Pit Stops

So having watched my first Blancpain race weekend yesterday and today it looks like pit stops, especially in the sprint races id say have a huge impact on the racing. Race one was won yesterday by the Lambo almost entirely because the team pulled an epic stop (my opinion only) and race two today was turned upside down in the stops and subsequent drive through's. So seeing that would love to know if there is any consideration for adding some kind of human involvement in the pit stop process somehow? Something where pit stop time would somehow be affected by the driver instead of all pit stops being exactly the same time (excluding fuel variable)

 

Pitstops were influenced by driver in early AC days and it was, understandably, not popular. Most high level drivers do not want a pitstop lottery. Something that would be nice is, maybe, pitstop time that is related to how accurately you stopped in your box. Anything else would be meh, imo.

 

I like the how accurate you stopped in your box part, if you miss your mark by 2 meters and clean up the guy in front only fair you should pay a price. How were they influenced by the driver in the early days? Before my time that...
Like all these things i believe they should have the option of being enabled and disabled, kind of like driver aids but for pit stops, from all auto to as manual as realistically doable

 

Early on you could not pre-plan pitstops, so only after you had stopped in the box a window popped up and you had to panic click all the things. The pitstop timer only started after all that.

It didn't take long that a "pitstop app" macroed all the clicking and if you weren't using that you were 3-4 seconds off always.

 

Righto, can see how that could be annoying as there's a good chance you would chose something wrong in a panic (wrong tyres, not enough fuel). I think pit stop strategy should be pre planned as that's how it is normally, but some form of driver input that would affect how fast its carried out

 

Imo should be only affected in ways that driver can affect it IRL, like maybe accuracy of your stopping position.

Isn't it more about the pitcrew, which is not you. Any kind of randomization is not good for competitive gaming. And some sort of artificial minigame... sounds a bit meh. If they are pre-planned, only thing that would affect the pitstop speed is pit crew performance. Not your (drivers) performance. Only way I could see this is in offline career mode, where pit guys could maybe gain experience or similar, and have different skill attributes. But dunno

Maybe it's a bit like random engine failures, happens IRL and can determine win/loss but not good fit for gameplay purposes

 

Random mechanical issues were discussed somewhere else and we already have their equivalent with random PC/peripheral failures or disconnections. I copped a random disconnection for whatever reason on my end at the last race of our f2004 league race while running p3 half way through the 53 lap monza race. Words can not describe the anger, I can imagine it was very similar to a driver suffering a terminal failure.

 

The only thing that I'd like to see are penalties for speeding on entry, then you could gain some time by practicing the perfect braking point on pit entry. You already lose a lot of time if you don't stop in the right spot. Apart from that it would just be gimmicky to have the driver influence pitstop times, and having random pitstop times would be unfair.

 

I think a kind of time penalty for not hitting your marks would be excellent, as it rewards skill. Something like x seconds additional pit time proportional to how far you miss your marks by.

Speeding in pits penalties should be as per real life.

I could live with a little random variation on pit stop time too. In real life, there is variation, and it's something the driver has to deal with... the elation if an excellent fast stop, or the frustration of a poor stop that may cost you some seconds. It's all part of simulating the racing, and would be easy to implement.

 

That’s what I was thinking, the humble pit stop is a large part of raving after all.

I think something like a theoretical best and worst pit stop time window based on how accurately you stop in your pit box would be good, it would look at both your stopping point and how straight you are in the pit box. So if you have hit your marks perfectly you get the minimum stop time and if you are angled and overshot a bit then it’s a few seconds longer up to a maximum longest time depending how bad it is. Currently in AC if you overshoot by a bit too much then nothin happens and you have to reverse a bit. Imagine that in real life, miss your mark by a meter and all the mechanics sitting there thinking nah, it’s too far so can’t be bothered... lol

 

Idea of randomizing is not imo good for competitive eSports. Even if it plays a factor IRL, you would IMO want to eliminate that kind of thing from a competitive multiplayer game. In real life the crew are professionals, with talents and skills, with different preparation and concentration level, different ability to handle the stress that day... they are also part of the team, also takes some credit of the win. But in game, it's just you. And it should be you, since it's a competitive eSports of driver vs. driver. Not some imaginary crew and imaginary concentration/preparation level, that is in reality just randomized pit stop length.

But definitely longer penalty, the more you miss the correct stopping spot would be cool. But predictable not randomized, so that if someone loses some high level ACC eSports tournament, he didn't because of AI pitcrew was 2 seconds slower than the winner's AI pitcrew.

 

It seems very stupid to raise random problems. It is impossible to enjoy if I am more prejudiced than others, the main thing in a game of this type is to compete with the pilots with the same weapons, the only way I should be harmed is because of my mistakes.

 

Very good idea with punishing for bad positioning of your car. More are you of spot in pit stop, more time should be added to pitstop. If you miss your spot for 1 meter, you can add 1 second to your pitstop or something like that and penalising for not respecting pit limit. That's all, no other randomizing stuff, i am not worried about that, because Stefano said in the interview that is not interested in random problems like tire blow and he had pit stops in mind too.

 

Racing is not just driving a car. It is also racecraft, strategy, and teamwork. You either simulate racing or you don't. Part of racing is that your pit crew are not going to do the exact same 15 second pit stop every single time you change tyres. To not randomise pit stop time a little is frankly simcade.

 

Please.

If we want to go full retard then racing is mostly about money. Good luck with not simcading your way out of this one.

 

Is that your idea of a logical argument for not randomising pit stop time? Because all you've done is revealed what kind of person you are.

 

You do realize you just called AC simcade, right?

 

Just to clarify I absolutely do not mean random pit stop time but specifically driver affected, so if you stop on the same spot all the time your stop time is the same all the time. This will be a driver skill thing and perfectly fine for eSport.

Also as a feature it could be disabled for those that don’t want it. I honestly think that it would be better to have your stop time increased a bit then be forced to reposition your car because the pit crew won’t do anything.

 

It's not random in real life. It's based on individual performance of each pitcrew member, who also contribute to race win IRL. In real life, Kimi Räikkönen's pit crew are also winners (or get their leg fractured, on very bad day). If me and my beer buddies were Kimi's pit crew, he would not win. They are part of the team, and contribute to win just like co-driver with his pace notes contributes to rally win (even if they won't get media spotlight like driver). It's not random or coincidental.

In game, just driver contributes. Unless there is multiplayer which has also each pit crew member played by humans, in some weird 1st person car mechanic game. But that's not racing simulation anymore, there's game for that:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/645630/Car_Mechanic_Simulator_2018/

Nothing is random in real life, even if it seems random. No dead leaf will fall in random place from a tree. Even "random" engine failures have a reason IRL, just possibly never found. Pit crew is faster or slower, because of what they did. Simply not good idea imo to randomize

 

The word random was never even mentioned in here so I’m not sure why it started poping up all over the place suddenly, it was driver affected stop time from the start. If Kimi stops perfectly on his marks then his well trained crew will change his tyres in the same time all the time within a small margin (we don’t care about this margin for the purpose of this discussion). If he misses his marks by a meter then his whole crew will need to reshuffle and his stop will be a good second longer or so (this part is the purpose of this discussion), and the guy on the front jack will need a change of underwear. This is what I mean by driver affected stop time. If Kimi drives in sideways and runs over his pit crew his stop will be a good bit longer again because of his (the driver) actions.

This is actually a little less of a problem in Blancpain as the pit crew can’t actually come out of the garage until the car stops but the stop is still easier on them and hence quicker stop time if the car has stopped well on its marks well