KERS fully-charged from start?

@Andrew
John is not right, as it’s not possible to train my drivers any more on the overtaking part and I still have the issue very often. So more races gives more Training opportunity and more experience on situations like this.  In a 25% or 50% race the race is over after 3 laps if you are a bit unlucky and behind an unmanaged driver. No Training in the world can change this. All this happens because of the qualy is done wrong not depending pure on performance and strategy, but mostly based on luck and maybe some hidden driver skills.
Q is the thing need to be changed.    
 
And you are right that things need to be tested good before going out. I totally agree.
 
Back to KERS,… As everyone has a different opinion, just let it like it is, why screw something else up. We need to deal with already enough bug’s.
 
@ I B
Yes KERS from start would punish absent managers even more,.. Soo ?? Maybe they should not be absent. Why punish online managers ? The people actually play the game get punished at the moment. That is wrong.

I'll break my answer down into a few different categories because I have a few ways to answer it haha
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[*]Saving kers for the last lap is an absolutely terrible way to play this game. It's no matter of opinion - I'm stating it 100% out right haha. Ask any of the top players in the most competitive leagues. If you want to win you have to battle with kers, and you need to be out in front in clean air as much as possible. Just because some people can win certain races in certain leagues by doing it doesn't mean it's a good thing to do. It's well and truly slower and every car you let pass you makes you lose time on track aswell. Forget the dirty air argument, that stands on it's own. I am talking about every single time you let someone pass you on track, your sector times are sometimes up to 0.5 slower when someone passes you so it's just miles slower over the whole race. Then when you blend this with the time lose in dirty air, you're losing mega time over a whole race, more so than the 4 seconds you gain at the end in one lap by dumping all your kers.

The only time there is no problem with saving all kers for the final lap is when you start from pole and lead the entire race, when you've had no need to use it.

I say to hell with it. If people want to save their kers then good on them. More wins for those who don't.

[*]I think it would encourage people to use their kers even more than they do now if anything, because since people have no idea how much someone else has left they will be less inclined to kers block. The only reason kers blocking happens is because people know they can definitely hold someone up since the other person has less kers than them. It's impossible to know this for certain if you can't see it.

[*]I think it would encourage people to use their kers not only more, but also in fashions they have never tried before (eg a little "squirt" in a certain spot every lap)
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So to sum up, I think hiding kers will stop an abundance of kers blocking, it will encourage people to use kers in a different fashion and in different places on the track and would definitely help mix up the static gameplay. Win/win is the way I see it.

Exactly my point aswell... I really am struggling to grasp this "give the afk managers a chance" concept... I seriously don't understand it.

I still have yet to see a clear answer on that question - Why punish active, paying subscribers who put in hours a day and get online for all or most of their races, and give the unactive and in most cases, free users who put in little to no effort, the advantage?

+1

This is the most interesting and constructive thread I have read in a long time.  Most of the managers seem to have taken time over their considered opinion.
I would like to throw the following observations into the pot, some of which have already been commented on.

1 - Not all drivers have KERS so would having this function at the start penilise their chances?  It might mean that they take a considerably longer time to get enough money to buy the feature and in the meantime just give up playing.

2 - It is good that managers are looking at the game as if it were 'real' but in real F1 there are only 23 cars on the grid.  In a lot of the active leagues in iGP there can be 32 cars on the grid - that would be impossible IRL so the problem of being held up is greater.

3 - F1 does not have 50% or 75% races therefore any KERS use would have to be scaled to shorter distances if this was allowed to be used at the start.

4 - Qualifying is not 'luck'.  A great deal of coding from driver attributes, manager choices and staff levels (to name but a few) goes into where the cars end up on the grid.  So KERS at the start would just add another aspect to this.

5 - Driver training does have a huge effect on gameplay.  Obviously, how good your driver is at attacking as opposed to how well the driver in front is defending is what overtaking is all about, as much as the track stats.  The use of KERS can be ruined/pointless if these aspects are ignored.

6 - Non 2D managers who are also present at the race are at a disadvantage as, unless you can really follow the numbers, it is difficult to know when to use KERS.  So using it at the start may help their chances.

7 - There seems to be an opinion amongest some managers that they are being 'punished' by the system for being stuck behind absent managers and that absent managers should be 'punished' instead.  I think it should be made clear that this is primarily a management game.  Attending races is only one part of the gameplay and not compulsary.  Some managers may have no interest in the actual race but are only interested in the set-up and negotiations of a management game - this is perfectly acceptable.  In this case the use of KERS will therefore be totally in the control of the AI system.

8 - There also a feeling that 2D subscribers should have an even greater advantage and that if you don't pay then you shouldn't play.  This view is anethema to the very fundamental principals of this game.  The non-subscribers have a lot of disadvantages and 'punishing' them by using that sort of language does nothing to promote the game.  KERS should be available to all at an appropriate level.

The vast majority of managers seem to have no opinion or interest in when KERS is available.  As with life, decisions are left to the vocal few who all too often only see the problem from their own point of view.  I stress this is not a bad thing - but concensus will never be reached.  I think the devs have to make a decision.  If change is decided upon then stick with it until it is seen to work - or change it back if not.

Since you're only looking to have a simple fix, I'll just cut to the chase and say that allow KERS from the start and see how it affects racing and people's opinion.

But as I see it problems arise from two main things:
1) race distance
2) absent vs. present managers

How a 100% race and a 50% race pan out is very different. KERS charging speed and amount should be relative to the race distance. As should some other features. Maybe not linearly, but still. But I also think that it's good that you need different strategies for different distances. Keeps things interesting. Someone who has done only 100% races and gotten bored might find it appealing to go to a league with 50% races knowing it's going to be a little different experience. Not just shorter.

Cars get stuck behind other cars, that's racing. If other cars are effectively invisible then what's the point in having then on the track at the same time? Also it would make it less important to be present during the race. Someone said you can lose up to 3s per sector? I've never ever seen anything even close to that.

This game tries to cater to two fairly different playing styles; to managers that are present during the race and those that are absent. I think they should pick which one to focus on and just ditch the other. As I see it the "play absent" feature is only there to make it so that you don't get completely screwed in the championship if you miss a race or few. You could do the same with drop races. It would also be a lot simpler to handle. Trying to cater to both playing styles forces the game to be less appealing to each group. And I'm pretty sure most people here are more one or the other and very few are inbetween (ie. are present in about 50% races and absent in rest).

Of course KERS should work somewhat similarly to how it does in F1. Limit the per lap use in some way. I don't really care if it needs to be charged or whether you just have it at the start of the race. Of course it would be cool if you would actually have to harvest it and you could tweak the harvest setting during the race. It would then have to have a negative affect if you harvest too aggressively.

Visible KERS usage and tire temps. How would you know these things anyway? I know it's a game and sometimes decisions are made to make playing more fun and interesting at the expense of realism. And that's good! But I don't know what it brings to the game to have both KERS usage and tire temp visible.

And Jon makes a good point about allowing leagues to customize rules.

Edit: This forum is stupid. Pasting text from notepad looked fine but as I clicked "reply" it all became one continuous paragraph.

That isn't really true though - 95% of the time it's completely random, bad driver or good driver. Lately the common trend appearing is that drivers with lesser attacking (15-17 range) are much better in traffic and in qualifying than drivers with maximum 19/19/19 attacking. See my drivers for two examples. The categories don't make much sense at all on the track.



Not at all. Our argument is mostly about activity, not money. Paying or not paying is irrelevant to our argument really (we've had some very fast & active free users in the past, Allar Foht for example). All we are saying is that active managers should be rewarded for the effort they put in.

The point is that even active, paying subscribers have real-world responsibilities that get in the way of being at a race. It's as ludicrious to say that, well, it's their fault for not being at the race as it is to say that paying subscribers should be punished so that free accounts can prosper. If you devote time and energy and strategy towards developing your team, you might feel like you deserve better than to have your drivers finish DFL in a race just because you had to go to your kid's recital.

The biggest issue, of course, is that the entire "push level" system is broken, because it is a) too oversimplified and b) too disconnected from driver AI. There is absolutely no way to win a race without being present in 2D mode unless you run in a series with low competition levels.

As this is nowhere near to come to a point let’s give me one more suggestion :
 
Drivers that are not online should at least haven the option to set push levels for their Tire choice. So they can use Soft tires with push 2/5 and Hard with 3/5 as an example.
Even better would be to have pre warmed tires or the push setting individual for every lap.
 
This way absent managers can really play a role in the race. Like now they are just driving chicanes. But this only works for absent managers who care about racing. For the once been away and do nothing,.. we always will be stuck behind. And for this case IGP need to find a solution.
 
That’s the last I will say here,…

Well, iGP need to find a solution "for your league", anyway.  Though i would say the solution you use is to kick these managers out after x amount of missed races if it really causes so much bother.

The solution for active, but not online managers, seems simple enough to me - take push levels out of the equation entirely except for in the 1D or 2D viewers.

The AI default behavior should be to push up until the tires are at optimal temperature - or, if you want to get more realistic and a little more complex in the coding, the likelihood of a driver getting to and staying at optimal tire temperature/wear could be tied into the Mental/Technical ratings, which at the moment are nigh useless.

So, if you're a manager who is missing a race, your drivers won't either a) burn their tires to a crisp in 2 laps or b) be stuck blocking half the field with ice-blue rubber. Rather, your drivers will push until the tires are grey and then enter "station-keeping" based on their mental ratings. (If iGP ever goes to tire warmers, then obviously this could be addressed again.)

However, for those who have 1D/2D and show up to the races, you could keep three manual push levels - Take it Easy, Normal, and Push - which you can use to encourage your drivers to alter their tactics in-event. I would suggest that the effect of these also should vary based on the driver's AI ratings, but at least you as a manager still have control. It also remains as an incentive for people to show up and be at the races if possible.

What do you think?