About track limits abuse

From what I feel, on Assetto Corsa, whenever you go off the track, it feels to me like you lose power, also I've seen a number of people saying that the grip on astroturf (AKA green stuff) is really low in comparison to other sims and even real life. I do realize that the purpose of that is to reduce the advantage you get by track extending or cutting, but I can't see the point of that.
For ACC, in my opinion, you should be able to gain all the time in the world by extending the track if you want, if it isn't realistic to lose power off track, then on a racing simulator that shouldn't happen.

And since we're talking about track limits, can we please have a better penalty system? Not using the throttle for a few seconds or slowing down to 35km/h to me seems like the worst penalty system ever. Either make the player yield the time they gained like on iRacing, or make him take a drive through after abusing track limits a number of times.

I know someone is gonna find a reason to offend me because of my opinion, but I really do think ACC (and even AC for that matter) deserves a penalty system an order of magnitude better than what we currently have.

 

yep I agree. We are not going to use any artificial slowing down for ACC. Also the penalty system during the race is totally redesigned (not sure it'll make it for the first EA version tho) and hopefully will provide a less frustrating experience in case of involuntary excursions outside.

 

This now got me interested. One thing i did not like in AC is like you are in race you cut the track BAM instant penality on it. Would be cool to have delayed penalities and after you cut the track than next few minutes are silent and than Stop and go or drive trough or timed penality.

 

Delighted to hear that the penalty system is going to be different (better, hopefully ).
The AC one is sufficiently flawed that I simply can't use it for actual races (it's OK* for qually though).

*: well, qually is OK in how it applies penalties; however, the actual positions of the track limits where the penalty is detected are extremely inconsistent in AC tracks (both Kunos and others), which is a shame. Some corners give you a penalty for a small excursion and others allow enormous leeway.

 

This is happening on Monza all day long idk is it server settup or vanila game allows this

 

That could be server setup but also in AC most official tracks have these sort of runoff areas marked as valid track. So if that is the case and also curbs are mostly valid track then even having a server set with 2 tyres allowed out that would be valid. Good to hear that ACC is redesigning this system as it was expected especially with people like @Minolin involved in this part of the game. Still its always very hard to make any automated system that is strict enough to eliminate blatant abuse but then not so strict that it kind of ruins the experience for those that just make the odd error. For examples like the one pictured a better damage model would also help if it was possible to damage the car by abusing the sausage curbs designed to keep drivers from using that part of track. Its not like it happens every time that something breaks over using curbs but doing it excessively does tend to make it more likely.

 

I think the official rules are quite strict, you have to stay on the white line, so no riding the curbs with all wheels.

In practice they can force you to stop the car, in quali you lose the laptime and in the race you collect a few warnings and eventually get a drive through - it does not matter whether you gain time or not.

Of course that might be a bit harsh for some...

 

In my opinion getting the run-off areas to have a bit less grip than what they do in real life in order to cancel the advantage of going there is a very good compromise. Real life cannot be fully simulated on this aspect anyway, we can't have a race director reviewing all such incidents and reliably detect if it was a blatant cut/track widening on purpose or a brief honest mistake, so I think it's much more intuitive getting slowed down a bit due to less grip in an off-track excursion, rather than getting often harsh penalties/lap invalidations for cases that would had never even been reviewed in real life.

 

Well, you've got about as good an idea as anyone in the AC[C] scene about what the issues are for someone trying to write an app to fine-tune the way the game behaves

My wish would be for server-side apps to have access to much more/better information about things like the position of the car relative to the white lines, so that people can create their own rule-set with reasonable simplicity.

 

Do they not use those little flaps in places where they don't want people to extend the track? I've seen those at the outside of turn 16 at Spa and at the outside of the turn after the Mistral Straight at Paul Ricard (Which is a really good place to gain time by extending). If I'm not mistaken, if you touch those, you get a penalty.

 

That's great news, thanks for the heads up.

 

That is definitely NOT possible with the default track limits in AC. Trust me, speaking from experience.

You can cut a bit there, but, not like that.

 

With F1 there are two parts that decide if the lap gets invalidated, first is obviously if he cut the track which RIC did, second is did he gain an advantage by doing so? RIC did not, he lost time (He lost the purple sector as someone else went faster through there). That’s why only some corners are cared about as far as cutting is concerned in F1, they just decide where an advantage can be made and monitor those, think it’s just over the top of Eau Rouge there as can gain good time down the straight after, everywhere else there are sausage curbs or just slow

 

If I remember correctly did they not place a cone on one of the chicanes at Zandvort (qualifying only I think) and if the drivers knocked it over them a FCY was put in place until the stewards could put the cone back on? I think that is how it went.
Could something similar be implemented in ACC, just on the corners where you gain advantages like chicanes and the above example? If you hit the cone you get a power reduction of 1 or 2% that would cost 3 or 4 tenths and not drastically slow you down as to cause a hazard during a race.

 

Why get an artificial power cut? Just make a similar system to iRacing where the game tells you to yield the time you gained, otherwise it's a black flag.

 

How does it work out how much time you gained? Is it based on previous laps? Is there a certain time limit you have to give the time back? Sounds like that would work well though

 

That's definitely possible if two or more wheels are allowed off-track. That green painted surface counts as a valid one, so this will not give a penalty, unless only 1 wheel is allowed off-track. Whether that's viable or not laptime-wise, I don't know, never tried it, you'd need something more compliant over big curbs than a GT car though I'd imagine.

 

I also belive that example of the Paul Richard board of the side of the track would be good way to deal with extending corners But if it is repetative. So guy keeps going off overy lap penality kicks in after few laps.. but if he does it every now and than it acumulates and remembers them and than penality

But ofc for some corners all four wheels off clear corner cut nothing except penality

 

Its not quite that simple, for a hotlap/qualy lap it can be assuming Blancpain enforces rules like that. Very easy to disallow any invalid lap times and it should be easily acceptable assuming its easy to see the track limits that is.

In a race its not so easy, you may have spun or been forced off track by another car. So penalising people beyond this isnt correct unless they are making a huge gain on purpose, but how do you get the system to understand this?

I do like the PLP method and having a time penalty or pit penalty enforced after a certain amount of warnings for minor infractions. I suspect Blancpain do the same but then for massive blatant cuts there should be a way to instantly penalize a driver. These would never happen in real racing so its not an issue for them, but as we all know mp racing does need an active babysitter at times which is likely doable with some clever code.