The only way we could send a setup at the moment is via email.

I'd happily tie into the Inferno main site, or to a sub section of easy-drive setups, if it was possible to relay setups in game.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Changing Single 1 to an intake restricted FOX training car. Dropping BF1 from Single 3 and putting FOX/FJR and FJR/FO8 on rotation on single 2.

Please don't do that.
The FOX is already an slow and easy to drive car, if people can't drive that car than ss cars is nothing for them.
Why not let things the way they are and open server 2?
A good formule driver needs 50 to 100 race before they get their lincense and then they can leave server 1 behind.
On server 2 is where the good clean racing really begins.

Quote from Demon68 :

Please don't do that.
The FOX is already an slow and easy to drive car, if people can't drive that car than ss cars is nothing for them.

In YOUR opinion, it is a slow and easy car to drive, but to newcomers to single seaters, it isn't, it's a very twitchy and looses the backend fair to easily for new SS drivers, you can't say, "if people can't drive the FOX then single seaters aren't for them"

for most of these racers the inferno site wouldn't be of much help as they would crash even more often with hotlap setups. easy to drive sets sound better, or having a choice which one the racer would like.

shame insim doesn't allow setup sending yet.

having a pack of setups for the rotating tracks mailed to the racer upon request might also help, and you could have those 2 options mentioned above. although it is not the best solution as it requires alt+tabbing, or shift+f4-ing, it is still the best there is currently.

Quote from Becky Rose :

The MRT is a possibility, although it could well kill the system.

well to put it bluntly ... how would you expect anyone unable to drive the mrt to race the bf1 ?
the great thing about the mrt is its hard enough to drive to frustrate while being light and slow enough to not cause pileups anwhere near as big as the fox

Quote from danowat :

In YOUR opinion, it is a slow and easy car to drive, but to newcomers to single seaters, it isn't, it's a very twitchy and looses the backend fair to easily for new SS drivers, you can't say, "if people can't drive the FOX then single seaters aren't for them"

It really is a beginners formula car. If people can't control it then they need more practice offline.
PS the car is only twitchy if you put a set like inferno on it.
Put more wing on it and it is as stable as you want

Quote from Shotglass :

well to put it bluntly ... how would you expect anyone unable to drive the mrt to race the bf1 ?
the great thing about the mrt is its hard enough to drive to frustrate while being light and slow enough to not cause pileups anwhere near as big as the fox

The problem is that the MRT would cause even more frustration and consequently, even more reports and stormy attitudes online. If it was seen as a mandatory step to get into single seater racing then it could lead to a lot of problems for the administration team.

It's also a hugely unpopular vehicle, and as much as it is true the STCC/CTRA managed to bring life to the TBO's and STD's in the past - this happened because the LFS userbase was ready and willing for it - we cant just wave a magic wand and say "right everybody - drive these" and expect you all to follow, some would i'm sure - but after a few days of bedlam it could well become an empty system.

The MRT is a peculiar car, it's something of an extreme - a marmite of race vehicles - and it's inclusion or ommission is likely to polarise views either way - so i'm going to pick the route of least resistance.

Not read the whole thread but last night racing the fox I had some nice battles with people. I have found this for the past few nights that I have been racing the fox on the ctra servers. What I have noticed is that on larger tracks the people who are slow or are novices spin and crash which is no problem. The faster more compitant driver's pull away and race. Like BL1 in 9 laps I think it was you would come across some backmarkers but with the layout of the tracks was easy to get past. The problem comes on tracks like the small FE (can't remember the name off top of my head) where one car spins but the track is so small that the faster drivers are coming up on the novices almost instantly and with almost no where to let blue flag drivers past it becomes problematic.

I am not saying the small track is an excuse for bad driving but it leads to what seems to more bad driving, which IMO is partly due to the driver but due to track as well. I say this because racing BL1 last night was alot of fun, track changed to FE and it was utter carnage.

Edit: Just say your post above becky. Personally I love the MRT but despise the TBO class. I raced in the STD class in STCC but when I got silver licence rarely in the TBO server. Now I race the TBO server just so i can get gold to move upto the GTR car's which I like. My point is there will always be people who like the car's they are racing, others wont. Saying this though the MRT to me does not seem a good idea as it is IMO harder to drive than the fox as it light, slides are hard to catch, no reverse etc.

Restricted FOX in a Training server is way better than MRT, MRT is really hard to drive if your not experienced with it.
I think its just gonna make things worse.

I would like to add one training server with restricted FOX before SS1.
Havent tryed the restrictions but I think if they make the FOX have less power and slower, it will be more stable than a MRT.

The MRT could well cause more problems than it solves.
With reset disabled and no reverse gear, the amount of DNFs would increase a lot.

Quote from danowat :

In YOUR opinion, it is a slow and easy car to drive, but to newcomers to single seaters, it isn't, it's a very twitchy and looses the backend fair to easily for new SS drivers, you can't say, "if people can't drive the FOX then single seaters aren't for them"

My feelings parallel danowat's. I am certainly not new to LFS and I find the FOX quite difficult to come to grips with (no pun intended). It is indeed twitchy and looses the backend. I have never gotten the setup of that car correct that the back doesn't whip around at the very exit of a corner. Everywhere else in the corner is fine, but as I am just pulling straight, the back end doesn't just oversteer and slide, but whips around. When it happens for me, I can't correct fast enough as then the back whips around the opposite way when trying to correct and I put the nose into the wall every time.

A very unstable car for me. The F08 on the other hand, is a dream to drive in comparison. The BF1? Well, I just don't enjoy racing it. To difficult to get use to paddle shifting. Every time I want to look left/right, I end up with 3 downshifts because my paddles are my look buttons in everything else.

I ran for the first time in the FOX in CTRA last night at AS North. I was surprised, and put off a bit with the "rejoin only once", but I now see why that was implemented. Fortunately for me, we don't have as much problems with "noobs" in the US timezones as it seems all of you do. It makes it difficult to spend the first race after connection to get the car properly set when you are fairly new to it if you can't rejoin at an empty spot in the field. But I do understand why it was implemented.

I started writing a different post, but it covered all the points made already.

People should be slapped if they don't use look left/right controls, especially after a crash. My wheel only has 4 buttons, so if I can do it and still drive, anyone can.

I've had people on the SS server pull out in front of me, clip my rear end and just plough into the side of me when recovering from a spin or crash. Clearly they didn't check to see if someone was coming. IRL this would result in a serious post-race punch-up.

Could those who are interested give this a go in single player:

FOX: 25% Intake restriction, 25kg weight penalty.

I've experimented this morning, I found that an intake restriction only lowered speeds on the straight and resulted in shorter braking zones and a car that was equally twitchy as normal and no easier to control, the only difference was a slightly reduced rate of mommentum - but my experience tells me the problems are the difficult corners, not just the reaction time that Fox speeds require.

So I loathingly added 25kg weight penalty to the mix, I wasnt keen to add mass to a car that might not brake into T1, but actually the effect worked quite well as it reduced cornering speeds too and made the car, in my estimation, much easier to drive.

Others thoughts on this?

In my opinion, the server has only been going for a couple of weeks if that so I would hold back on making any structural changes just yet.

There might be a case for changing the tracks on SS1 to get rid of the really short tricky ones like FE1(R) (although I like that track), but I believe that opening SS2 as it is now will relieve some of the problems seen on SS1.

Oh and Silver and Gold to get straight into SS2? Not sure about that. Silver is not a guarantee of ability as it can be achieved with longevity - doesn't necessarily mean you can drive the TBO never mind FOX.

Quote from Demon68 :

Why not let things the way they are and open server 2?
A good formule driver needs 50 to 100 race before they get their lincense and then they can leave server 1 behind.
On server 2 is where the good clean racing really begins.

I agree, a "number of races finished" thing should help to select clean racers to server2.

CTRA licence holders will not get direct access to higher single seater tiers, it's a totally seperate licence tier, as is the bump and jump.

On the short tracks, I am considering this. I am keeping an eye on the tracks which lead to reports, and yes it is mostly Fern Bay Club and some South City Classic

The problem is if we ditch the tracks where the accident rate is high, without using tracks that are 'too long' we're left with:

Aston Cadet + Rev
Aston Club + Rev
Aston North + Rev
South City Town + Rev
Westhill + Rev
Blackwood + Rev
Fern Bay Green Rev Only

I'm not sure what tracks are on the current rotation tbh, I didnt put too much effort into the rotations - but if this track list is acceptable to the single seater community then i'll put it on.

I would run Fox as now but switch tracks to the large wide variety rather than the thin narrow ones that are included now, this would mean the cars would have a good spread after 2 or 3 laps and if the races were set to say 5 laps or so then there should be no problem with backmarkers.

Quote from Becky Rose :

The problem is if we ditch the tracks where the accident rate is high, without using tracks that are 'too long' we're left with:

Aston Cadet + Rev
Aston Club + Rev
Aston North + Rev
South City Town + Rev
Westhill + Rev
Blackwood + Rev
Fern Bay Green Rev Only

IMO, it's an OK list, however....

I would say Aston Cadet causes issues, and I personally think the Kyoto National is quite a good track for the FOX and worthy of inclusion.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Aston Cadet + Rev
Aston Club + Rev
Aston North + Rev
South City Town + Rev
Westhill + Rev
Blackwood + Rev
Fern Bay Green Rev Only

funny I have never met FE green, nor rev, never did SO town, westhill or aston north either.

I encountered aston cadet and blackwood yesterday. during the last week I only drove fe club, rev and kyoto nat and rev. I saw so classic reverse once, but didn't manage to join in time for it.

Where did kyoto nationals go from that list? also why isn't FE gold in the list? One of the best tracks in LFS all time, and it is very short with the fox.

Is it possible to have dynamic grid size? I mean on smaller tracks you could reduce it to 15-17, and on larger ones increase it to 25 or so.

Dynamic Grid seems like a good idea if do-able, and able to leave SO_Classic_Reverse and FE

Quote from Becky Rose :

The problem is that the MRT would cause even more frustration and consequently, even more reports and stormy attitudes online. If it was seen as a mandatory step to get into single seater racing then it could lead to a lot of problems for the administration team.

well my thinking was that this will lead to a transition phase of some 1 to 2 weeks during which all those which truely are unsuited fo ss racing will get frustrated to the point that they give up entirely

imho the problem with the fox is that at first glance its incredibly easy to drive and you can push it to ridiculous cornering speeds
however if you dont have any offline experience with it it will bite you in the arse quickly and youre very likely to not be able to handle the cornering speeds when youre not the only one on track

Quote :

The MRT is a peculiar car, it's something of an extreme - a marmite of race vehicles

well i suppose one could argue that its the closest thing we have to a formula ford


i dunno maybe my oppinion is this extreme because both times i decided to spec the ss server was when it was set so south city but it did look like a ww2 battlefield at the time

Quote from Becky Rose :

Others thoughts on this?

havent had time to try your settings yet but my hunch is it would need a bit more weight to get the braking distances to a point most drivers are comfortable with
especially on wider tracks you hardly need to break in the fox as is ... with25% intake it will be even less
(admitedly i have no idea how many fox crashes happen in braking zones)

i think the issue here is people know how to drive a Fox around BL1 and AS2 from previously used servers which means that people think they can just juymp in the fox and go racing else were at 100%

last night was a mixture of great clean racing with the guys at the front and seeing a mixture of slower drivers and people who had joined mid race trying to overtake and unlap them selves from the leaders on more than one occasion.

i would say that the problem is the shortness of tracks and people trying to drive the car too quickly too soon as they think they can drive the fox just becuase they have raced on AS2 and BL1 successfully (they aren't exaclty hard circuits tbh)

I've taken the attitude that if someone is driving irrisponsibly then i will report them, the problem is at places like FE1 that they are actually driving badly with the person in front etc etc and you are watching, but you have no power to report it as you are 'not involved'

Regards,


Dru.

Quote from Shotglass :

well my thinking was that this will lead to a transition phase of some 1 to 2 weeks during which all those which truely are unsuited fo ss racing will get frustrated to the point that they give up entirely

imho the problem with the fox is that at first glance its incredibly easy to drive and you can push it to ridiculous cornering speeds
however if you dont have any offline experience with it it will bite you in the arse quickly and youre very likely to not be able to handle the cornering speeds when youre not the only one on track



well i suppose one could argue that its the closest thing we have to a formula ford


i dunno maybe my oppinion is this extreme because both times i decided to spec the ss server was when it was set so south city but it did look like a ww2 battlefield at the time



havent had time to try your settings yet but my hunch is it would need a bit more weight to get the braking distances to a point most drivers are comfortable with
especially on wider tracks you hardly need to break in the fox as is ... with25% intake it will be even less
(admitedly i have no idea how many fox crashes happen in braking zones)

From being on the server a lot, The majority of crashes are on the exit for a corner, people getting the power down too early and turning the car round, and everybody else just barrells in. Braking isnt that much of an issue.

Becky, I think the list you have posted, plus KY Nat and Rev (already on) plus FE Gold and Rev would be a good enough collection. I count that as 17 tracks in total which is plenty on a 2 hour rotation - 34 hours means a different track at the same time each day.

It is a terrific system - thanks and congratulations. Before fiddling with the servers and cars though I think it would be nice to have SS2 running for a bit to see how things develop.

I had a great race with you, Dru, that ended with my first podium in the single seater server. You overtaked me in the begining of the race at the end of the BL straight, and it was a clean overtake, but if I kept the normal racing line we would have crashed. But I knew we were there and you're with the advantage for the turn, so I took a diferent line. And for me that is the biggest problem I see in the CTRA servers. People don´t use mirrors, don´t look to their sides and keep racing like they were alone. They learn the best line to race and to be fast, and stick to it. If you happen to be in their racing line, bad luck... you´re taken out.