Teo Fabulous medal 5000 11 years 34 days ago
"Simon
I like Tonys ideas! KERS in 5-second bursts maybe with a delay in between usage?
Yep - that would make KERS less tactical and more strategic. You'd have to time your KERS use better for sure, unlike now where you can just blip KERS a few times at various places on the track to gain position like a nitrous button.
I also think KERS should be detuned a tick, because I doubt that real KERS gives you the Airwolf-style turbo boost that iGP KERS does.
Andrew Hurn medal 5000 11 years 34 days ago (edited 11 years 33 days ago)
There are a lot of good ideas here.
With regard to people using it all at the start of the race. They could be doing that now, the moment it becomes available. I don't recall ever seeing that happen. If the earliest opportunity is the best time to use it, why don't people do that now; at the earliest opportunity, whenever that may be? The chance of passing the most cars is at the point KERS becomes available. I don't understand how it would be different from now.
I also have to say, that with everything we have going on now, this needs to be easy to develop. We only have two work streams now: reduce/eliminate lag; fix things which are broken & we are flat out with both.
We have just released a fix for DRS, which we need more feedback on. We have seen the effect at every track, so far some of you have only seen it once & with the interruption to service, some of you have not seen it at all. We cannot sign this change off as being complete until we have more feedback, which.will be Monday 21st at the earliest. We have some other 'fixes' which we need to test & we have more in development. If we take someone off this process to add a new feature, these fixes will be further delayed.
We will always try to do things in an appropriate order & this could be implemented if it is quick to develop & quick to test. Changing to 5 secs per lap or so much at the start & so much later is all great stuff, but if this is not a straightforward change & easy to test, then it is not a priority. As such it will not be developed until one of the two work streams is completed, which could be some considerable time. Also adding new features may make the job of fixing things more complicated & delay that work even more.
Eton Fed medal 5000 11 years 34 days ago (edited 11 years 34 days ago)
The reason it doesn't happen already Andrew is because the field has had enough time to spread out by the time kers charges... If you give us full kers at the start of the race, and you start P10 say, ofcourse you're more likely to dump it. If you have 10 cars within 1 second of you it's a little different to having 10 cars within 10 seconds of you.
Rene Cornella medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
As I am too often a victim to be stuck behind a slower unmanaged car at the start, this would solve a lot of frustrations.
At the moment I lose about 9 to 11 seconds in 3 laps until the DRS starts too work. Then if there are more unmanaged cars and you are even further behind them it can take up to 4 or 6 laps until you are able to overtake them,.. just when Kers is loaded.
I hate this,.. This is a huge BUG as I see it. Changing to have kers loaded already makes a difference to people online. Now the argument is that people will use it right at the start,.. yes and, is there anything wrong ? Now people save it for the last lap to have the best laptime,.. also a bit unrealistic. So what is the point in not doing it ?
David Seward medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
While I've wanted KERS at the race start, I have also found that race starts appear very "jumpy" and you cannot really judge if someone is making ground on an opponent. It bounces around quite sporadically and I am not sure if it is lag or just a long sequence of attack, defend, attack, defend, attack, defend. (for about a full lap, first lap). Looks bad, and I'd hate to use KERS boost at the start and not ever truly make ground on cars.
I agree with Rene's last paragraph above.
We just need to have a per lap charge like in real F1. People saving a boatload of KERS to the very end, or in this case, using lots at the start is awfully annoying and unrealistic.
Eton Fed medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
The point in not doing it? What is the sense in removing one problem and just creating another? Automatic 5/5 qualifying is what caused this whole problem in the first place and more users wanted it removed over how many wanted to keep it, so I don't know why it stayed in the first place. When did we ever hear people complain about blue tyre cars before that system rolled out? We never did.
With this new system you're essentially giving P15 for instance the capability of going from P15 to P1 (if no other cars used their kers that is) in a couple of turns. That's even more unrealistic and even more silly than having one slow car hold you up like it currently is. Also the fact that you can't kers both cars at once, so if you start with both cars up front (EG P1 and P2) and everyone behind you uses their kers (P3/4/5/6/7/8), you can only defend one position at a time, so atleast one of your drivers is going to fall back through the field. It's just weird and will cause an even bigger kers orgy than we already see and I guarantee at the end of the day you'll see even more complaints.
I'm not against the idea of kers from the start, I just think for it to work there needs to be rules to balance it out.. Such as the one Tony suggested about limiting how much you can use at certain times. Kers hotkeys so you can use both cars kers at once would also give the system some merit. But I am only one opinion, I'm just trying to explain it how I see it.
Eton Fed medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
I can agree that saving kers for one final lap is unrealistic, but I can't agree that it gives anyone an advantage if anyone was implying that. If you give up positions and drive your entire race in dirty air just to have one fast final lap, you're ruining your own race results.
Yuri Kasdorp medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
I think that if this was implemented, it'd turn out that quali wasn't worth nothing anymore (you're not even 0.1 from the guy in front, you can just kers a bit) and races wouln't be as divers as they are now. There has to be a solution to getting stuck behind cars on ice cold or glowing hot tires but this isn't it IMO
Rene Cornella medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
Eton, I understand your opinion with KERS at the start and having 2 drivers,.. but at least you would fall behind drivers online and not loos so much time, just a place. But you would be still right in touch with the front runners and still have kers. That can give you back the opportunity to get them later in the race. Ok I understand it’s not perfect. But as it is now it’s worse as you lose any chance of a good result right at the start,.. . In a good league losing 9 to 11 seconds in a few laps is impossible to make good. So yes, it’s not perfect, but sure better as it is right now,..
Eton Fed medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
The thing people underestimate is how powerful clean air is in iGP. If anyone thinks having kers being in P10 is better than having no kers and being in P1 clean air, IMO they're very mistaken. Anyone can call that an an opinion if they want but it really is how it is.
What I can understand is removing 5/5 qualifying. That solves both problems straight up. Why are we considering a new system to work around a problem we already know the answer to? No one complained about blue tyre runners when 5/5 qualifying wasn't there, and no one can use the "to give the afk users a fair chance" argument like they did last time if we're currently discussing a new system to work around the afk managers again.
How is it not more logical to just remove 5/5 qualifying again? I really don't get it. That system did nothing but introduce problems and it's still there with people moaning about it every day.
Yuri Kasdorp medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
+1 to Eton
Rene Cornella medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
Eton is right. Why try to make a workaround for a problem and not solve the problem.
Q is very random and with everyone empty and on 5/5 setting for the Q-Lap things got messy.
Take the 1st stint fuel and the assigned push setting for Q. That solves all the issues.
Jon Denton medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
Not a good idea really IMO, with two cars you can't KERS both, and in 100% races it will inevitably lead to much more KERS usage in the early laps. But I am well aware that our league may not run things the way the majority do, so we'll deal with whatever the governing body throw at us. :)
I fail to see what the problem is with not being able to get past an absent manager. The issue here is that managers are absent, so kick them from your league. Or, of course, do a better job and just get past them. Races sometimes involve being held up and not being able to run at your ultimate pace, that's racing.
Jon Denton medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
+1 to Eton and +1 to Rene.
Return to the old qualifying method, which matches the refueling standard as per 2008/9 FIA F1 rules. Race with refueling, qualify with race fuel on the push level set.
Punishes absent managers? Well, they should turn up then shouldn't they? Given that's the point of the game.
John Sjostrand medal 5093 11 years 33 days ago
If the problem people wants to solve is "I cant get past absent managers cars unless I have kers on lap 1", then the obvious solution would be to to automatically let the managers that are online qualify ahead of all the absent ones.
That would of course be ridicolous.
I would find it ok to have quicker kers loading, but it shouldn't be available on the first lap. If you can't get past an absent managers cars at the beginning, be patient, you will get past if you do your job well.
..
An idea to make qualifying better would be to let people run the qualifying manually. Have a period of maybe 15 minutes before the race, trying to find the right moment to do the runs and manage the pace.
Andrew Hurn medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago (edited 11 years 33 days ago)
Someone has to make a decision about whether to implement this or not.
However, As I said before, if this is not a straightforward change, we will not do it now. Therefore I will consult with my colleagues & find out how long the original suggestion will take develop & report back here.
Jack Basford medal 5193 
CEO & CTO 11 years 33 days ago
The push setting for qualifying was taken out for various reasons, primarily:
[list=1]
[*]Lots of people can't always get to their computer for the start of a race, and they would be forced in to an uncompetitive race through no fault of their own. Either they would run 5/5 push and overheat while they were trying to get to their computer, or if they knew in advance, they would be forced to run 3/5 or lower and suffer the consequences. It may seem like there is an obvious solution: Have a push level for qualifying. But this bumps in to the next reason that it was removed.
[*]Everyone will choose 5/5 push. It adds nothing except a meaningless and tedious choice to the process of preparing for a race.
[/list]
Why was fuel level removed from qualifying?
[list]
[*]Because anyone running heavy fuel or hard tyre opening stints would sink like a stone in qualifying and be completely uncompetitive in the race. As a result, everyone is forced to run a low-fuel, soft tyre strategy in order to be competitive. Again, there becomes only one right choice, strategy becomes obvious and there is no sense in trying anything different.
[/list]
There are simply better reasons to continue refining instead of reverting. It can be made to work, unlike the old system which will never offer a fully dynamic approach to strategy. Our goal is to have maximum flexibility with strategy and approach to the race, so that a variety of approaches can work.
In the current version of the game there are choices that only have one right answer, and in the past the qualifying and race strategy was just one more. The version 2 update changes the gameplay in a big way to make variety inherently built in to the system. Until then, we've got to work within the confines of the current system, where some areas still have only 1 right answer, but at least with strategy we can extract a lot of flexibility in the current system.
There are other things I want to try in the long-run (such as more tyre compounds), which I may create another thread about as this one is already getting quite derailed. But for the reasons I have given above we will not be returning to the old system, as we will quickly remember why we changed away from it.
Teo Fabulous medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
"Eton
I can agree that saving kers for one final lap is unrealistic, but I can't agree that it gives anyone an advantage if anyone was implying that. If you give up positions and drive your entire race in dirty air just to have one fast final lap, you're ruining your own race results.
It's an advantage in our league. Just yesterday, we had a manager win the race because he saved most of his KERS for the final lap while the rest of us used it to get out of traffic. He basically leaned on KERS for most of the final lap and went from about 5th place to the lead. It's a legit win because that's the way the rules package is, but for me personally I think it makes the racing too artificial. In fact, most of our races lately have come down to who has the most turbo-boost left for the final lap.
The reason I like the Push-to-Pass model of IndyCar for iGP is that the manager can't control how long KERS is active, only WHEN it is activated; and the manager only has a certain number button-presses for the race (in an ideal world, it'd be scalable based on the race distance - 10 pushes for a 100% race, 5 for a 50%, etc., but the implementation would be the key issue). So instead of a "get out of traffic free" card, KERS becomes a strategic weapon that requires judicial use and good timing.
I realize that this is just pie-in-the-sky thinking and that it likely won't be changed, but at the risk of sounding "grass is greener" I certainly would prefer it to the arcade-ish KERS implementation we have now.
Teo Fabulous medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
"Jon
Punishes absent managers? Well, they should turn up then shouldn't they? Given that's the point of the game.
Yeah, that's a terrific business model.
Jon Denton medal 5000 11 years 33 days ago
"Tony
"Jon
Punishes absent managers? Well, they should turn up then shouldn't they? Given that's the point of the game.
Yeah, that's a terrific business model.
The business model doesn't come into it. If you pay to play a game; similarly to, say, if you paid to rent a tennis court, it makes quite a lot of sense to turn up. If you don't, then troubled times all round, but once i had to drop out of a real race because of major food poisoning, do you think I got my entry fees back?
Anyway, this is off topic.
