2017 - Rules and cars

[Shoegazing Leo]

Topic to discuss the cars what will enter and left competition or any idea of new rule.

[alanrotoi]

F-40, Melange, Skyline and Lotus should stay IMO. And the fifth I'll add Ford Ranger

[Shoegazing Leo]

For me, the fifth would be Ford Ranger (alternative to LM) or McLaren (alternative to Indy)

[Duplode]

Thank you for creating the thread Leo! Two topics (plus a bonus one) occur to me right now:

Cars

I haven't thought very much about that; if only one car will be rotated, Leo and Alan's suggestions both sound fine. I like McLaren somewhat better than Ranger, though the choice is more about whether to pick a slow car or a fast one rather than about comparing the cars directly. (By the way, what do you think about bringing back the Kart as a slow custom car?)

Alternative scoreboards

Which alternative scoreboards we should have? Personally, I see it as a trilemma:

• GAR makes a lot of sense for an alternative scoreboard, as it is both very different from the regular rules and easy to understand for newcomers. (Also, I found it quite fun during the season.)
• I kind of miss the NoRH with shortcuts scoreboard.
• Having more than one alternative scoreboard is perhaps a little uncomfortably complex with respect to, so to say, user experience.

We can only address two of the three items above. I find status quo (i.e. [1] and [3]) sensible; still, it would be nice to hear other views on this matter.

Bonus topic: Advertising

Right now I feel like trying my hand at a bit of promotion, even though I am generally clueless about such things and my network of relevant contacts is vanishingly small. I'm thinking of making posts in a few appropriate corners of reddit (the one social network I have any meaningful activity in right now) once the season starts.

[Cas]

My personal taste: I love fast races. I do think, though, that it's very important that all cars have a chance sometime, but if we're going to just rotate one, then I'd definitely vote for a fast car.

About the second score table, NoRH with shortcuts sounds amazing to me. I've never tried that. In any case, if you'd like to keep GAR running as well, my site and its system are at the service of Stunts community. Say, for example, if Marco would like to maintain a GAR tournament next year, I offer him my code so he can use the platform as an administrator. I can set up the whole system for him. The reason I think this makes more sense is because last year both GAR and shortcut-based races were running on a same track and it's unlikely for a track to be amazing for both things at a time, whereas RH/NoRH is a minor difference in terms of how a track should be designed. By using my platform, Marco (if he'd like to be admin of GAR) could have his own tracks, designed for GAR. The platform could be added to Stunts.hu hub and the two sites could also link to one another more visibly. This is just an idea, of course.

EDIT: Oh, I have one more idea I would like to add. What if every car were classified as either "fast" or "slow" and instead of just rotating the whole list, one month were fast, the next slow, then fast again, etc.?  This would allow designing a track to be fast or slow.

[Marco]

I'm the father of the GAR and I think that it has no sense to keep it alive for 3 pipsqueaks . He took me 2 years but I have understood the sense of this community and rules and now I love it as it is. Running 2 championship in one still requires too much effort for the pipsqueaks that participate to both. It could have sense that CAS sometime creates a special NORH GAR event maybe for the best of all the best, for the more immortal of all the immortal or for the kick of all the kicks ... but no more sense to keep it here. I vote for to close the GAR

[Cas]

There are times and times. When I first started racing in the community, it was not ZakStunts that I first got to. There were a number of active tournaments that also had many pipsqueaks. I enrolled in Paleke's WSC, which was OWOOT with replay-handling. That's the way I started. I remember that, at that time, I knew about ZakStunts and it had more pipsqueaks than WSC, but still WSC had some 7 to 10 pipsqueaks every month.

The real issue with tournament popularity has to do not so much with how many people are in the community, but about why they are in the community. Back then, most pipsqueaks were new and they were changing all them, so the reason was just to try something new. A lot of effort was put into attracting more pipsqueaks because there were relatively few permanent ones. But some of them did become permanent. Today, most races occur without any new pipsqueak. One or two appear per year. pipsqueaks participate because they learnt to love the community and they want to be part of it. Because the number is reasonable, not much effort is being put in getting new pipsqueaks. Also, I'm sure the tournament site has been a lot of work for many years and for no money, so after all this time, it's hard to still feel like investing all that time and effort.... completely reasonable. It makes sense to start a new event, even a new tournament from time to time, in hope that people will like it. If it doesn't work, it still was worth the try

[zaqrack]

moving this topic to the 2017 board...

[zaqrack]

Finally read through these posts.... my comments as follows:

Cars:
I'd like to keep the Lotus, F40, Melange for sure.
Skyline I'd rather keep unless you have a better alternative.
The P911 turbo could be rotated - however, I will not recall the Ranger or the Kart (too unrealistic) and I recall the Mclaren to have a very ambivalent reception in the community - in any case it is not late yet to make a change even though the season has started. My only restriction is, that the car must behave realistic. Why don't we call one of the Toyota's? Or is it too slow?

Alternative scoreboards:
This is entirely up to you. I am fine both with GAR and NoRH. Whichever is liked and requested by more of you. Please decide and we can fix this by the end of January.

Advertising:
To be honest, I keep the competition running for my friends - you guys. I don't think we _need_ others, but of course it always feels better to bear 10-15 pipsqueaks than to beat only a few. So if you have the capacity and the will to advertise, don't hold back. I can't promise I'll do it myself.

Generic thoughts:
I really wanted to bring in some changes for 2017 but simply did not have the time for it. Three kids / moving to a new home / my other hobbies / keeping my team happy at my workplace - this will be a busy year. Still ZakStunts has its place in it and I'd love to see ZakStunts continue for several years, but I need your help. Guest tracks, advertisements, rule change proposals, funny side-races for a few months, new cars, access to post news to the main board, taking care of monthly updates - all are open possibilities and all help is welcome. No ghosts please though I ratrher see myself as a competition facilitator than a competition manager after all these years. ZakStunts is yours as much it is mine - don't hesitate to help form and run it together if you can afford the time. 

[dreadnaut]

Hello there! I haven't been around much in the last months, but I'm glad I managed to race on every track last year

For 2017 then:

• I am happy with the current set of cars, can't wait for another Lotus race
  
• I see myself racing NoRH now and then, but GAR requires too much time and patience for me.
  

@Cas:
Let me know if there's any stunts+web related code that you might need for your competition, beyond phpStunts, there might be useful bits of ZakStunts (Zak's permission withstanding of course)

@Zak:
Now that you've just gone through the start of season, let me know what the pain points are and what could be smoother. I suppose the manual database updates are the most annoying bits? The same about the track updates.

I almost have two jobs at the moment, but if I have a list I think can find time to decrease admin friction

[Cas]

Guys, in my case, I will participate in the main competition every month or most of them. For NoRH or GAR, I can say I will participate, but less often... maybe half the races. I think I would be more likely to participate in GAR than in NoRH because shorcuts are usually very risky and most shortcut-based attempts to race a track end up in a crash, whether this is not necessarily so in OWOOT. On the other hand, some tracks are just not good for GAR. But I would try to post replays for both whenever I can.

Idea:
Maybe all modalities could go to the same socreboard and a new column would day which modality was used. Depending on the modality, a handicap value could be given, to encourage diversity of modalities. To prevent new players from cheating (stating they are doing NoRH when they are not), NoRH and GAR options could be disabled for new pipsqueaks until they've raced a certain number of tracks or vouched-for by another pipsqueak. Same way, this could be banned for pipsqueaks suspected from having cheated. These are just ideas.

PHP-code:
At the moment, I don't know, but of course, Dreadnaut, count on me to cooperate. We can share code or create sites that intercommunicate in any way that's good for the community. For instance, I was thinking I could this year take care of the records on the default tracks that come with Stunts and keep record of them for all modalities. Once I manage to get it working, I could pass you the code and the data or share it with ZakStunts or anything. Whatever is best. Another thing I would like to accomplish is finally creating a mod to verify NoRH. This is hard and I've tried to do it several times, but it'd surely be an achievement.

[Duplode]

The P911 turbo could be rotated - however, I will not recall the Ranger or the Kart (too unrealistic) and I recall the Mclaren to have a very ambivalent reception in the community - in any case it is not late yet to make a change even though the season has started. My only restriction is, that the car must behave realistic. Why don't we call one of the Toyota's? Or is it too slow?

I like the idea of trying the Toyotas, at least in principle. I will give them a try to remember exactly how slow they were (I have some hopes at least for the faster one).

Alternative scoreboards:
This is entirely up to you. I am fine both with GAR and NoRH. Whichever is liked and requested by more of you. Please decide and we can fix this by the end of January.

In aggregate, the feeling here seems to be somewhere between neutral and slightly in favour of NoRH. Quite a few regulars haven't commented on the issue yet, though -- Alan, Leo, Renato, etc.

Idea:
Maybe all modalities could go to the same socreboard and a new column would day which modality was used. Depending on the modality, a handicap value could be given, to encourage diversity of modalities. To prevent new players from cheating (stating they are doing NoRH when they are not), NoRH and GAR options could be disabled for new pipsqueaks until they've raced a certain number of tracks or vouched-for by another pipsqueak. Same way, this could be banned for pipsqueaks suspected from having cheated. These are just ideas.

The only thing I don't think that would work well (at least not in ZakStunts) is using modality handicaps to correct the times used for computing the official results. Other than that, it is mainly a question of what is the nicest way of giving visibility to laps done with the alternative rules. (By the way, a tidy way of adding modality information to the main scoreboard might be through small icons -- in addition to the "A" that indicates auto gears, there could be "N" for NoRH, "G" for GAR, etc.)

[Cas]

Another possibility could be that you just select a modality, which won't affect handicap, and then, you can filter the score table to show "all", "NoRH only" or "OWOOT/GAR only". Also, maybe there shouldn't be handicap like affecting the final time, but something more like LTB, that is, extra points, say "Merit Bonus". This not necessarily has to affect the final season score either (although it could)... It might as well just display as a separate final score. Again, I'm just throwing tons of ideas in the hope that one or two of them might be good or might at least give rise to another idea that could be good.

[zaqrack]

Hello there! I haven't been around much in the last months, but I'm glad I managed to race on every track last year

@Zak:
Now that you've just gone through the start of season, let me know what the pain points are and what could be smoother. I suppose the manual database updates are the most annoying bits? The same about the track updates.

I almost have two jobs at the moment, but if I have a list I think can find time to decrease admin friction

I would say the biggest pain point (monthly/annual update) is to package the track zip file. I have to go through the list of replays, identify the best time based on the submission date, download all, organize and package in a zip. If we could automate this that would be great - or simply link replays to the scoreboard once a race is finished, and then we could abandon the zip altogether.  The rest of the update is really a piece of cake thanks to your constant improvements I have to touch phpmyadmin for two reasons only: adding LTB hours and adjusting car bonuses. 

[Duplode]

I like the idea of trying the Toyotas, at least in principle. I will give them a try to remember exactly how slow they were (I have some hopes at least for the faster one).

Good news: the Toyotas are not nearly as slow as I remembered them; on the vast majority of tracks they should have no more trouble than the LM002 in completing a lap. If you ask me to pick one of them, I will suggest the Corolla GT-i. While the Sprinter Trueno does have a few things in its favour -- in particular, the lower overall top speed (148mph vs. 166mph) make it a more plausible LM002 alternative than the Corolla -- it also has one big drawback: unnaturally high non-asphalt grip, like the Lotus but even more strongly. Though that effect can be quite interesting in the Lotus, I don't think it would be a good idea to have two cars with this bug-slash-feature.