Cars and rules for 2024

[alanrotoi]

Let me know the start bonuses to set the +10 -10 for the cars

[dreadnaut]

Let's go for the ZR1-GT3 — it has not been around for a decade!

To put them all together:
- Ferrari F40
- Ford Thunderbird
- Lancia Stratos
- Lola Cosworth Indy
- LWT-ZR1 GT3

[dreadnaut]

First stab at points. Yes, I am bringing the Indy much closer on purpose, to go with the new year's focus on track design that makes powergear less likely.

Car	2023	2024
Ford Thunderbird	➡️	30
LM002	31	24
Challenger	13	✖️
Carrera	29	24
Lancia Stratos	➡️	24
Lambo	24	20
Lancia	24	16
Audi	16	15
Pantera	16	✖️
CERV III	15	✖️
ZR1-GT3	➡️	10
Vette	12	10
Ferrari F40	➡️	6
Acura	8	5
Mercedes DTM	7	✖️
Ferrari GTO	7	0
Jaguar	7	0
P962	4	0
McLaren MP4	-17	✖️
Lola Cosworth Indy	➡️	-10
Indy	-36	-12

[Daniel3D]

First stab at points. Yes, I am bringing the Indy much closer on purpose, to go with the new year's focus on track design that makes powergear less likely.

You place a lot of responsibility for that at the designers. But maybe I missed it, but I don't remember a solid checklist or cheat sheet for designers to aid in doing it.

[dreadnaut]

Actually, I place a lot of responsibility on myself to get tracks in time for review, and to review the properly

A checklist would be helpful, could you start one with what comes to your mind?

[Overdrijf]

Personally, I think this whole rebalancing is a bad approach.

The cars are rebalanced automatically, but very slowly. You're taking cars that have been patiently waiting for their chance and setting them back another half a year of waiting or more, and you're taking other cars that have dominated this season to the point that people got sick of them and you're goving them 2 entire full years (!) of extra bonus, which ensures that they will be even more massively dominant this year, different track design or not. The principle of every car getting their chance to shine every year or so is kind of being thrown out the window with these huge start of year tweaks. I think the Mercedes' run last year showed that we shouldn't try too hard to rebalance and predict these things. Its bonus was set too low, we all knew it would just be dead weight for the entire season, and it was. My preference would be to not actively try and do that to as many cars as possible.

If you want to personally manually change the coefficients like this every year my vote would be to at least move back to the +3% system rather than the +1% system. The +1% only works if the cars are allowed to find their natural spot in the order over the years, and brings the cars closer to their natural sweet spot than the 3% does. But if we just randomly hand out huge bonuses to cars that were already overused the system is going to need the bigger jumps to at least get back to near those sweet spots faster.

And I don't think having all the tracks flooded and shortcut-less is going to fix that. People have been getting better at using powergear, that means we have more powergear races until we reach the point where they've naturally dropped far enough to be fair again. At best we could overcompensate a bit and lower their bonuses, not raise them.

[dreadnaut]

Personally, I think this whole rebalancing is a bad approach.

One of the topics in this thread has been how powergear cars have such low coefficients that have become useless, except for powergear laps. The point of bringing the Indy closer is to give it the chance to be a normal car, while we try to avoid powergear with a different process. One Indy victory sends it back in the minus-twenties, but people might actually enjoy driving it on a non powergear track.

If you think reducing the other cars coeffiecients is also a problem, I'm open to suggestions to the table above. There is also the option to move from 160 to 180 points. Which cars do you think would deserve those 20 points?

[dreadnaut]

To those kind folks who help me every year: could you prepare side pictures for the Thunderbird and Lola? 🙏

[alanrotoi]

Please with lola (black and light blue) and thunderbird (pink) use first painjobs for each

[Duplode]

The point of bringing the Indy closer is to give it the chance to be a normal car, while we try to avoid powergear with a different process. One Indy victory sends it back in the minus-twenties, but people might actually enjoy driving it on a non powergear track.

Even if we succeed in blocking full PG lines, PG in a specific track sector or two might give the Indy a significant advantage. Furthermore, even if the Indy were to stay most of the year out of contention due to low bonuses, we'll still have the Lola as a no-PG alternative this season.

I tend to agree with @Overdrijf in that we don't need a full rebalancing of bonuses, and that letting they mostly carry over from last season could be easier for everyone to deal with. What about starting from the after-ZCT269 values, finding sensible places for the new cars and maybe adding a few localised tweaks on the top? (No pencil or spreadsheet at hand right now, but I'll try to post suggestions as soon as I can.)

[dreadnaut]

Rules: there are a number of options discussed in this thread which look very promising, but nothing that felt solid enough to be put into practice — while at the same time not requiring a month of development.

I will leave rules as they are for this year, as we keep an eye on problems and prepare the ground for the next season. I might open the "Rules for 2025" thread much earlier

A couple of thoughts so I don't forget them:
- an incentive to race throughout the month for the Amateur League is definitely missing
- checkpoints feel to me like artificial splits, which require spikes of activity: miss the spike and that's it; LTB (or variants) leave pipsqueaks with more flexibility around racing
- simple rules make a competition accessible

@dreadnaut: I am bad at reading between the lines and am not sure whether your suggestion was serious. That being said, I strongly prefer it to the status quo. My preferences aside, it would make it far too easy for strong amateurs to beat intermediate pros.

It was serious, but not deeply considered. My aim was actually to threaten all pros, not just the intermediate ones. Thinking more than a second about it, however, it is clearly a bad idea as everyone pointed out

[Erik Barros]

To those kind folks who help me every year: could you prepare side pictures for the Thunderbird and Lola? 🙏

it fits?

[dreadnaut]

Thank you @Erik Barros. Almost there:
- Could angle them a bit "up", to show a bit of the roof and hood? See Mercedes
- A slightly larger version if you can, > 100px tall would be perfect.

🙇

[Daniel3D]

I agree

- an incentive to race throughout the month for the Amateur League is definitely missing
- checkpoints feel to me like artificial splits, which require spikes of activity: miss the spike and that's it; LTB (or variants) leave pipsqueaks with more flexibility around racing
- simple rules make a competition accessible

The idea was to take the constant strain off the LTB, and shift the focus point to a different group each time.
It may create spikes, but that has already been the case.
If the checkpoints are on Saturday night, it would sort of create an incentive to check out the competition every weekend. That could benefit participation in general.
By having the first one to grab in the first week, pro drivers who want it have to be strong that week. (Only chance) That would potentially give stronger than usual replays that benefit the less experienced players.

Same goes for the second, it excludes the top drivers but the replays from the others will help the less experienced.

I believe it's simple enough. It doesn't place pressure on just a few and a lot of players benefit from this.

[Erik Barros]

Thank you @Erik Barros. Almost there:
- Could angle them a bit "up", to show a bit of the roof and hood? See Mercedes
- A slightly larger version if you can, > 100px tall would be perfect.

🙇

This way? If you need any adjustments, you can ask please