Let's get it rolling! On the subject of cars, I would like to begin by making a pitch for two of them:
- Superkart: I like the Kart, and would enjoy seeing it again at ZakStunts. If it comes up at a insufficiently twisty track during the season, we can always slap a -10% penalty on it. If you want to try it for yourself, head to the current race at Cas' competition (http://dimioca.com/r4k/index.php?o=race).
- Toyota Sprinter Trueno: It would be good to give one of the Toyotas a chance to shine. I feel the Trueno is a more interesting car than the Corolla, as due to its low real top speed it is closer to the LM002 than to all the other mid-slow cars. There is one problem: the Trueno has extra off-road grip similarly to the Lotus, but exaggerated to the point it becomes more bug than feature. However, as the Trueno was never used in a competition, it would be straightforward to prepare and distribute a bugfix release -- I will do just that if we decide to use it next season.
As both of my candidates are slow cars, it sounds sensible to bench the Skyline this time if either or both of them are approved for 2019.
There are all those other cars to consider, of course, and perhaps I'm overlooking some great candidate (you can find all of them, or at least the released ones, at Southern Cross (http://scr.stunts.hu/mods.html#custom-cars)). So please have your say :)
Trying different cars each year is very good, so we get to know them better and we don't forget they're there. How are handicap levels set at the start of the season? Do they continue from the last race of the previous one? In that case, how are newly incorporated cars assigned handicap by default?
Quote from: Cas on September 23, 2018, 03:52:34 AM
How are handicap levels set at the start of the season? Do they continue from the last race of the previous one?
It worked like that from 2011 up to 2017. Carrying the bonuses over is one way of ensuring all cars get a chance (as there are more cars than tracks in a season, a car which starts with a relatively weak bonus may end up not being used before the year is over). This year, though, the bonuses were reset at the beginning of the season -- I can't say much about that, as I only noticed that now :D In any case, this might be a good opportunity to revisit this matter -- we have been using bonuses for long enough that there might be some meaningful statistics about their evolution to be squeezed.
Quote from: Cas on September 23, 2018, 03:52:34 AM
In that case, how are newly incorporated cars assigned handicap by default?
I believe the protocol was/is to do laps at a handful of test tracks (http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2278.msg39827#msg39827) and use that to figure out reasonable starting values.
Quote from: Duplode on September 24, 2018, 05:11:46 AM
This year, though, the bonuses were reset at the beginning of the season -- I can't say much about that, as I only noticed that now :D In any case, this might be a good opportunity to revisit this matter -- we have been using bonuses for long enough that there might be some meaningful statistics about their evolution to be squeezed.
Actually, 2018 coefficients follow from last year as well, but there were both large custom changes (including the Ford Ranger getting 20 points to start with) and a rounding effort to stabilise the numbers.
When I made it possible to updated coefficients through the website, I discovered that the numbers had drifted quite a bit over time —a mix of small mistakes and car rotation, see chart attached. At that point, I decided to round the coefficients down to 12 points per car (192 total, down from 199 from the 2017 season).
Calculations are now automatic, which should prevent further drifting. Custom, per-track bonuses can still change the total, but the UI shows some warning signs if that's happening.
Quote from: Cas on September 23, 2018, 03:52:34 AM
In that case, how are newly incorporated cars assigned handicap by default?
Let's say "feelings" :) On one side, we want the seasonal cars to be used in at least one track of the season, which means they would get slightly higher bonuses than they deserve. On the other hand, it's not nice to mess up with the coefficients too much, because other cars might end up unused for too long. But it also depends on the tracks coming up and the other cars coefficients: if we introduce a car of a specific class I would give it coefficients close to the other cars of the same class.
More than about maths, it's about keeping things interesting: a) rotate all cars b) increase uncertainty in chosing the right car c) make of many tracks a memorable event (the powergear race, the slow and tricky race, etc)
I didn't know the bonuses are now updated automatically. That's cool!
Quote from: dreadnaut on September 24, 2018, 12:49:36 PM
b) increase uncertainty in chosing the right car
Looking at car choices over recent races, this seems to be working as intended :)
I think the car bonus system is something amazing that ZakStunts has and indeed, I've seen almost every car used in races, so it works very well. There is only one goal that seems very hard to achieve: car diversity on the same race. It looks like, while cars from race to race change a lot, the trend is to use only one car or two per race. I can think of a few ideas that could help in this regard, but all of them are risky, that is, they could lead to undesired, unexpected results as well.
For example, what if, like in the currency market, cars coeficients would float during the race? Say, using a car that hasn't been used on the race when at least other two different cars have been used already will signify an extra little bonus to the first pipsqueak using it. I know, very complicated, but this idea could lead to something simpler if analysed. Also, what if a pipsqueak would get a lower bonus on a car if he used the same car on the previous race, but pipsqueaks who didn't will get the normal bonus?
Another idea, longer to apply, but simpler. Suppose initial bonuses are assigned to cars from simple tests on tracks for the first race and then, on every next race, instead of trying to make the cars cycle, bonuses are recalculated according the the diversity obtained on the previous race and seeking a greater diversity? The problem with this is that a whole season of racing would be sacrificed for this calculation. But, I could use R4K for this purpose next year... I don't know.
Now, beside any of these crazy ideas that are just brainstorming (feel free to use your creativity on them and change them wildly, ha, ha), one thing I'd like to propose is a field in ZakStunts where one can enter a lap and a car and obtain the lap with bonus applied or maybe like this: you click on one result on the scoreboard and that can take you to a menu where you can select one of the available cars and ZakStunts will calculate what lap you need to reach that pipsqueak with the car you selected. That tool would make it a lot more comfortable for pipsqueaks and would make them more eager to pick different cars instead of following the one that everybody's using. What do you think?
One thing you could try to get more cars viable per track is lower the car coefficients gain and loss. Not used is +1.5%, or +1%. This also lowers the drop from being used, keeping cars closer to the bonus where they are useful.
A side effect of this, which could be seen as both a positive and a negative, is that cars will tend to get used more on tracks where they are relatively fast. If the Rambo Lambo is 20% below it's ideal bonus when a track with ice turns comes up it may not get used, if it sits 10% below its ideal bonus it may be worth a shot.
Quote from: Cas on September 25, 2018, 04:03:08 AM
There is only one goal that seems very hard to achieve: car diversity on the same race.
Is that actually a goal? Whatever the calculations behind it, that can only work if you artificially push or force single people to use cars that are not the best¹ car. The current system works by forcing "everyone", which has a pretense of fairness, but any similar mechanisms while a race is moving would target pipsqueaks in possibly unfair ways.
[1] "best" intended as handling + bonus for the track
Quote from: Cas on September 25, 2018, 04:03:08 AM
Now, beside any of these crazy ideas that are just brainstorming (feel free to use your creativity on them and change them wildly, ha, ha), one thing I'd like to propose is a field in ZakStunts where one can enter a lap and a car and obtain the lap with bonus applied
Mmmh, sounds like the RPLinfo (http://zak.stunts.hu/index.php?page=rplinfo) page, or is it a different thing?
The "intersection chart" is something I sometimes make for myself, but it could be useful in general. Or what about just showing the top result converted for all cars? "To lead with car X, you need at least 1'12!"
Quote from: Overdrijf on September 25, 2018, 09:01:01 AM
One thing you could try to get more cars viable per track is lower the car coefficients gain and loss. Not used is +1.5%, or +1%. This also lowers the drop from being used, keeping cars closer to the bonus where they are useful.
An equivalent solution is also reducing the total number of bonus points that circulate, which is currently 12×16 = 192. But if cars circulate faster, fast cars (Indy, MP4, IMSA) would become too strong: the only reason they are not an option is because they have large negative bonuses. Bring them closer, and they would always be faster.
Quote from: Overdrijf on September 25, 2018, 09:01:01 AM
If the Rambo Lambo is 20% below it's ideal bonus when a track with ice turns comes up it may not get used, if it sits 10% below its ideal bonus it may be worth a shot.
The track designer can assign or remove up to 20 points to any cars. Leo choose to keep values as they are, but we could have had the Lambo at 41% on this track. Because we trust the maths, but sometimes a track is begging for a specific car :)
Quote from: dreadnaut on September 25, 2018, 04:23:13 PMBut if cars circulate faster, fast cars (Indy, MP4, IMSA) would become too strong: the only reason they are not an option is because they have large negative bonuses. Bring them closer, and they would always be faster.
O no, the point is not to bring the bonuses closer together, the idea was to make them change more slowly. The Indy over the last three years has had coefficients between -48 and +3, so it generally sits at around -20 or so. If the coefficient changes get smaller you'd still expect it to sit around -20, it just goes up and down less. Because it's the same for all cars, the Indy gets used when its bonus gets around -10 to -5, rather than -5 to 3. So far it's all just change for the change, it works out exactly the same as the current system. But the point of the whole idea is that there will be more weeks when the Indy is relatively near that top of its coefficient curve. Under the current system two months prior to winning the Indy has 6 points bonus less than in the month it won, that's a difference of roughly 12 seconds over a whole race. 12 seconds is a lot, the Indy was not going to be competitive that month. But if the bonus for not getting used was just one percent then 2 months prior to the race in which the Indy won it already had only 2% less bonus, a difference of 4 seconds. That might have made it at least potentially competitive. And it's the same for every other car, including the slow ones.
O course, I don't know if more potentially competitive cars would actually lead to more cars being used per race, or mostly to a longer period at the beginning of the month where everybody tries out a bunch of cars before all settling on the same one anyway. That would be anticlimactic. But it's an idea to consider...
I think Overdrijf is right. I don't mean (and I think neither does he) that we have to make this change, but that this change would result in greater diversity of cars per track. In theory, the smaller the deltas applied to cars after each race, the slower the "favourite car of the race" will change, but the most precise the handicaps will eventually be, until they get to the point that, on every race, every car could be considered. Of course, if this were done, there's another problem: some tracks are simply better for a car than for another, so when a track favouring, say, the Jaguar, came up, it would cause its handicap level to be drifted from average, but, if changes are small and tracks are always very varied, this should work. Maybe I should make this experiment next year with a R4K season (more than Race For Kicks would be like "Race for Science" XD). Of course, the handicap bonuses that will work fine in OWOOT won't in freestyle and vice-versa.
This is just an analysis. I think ZakStunts is great as it is. But you know, some "what ifs" lead to good ideas sometimes, even if they are entirely different from the initial proposition, so I think they have to be stated.
About the scoreboard position calculator, the idea is that one can say "if I used this car, what lap do I need to reach each of the current scoreboard positions given the current bonuses?". I don't think it's the same as RPLInfo. The idea is that I don't have to create a replay.
Quote from: Cas on September 25, 2018, 10:37:57 PM
About the scoreboard position calculator, the idea is that one can say "if I used this car, what lap do I need to reach each of the current scoreboard positions given the current bonuses?". I don't think it's the same as RPLInfo. The idea is that I don't have to create a replay.
I guess you want something like what CTG, once upon a time, used to do by hand (http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2973.msg59495#msg59495).
Yes, more or less it would look like that. I mean, you have beside each scoreboard line, a small icon or button. You click it and you get a menu with things you can do on that lap. One option could be "get here with another car". That leads you to a page in which you select a car and then you get the driven lap for the same resulting lap.
Another, nicer, way to do it would be this: beside each of the cars in the bonus list below the scoreboard, there's a radio button. There's an extra line that says "Show each lap with its actual car", which is the default. If you select any other, you update the page maybe with a button and the scoreboard is recalculated with the driven times all equal to the time it would take to achieve each of the resulting laps. Some colour or mark could indicate this is an estimation and not the actual scoreboard. This option might be unavailable if one is not logged in.
Another thing worth considering is plain increasing the number of cars. The current number of 11+5 cars is a good number, it lets every car in on a race roughly ones a year and the specific numbers of the bonus system have been balanced around it. But on the flip side quite a few interesting custom cars have come out over the years, and I don't want to suggest discontinuing some of the original cars.
Let's pick this up again:
- I can probably build the table suggested by Cas, although I would leave it for later since it does not need to be ready for the new season starting.
- Increasing the number of available cars would be nice, but right now it's a pain because of the way the database is set up. I can change that, but it takes time and testing to make sure that stuff still works. (ZakStunts requires a bit of effort to maintain, because it always need to keep backward compatibility with previous seasons)
- An easy change would be to "slow down" the coefficient variations. Everything right now is defined by a single value: the number of points an unused car recovers, which is 3. The cars on the podium lose a share of the total points recovered by all the other cars. I can change that number to 2 or 1, and everything will move more slowly. We can try this for the next season if people are interested.
I'm not sure about the slowing down. That is, it'd be interesting to test, but could cause the last five or six races of the season to be all-slow. If the cars recover more slowly but go down just as fast as before, this could happen. I'm OK with both doing it and not doing it. I'll agree with what most of you guys want :)
Quote from: Cas on November 13, 2018, 10:02:02 PMIf the cars recover more slowly but go down just as fast as before, this could happen.
The problem I have is that to keep the number of points constant, I need to add as many as I remove :(
Do you think it would help to "flatten" the bonuses at the beginning of the season, bringing the cars closer to each other?
It might help to reset the bonuses to a value closer to the average for that car. Resetting the bonuses to be closer to each other mostly benefits the faster cars.
The gap the cars need with each other to be considered for use is still the same. If the LM002 is in the current setup about as fast as the Indy when the LM002 has 30% bonus while the Indy has 10% bonus, that stays the same.
The thing you could think about flattening out is their difference from their average. Cars that haven't been used since the beginning of the year, ready for their time to shine in january or februari might have a big enough bonus that under a changed system they'll see use several times in the new year, because their bonus goes down more slowly they don't get dropped to the bottom of the usefulness list, but maybe to halfway. But it's cars that have recently been used that could get the real short end of the stick. If their bonus is now exceptionally low a slower change in bonuses could see them rise slower and remain unused for over a year (unless of course track makers correct for this with the manual bonus adjustments). It won't take three times as long for these currently very low bonused cars to get used with a 1% bonus compared to 3%, since they don't need to get as far past their average to be considered, since other cars sit closer to their average as well, but it would take longer.
The same does not go for cars that get bonus changes from being used in the new year. It's a starting issue, not a permanent downside. A vehicle's drop from being used is proportionally smaller, so their time to rise back up is about the same. A bit faster even if the idea accomplishes its goal and we see more tracks where multiple cars share the podium.
Quote from: Overdrijf on November 14, 2018, 07:25:37 AM
Resetting the bonuses to be closer to each other mostly benefits the faster cars.
In particular, it benefits power gear cars, as often the tiniest of margins suffices to turn a track into a PG freeway. The 2008 season illustrates this potential problem.
Yes, there is this issue the guys point out. In my terms, normally, all cars could have a fixed handicap if they were similar in their handling, only with different top speeds and an acceleration proportional to the top speed. But that's not what happens. Some cars are capable of things that make them very different from a track to another and PG is the single most noticeable one of these features. So, say, Porsche Marcy Indy should get not one, but two fixed handicap values if one wanted to do this. But then how would one judge which would apply?
I think the current car-shuffling system in ZakStunts does a decent job in getting us try all cars. It could be better, but it's really hard to make it better without, well, making it worse XD I see this and for this reason, I'm just as much in favour as I am against about changing it and will support any outcome. If you guys want, I can set up an experimental shuffling system different from that in ZakStunts during next season so we can mess up there and not break anything here. For example, in the past, I was thinking of setting up fixed handicap values, but obtaining them from the results of at least two different tracks (one favourable for PG and one not favourable), making an average. This would make PG cars non-suitable for some tracks, but very good for others. Another thing that could work is simply banning a race's top-car from the rest of the races in the season.
Well, anyway, I'm at your service
I did a little Excelling.
(https://i.postimg.cc/PxyH7Gr7/Car-coefficient-deviations.jpg)
I wanted to identify which bonuses might be good to change if the amount of change per month was to go down. So I wanted to identify the cars that are currently far above or far below their typical bonus values.
To that effect I took the average coëfficients of the current cars over the last three years and their standard deviations, based on all the values the coëfficients have had in that time. If the amount of change was to go down to +2% for a month of no use I'd consider changing the bonuses for anything that per January first sits outside of a single standard deviation. If it went down to +1% I'd consider changing everything outside of half the current standard deviation. In the final two columns I took the current bonuses (before the end of ZCT208) as an example to see how much change roughly both of those options would require.
In the second to last column you can see the amount of cars outside of 1 standard deviation is pretty manageable. Yellow is too low, purple too high (the shades of green are above and below average but within the limits). If the current bonuses were in effect on January first in this scenario I'd consider lowering the values for the LM002 and the Ranger and raising the one for the F40. But overall the values seem pretty suited to carrying over without or with minimal change.
In the last column we shift to 0.5 standard deviations, the stricter limits I would consider if the change went down to 1%. Yellow and orange are too low, purple and pink too high. I this scenario based on the current values I'd consider changing the bonuses for every car except the GTO, the Lancia and both IMSA cars. Overall the current values would not be very suited to carrying over, and I'd consider looking at averages over longer periods to be able to make more precise adjustments.
The up and downside discussed earlier still apply: bigger chance to see more cars viable per race, but also a shifts towards cars being used on the tracks they're most suited for, with the biggest offenders being good powergear tracks that would see more use of powergear cars and less use of regular fast cars like the IMSA's.
As for the selection of cars for next year: I'd like to voice support for the Xylocaine as a fun fast car, good for rollercoaster tracks and mad tricks, and for the GT3 as one of the fastest of the slow cars, good for technical racing with slow sliding corners but better suited than most slow cars for combining this with faster elements.
I'd also take this chance to promote my own cars some more, but of course I'm too much of a gentleman for that. 8) Although people looking to try the latest batch out can visit the Race for kicks event that's about to enter its last week. ::)
Great work! I would like to make some experiments with car balancing next season in R4K, as I said, but I'm not sure. Being OWOOT, using slow cars would mean tiny tracks and the popularity of the tournament is not like that of ZakStunts, so not having to consider different cars simplifies it for participants, which might otherwise prefer not to race. I do have an idea I still have to work upon, though.
Let's try this!
I'll modify the bonus increase from "cars not in-the
top 6 gain
+3%" to "cars not in the
top 6 gain
+1%", and bring the current bonuses closer to their average. I will also reduce the total points in circulation, from 12 points per car to 10 (from a total of 192 to 160).
The hypothesis is that by reducing the speed of variation, in each track more cars will be closer to their "useful threshold". This might not change which car wins a race, but we will see more variety of cars through the scoreboard —which should be more newbie friendly and more interesting. We'll see how it goes and re-evaluate at the end of the year.
Custom cars:I propose to remove: Melange XGT-88, Nissan Skyline GT-R, and McLaren Honda MP4/4
The custom cars for 2019 woul then be:
- Ferrari F40
- Ford Ranger
- SuperKart
- BMW M3 (from the DTM pack)
- Audi V8 (from the DTM pack)
Let me know what you think!
O, wow, I'm honored. This is pretty cool.
I'm potentially maybe even a little too honored. I like the cars that are staying, the Ranger will never be a personal favorite of mine but it has a good niche of its own and the F40 is a fast slow car, which offers an exiting driving style and a nice contrast to more regular fast cars. One could argue though that the two DTM cars are pretty similar and the kart sits in the same kind of niche, just at a more extreme point. An argument could therefor be made to replace one of the DTM cars with for instance one of the cars made to bridge the gap between IMSA and INDY.
I'm not making that argument, mind you. I designed these things to be pretty much my ideal cars, and I will love driving them. I'm quite happy with the feedback so far and I hope others are enjoying them too. I'm just saying that if anyone does wish to advocate this viewpoint I understand why.
As a counterargument: it's fun to use new cars, keep things fresh. (EDIT: I'm also happy with the inclusion of the BMW, as it's my slight personal favorite of the three DTM cars.)
(Alternatively you could try adding the DTM cars under a single coefficient. I have no idea if that's feasible under the Zakstunts system, it's experimental and you're already experimenting with the coefficients, it could lead to one of these cars being generally favored over the other(s), and it would give both less individual screentime. I'm sure you've already toyed with this idea because I mentioned how the idea of a 3 car pack was inspired by this idea on release.)
(In related news: I posted a graphics update for both the DTM cars (a few days ago) and the Superkart (in the past hour) in their respective threads (kart (http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=2578.30), dtm (http://forum.stunts.hu/index.php?topic=3436.15)). It changes nothing but the 3D model, and some text in the case of the M3. That probably makes the M3 the only car of these four for which the Zakstunts system will make a distinction between the 1.0 and 1.1 versions.)
For me it's ok, we can start the season with these modifications!
As for the modified bonus system: I'm curious to see it in action. I think the bonus points awarded by track designers will help a lot for the transition. For example: The Jaguar sits at -19 and would take a year and a half just to get to the positive numbers again (which it usually needs to compete) at 1% per track, but with just one 5% boost somewhere in the year it should become quite manageable. (Especially considering that this is one of the biggest deviators, we just had 2 Jaguar tracks, it should be getting a break.)
I did some more excelling. I picked up where I left off: getting car bonuses closer to their "fair" value now that the amount of change per month has decreased. The same color coding as above: The pink and purple colors indicate a car above their normal values, orange and yellow below. Green is around normal, with light green just below the average and dark green just above it.
The last race had quite some contenders which should mean that purely by chance we're on a good path. If your track is coming up in the next few months, you might consider giving a few manual bonus points to the Jaguar, the LM002, the F40, the Countach and/or the GTO. Those five cars might need a little help getting to their fair value.
The Indy is the only one that looks like it has too high a current bonus in the numbers, but the Indy is a weird car which has had a weird few years now, the years on which these numbers were based. I don't think it's actually that high above its actual fair average value. And while the Indy won last month that wasn't really a proper Indy race, so it's fine if its number comes up ones more in the nearby future. For these reasons I encourage restraint in going by my results and dumping too much of a manual negative modifier on the Indy.
For this month I tried to distribute the manual negatives in such a way that we would again have several contenders. Let's see if I succeeded.
P.S. bonus factoid: when there's 14 negative points to distribute between a portion of 50%, one of 30% and one of 20% the bonus algorithm will apparently go with 8, 4 and 2 points respectively.
Quote from: Overdrijf on February 10, 2019, 10:36:53 PM
P.S. bonus factoid: when there's 14 negative points to distribute between a portion of 50%, one of 30% and one of 20% the bonus algorithm will apparently go with 8, 4 and 2 points respectively.
The points removed from the podium cars are rounded down, so with 14 point the cars in the top three positions would receive 14 * 0.50 = 7, 14 * 0.30 = 4, and 14 * 0.20 = 2. But those number sum up to 13, so the "rounding" point is always assigned to the car in first position.
Quote from: Overdrijf on January 13, 2019, 03:36:29 PM
As for the modified bonus system: I'm curious to see it in action.
So here we are, six month in. Time to validate our hypothesis.
In the first six races we had four podiums with two different cars, sometimes three different cars in the first six. Looking back at 2018, were most races were dominated by a single car, the difference is impressive.
We'll see how the second half of the season goes, but at the moment it seems a resounding success :)
I agree! So far, this experiment has given very positive results! And there's always a "what if" when considering cars and watching the scoreboard... many sudden surprises!
I'm not quite sure what I did wrong/imperfect in my calculations, maybe I should have tried balancing around the highest points the cars reach rather than the center, maybe I underestimated the addition of new fast cars, but I feel like throughout the year we've seen a bit more of the faster cars than entirely justified by complete randomness and a bit less of some of the slower cars. (The BMW made the top 3 in 3 races, though never in first place, the Indy, 962, Audi DTM and kart made the podium in 2 races each. Not that I'm complaining, I like fast cars...)
In related news I feel like now we've reached the point where that imbalance has mostlty fixed itself. The cars that sat at too low a bonus to be viable this year also seem to have risen enough to stand a chance next year. The Jaguar sits near the other fast cars, The two Lambo's sit near the top (though they are slow enough that they could be there for a while). The Ferrari GTO does not have a stellar position but it is set up for one of the next two powergear races. The F40 probably got the rawest deal after all, that one might still be stuck in traffic for a while.
So far 6 races featured multiple cars in the top 3, 5 did not. Last year there were 3 mixed scoreboards, in 2017 2 and in 2016 none. Part of that is luck, but the system change does seem to be doing what it was supposed to do.
For next year we have to consider what to do with the monthly bonuses. We can keep them as they are, plus and minus 10 percents which are permanent. This means these bonuses have a big effect on when cars are due. On the plus side: the cars that people like come up more often. We can lower the amount the track maker can hand out as bonuses but keep it permanent. This lowers the size of the effect, but also the impact track makers have on how their track is run. The third option is to make the bonuses temporary. If the Indy sits at -6 and you give it +10 the bonus becomes 4 for the duration of the race, but it goes back to -5 for the next month (or less if the Indy ends up in the top 3). This option is probably the fairest one, and it gives track makers control over their track without big lasting consequences. On the downside it may encourage trying to set up 1 car races, just give +10 to your favorite car and yolo it. On the upside again, if that's your favorite car, why not?
About the bonuses... maybe I'm just saying what Overdrijf said in another way, not sure if we've got exactly the same idea, but the more we add, the better to help all of us think.
I think about this: suppose bonuses are only for the current race so it's my turn and I boost some car. Then the car gets used a lot and as a consequence, for next race, it falls, since my boost is lost. This means, making the bonuses permanent affects competence of cars for other races which isn't fair for somebody who wouldn't choose the same car, but making them temporary affects the competence too, in the other direction.
There are many things that can do about this:
- We could make it so that bonuses are temporary, but cars boosted by the track designer are immune to fall-from-use
- We could make the permanent bonus a proportion of the temporary bonus, say, half the temporary bonus
- We could replace the ability of the track designer to apply bonus, with an ability to freeze certain cars
- We could make the bonuses dynamic during the race (of course, not affecting the already posted calculated laps). This could be crazy and very complicated, although it'd be very interesting to see. Could work like a charm or destroy everything
As always... this is brainstorming. Hope some of all that is useful to anybody :P
Interesting ideas, but I'd personally argue pretty heavily against two of these:
- Boosted cars are immune to drop from use:
Cars that get boosted are often already close to being useful. This is I think a recipe for seeing the same car come up several times in a short amount of time.
- Bonuses are dynamic during the race:
Not only does this hurt both the time hiding game and the really strong optimization attempts, it could make the race unwinnable after a certain point. Yeah, it's good to promote early racing, but not at that cost, I'd say. To counteract that you could make it that bonuses can only go up during a race, which is better, but also incentivizes late racing even more.
A semi-interesting brain fart I just had: would it be easy to implement a delay in public replays being posted, like say 12 or 24 hours? Like an extra button that says "public after delay"? It might slow down the collective efforts to find the fastest route a bit, but it would also reward innovation with a chance at LTB points. I'm thinking of calling it the "Oh god what if Marco (or Overdrijf, let's be honest here) comes online somewhere in the next few hours"-mechanic. 8)