The Birthday Bash Race - 2023.10.21 - 17hPS4 

  • Thread starter Hun200kmh
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Portugal
Lisboa
FLAT_TWELVE
Raeggae's
Birthday Bash
October 21st 2023 -
19h 17h UK time



Ferrari-365-GTB-4.jpg




Ok, so raeggae's birthday is tomorrow (can't tell you the number of years, suffice to say he is older than Max Verstappen, younger than Jackie Stewart, faster than both)

And we'd like to throw a PCars2 event dedicated to him. I asked him to pick the car and the track, promised him no rain, and - no surprises there - he picked the fantastic 365 GTB/4 and the classic Spa track. Picking car, track and weather is a good enough gift already, so he won't expect any other on-track favours (not that he needs any, especially at that track), and we're NOT to indulge him in any way during the event.

Curiously him picking this combo works perfectly as a test for the "classic" championship I'm pondering for the near future, so we'll use a event format that allows for some conclusions (about what works and what doesn't) regarding that future championship.

That said, here the specs:
1 - EVENT SETTINGS

A) LOBBY AND RULES/PENALTIES
  • Private Lobby - Invite only
  • Fill vacant slots with AI - Yes (16 cars on the grid regardless of how many human players)
  • Wait for race ready - On
  • Rules & Penalties - On
  • Track Limit Penalties - On
  • Allowable Time Penalty - 30
  • Drive Through Penalties - On
  • Pit Exit Penalty - On
  • Competitive Racing License - On

B) RACE AND REALISM SETTINGS
  • Track is "Spa Francorchamps Classic"
  • Rolling Start
  • Allow Auto Start Engine -Yes
  • Force Interior view - No
  • Force Driving Line Off - No
  • Force Default Setups - Yes
  • Force Manual Gears - No
  • Force Realistic Driving Aids - No
  • Allow Anti Lock Brakes - Yes
  • Allow Traction Control - Yes
  • Allow Stability Control - No
  • Damage Type - Visual Only
  • Mechanical Failures - Yes
  • Allow Ghosted Vehicles - Yes
  • Force Manual Pit stops - Yes
  • Pit Stop Errors - No
  • Tire Wear - Accelerated
  • Fuel Depletion - On
  • Force cool down Lap - Yes

C) WEATHER:
  • Quali - Wet track, daytime
  • Race - Weather will change during the race but the track will be always DRY

D) TIME OF DAY
  • Will be accelerated to simulate a 12 hours cycle, the race will start at dawn but will mostly be raced during the day

E) HUMAN DRIVEN CARS
  • Race will be raced with the same class of cars of the Ferrari depicted above and THAT is the car all human drivers must pick.

F) AI DRIVEN CARS
  • The field will, regardless of how many human entrants, always have 16 cars, the AI will fill all available slots.
  • AIs will show up in other types of cars, and they can go from the slowest Nissan to the fastest Jaguar E.
  • The AI setting is still undecided, I have to check what works and what doesn't. In any case put your minds at ease, damage is Visual Only so any mishap due to AI cars won't impact your performance. In any case don't treat them as if they arent there, because even a damag-less crash remains a costly experience (in time lost if nothing else)

G) Random words of advice (consider this a pre-race briefing)
  • PITS are fully manual. This means you will still be driving your car inside the pit lane, and you must be the one parking it in your pit stall. It is best if you don't have a "pit limiter" button set because then the game will activate the limiter for you (same happens with headlights and windshield wipers, but people usually like to have full control over them)
  • STRATEGY - Not sure if you need one, IIRC the tyres of these cars go a long way. About the fuel, again, not sure, it's up to everyone to try and understand whatever is needed.

H) The Event

  • LOBBY - will be open and invites will be sent a few minutes before 17 PM(UK and PT time, 18 PM in most of continental Europe).

  • PRACTISE AND QUALIFYING - You don't have to take part in either of these! Just make sure you enter the lobby well before the end of quali, or else you won't be able to enter the race.
  • Practise will last 15 minutes, dry, sunny or light cloud
  • Qualifying will last 30 minutes, also day time. starts wet but there's the chance the track will dry a litle towards the end

  • RACE - This one you must enter!
  • It will be 1h15 minutes long, time will be accelerated with a x10 ratio (75 minutes will be equivalent to 750, meaning 12h30)

I'm just fronting this in representation of the PT folks, we're all taking part with the exception of hartur (@tal ) who sadly is unable to join us for tjhis celebration of our fellow competitor. This means I already have confirmed the presence of the following:

but we thought maybe some of you guys we all race against regularly would like to join (and any others interested in fair racing, even if they don't know our friend raeggae). Everyone is welcome!

So, please state your interest, I'll add the GTP names I know so you can be alerted this thread has been published. Sorry if I'm missing anyone!
@IfAndOr
@half_sourly
@Napalm_LT
@richroo
@Pantheons
@Zolon32
@Oldbass47
@beachboy6658
@John Wells
@xeronima
@Maxmusmonster
@Don Mejillone
@Saltyjoe90
@AndreasR
@jammy21

PS - Can never say this too often: as stated above, any other gtplanet forum members that might be interested in this, just post about it and you'll fill any available slots (first come, first serve)


 
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@half_sourly, I made a terrible mistake in the first line of the opening post (wrote 19h) the correct time is the one in the title (17h) and, inside the post, when I say at what time I will open the lobby (also 17h)

So, to make it clear, the starting time of the event is 5 PM (UK/PT time) and the plan is to end it well before the semi-final time (8 PM). My guess is will wrap everything up at around 7 PM.

PS - However, if you are planning to attend (I have a friend departing to France to watch it tomorrow in person, lucky fellow) of course you can't take part. And I wish you a great experience and that UK reaches the final 👍

PPS - I am going to correct the first line of the opening post!
 
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I don't think I'm going to be able to make it either. I'm going to be off visiting a relative in hospital at around those times.

Save me a piece of birthday cake though, I'll eat it later. 🙂

And of course, Happy Birthday to Mr Raeggae. 🎁🍰🥳
Will there be reggae music playing throughout?


Hey it's my birthday later this month! Age and date top secret. 😀
 
Now I thought you and the AI would have let Raeggae win on his birthday. Obviously you all didn't get the memo. 🙂

Nice settings. Not sure it would have looked so good on my screen though.
 
About the "looking good", if you refer to the dark periods (race start and race finish) I can't help much. Maybe Ricardo can (@GTP_RPREGO), he complained a lot about this when he moved to a PS5, yesterday not a word, not sure if he found better settings or just got used to it.

Quick recap and a few notes

It would be a disservice to Raeggae to give him a win. I talked to the Jaguar E crew and told them "just do your thing" and that's the same I said to everyone else, human or not :lol:

It truly is a shame that this class of cars is so unbalanced, from the incredibly fastest Jags to the evidently slower Nissans. I of course knew about this (and in this 80% flat-out track it would be even more obvious) so I suggested to raeggae, when he picked the car/track combo, that we could do a one-make race, but he was against the idea, saying that we would be much faster than AI-driven Ferraris. Funny that one of those supposed wimps finihed 5th, after me and before ... raeggae :D

About the race, well, first few laps were eventful as usual, I had a lot of trouble to adjust to a fully loaded car (125l of fuel), the rear would step out in a way I had no previous experience (and I don't think it was just track temperature, the car was really ... different).

I guess the game makes the fuel load change, not just the weight of the car, but also the weight ratio between front and back.

When the "first few laps" dust settled I was way back (10th I think) so I did a slow recovery to my finishing position (4th), the best I could achieve behind the 3 unreachable Jags. Funny that my gap to them didn't really increase much during the race (after my mishaps) so one can wonder ... but I think they go faster if we get closer, so I guess we never had a chance.

In fact our only chance would exist if (and I wondered about it) the Jags maybe could need to stop twice for fuel, giving us humans a fighting chance, but, although they stopped a lot sooner than we did, 75 minutes was still a 1-stopper for them (as it was for us).

My "victory among humans" was mainly dictated by raeggae's fuel blunder, he forgot to add fuel from quali to race. In fact he was the lead human when he had to pit for fuel, well before I did. Then the game didn't help his case because they fully loaded his car (handicapping him in two ways: a) time lost in pits; car heavier than necessary).

3rd placed human (Duarte or @Madbigdog around here) ended the race strongly, chasing raeggae to the line, he was hindered because he hasn't played the game and had no prior knowledge of this track, so he had a steep learning curve (and a few crashes in the first few laps I guess). Regardless, he had fastest lap at the end, an impressive feat.

Ricardo and Diogo (@PANDACoff33 here) ended 4th and 5th among humans, they also had to contend with being absent from the game for a very long time, from what I'm told they had a nice race-long battle among them.

I think I learned valuable lessons regarding a "Classic Cars/classic tracks" championship, but I also got very definite problems I have trouble to solve. Biggest of them is how unbalanced the classic car classes are and the fact we can't veto a particular car (it's either single make or the entire class showing up). I don't like single-make races much but with some classes it will really be difficult to avoid that format.
 
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