Help - Does AMS2 drivers really want to race online?

Hi, thanks for great feedback

About weather, time and regions:
www.racecraft.online/faq#Weather
www.racecraft.online/faq#SessionTime
www.racecraft.online/faq#Regions - it's not obious from the FAQ entry, but currently drivers from multiple regions are racing together

You all have a valid points. I will switch off night races and I will set easy to drive, but more repetitive weather. For now weather and time info will not be visible on RCO website, but I will add such feature request in to my backlog
Weather info visible on race details makes sense and it's not currently implemented because random weather was easier for me to do - this and the fact that AMS2 real/historic weather engine is really cool - I don't think I will have time to implement the similar engine on RCO.

Maybe the option is to use AMS2 historic weather, so instead setting race date to 2023.03.07 i would set it to 2022.03.07 and we could check by the date what the weather was 1 year ago? Later on maybe it would be possible to display historic weather on RCO website, on race details?
idk, it's just the option.

I belive the server was avaliable after 2-3 minutes, but the "Join race" button/spinner have a bug currently, sometimes it doesn't work - I am working on it. For now just manually refresh RCO website 2-3 minutes after race start and you should see "Join race" button, or you can search AMS2 server browser for RCO races (using filter feature), server should be avaliable 2-3 minutes after the race start hour. I know how to speed up server bootup, but this feature is not priority currently, I will implement it in the future.

Thanks again for ideas, keep them coming

 

@Coldsalmon was it you today on Copa Classic B? It was great fun to race with those little devils, but you need to have a good amount of dexterity to keep it on track when they break loose

Overall great car class, thanks for pointing me in to that direction

 

@Fernando concerning practice session: contrary to race servers, the practice servers are open to anyone, so the guys you seen were just some random guys. I will add such info to FAQ

 

In my case, I just needed to know how the server will be set up, so if I read for example "Weather = Random, Time of day = Night" in the race description screen, I would know beforehand that I may encounter rain and that the race will be in the night, so I can set up my system before the race start.

I agree with @Magnus here in that it would be good to offer races in varied conditions including rain and wet or partially wet tracks for more advanced drivers. After all as you mentioned, weather system in AMS2 is the best in this industry and would be a shame to not include it.

My observation was more related to rookies or new to AMS2 drivers who would be affraid to ruin other players race thus not racing at all and going to another service, and we don't want that.

That's make sense now

 

Yes that was me! What a fun race. The Gol is my current favorite in CCB; I hope you liked it as well. It's a very diverse class. CCFL is problematic because the Puma is so much faster than all the other cars, but CCB seems well balanced to me.

Londrina is my adopted "home track" in AMS2, and a few of the corners are really tough with the old FWD cars - they can turn right around on you under braking. The key is to use some throttle to keep the car settled during any weight transfers; easier said than done. I find turn 1 and 2 on the long layout especially difficult, in a fun way.

I was hoping to keep it on the track for the whole race but I went off twice. At least we had a few laps to race close together Thanks again for putting this series in RCO! I hope other people like it too.

Edit: If the FWD cars are too slippery try the Chevette.

 

This does sound interesting. I looked at the site when you first posted it but it wasn't clear what the service was.

Maybe a homepage with some information about what the service is and how it works would be useful?

After reading the comments here it sounds good so will try it out this weekend.

 

Hi, thanks for feedback

Recently i've added FAQ section in to RCO website: www.racecraft.online/faq - check it out. It's not perfect, but for now it's better than nothing

 

I've just finished both the 2pm and 3pm races for the P4 at Cordoba.

The reason being during the first race, having qualified over 5 seconds ahead of second place, I went on to win whilst lapping everyone but the second place driver twice. So I thought I'd sign up for the next one and see what the AI would do about the time difference.

...and the result was very impressive. First place qualification time was 54 seconds and something compared to the 55 seconds and something I'd qualified with in the previous race ( I don't remember the full times.) A similar time gave me sixth place in the 3pm race.

There seemed to be a greater number of MRX Duratecs in the second race and the AI were better throughout the pack with a good spread around the 55 second per lap mark. I did manage to battle my way through to first place but was hassled and harried throughout the race to the point I made a stupid mistake and went way too deep into the second corner putting me onto the grass and down to fifth place. With CrewChief telling me it was going to be very tight for fuel I decided to go for glory and try to snatch fourth on the penultimate lap, but he was having none of it so around we went again. He took too much speed over the slight rise into the twisty corners before the last bend and spun just infront of me but thankfully momentum took him away from me. Fourth at the flag and aching arms from a good fight - but my 'Incidents Average' has just taken a hammering.

All in all it was extremely impressive how the AI responded to my previous result and I'm looking forward to seeing how that progresses as I go on. I'm interested in whether this is all the games AI or whether you've tweaked it in some way - also, on the first race the AI were very good in blue flag situations which has always been a nightmare in the past.

 

Great to hear that you have nice experience

RCO use vanilla AMS2 AI, I didn't done any magic there, the only thing RCO does is that it tracks AI times and skill settings per vehicle class and track. Then it's just a matter to match AI skill level to your lap times, if there are not AI lap times data for given car and track combo then RCO tries to predict required AI skill, it's just very simple math.

I am trying to create Adaptive AI which will always put you in the middle of the field, I am not there yet, but I am already quite satisfied with RCO Adaptive AI

BTW I've change the weather from random to predefined, the same with race start. Weather and start time should be visible on RCO website. So no rain and night for now.

Hopefuly I didn't break anything, let me know if I did ;P

 

It was a great experience, thank you

Ahh, that'll be why I don't understand it

That sounds like it will be a good challenge for us. I can see this leading to better 'training' for racing human players if it tracks, learns and adjusts for our skills.

I look forward to checking it out as soon as I can.

Good luck to whoever the two are who've signed up for the F3 at Kansai GP later - wish I could join you!

 

Those two guys on F3 this evenening is @DazzyD70 and me. Everyone is welcome to join

 

@Coldsalmon , @DazzyD70 thx for race. As I said there is some problem with AI matching, it shouldn't be so fast, I will take a look at it later

 

I have a bronze license! Earlier you asked me about what bronze series I thought would be a good idea. Frankly, I think the CCB, F3, and Vee series would be better as bronze series than rookie series, since they can be tricky to drive or to recover mistakes. I was thinking about what might make a good rookie series, and I came up with this:

1. Hard to spin
2. Attractive to experienced racers, so they will want to race alongside the rookies sometimes
3. Slow, so that experienced racers can avoid the rookie pileups when they happen
4. Able to withstand some door-banging without damage or disaster

Lancer R is my top choice - it's very easy to recover mistakes, including driving on the grass, since it's AWD. It's also not very fast, extremely hard to spin, and tons of fun to drive. Other good candidates would be the Mini, G40, GT5, Copa Fusca, P4, 86 Stock, and Sprint Race. You could add GT4/GT3 since they are also popular and easy to drive, but those racers are already on LFM/ACC; it's a marketing decision. I think it would make sense to lean into AMS2's advantages in fun-to-race cars that are not GT3/4, but I'm no marketing professional.

As for my own personal preferences for Bronze races, I'd be excited to race Caterham Supersport, Formula Retro Gen3, M1 Procar, and Formula Inter (when it's released).

 

Congrats on your new license and thanks for car ideas, I will cook something up from those ingredients

Here is a question to you all:

I was thinking about racing license progression, currently you need to do 5 races and if you did good you will be promoted. Isn't it too fast? Maybe it should be more challenging to get new racing license?

Currently RCO has 6 weeks seasons and each week is a racing "event" with multiple races during week.

I am toying with such ideas:

1. In order to be promoted you need to race in one racing series for at least 4 weekly events during 6 weeks long season - it can be just 4 races, one per week. Then at the end of the season, if your rating is good, you will be promoted.
2. As additional challenge you would need to gain some amount of points during racing season within one race series - don't know how many points yet - without required points you wouldn't be promoted to next license.

Why I would like to do that? I think it would keep people longer in one racing series and maybe it would increase chance to race against other people?
It's quite thematic when you think about it. You're choosing your preffered race series, you're racing there, trying to get the most points and increase the rating, then finally you're rewarded for your effort with possibility to race in faster series

To support above ideas I would create only one Rookie race series, to even more increase the chance to race against human opponents.
Then maybe two Bronze series, three Silver, etc.

I'm not saying that I will do such change now, but maybe it's a good target point?

What do you think?

 

I think it partly depends on how many license ranks you have. It probably makes sense to get out of Rookies quickly. This gives new players an attainable goal early on.

Also, why do these license ranks exist? They only track safety and consistency, which I think is good - you shouldn't have to be fast or skilled to get out of Rookie series and find safe opponents. But they also serve as a personal progression goal, so in that sense it makes sense for them to be challenging - but I think this is a secondary goal. The main thing people want is to find safe opponents easily.

I think the early ranks should be easy, just as they are - this will weed out the worst crashers. But as you progress through the ranks, the progression can have more requirements. Maybe progressing to Gold requires pace/points as well as safety and consistency. I don't think that progression out of Rookies or Bronze should require investment in a series. There are already competitive incentives to invest in a series thanks to the standings - this is sufficient to motivate me. And if someone is not intrinsically motivated to invest in a series, then the extrinsic motivation of license advancement will probably just feel annoying.

Just my 2 cents. Like I said, I've never raced online before so I don't know what the practical issues are with creating a safe and respectful racing environment. I hope some others chime in as well.

 

Interesting. I'd certainly agree there's some finessing that can be done.

I've just attained my bronze license this morning and my stats show; Pace 50, Safety 87, Consistency 93. That's despite me having a torrid time at Londrina Short on the first bend, entering the chicane ( I think my brake balance was way too far to the rear on the Puma) where I spun out and onto the unused section of track twice and damaging the gear box. I even rage quit, I know - it was very childish! However, this kind of highlights that even with the additional penalty quitting had to my incidents per minute I'm still on course to attain a Gold license so long as I drive safely. Which, unless I've misunderstood, could mean I pootle around for the next five or six races to ensure I keep those two ratings high.

I think that's fair enough for getting out of the Rookie league. Safety and racecraft are paramount in the intial period of your 'career.' Moving on through the licenses should get progressively harder and include in some way the Pace factor. The difficulty at the moment is, certainly for me, I'm driving against a grid of AI and if it works as intended I'll be mid-pack in both qualifying and races so I could potentially struggle to ever gain enough Pace points to progress from the Bronze license should these be taken into account and the requirements a little too high. Once more and more human drivers join I suspect this would be far less of an issue as the talent pool would be lowered (assuming most drivers aren't capable of beating the %120 AI setting that's the fastest the AI could be theorectically set to) and the AI would find an average for all users within the class. It's a tricky one, certainly for the moment.

I'd suggest, and it's an uninformed by facts or figures suggestion, that Rookie, Bronze and Silver should be seen as the basic licenses. Rookie being purely to ensure you have basic racecraft, Bronze requiring a balance towards Safety, followed by Consistency and then Points and Silver requiring Consistency, Safety and Points. Gold, Platinum and Alien are all licenses that people may find are their skill level - currently I'm two points of Consistency from Alien and prior to Londrina was three points away in my Safety ranking (the notion I could/should ever attain an Alien license is absurd.)

I can see the benefits of more series being available the higher your license but squeezing users in to fewer series options may just result in them walking away. If Rookie were just Karts and I had to race for longer to progress from Rookie I wouldn't hang around for long - I'm not keen on karts However, if Caterham Academy, Formula Vee and/or trainers were Rookie level and my progression was Safety weighted I'd have a choice and the chance to progress to 'better' options reflected from my (hopefully swift) license promotion.

It's tricky to get the balance right but I wouldn't be in a rush to change things drastically. As new users come on board you'll get more and better feedback across a broader range of users and I think things that need to be changed will become obvious.

Just my thoughts

 

This thread is pure gold for me. Great feedback, great ideas, fresh look on subject, thank you guys

To get Bronze license you need to do 5 races in Rookie series, to get Silver you need to do 5 races in Bronze series, etc. Since there are no Bronze series atm, you will not get promotion to Silver
I will cook some new series soon

 

Please also consider the Formula Inter.
It is very easy to drive and not to fast.

Alien promotion only aliens should get. Meaning they should be really fast.
Promotion to bronze and silver safety rating should be enough, for gold there should be recent race results, not just safety rating.

 

Oh yeah...I was talking theoretically That said, I do look at my stats (which is a nice addition) and see how my graph is looking ( not so great after the last race .)

One question/request. Is it possible to see the number of races each driver has driven in any one series event? For instance, in the P4 Cup nangu and dudefaceguy (Coldsalmon?) have a position average of P1 whereas I have P4 and DazzyD70 has P11. I'm curious, due to the way points from finishes are averaged over the number of times you've raced the event whether nangu and dudefaceguy have that track nailed over various races or were smart enough to race just once, just as they may wonder whether myself and DazzyD70 are struggling on that event or have raced it numerous times. It's not really important but when you've got stats it's quite fun to dig into them a little.

 

Is it normal that I cannot sign in browsing with my smartphone..?