Hi everyone,

Ever since the legendary CTRA closed down years ago, I’ve dreamed of seeing a system like that again in the LFS community.

I have zero programming knowledge, which always stopped me in the past. However, thanks to AI, I decided to start a project to finally build the platform I always wanted.

It is still in development, but I wanted to share my progress to gauge interest in the community.

The Web Interface (Work In Progress): I am currently building a dedicated website to track everything visually with a UI. It is not ready for the public yet, but here is a preview of the key features:

• Player Dashboard & Live Status: View your ELO progression, win rates, and recent history. It also features a "Live Race" panel to see who is currently racing on the server in real-time.
  

• Detailed Statistics: Beyond just rankings, the system tracks your PBs per track and provides analytics like Car Popularity charts to see the current meta.
  

• Global Leaderboards: extensive rankings with filters by Nation, Car, and Class, plus dedicated pages for Server Records.
  

• Team Management: A complete system for players to create teams, recruit drivers, and track collective stats (Team ELO, Podium counts, etc.).
  

• Web registration via the !register command.
  

How the System Works: The server logic I am creating focuses on variety and skill. You won't get bored of the same track.

• Ranked System: A rating system that updates after every race based on your finishing position and the strength of your opponents.
  

• Dynamic Rotation: I don't want static servers. The system is designed to automatically propose a new car/track combination every 5 races to keep the grid fresh.
  

If I see that the community enjoys the system and the server gains traction, I have bigger plans in mind:

• More Servers: I plan to launch dedicated servers for specific categories (like GTR, TBO, or Open Wheel).
  

• Open Ecosystem: I am considering the possibility of sharing this system. My goal is to allow external server owners to connect their servers to this web platform, creating a centralized "Ranked" hub for all of us.
  

I haven't decided on a final name for the project yet (currently testing as "Testing Ranked system"). If you have a cool name in mind for the Server or the System, please let me know!

I am learning as I go, building this entirely with AI assistance. Let me know what you think!

Thanks!

Seems like a cool idea/project, I wish you luck I hope this succeeds.

Perhaps, if good enough, maybe integrating it into lfsw could be viable? Making it more official, I wonder what Scawen thinks about it

How is the Elo number going to be implemented?

I was working on something very similar, but also "integrating" an iRacing-style system for server management and license racing, but this isn't possible at the moment since dedicated servers no longer exist. Excellent project, my friend!

Quote from TFalke55 :

How is the Elo number going to be implemented?

It compares your actual finish against your expected result based on opponent ratings. If you beat the prediction, you gain points.

I'm also thinking about adding separate ELOs per car, since a UF1 is totally different from a BF1. However, I'd want these to feed into the global ELO, so the main rank reflects your versatility across all classes.

Sorry, I wasn’t precise enough: how is your Elo number designed exactly, on the formulaic level? I designed a method several years ago and it was implemented by RonaldG into a working homepage and system for the CityLiga.
https://cl.ronaldg.net/index.php

Each player has a number (their Elo rating).
When you win, your Elo rating goes up.
When you lose, your Elo rating goes down.
If you beat someone with a higher Elo rating than you, you gain more points.
If you lose to someone "weaker" (with a lower Elo rating), you lose more points.

It's basically a mathematical way of saying:

"How good is this player compared to others?"

It's not the same as "level" or "rank."

An Elo rating is continuous (e.g., 1250, 1640, etc.). A rank consists of categories (A, B, C, etc.), although many games convert Elo to rank.

IRacing use ELO

Quote from TFalke55 :

Sorry, I wasn’t precise enough: how is your Elo number designed exactly, on...

It's a multiplayer generalization based on averaged pairwise comparisons.

Actual Score: I normalize the finishing position linearly between 0 and 1:



Where N is the number of drivers and P is the finishing position.

Expected Score: I calculate the probability of winning against every other opponent individually using the standard logistic curve, sum them up, and normalize by N - 1:



Where Ri is the player's rating and Rj is the opponent's rating.

Rating Update:



I'm currently using a fixed K-Factor of 32.

To be honest, the AI did it.

woo i love that

Quite interesting. Back in the day we chose to take the average Elo of the grid as reference rather than calculating all individual matchups. Also we normalised the position with the “VLN” formula so the winners normalised position is smaller 1 while the last place’s position is higher than 0. That way the grid size was mapped into the Elo number. So a winner of a 40 car grid was closer to 1 then a winner of a 8 car grid. Also a one car grid would default to a 0,5 result for the results.

Edit: if it is of interest, these were my thoughts back then, in addition to what was written by RonaldG on the CityLiga Elo website

Quote from TFalke55 :

…

Edit2: https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1908999#post1908999

Keep up the good work!