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The cloned replays are now excluded from calculations. You can still find them at the bottom of the All Results page. I've refreshed the season's scoreboard, changes are luckily minor. PTB updates coming soon.

I was under the impression that this kind of thing was checked automatically, but perhaps that only applies to replays that are cloned in their entirety.

There is a check for identical replays, but it's meant to avoid resubmission more than sending someone else's replay. There are definitely technical ways to check for extreme similarity, and we'll look into those next.

Hello folks, I have to sadly bring to attention a series of "cloned" replays that we have discovered among the submissions for ZCT285 to ZCT292. These were created continuing from an available replay sent by another pipsqueak, tens of seconds or even a minute through the lap. One similar case happened during ZCT233.

How do we spot these? The check is part of the end-of-race steps, where we review all the replays on the final scoreboard for missing penalty time, suspicious similarities, etc.

Unfortunately these checks only cover the final replays, and require fallible human attention: we only recognised the problem at the end of ZCT292. This means we failed to highlight the issue right away, and let it grow over the course of eight races. While fixing the data is easy, I am sorry to bring you this disappointment.

In the next days we will disqualify all cloned replays, and update track and season scoreboards. Experience points, PTB, and Folyami ratings will probably need updating as well. We will also try to improve the way we check replays, to make sure we don't leave similar problems undiscovered.

We have been unable to contact Mortimer after bringing up the issue, so we still lack full understanding of the situation, and any penalties have not been finalised.

You can find the full list of affected replays in the attached file.

@dreadnaut leads the list. He doesn't miss a race since October 2012

Wow, I had never thought about it, but yes: in my mind one does not miss a ZakStunts race 🤣 At the minimum, I always drive a relaxed lap to have a look at the track. Then I think: oh, what about that other car? could I drive that part differently? And there you have it, a more or less competitive replay ready to upload.

Again, thanks for digging this numbers out, @alanrotoi!

I'll have @alanrotoi and @Argammon in my S tier of folks who create interesting threads.

I don't know enough to attempt a tier, but I'll put @CTG and @Renato Biker at the top tier for "pipsqueaks who are good at hinting and explaining how to drive well". Marco, Seeker1982, Duplode and FinRok are brilliant at the driving bit, so deadly in live races. Tricks are an interesting mix of patience, attention to detail, imagination, and dedication/time. I have trouble differentiating, but I know I can get the first two with a powergear car. I have only admiration for those who can put consistent skill and effort on all those fronts.

Possibly wrong link? 🤔

Whops, Imgur is self-blocked in the UK (thank you, short-sighted legislation), so all the charts above are now "Content not available in your region"

Thank you, should be solved now 👍

The number of replays is already part of this chart:


I could add a line there, showing the position at the end of a race. Might be difficult to find the right vertical scale, and the horizontal one will look a bit odd, since we don't have precisely on track per month. I'll give it a try at some point 👍

Sadness

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I'll echo HerrNove in congratulating you for the great season, and well deserved champion title! 🎆

A strong season means a lot of effort, and I can understand if you want to take it easy now. (No-one has ever won three seasons in a row, racing does take the toll!)

Hope we'll still see you around on the forum, and any races where you feel inspired by the track. Or maybe a live race for a different challenge!

Thanks for letting us know! I've triggered another 'save' on the Internet Archive, for posterity.

Thank you! When you look at the map, or when you drive through?

Should be fixed now. I've removed all casts, and replaced them with the explicit conversion function in each occasion: floor, round, and intval.

I think exploits are possible if you look at a single pipsqueak. But when you have a system of competing pipsqueaks, connivance notwithstanding, efforts balance out to avoid the extremes.

And because the "exploit" is publicly visible, it becomes part of the stregic game: "it looks like someone is holding back, ah, let me ruin their plan by doing this other thing!"

I'm interested in digging deeper though, because there are competition 'principles' that I think are important:

- strong pipsqueaks should have to make more difficult choices
- moves that can advantage a strong pipsqueaks should also lift the (not-immediate) followers

If there is an "exploit" that can advantage someone without giving something back to the lower scoreboard, that's something we should look into.