Suggested

Either or, please!

So with no dirty air in the game and DRS usually being very overpowered, we're having lottery races over and over in our league currently. There's simply no way to break away from the train and everyone is at 100% boost for the last lap over and over again. I know this is getting worked at and so this isn't the reason why I am here.

The reason why I mention the above is because our last lap battles are scuffed and unfair.. Earlier in the season in China, one of my title rivals won the race by leading into the last lap and giving away DRS to everyone behind him, however since we all had boost including the leader no one passed him. We had DRS and boost active but he nullified the DRS with his own boost. The next race we had the exact same situation in Malaysia, as we got onto the final lap and final DRS straight this time however, the leader stood no chance and got passed by anyone who used boost + DRS vs his boost. This is very confusing... Today, once again my title rival missed DRS on the final lap on Canada, but the cars behind him couldn't pass him even with DRS + boost. 

There's no possible way to test which tracks this will work on as we literally have 100% boost for the last lap, so it is complete lottery. It's boring until the last lap, and random whenever we get to the last lap. Perhaps this will also be fixed with upcoming updates to the dirty air system, but I don't see how it would.. It feels like the DRS strength difference from track to track is just not logical.

The suggestion, I guess would be for the devs to look into DRS power from track to track more carefully and (unless I've missed it) give us some insight as to why it is this way. In my opinion, DRS should never be completely nullified by boost.

Thanks for reading my rant :)

Boost + DRS only works under acceleration, once cars reach their max speed it is completely useless. The reason why it happened in Malaysia is because the straight is shorter pr DRS is more powerful (not sure about that). A lot of other factors could have influenced it like tyre temperature or fuel level (in case he overfueled)

Well you would think that's how it should behave, yes.. However it doesn't. In china which is a track with more than enough straight to reach top speeds, the same thing happened before reaching that top speed. The DRS didn't help to accelerate faster at all essentially nullifying the DRS power entirely. As for Malaysia and the DRS being more powerful there like you said yourself, that is the exact problem I am trying to highlight. The power of the DRS should be the same on every track, wether you reach top speeds or not.. During races we should know if it's better to be p1 or p2 coming onto the final DRS straight. Otherwise there's no point in planning beforehand, it all becomes a 50/50 luck based race. The margins are so very extremely small when you're racing on the maximum. 

Long story short, the power of DRS is different from track to track even within the acceleration zones. Which is a problem. It should be either or Imo. We dont like randomness :)

It’s not luck though, if you take notes you’ll know exactly how powerful the drs is on each track…

I feel it should be variable between tracks. It's not random as tracks have different features. You could try scouting the tracks beforehand using practice races to see if you can get an idea or just try to gauge it throughout the race.

As a freebee for everyone reading this though, based on my experience from last season, Spain has the strongest DRS by far. My DRS is at lvl 16 and I would go from behind someone to over 1s in front. 

DRS is only a slight drag reduction used to get the trailing car side by side coming into the next turn. That is all. To say it should never be nullified by boost is giving it too much importance.

What this problem is showing is the massive difference between 1 and 2 car leagues. In my 2 car leagues this update has been generally positive and a step in the right direction. But I keep hearing from 1 car leagues it is generally unfavourable. And this presents a problem. Because you can't fix it for one without breaking it for the other.

Yep, Kevin you're right. Our league is losing members or have long standing members go inactive due to the current state of the gameplay. Randomness in just about every race. Pole positions and being the faster car doesn't really matter as you'll be stuck in the train until last lap where the boost war starts happening. The DRS part is just another thing to throw off more randomness and during tight races where we sometimes have 7 cars fighting for the same centimeter of tarmac, this is just bad. 

As for how DRS should work, it is my opinion that it should never be nullified by boost under any circumstance because it just means that whatever order we enter final lap in is how we'll end the race as we're all boosting. However, I rather have it be continuous and I would prefer the DRS being nullified than what we have now. Then again, with the DRS being nullified it would probably make for better racing if DRS was removed completely. After all the wet races we've had this update have been the most fun ones.

The parts that you mention about the game are obviously things I agree with you on Kevin, however I think this DRS topic is something that is going overlooked and should be highlighted in one form or the other.

Seen as your league is locked I can't really speak as to what you are experiencing, but it surprises me. I'm not saying the update has been perfect, it's obvious there are a lot of apects that need tweaking (a good compromise on dirty air is needed), but it's definitely been a step in the right direction.

1. You can actually overtake now during normal racing, without the aid of DRS or Boost. This is a massive positive in my book.
2. I have not had 1 race since the update (over 44 races I think) where people have not needed to use boost and saved it for a last lap boost war. It just hasn't happened.
3. I have found the circuits to play quite differently to each other. There are some circuits where free air is still important, some where it's not so important. Furthermore at many circuits there have been at least 2 strats which are viable for the win, sometimes three. I have even found the undercut has been more useful. That was never the case before.

I don't think boost or DRS is the problem here. And I'm not sure how it would fix anything.

And I'm amazed that wet races have been the most fun ones, Rollo. Those are still probably the most boring ones for my leagues. Unfortunately it's still almost impossible to overtake in the wet unless you are 10+litres lighter, which just gets nullified by the overcut anyway.

One thing is clear, the update has divided a lot of opinion. A lot of people are going to lose out when fixes come around, and it's probably going to be most of the 2-car league competitors.

We've just gone from 75% back to 100% after over a year to try and improve things. There have been some races where diffrent people have diffrent enough stratergies but there is still probably 50% that are a massive train. The problem is of course this is the first time we are racing many tracks at 100% in nearly 18 months so when we come around to them for a 2nd and 3rd time the quickest stratergy will begin to emerge and then everybody will converge on that one. So it's only really a short term fix based on uncertainty we created ourselves.


Though hopefully gives a bit of time for changes to be made before we all converge too much and every race becomes too boring. But some tracks there is still only 1 obvious stratergy and then it's still 50-60-70 laps of trainfest.

Its probably easier with a 2 car league because at the very least you won't be stranded with absolutely no drs like getting it wrong in a 1 car league will do.

Also you can actually have the right stratergy at the moment but if everybody else picks the wrong stratergy the drs will make you lose fairly easily on the stratergy that would be fastest in a vacuum. And that's just plain wrong, the effect should never be that strong to make the right stratergy call the wrong stratergy call.

As Kevin says we moved to offline because of the long drs train that lasts until the final lap.  Offline has given more enjoyment since we see a wider range of strategies especially as managers learn the nuances of this under-rated way of racing.

As far as live racing goes I think Matthew has hit the nail on the head about mixing up distance, speed or even tyre rules only gives a temporary fix and most good managers will always eventually work out the best strategies and everything will converge to a long train again.

I actually believe that the updates aren’t the real cause of the issues the game has.  Removing dirty air has made it easier to see the fundamental problems embedded into the program and I’m not sure how easy it is to fix, but hope the devs find a way.

Advanced strategy is completely busted, although I doubt it will be seen as a priority.

Some misconceptions in regards to DRS here.

DRS is an Acceleration Boost by code.

There is a lower cap of Acceleration of 200. (design point limit)
There is no upper cap of acceleration (further increases from CD and suppliers past 200), and DRS/KERS as well.

Pace gain between Acceleration 1-100 is much-much larger than 100-200. This is called Diminishing Returns. 
You can imagine what acceleration at 200+ compared to 200 is very small too.

Maxing Acceleration to 200 as fast as possible is not the best strategy. A car with 100 in Acc, Bra, Fuel, Tyre, Hand and Down is faster than a car with 200 in acc and 80 in Bra, Fuel, Tyre, Hand and Down.

I disagree with this bit. Maxing acc could indeed be the 'best' strategy at the time, depending on what the competitors do and 200 80.... is definitely faster than 100 100...

I’m certain when the cap was increased from 100 to 200 it was absolute and no extra benefit could be gained via supplier attributes?

That’s correct, I was referring to the underlined bit.

Sorry, I should have clicked on David’s post as I was commenting on that ?