Suggested

Traffic and backmarkers

I've been playing the old and new version of IGP for about a year now, and one area where I think the game could be improved to add realism and reward dynamic players is to significantly increase the time loss when running behind other cars, both racing for position and with lapping backmarkers. At the moment, especially with backmarkers, the faster car just sails past anywhere on the track without any real delay.

This is a missed opportunity I feel, because if the opportunity to pass was restricted to more realistic locations on the track (i.e. only one or two places each lap) then the penalty for getting caught in traffic would be much higher. In turn this would reward managers who are creative and flexible with their strategies during the race, and encourage risk and strategy changes on the fly to pit cars before hitting traffic and get them out of the pits in clean air, just like real F1. At the moment managers simply plug in the known best strategy and rarely alter it for any reason other than weather.

This would also benefit players who attend races, and give attentive drivers at lower levels the chance to take risks and potentially get better results than are currently possible. Another interesting permutation is that drivers might opt for fewer stops if they know their slower pace can also slow their competitors down if they can get the required track position.

It really seems like it could open up a lot of interesting potential and make the races less predictable than they are now (the biggest weakness of IGP since I have been playing).

So - is it technically feasible with the way the tracks are currently designed? And is this on the road map of changes? I really hope so! :)

100

But realism would also have blue flags, there are a lot more than just the 2 or 3 overtaking zones in the real world were faster cars lap slower ones. They are obliged to get out of the way. 3 flags etc...

The work involved to create a realistic sim in those circumstance I guess would be pretty significant?

In your best Seb voice... "Come on.... Blue flag... *****"

Well if the blue flags are anything like the ones in console games it's pointless having them as people just ignore the blue flags and they do their best to block you and slow you down and they get away with it.

Need flags and penalties to insure people get out of the way....

I can say each time we go through a backmarker we lose between 0.1 and 0.3s and it's possible to lose more at Monaco for example. Just keep in mind there are up to 32 cars on the grid and finally I can tell that in competitive leagues you're forced to use kers to overtake those "backmarkers" or you are stuck behind. In conclusion I see no problem here and there are more important things to look at now.

Thanks for the replies. Ross, I think it's fair to say I'm not saying it's a problem, or a high priority, but it is a clear path for improvement when the time is right.

FWIW, I think there's a large range of levels in my league, combined with less than 20 cars, so it makes sense that I'm seeing the effect less than other leagues.

Any possibility of making it dynamic? i.e double the time loss that exists now, but then back to current delay level if you haven't passed the car within a lap, or 80 seconds, or similar.