If two cars enter a braking zone side by side, then they should go through the corner side by side to avoid a collision, neither of them following the typical racing line. If the car on the outside tries to follow a standard outside-inside-outside line, they will collide on corner entry, and it will be the fault of that car, but under the racing line angle system, it wouldn't be as they would be perfectly on the line.
You are dipping your toe into the realm of perfection. It doesn't need to be perfect. I have been saying that it needs to go back to being contact based. Scroll back to video of Newton's Cradle. Contact will cause a force on another car. Forces can be measured and compared. You penalize the person who exerted the most force.
An alternate system could be invisible "lanes", particularly car-width lanes at the edge of the track, where any side impact there is the fault of the car closer to the middle of the track, unless the car on the track edge is returning from off-track. Also defined braking, cornering and straight zones, with the car behind being at fault for a collision unless the brake has been used on a straight by the car in front within a certain time window.
Over complication to placate people who don't want to be responsible for themselves. A light touch should be no big deal. Rubbing IS racing, but rubbing is light contact. There is no such thing as racing without some contact.
Personally, I think everyone should go and do a real track day, where real consequences exist, where damage will cost you real out of pocket money, or worse. I GUARANTEE, as in I will bet my life, that you will check your mirrors to see if someone is coming up the inside of you and you will ABSOLUTELY NOT turn in on them because of some imaginary right to the corner.
The best, cleanest, most fair racing I have seen was when everyone was at risk of getting a contact penalty, and the 10 second penalty was still a thing. When you had a car on your quarter panel, you knew they were taking the next corner, because the system would not let you touch. The ONLY true frustration was that breathing on someone would get you a 1 second penalty or more. It was TOO strict.
Light contact should get you 0, 0.25, 0.5, or 1 second of penalty based on the force exerted on the other car, IF that other car is in a normal racing state. More force will obviously get you more penalty.
Dial up any racing series, watch the in-car camera, and you will see contact that they officials will let slide. You will even see track cut penalties that they will let slide ONCE. You get warnings. Why don't we get that?
Something that would also help is to keep the rules and SR gain/loss the same for all ranks, it shouldn't be easier for someone to get up to 99SR from 50 than it is from 80.
Yes. It's ridiculous. I don't understand the rationale. The current implementation is encouraging BAD PLAY by rewarding it, until the player gets to a point where their actions have far more significant impacts on others. Then, guys like me have to deal with this B.S.
Why is it that the DR tiers are not gated on the way up? There is an achievement for clean races, and we have the clean race bonus, so why not make it MANDATORY to have a clean races in order to graduate to the next DR level? After all, if I lose SR, my DR will follow in short order. If it's not possible (and it probably isn't) then that should tell PD that their clean race requirements are a little out of whack.
Food for thought. I was punted off track yesterday in T1 of lap 1 at Autopolis. I was 2nd on the grid. The culprit lost control, cut across the grass, and slammed into me.
He got 4 seconds (ridiculous - he should have gotten 10)
I was punted deep into the gravel. I was reset next to this guy. I went about my business and I worked my way from 12th to 4th. I watched the replay of him and he made more contact, more off tracks, he was perpetually in 13th and gained more penalties before eventually quitting.
I got the
Clean Race Bonus! So, OBVIOUSLY, the system CAN tell, during a collision, when one car's force exceeds the force exerted by the other. I was touched by other cars along the way as well and STILL got the CRB.
The system CAN do what I am crying for. It IS doing it. It's just doing it behind the scenes and, instead, penalties are being doled out because contact+car off track= penalty for car that did not go off track.
It's the worst possible implementation they could implement. It only makes sense to terrible players who are unaware of how terrible they are.
The thing is, there is no way around but solving the problem of detecting who's fault an incident was.
This will only fill the lower DR-rated Lobbys with fast but unfair/ uncautious Drivers.
The main question is anyway, is Motorsport a contact sport or not? Where does side by side racing with little taping end and where does divebombing start?
Yes there is. There is, there is, there is.
Granted, it takes a bit of self ownership, but there is.
Force. As I describe, when one car's force exceeds the other car's force, there is some blame to be dealt.
HOWEVER you need a state machine in place. Car's need to be placed in states.
Normal racing cars should be in state "normal". cars that have gone off track need to be in state "accident". Cars within a set radius of a yellow flag event need to be in state "accident", etc, etc, etc.
If they have a state machine in place that puts cars into "normal" or "accident" conditions, maybe even a few more, then it gives the contact context. SIMPLE context that does not require super complex AI.
This is why I quit game development. I spent way to much time having people tell me something was impossible, until I forced the powers that be to give me two-three weeks, and proved it was possible.
How dare you try to overtake someone in a race!!! That just has to be punished. WTF?!?!?! What reason did it say? This one is probably the most ridiculous I've seen so far. I have absolutely no idea what it could have been for. Well done PD.
semi joking.
