of the world.
Fact is, I like what I've experience so far, and should come back and visit soon. Just a shame I lost my grid position because of a silly disconnect when someone lagged out on the server (a lot of other connections were dropped). That meant a lot of people could not rejoin the server in time for the race restart. Which leaves me with only one suggestion. PLEASE make the break times between races a little longer. A heated 15+ lap race in the single-seaters could use a bit longer break and time to chat. It just seems awful quick when another race is about to restart.
I've only tried the FOX so far, will try others another day/night.
Last night when I was driving there, there seemed to be a lot of confusion what exactly is considered acceptable. Some people were overreacting to small bumps and nudges and on the other hand some people were doing what could be considered wrecking. I especially disliked when people tried to ram through a tight spot even when it was obvious that they can't get through when we were racing on the Champange layout.
To be honest the rules aren't very clear on what you are allowed to do and what you are not.
I've had a quick scan through this thread but I haven't seen this being mentioned, so apologies if it has already, but...
Well, the website looks great and all but it is poorly built. The biggest worry for me is that the output source just doesn't validate in ANY of the W3C HTML standards (INCLUDING the DOCTYPE that has been explicitly set in the code) I just mention it because we all know that LFS has a pretty huge user base and from what I understand, CTRA is an important concept that a lot of people will use. The thing is, a small percentage (those with disabilities, especially those using screen-readers) may have problems viewing or even using the site properly.
Also it uses tables for layout, but that's just me being picky
Just my 2p really, but it's something to be weary of in the future. Unless you get some users complaining about it I wouldn't worry.
So am i right in assuming there is no way of knowing when a certain track will appear or is there a schedule or rotation order? I cant find any info on that in my searches.
Being new i dont know many tracks and tend to concentrate on 1 or 2 at a time until i get competitive at them. I dont want to race on tracks i am unfamiliar with as this will cause problems for other drivers, it would be nice to race on those where i have a certain level of competence though.
Do i basically have to learn all the tracks or hope i get lucky in finding a track i know is active?
Is there a list of what tracks may be in the, say, SS1 server pool so i can at least concentrate on those if it is random?
Of course this may be a deliberate feature of the system.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that today the rules seemed a bit more formed already. More people seemed to have grasped the difference between wrecking and bumping people now.
Well now this is starting to get kinda frustrating while online. UKCT Dan was telling me that there is some connection issues that occur when buttons are being sent or something... and it causes a huge lag spike for certain players. Which is pretty bad considering LFS his very flakey when a player is lagging out and other players get kicked from it. I've lost several lead-lap races from disconnects (3 count now), and many other disconnects in between. It is not my connection, I am 100% positive of that. If what Dan says is true, I'd really like to see that fixed... it is kind of spoiling my momentum (and fun) for my first night .
I haven't been on CTRA servers today but I notice just now when looking at the server list that a whole bunch of servers have significantly higher ping than normal for me (almost double :shrug so maybe one of the major LFS server providers is having some trouble?
The official LX4 servers seem normal but condogers and ctra are high amoungst a bunch of others.
I was just looking at the top racers list and noticed that I'm not in that list. I have a Gold licence with 4709 points. I guess I should be in between them:
123. 3laurent 7caplain France 4,735 Gold
124. Martin Macjon Germany 4,666 Gold
I just mention it because we all know that LFS has a pretty huge user base and from what I understand, CTRA is an important concept that a lot of people will use. The thing is, a small percentage (those with disabilities, especially those using screen-readers) may have problems viewing or even using the site properly.