Cars and rules for 2024

[dreadnaut]

Future ZakStunts says hello 😎
I'm back! I've just travelled to the future to see what 2024 will bring us, and I can confirm: there will be ZakStunts! It will have new tracks and cars and small rule changes. Use this thread to guess what they'll be, next year we can check if you got it right!

While the game stays the same, the Competition is open to rule changes. This thread is here to collect and discuss suggestions, and also to decide which custom cars will be allowed for the coming season.

See also: Cars and rules for 2023

(Opening this thread earlier than usual because I will be away for three weeks late this November)

[Erik Barros]

I would suggest an LTB points system for the amateur league.

[Argammon]

I would suggest an LTB points system for the amateur league.

Excellent idea. I have two radical proposals:

• What's about LTB points only for the amateur league? Let the new and innovative drivers do the scouting! 
• Alternatively, pro drivers can get leading time but only if they post their replays as public.

[alanrotoi]

I would suggest an LTB points system for the amateur league.

Agree a separated earning LTB point system for amateur league.

Maybe adding up points to the overall, we should test if it would be an excessive advantage over the bottom of the pro list.

[alanrotoi]

I would like to offer few cars. -> https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Alan_Rotoi


Also you can pick from the cars under development.

[dreadnaut]

I would like to offer few cars. -> https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Alan_Rotoi

Which one car would you put ahead of the rest?

[alanrotoi]

Any of these would be cool! All were already used in competitions and/or live events but Plymouth Superbird.

You cannot view this attachment.

Chevrolet Silverado Monster Truck
Lola Cosworth INDY
Plymouth Superbird
IKA Torino
Ford Thunderbird

I chose these because they are quiet different each other and they could fill most of the speed/acceleration spectrum.

[Shoegazing Leo]

Lola and Torino are good ideas. 

[alanrotoi]

Lola and Torino are good ideas.

Yeah thanks! Torino maybe has my most realistic dashboard. We had a lot of fun racing it at the live event ---> https://youtu.be/_DGesv9YnCw?si=pvjfi9mvEvHfCS5z

About the rules for 2024, what about a different car coefficient for PG cars when they win/podium?
If an original car wins twice in a season always is a PG car. Only once in 2011 a non pg did it. Then for custom cars it happened two times in 2019 and I think it was because a high initial bonus and also different rules.

PG cars are way too protagonists in this competition. We could balance them giving a higher amount when they finish in a podium position. Now it's: winning 50%, second 30% and third 20%. We could add an extra 10% for them: winning 60%, second 40% and third 30%.

The goal is to reduce the quantity of pg races and / or pg surprises, from 41% and 33% (4 or 5 races, depending on the year) to a 25% (3 pg races per year).

[Duplode]

On bonuses and PG, I'd still highlight that the root cause of there being so many PG surprises and intrusions is the 2019 rule change, which lowered bonus gains per car from +3% to +1%, thus making bonuses much closer to each other. This closeness makes it much easier for PG cars to jump ahead of the rest when the track gives them even a slight leeway. Then there's the flip side of other cars getting stuck for many races waiting for their chance, appearing competitive but getting overtaken later in the races (the LM002 and the Carrera, for instance, seem particularly vulnerable to that).

Since the base bonus changes after a race have to add up to zero, the simplest way to tackle that would be raising gains per car to +2%, thus doubling the maximum exchanged points from 15% to 30%. That, however, would likely make multi-car races a lot rarer. Having more races with multiple competitive cars was the main point of the 2019 rule change, and it has been pretty successful in that regard, so I guess we don't want to throw the baby with the bathwater.

All tings considered, I believe it would be worth trying to increase the amount of exchanged points without having to do it in very coarse steps of 15%. One way of achieving that is increasing the points gained only for cars whose last victory was many months ago. A mild way of doing it might be giving +2% instead of +1% for cars with no victories over the previous 12 races. That would increase the exchanged points (and thus the points removed from podium cars) by a minimum of 4%, plus one point for each repeat winner in the past 12 rounds. It would also make it easier for cars that have been in the queue for a whole season to catch up, thus adding an element of self-correction to the system. Cars (re)introduced at the beginning of the season might as well get +2%: that would increase the exchanged points a bit further early on, and also give new cars better odds for their first victories.

My suggestion is a fairly conservative one that doesn't target PG cars specifically. I don't expect it to make a difference in situations in which both track and bonuses strongly favour some or all PG cars (e.g. GTO in ZCT260, or Acura in ZCT266) -- the goal, after all, isn't banning PG cars. However, such a tweak to the system might be just enough to keep PG at bay in more evenly matched scenarios (e.g. Vette in ZCT261, or Indy in ZCT265). Furthermore, if a more pronounced effect is desired, the number of months in waiting needed to get +2% can be lowered (for instance, to 9 instead of 12, which would ensure a further 3% increase in the exchanged points). It's all a matter of finding the right balance between separating bonuses a bit further while keeping reasonable odds for multi-car races.

[Cas]

I agree that the 2019 changes were generally successful, so I support amendments that do not imply undoing (even partially) what was done back then. I've already said before that I don't have this aversion towards PG that many have, but I guess the point is we all enjoy the race. One could simply disallow PG on races in which the track creator so chooses. Of course, this would mean verification would become very important in those races, but... to give an example, not reporting a penalty time also results in a replay that's invalid and only will be detected if somebody verifies it and we don't seem to have a problem with that. Usually, only competitive replays get verified in ZakStunts, I think. If something looks unlikely, all eyes fall on it. It seems to me this could work in a similar fashion. This way, you don't need to ban the car, but just PG-runs. How to define a PG-run? Well, that's another story. I'm sure we can agree on something.

[Argammon]

A very simple and easy to understand solution is to ban a power-gear car after a win. That way, we limit the power-gear wins to a maximum of 4 per season which seems the right amount to me.

[dreadnaut]

All tings considered, I believe it would be worth trying to increase the amount of exchanged points

Beyond the speed of movement, I wonder if the amount of points in the system has anything to do with its behaviour. Right now we have a 160 (10 × 16 cars) points which move around. But what if we had... zero, pushing more cars into the negative, or a higher number, letting slow cars reach +50%.

Does anyone feel like kicking the tires of a championship simulator?

[Duplode]

Beyond the speed of movement, I wonder if the amount of points in the system has anything to do with its behaviour. Right now we have a 160 (10 × 16 cars) points which move around. But what if we had... zero, pushing more cars into the negative, or a higher number, letting slow cars reach +50%.

That's interesting to think about... since a change of 1% is relatively larger at higher bonuses (e.g. it is 0.01 upon an 1.00 multiplier at 0% bonus, and 0.01 upon 0.80 at +20%), increasing the total amount of points should have a similar effect to making the differences larger, though I'd expect the effect to be fairly mild.

And yeah, a simulator should be useful. Not sure I'll get to work on such things this weekend, but I'll try to look into it. It will also be somewhat of an exercise of imagination when it comes to making up imaginary histories of how the season would have gone with different bonuses 

[Argammon]

I don't have time for a simulation, but here is a back of the envelope calculation on the immediate effect of a bonus point deduction from the carpool.


1) We are at the beginning of a new season and Car X starts with a X% > 0 bonus and Car Y starts with a Y% > 0 bonus.
For Car X to beat Car Y it must hold that

t^x < t^y*(100-Y)/(100-X), where t^x are the driven times of cars X and Y, respectively.

Example: X=27, Y=5, and t^y = 60, think of the LM and the P962. Then Car X must drive t^x = 78.08 or faster to beat car Y.

2) The admins decide to remove p bonus points from each car in competition (to reduces the number of points in the system). For simplicity, we assume X-P and Y-P are positive. Then for Car X to beat Car Y it must hold that

t^x < t^y*(100-Y+P)/(100-X+P)
Example: X=27, Y=5, t^y = 60 and p=4. Hence Car X must drive t^x = 77.14 to beat Car Y, meaning the LM suffers from the change.

3) More generally, we can compare the thresholds: t^y*(100-Y)/(100-X) > t^y*(100-Y+P)/(100-X+P) holds for any X in (0,100) when X>Y>0 and p>0.