Hi peops, I feel the same so have done something about it
I've rented a server (US based) and have set it for road car racing.. Its currently set for XFG and XRG with tracks selectable by guests, its only a 10 slot server at the moment but should give lag free play for most countries around the world..
Its called RoadCarRacing .. hope to see you there sometime

Quote from Akuma66 :

We got S2, and it is great to be honest the devs deserve all the rest-up they want. They have already earned my £24 upteen times over.

I agree entirely ^ I've bought tonnes of games over the years and rarely does one keep me interseted for longer than a few weeks.. a really good one maybe a month or two Well i've been at LFS nearly every day for about one and a half years now and I still cant wait till I get home from work to try a new setting lol And the real kicker is most other games have cost me $90 bucks on average LOL so LFS seems remakably cheap even if I never see another update!

rofl love the names you gave to some of the AI

Mm but who wants to sit there voting for 20 odd people after each race :S maybe if lfsworld just kept a record of how many times an individual got kicked or banned would do the trick and a server option "if banned more than 300 times do not let in" LOL that would keep the wreckers out anyway :P

Quote from Vain :

Small addition:
As rumour has it, the AI will only keep the knowledge it learned in training. The knowledge learned in races is deleted after the race ends.
(I only repeat what others said.)

Vain

Mm and its chinese wispers as always lol

I said they retain there learning in practise mode and they do learn in races but when you close LFS down and restart it - the AI will revert back to its previous level - this was outlined in shannons unofficial manual and I found it to be true, but that was some time ago.. ie early s1 days :S so maybe its different now I dunno (thought they hadn't made any changes to the AI but maybe they have..)

Quote from ColeusRattus :

As i stated in some of the numerous other threads concerning this topic, if you have to restrict by experince, do not use "points" but rather more precise stats like "miles driven", "laps driven", "races finished" and so on... And again, making these settings server-options, so noone will be excluded.

I think that is a great idea but probably should be kept at a fairly low level otherwise it would cause eliteism :S

So maybe a max setting of 300 laps required before entry or some such thing, so a particular server could be setup for experienced drivers only (i'm sure the community is mature enough not to exlude all anyway)

Another thing that could be done with this is you can join a server regardless of how many laps you have done on the track, but can only join the race if you have x amount of laps driven - in that way the new guys can still learn from the pro's

Quote from frokki :

I don't have those problems because I don't have any friends who could ask me anything

LOL it's ok mate we'll be your friends..

Could possibly work i think.. but the credit system would have to be revamped and would be better if not all servers had the system (ie the svr admin could choose to enable or disable the system on his/her server

Another thought is this idea probably could be implemented with an insim app, rather like the ladder serries we had back in S1..

Just something for you guys to know if you dont already... havent seen it mentioned in this thread so thought it would be worth mentioning

The AI will only retain what they learn in practise mode.. i.e. you must set the race to practise mode then the AI will learn and retain their learning.. if you just race them in races when you close LFS they will revert back to their previous state..

The reason they did it this way was so that you could keep the AI at a level siutable to your own, having said that they still dont learn to a higher enough level for my liking but they do improve a fair bit.. and i have seen some quite good races with them having battles at one stage back in S1 when myself and a few other team mates where too tired to race ourselves we would race our AI's against each others AI's :P was quite entertaining at times LOL we would each enter 2 or 3 AI's in a race then on Team Speak we would have a running commentary between each other and bets on who's AI would win, it was a blast actually.. but we had them trained up with over 300 laps in practise mode

The best way to train them is to put a full field in but with 2 or 3 of the cars with a passenger or two to make them a bit slower.. then the AI will learn to negotiate traffic better. The more laps you give them the better they become up untill about 60 laps then they level off, I think they still improve after that point but at a much slower pace. Unfortunately you also have to train the AI for each track and car combination you want them to use.

And for those that find the AI no longer a challenge you could always handicap yourself ie add a passenger or full tank of fuel when they are running light depending on how much faster you are than the AI..
What I would love to see in S3 is the AI learn from observing your race line or someone elses (ie WR replay ) Now that would be cool..

Hi... just an experience from real life, I had a VL Commodore (aussie car) with a 6 cyl fuel inject motor and rev limiter...
It got stolen and the son of bitches thrashed the hell out of it lol... they reved it so much they broke the engine mounts (bonnet was dented from motor bouncing around inside) damaged the 5 spd gear box (it was always noisy after that) but the engine seemed to have no problems at all so my guess is the rev limiter works very well even in neutral
I think the main area for engine damage would be downshifting too soon as others have said...

Edit: - also when you watch others race online the lag factor makes it seem like there overreving to the max when flat shifting, I personally flat shift a fair bit but also tend to lift off fractionaly aswell depending on the situation.. my RPM never goes into the red the only time i get engine damage is when accidently downshifting to a lower gear than i should have lol

Edit 2: - got me curious so I just checked some replays of myself in a GTi, in N in the pits the RPM will hit 10,500, when I'm racing and flatshift the RPM is always in the 9,100 - 9,500 range and when downshifting aggressively (i dont downshift as aggressively as some though :P) it averages around 9,000 RPM the redline on the GTi is 9,500 so im not even getting close to the rev limiter so its a mute point... maybe different in the more powerful cars though I dont know...

Edit 3: - k i thought what would be the most likely car to have this problem.. the fo8 right well tryed it on that as well, definately has a much faster engine response it goes well into the red on flat shifting... but i notice the rev limiter kicks in at 11,750 rpm and when flat shifting it hits about 11,500 rpm for a fleeting of a second... (watched replay in 1/4 slow motion) im not convinced it actually hits the rev limiter either :/ the engine in the fo8 can handle 11,500 rpm no problem so it shouldnt damage it (i sat in the pits and held it at 11,500 for several seconds without any damage...) so maybe the problem is not the rev limiter but the speed of gear changes able to be achieved

Last edited by B2B@300, Sun, 11 Sep 2005 07:00.

Isamu ive been playing lfs with an xbox controller for over a year now.. had similar bad experiences at first until i realised that u only need a very small amount of steering input to actually get around the track (ie on BLGP with GTi I ended up only using "Max Steering Lock" of 9 deg) nowdays I've managed to get a better driver that allows me to lessen the steering input sensetivity on the controller. With max steering lock set to 9 deg you will find you have much more control at the central position for straight line driving and more prescion in the corners, the only downside is if you spin you dont have much steering lock to turn around again LOL so my solution is DONT SPIN :P

Riding the curbs will only feel dangerous at first until you get used to it and as far as the "cut throttle" thingy goes, that doesnt need an extra button mapped to it - it just has to do with you letting off the throttle for a second while you change gears so as not to overev the engine. Some people even flat shift (hold throttle flat) without noticable engine damage... give it a try

Ps I use "auto clutch" and "blip on downshift" but no other helps..

Hi there, well i had a look at your replay and here are a few comments which are free so are probably worth about the same

1) Its good to see you are able to drive consistently speed will come with practise and observation
2) You had half a tank of fuel you only need as much fuel as the laps you intend to do (excess wieght otherwise) for GTi on BLGP that means about 2.3% per lap so for 5 laps I normally use 13%
3) You have the help "throttle cut on upshift" enabled which is not quite as fast as manualy doing a throttle cut see options-player section...
4) You dont use enough of the track :P dont be afraid of the curbs - go in wider hit the apex and go out wider will enable faster corner speed...

My PB is 13277 for the car track config - not in alien class but probably better than average. Doing a quick test drive of you car was able to do a 13355 without warming up so would guess would get 1332x - 1335x when warmed up for a days racing so your sets ok just lower the fuel load... I posted a replay of the test drive have a look at lines and how much of the track i use
To get a better idea i suggest downloading WR replays and studying them also.. you can view them in slow motion to really see whats happening (F2 to slow replay down, F3 to speed it up) hope this helps you out a little and look forward to seeing you on track someday