Hello, when racing in mainly Piranmoto destruction derby, there often are moments when a person has finished, but many people are in the back still crashing/stopping, so they get disqualified because they stopped for too long (only a few seconds). I've had this happen to myself a lot and have seen many people lose higher positions in a race just because of it. I would be really happy if there was a way to disable it.

To clarify, it's only open config layouts that do this - staying still 2 or 3 seconds will get you specced if the race is finishing (orange text), but our flip command (to put you back on your wheels without resetting damage) needs you to be still before it'll work. Sometimes there's just not enough time to get flipped back upright and moving again before you get auto-specced.

Changing the 2/3 seconds 'staying still' count to something like 10 seconds should remove the problem.

As a former racer, who did a few thousand races. I agree with this suggestion. The hosts should be able to choose to enable/disable this idle timer and if enabled, they should be able to choose the specific seconds that they think should be enough for the racers. It's mind-blowing that nobody mentioned it after so many years in the business.

I haven't raced for a while, but if I remember correctly:

Idle timer works when:

- Race starts (light goes green)
- Race ends (first racer to finish)

This should be configurable. Good work @Latvian, for mentioning this.

BTW. Since Dedicated hosts were discontinued. Maybe this page should be updated: https://www.lfs.net/host.htm

Is there any update on this, it has screwed up another race for me so it reminded me of this thread

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this handeled through inSim? I beleive we have such an entry in our Airio where you specify for how many seconds the car can stay idle before spectating it.

I'm saying this from my memory, I didn't check, so I may be wrong.

Bump, please fix, very annoying and it ****ed up more races

bump, Bump, BUMP!
Please fix

In Today's Trial of Champions that PiranMOTO hosted several drivers got afftected by the same issue yet again and its outright frustating, would love if something is done about it or hosts being given tools to adjust it

Fix this ahhhhhhhhhh

It's so freaking annoying to flip 3s after 1st guy finishes and right as I unflip I get dnf'd because I was barely moving or stopped and about to drive off...

Quote from rane_nbg :

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this handeled through inSim? I beleive we have such an entry in our Airio where you specify for how many seconds the car can stay idle before spectating it.

I'm saying this from my memory, I didn't check, so I may be wrong.

No, it's not handled by insim

As I'm aiming for an incompatible version very soon, I've made a note to look at this, probably tomorrow. I can't comment more until I understand how it works in the code.

I've had a look now and my reply is slightly complicated because there is a bug in the code that might sometimes come into action, but even without the bug, the problem is likely to come up.

By the way, I couldn't see anything different for custom configs and I think this could happen in any race.

What is supposed to happen (and does usually happen):

If a result can't be confirmed, because another car that might beat that result is still on track, then if that other car is stationary for 8 seconds, the game decides they will never finish and the result would never be confirmed, so it spectates that player.

So even without the bug I'll also describe, this can cause the problem.

E.g.
A wins the race with 4 laps
B has completed 2 laps but is not moving
C finishes with 2 laps

Problem:

Cannot confirm C's result as B could still beat C. Host spectates B if stationary for 8 seconds.

Separately, the bug (not sure how often this comes up):

1) Suppose the situation is as above except that B only has completed 1 lap. It cannot beat C and is therefore not blocking C's result. It is possible sometimes for the game to spectate B anyway.

2) Suppose the situation is as above except that B has completed 3 laps. Actually in the current system it does block C's result from being confirmed and 'should' be spectated but will not be.

What to do:

For a start, I'll fix the bug, but we are still left with the game spectating cars that are not moving in order to confirm results. What do we need to fix this problem? How about a host option to change that 8 seconds to something else, maybe up to 4 minutes? The easiest way to do this is by a text command after the host is started, and not available on the website. Maybe the default time should be a bit longer than 8 seconds too?

Yeah, I think good solution would be a text command to set this timeout in server side. Default timeout should be in the order of magnitude of 1 lap, so 4min sounds reasonable.

The default is supposed to work for hosts you just start up and are unmanaged, so 4 minutes is not suitable for that. 8 seconds has been fine for 20 years or so, so to change to 4 minutes would be way too extreme. It seems like you are only thinking of the downside of this code, without considering the problem it solves. I was thinking maybe around 12 seconds, which could be boring enough when you finish a race but another racer who is blocking your result has gone AFK. With long times, there is a risk that the race restarts before you even get your result. The idea is that long stationary times, such as minutes, would be available for managed hosts, for hosters who know what they are doing.

12 seconds should be enough, checking some replays, it has been spectating people after about 3-4s of being stationary after the race has been finished, For me it takes about 6 seconds to get back to driving after flipping

For a managed server like PiranMOTO I'm sure it would be a good idea to use the command to increase the allowed stationary time.

E.g. /specres 60 would set the allowed stationary time to 1 minute.

/specres may be a bit obscure but I haven't been able to think of a good short command name.

/allowedtimetobestationarywhilepreventinganotherfinishedplayersresultfrombeingconfirmed 60

/spectimeout

12 seconds should be enough, and a text option to increase it would be great.

I was looking for some examples of the short timing for you but so far I've only found a few and they are indeed all 8 seconds when timed properly. (A lot of times they're on grass - they get the car reset and give it the gas, but they're spinning wheels and still not moving when they get specced a couple of seconds later).

(I wonder if maybe your cutoff speed for speccing people is different to mine for allowing JRR - that could eat into the 8 seconds and make it seem shorter when it isn't. I did increase mine to 5mph recently to see if it would help, but I haven't done any checking other than people's complaints about it happening seem to have gone down a little)

Edit: something with 'dnf' in it for the wording I think would be clearest, /specdnf maybe.