Progressive system penalty

this was already discussed even with Stefano himself... this system is good in general. you had your time to share your thoughts, maybe you did it, but this is what we have, it's not that is definite since everything could be improved.
PS: te peleo porque sos amigo Albert

 

Yes, in the V8 Supercars series that's exactly what happens. The drivers even save them up strategically for the end of the race when they might be more important to gain an advantage on a competitor.

This isn't just a video game, its a racing simulator, remember?

 

So since one Regional touring car series does it (a series that has no cars or tracks included in AC btw) now it is a universal rule? And don't fall for marketing hype (even though AC has no marketing department) at the end of the day this is an electronic video game.

How come none of you guys that cried so many virtual tears over the five second penalty haven't even said a thank you to Kunos that it is now long gone? And now you have a system that not only enforces different penalties for different transgressions, and can even be custom tailored for each individual leagues needs, but since the computer can't take the place of a panel of live human stewards the virtual tears are still flowing....simracers....

 

I haven't really tried the new implementation much yet, it surely cant be worse then the first version but not likely to be used for league racing. PLP is still the best method I think for this and amongst fair drivers this works well, I have not seen anyone game it for an advantage in any of our races. If someone was and others noticed this then they will be dealt with as in leagues in the end if some cant play fair and need to cheat they shouldnt be welcome back for the next race.

Each real world series has its own method yet none have the 5 second slow down we originally had or a version of what is in now, this may be better for pickup servers and I will run with it for a while to see how that works there. For Nords I dont see any need for any penalty system as running off track there is enough punishment in most sections and very little to be gained with cuts.

Public servers we just need a method to clear the cheaters and the first try I had with the penalty at Nords on another server I got warped back to pits after a crash as I waited on the side for a clear bit of track to re enter. This is pointless as its far from cutting or cheating and if people are warped back to pits simply for waiting well off the road to come back on track when clear this part is broken.

 

The new system isn't bad. What I don't like about it is when the new system is used on tracks like the Nordschleife, where several people will crash. I had a 60 minute qualifying with several mates, only half of us made a time.

I would like to see an option for choosing penalties, whether it be the old or the new. This allows a bit of versatility.

Like martcerv said, if you're racing with fair drivers, they shouldn't be necessary. Accidents happen - what if I accidentally bumped you, and you went off the track. Boom, your lap isn't counted, and I can drive on my merry way. On a track like Nordschleife, that's brutal.

 

Where do I find that WorldPosition app you guys use to define the redline?

We are starting a league and I really like the posibility to define what a cut is on a certain (addon) track and being able to leave out corners of the detection. We currently are also testing PLP and for some reasons it gives us quite some 'false positives' that we want to avoid.

I have to test a lot, but just looking at the rating of drivers at the end of the race can give stewards an indication for which drivers to check on the replay, or even say, if you have +X points in a 60min race, you get x seconds added to your time.

 

I'd be curious to hear what kind of false positives you're getting with PLP. In our league, we're not getting many false positives. When you're off track, if you slow down when you're off, it shouldn't register as a cut.

 

Well, it's not the PLP Apps fault, but more that the AC cut detection is a bit wonky in some places and is not consistent sometimes.
On Silverstone you can go wide in some areas and don't receive a warning, whereas you would receive a penalty when making a mistake.

I haven't experimented with the app settings, but at the moment I feel that this Cutters app gives more flexibility to league admins to make their own cut detections where they want.
It would be ideal if your app would only count warnings when a 'redline' is crossed as opposed to using the default AC cut detection, which can be even wonkier on addon tracks.

 

The app goes by how many wheels AC reports are off the track. I don't know how the RSR rank app does it, as that seems to be much stricter than AC.

 

Just reading about the ”freebie” mentality about getting 3 warnings before a penalty, I want to add that what has been happening in practice in races with this system is that people are saying ”Oops, I got a warning, I better be more careful so I don't get a penalty”. I.e. even the very first warning is making people less likely to cut. And we are seeing very few penalties.

 

Yup - it certainly makes me more careful. I've yet to personally experience the new penalty (Haven't managed to trigger it yet), however, I still prefer PLP's implementation over the way it's handled officially. Detection seems to be more realistic with PLP too. The detection with the in-game system seems to throw a yellow flag up every time someone puts a wheel on the grass!

That said, with flags in the game now, is it possible to write up a black flag rule into PLP if warning is ignored?

 

Can noone point me in the direction of the WorldDimension app? It would be a great help!

 

I really don't like the current Penalty system. Of course, severe/illegal cutting should be penalized, but quite often I got a 10s/35 km/h penalty, just because I made a mistake on braking.
That mistake already cost 1s or so, but now I get another 5 to 10s penalty (depending on the track) for that mistake. That's—excuse me—idiotic.
Of course, a mistake is my own fault and you should avoid them, but that's the sort of penalty that would never ever be spelled out in real racing.
Example: Variante della Roggia. Miss the braking point there just slightly and you have a big penalty problem.
And I'm not talking about going straight there. Even if touch the track border in the left hand and go back into the chicane and take the right handed corner, you can end up with a penalty.

So what's the alternative?
Well for one, I think that the penalties themselves should be lowered slightly. Having to brake down to 35 km/s is pretty damn harsh in a GT2/3 car or anything faster.
50 km/h would be still a good amount of penalty but not that invasive.
The "10s slow down" should either be lowered or can be removed, nobody is going to do that.

Having 2 or 3 "freebies" can be an idea, but won't really solve the problem. Of course, some people would try to exploit that, but then everybody is even and can do the same.
Actually, I think that AC already does something like this to some degree.

My proposal would be to use deltas. If – due to leaving the track – you are not at least x seconds slower in that corner or area, you will get a penalty.
Note, that I'm not talking about "faster than your fastest lap", but up to a certain amount slower. x will have to be defined and I don't think that one size fits all there, could range from 0.2 to 1.0 seconds.
The question here is what to use as a reference. Your own fastest lap? Maybe. Better would be the delta to the racers in front and back. Did you lose or gain?
Not sure if that is possible right now, but imo, it would be the best solution.
If you have a relative gain, that's the best indication that you the cutting was illegal.
Easier would be the fastest lap. If you didn't set one, the quali lap might be an indicator. In quali, the penalty system is very strict (leave the track -> time doesn't count).
For some cars it might not really work though. For example the 98T is significantly faster in quali than in race mode (depending on the length of the race).

Regarding the penalty itself, I think it should be a delta.
It should be possible to calculate an approximate gain or loss one had due to cutting. For example 1s.
Add 1s and then show the driver a message:
"Penalty for cutting: Fall back 2.0s"
With "2.0s" being red and counted down if your delta compared to your reference time is positive.
(Which would mean that you could do the penalty within 2 or 3 goes, but I would be ok with that.)

If it's your second penalty, another 1s is added, so in the above example it would be a total of 3.0s etc.

 

With PLP, detections are more realistic because they are tempered by its rules system .... and moreover most of them are settings you may change if necessary.

The only last point missing ... is simply a black flag given when a Drive Through penalty is ignored by a driver.
Therefore, if a call to this black flag isn't a possible call due to the lack of access to it ... that's of course a problem he cannot solve.
Only Kunos might give access to it.

No problem in a league as the admin has control afterwards and may apply his own penalties ....
On public servers, without server settings about mandatory apps and without black flag ... it's of course useless.

 

I think a stop and go is too harsh a penalty for cutting. A drive through penalty in the pitlane is enough after repeated cutting. Drive through at 80kph.

 

This^^ But if you keep cutting again, then stop n go, then if you blah blah black flag....lol

 

I think that track cuts should be rewarded by the guilty party getting bombed by one of those balloons. Sorry for editing my post, Esox

 

Yeah.. hate getting damage from others too.

 

I think the slow down is kinda fine for cutting a corner. But in some cases it is easy to miss a braking point and go wide and then the penalty is more of a additional penalty because you did not gain any benefit. This is probably not a fault of the corner cutting system but track design. I don't know how track limits in ac are defined but I'd imagine track creator has some control over it. So corners where you go little too wide and get a penalty should be adjusted. I think there is some control because in the past the corner 4 exit was too tight and it was easy to get a slowdown even if you use the same line they use in real life:
http://smrc-eurocup.com/nurburgring/
Now that has been fixed and is better.

Silverstone international had similar issue with abbey corner although I'm not sure if that has been fixed.

In barcelona on the exit of t10 it is easy to get a slow down penalty simply if you out braked yourself. Moving the penalty line further from the track would help there a lot. And to avoid people taking adventage of it just make the offtrack area slippery there.

I think the track cutting system could need some improvement but at this point I think bigger gains would come from more effort being put into making the penalty lines more realistic and using more common sense instead of simply putting the lines equally close to the track everywhere. Different places need different margins and the system is not working if the corner cutting system is penalizing drivers who simply made a small mistake and went little wide in some corners.

 

Track limits are defined by setting IS_VALID_TRACK=1 for surfaces in the surfaces.ini in the data folder of a track (typically for anything other than tarmac and kerbs), which means there's not much track creators can do except making a virtual run-off area surface on the outside of turns if they want to avoid giving penalties for simply running wide.