Just to see… 
07:47.552
I did cross the line backwards after clipping the inside of the last bend.
2 Likes
Rally Poland saw a bit of a shuffle near the top, although not without a flew blips in the machine for the second week in a row.
Congrats to @Roo on the win, @chipwich hauling in 2nd and @Camembert taking 3rd. I’ll add in a special kudo’s to @521 as well for a nice jump up to 4th place.
Since the bonus stage was ss12 this week I can get away with just one picture and congrats to @keets for posting the fastest time there!
The biggest takeaway I have here is that there are 3 layers of potential screw ups that can be accounted for a little better than the way they are handled now. Racenet, Steam/Internet, the game itself. The first two can be counteracted by taking a Screenshot at the end of the stage with the times, that allows me to calculate the correct times.
The 3rd is when the game vomits all over itself, crashing or just passing over a stage, I’ve had both happen to me in the past as well. That unfortunately gives you the time-out times and at 15 and 30 minutes respectively I find that a bit absurd. That’s just game over times, same with tire changes as well really, but that’s a different subject all together. Anyway, I’d like to find a better solution, nothing will be perfect, but from here on out i’d like to put forward something else.
Slowest car in that Stage’s time + (xx:xx time), still not ideal, but maybe not at least the total game ender through no fault of your own. What’s a good “default” time in that scenario? (using slowest stage time as a starting point because, not exactly fair to them either to give a missing time a faster stage time.)
Slowest stage time +1 min?
Slowest stage time +2 min?
Something in between? Something more?
Similarly I don’t think it is right to retroactively apply this standard either so it would be from this point going forward.
2 Likes
A true sportsman and gentleman. You definitely deserve the win, so even more respect. Looking at your “unofficial” stage time, I think it would have been a 1:18 difference at the end, or 18 seconds if I hadn’t had that last minute penalty. Awesome rally, sadly mired by various issues that weren’t our fault.
Awww. 
I was actually thinking of designating the AWD class as my “official” time and running the RWD too as a bit of fun. If it’s too much trouble trying to sort out though, I’ll just run the RWD myself against the AI. Will be interesting to see how they stack up against the AWDs.
This will always be an extremely difficult problem to solve. Ideally I’d say you could run the stage individually and use that time, but it invites way to much potential for fudging times or doing multiple practice runs. I think we’re all pretty honorable here and it would probably be fine, but best not to enter that realm.
Ideally the substitute time should vaguely reflect the person’s performance up to that point. The person in last place shouldn’t get the same time as the person in first place, at least in my opinion. You could look at the delta between their time and the averaged time for each stage and average that delta across the whole event. In formula form, say for stage 5:
The precludes the possibility that you royally screw up on that stage though, or also if you had a damaged car.
While not ideal, I think that generally avoids punishing something that is out of our control. Yes, you may have been able to go faster than that time, but you also could have completely wrecked your car. An additional time could be added to that delta time (+10s/+20s or +15s/+30s depending on whether it’s a short/long stage) to adjust it way from a pure average.
Not an easy problem by any means. The above idea is probably too complicated to implement anyway, but thought I’d throw it out there.
2 Likes
Just fyi, you’re talking math to someone whose got a Philosophy degree, in no small part due to it’s lack of math requirement and who in several hundreds of hours of KSP never once even attempted, considered, looked at or cared about Delta V numbers or calculations 
Technically it’s not any harder than me adding in a single time from one place to the other, if anyone really wants to run “both” just declare before you run any official stages and run the “fun car” second to further ease my brain pains. I kinda like tooling around in the BMW Procar, especially in NZ myself
2 Likes
Like @keets stated, technical issues are an accepted risk one usually agrees to when racing online. Their acceptance prevents us from having these types of debates with every technical problem.
I’m not trying to rock the boat but having raced in a few leagues, albeit years ago and with questionable results 
, this seems to be what works best and what results in the fewest debates and challenges.
3 Likes
I don’t disagree with you, which is why I’ve left things as is so far. I guess if those affected are fine with it, I shouldn’t worry about it as much.
On the second part, I’m just going to nod and say yep if it’s some of the things I was also thinking of. Let’s just say a lot of things Ive been trying to do were trying to head off some questionable things I think we’ve both seen in other places 
2 Likes
I think it’s easier for us to accept that it’s one of those things. It’s admirable wanting to sort something but feel that’s just going to increase the overhead on what is a really fun event.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m gutted to lose out on a 1st place, but it happens. 
Chip nails it with this. 
3 Likes
You guys are awesome. 
The “do nothing” approach is definitely the harshest approach as it absolutely ruins your rally, but realistically it’s the only way that doesn’t lead to consternation down the line. I guess you can equate it to a completely random mechanical failure.
I’m planning on running my official times in the AWD class in the next couple of days, then will take the RWD out for a spin (literally) in New Zealand afterwards. I’ll probably run the RWDs in Scotland and Germany against the AI too, as they were fun in the AWDs. Not going to bother with Argentina and Australia. Jury is still out on Poland…
2 Likes
Thought I would post a couple of early times in New Zealand to give everyone a laugh. For the first time ever I did a test run on each model of car to see what suited me best and came to the decision that none of them did
Anyways I chose the Lancia yet again so that was a waste of time. Did my usual trick in stage one of hitting something inches before crossing the line and finished with steam coming out the back. Not a good sight with no repairs available for the next stage.
Then I did a first ever, I got a 10 second sneezing penalty 
for jumping the gun. Yes you read it right, as the count down started I could feel the itch in my nose building up and with VR it’s a bit awkward to stop yourself so as it reached 1 second I let rip and let the clutch out accidently and bingo, false start.
Called it a day after that as I had to clean the headset out and lost the urge to continue. Got a feeling it’s going to be a long rally this one.
3 Likes
LOL, I thought I was the only one who did that. So many times a mistake just shy of the finish. Oh well.
3 Likes
Poland was especially bad for that. Half of the stages have a really nasty ending, where you think you’re home free and floor it, but there’s a couple of tight turns just a few feet before the line. Caught me out a lot when we ran the R5s there, so I knew to be extra careful for our latest run.
2 Likes
I’ve finished NZ in the Group B 4WD class. This will be my official time. Like Roo I’ll run the alt rally for fun.
NZ is really nice in these cars and the tracks seem to flow nicely. I got a bit loose on a couple of the stages, dropping off the back of one of the hairpins, the bridge one, as well as down a bank.
I did get some green sectors, usually in the right twisty sections. I think you only made one mistake @Roo, on one stage where I got 12 seconds back, but really I was hanging on as best I could for the rest.
Great fun as always. Looking forward to the times coming in.
1 Like
Finished NZ in AWD.
Better than last time. I only rolled the car once and had one puncture. Two green splits and less than 10 minutes behind the top. I’ll take it.
2 Likes
Finished up the AWD run last night. Overall I think I did really well. Ran very cleanly, only had a few mistakes. Zoned out for a moment and missed the breaking point for one corner (thankfully with a soft fence on the outside), overcooked the same corner twice (including a low speed roll and +13s penalty one time), and tapped a rear wheel in one of the fast open sections, which sent me spinning. Other than that, everything was extremely clean. I think for two of the rest areas, I had absolutely nothing to repair. Don’t think I’ve ever managed that before.
New Zealand has definitely jumped towards the top of my list of favorite locations for the Group Bs. Everything just flows so nicely with them, even the hairpins weren’t too bad. Looks like the Lancia still has the edge in the really tight low speed stuff, but I’m getting better in the Pug in that regime. Overall I think this might be my best rally to date. Absolutely loved it.
The default gearing in the Pug really doesn’t work well with hairpins. First gear is so short it’s usually just wheelspin, and the turbo makes throttle modulation at such a low speed almost impossible. Plus, by the time the wheels do gain traction, you’re already at the redline at what feels like 30 mph. Second gear, unfortunately, is a bit too long, and unless you get everything set up correctly, it just bogs down out of the hairpins. I probably could adjust the gearing, but that would then break my reference points for the speed of the car in the normal sections, so I’ll probably just live with it.
I took out the Lancia 037 for a few stages in Scotland, and found out something very interesting: The handling of the 037 and the Pug is eerily similar. Sure you can just feel the difference between AWD and RWD at the edge cases, but the techniques for the Pug, such as trail breaking to get the tail out, the amount of slip angle that is recoverable, and countersteer amounts, are almost identical for the 037. It just feels like an “underpowered” Pug but with sharper throttle response. I even checked on the default Pug setup to see if it was sending a majority of the power to the rear wheels and making it feel like it was RWD, but it’s a 45/55 front/rear split. A bit odd, but it makes the transition between the two very easy and natural.
2 Likes
FYI, Steam has all of the driving sims on sale. I’ve been driving a bit of ACC and really like it. AC Ultimate version is less than $10. Ridiculous.
1 Like
This is how I see myself driving a fast stage:
…and this is how I see myself when I look at the results.
4 Likes
Check out this Lancia Delta S4 mod for Assetto Corsa. The sound is sick!
A collector’s S4.
Well, once you examine the footage, you notice that the first cat spends quite a bit of time getting the tail around, and even more time trying to get traction to accelerate up the stairs. Not the worst technique, but definitely leaves room for improvement. The claws might have also been worn from previous stages, leading to lower traction.
The second cat, on the other hand, has very good technique. No excess sliding around the square right, almost no speed drop and kept the body very straight to have good traction out of the corner. It also looks like food is the motivation in this case, versus pure fun, so the second technique is probably more efficient and faster. Overall I think that one may take the win.
What, you weren’t expecting an analysis of cat rallying? 
You do know that’s the wrong sim? If I didn’t know better I’d say you’re stalling finishing up the rally. 
That does look good. Another one added to the list of things to try out.
1 Like
So I took the BMW in the RWD cars, other than 2 spin outs early on, because I always start cold and don’t practice one bit, I actually had a pretty darn clean run up till near the end. Love gliding around NZ in that thing. Ignoring my overall time it was incredibly fun to drive there.
I was comparing times between the RWD cars in Greece and what the 4WD cars who finished had in NZ. Thought I might have had a shot to maybe get by someone, anyone that finished still running. Oh well, made what is probably the longest rally a good time.
1 Like
I’d give it a pass, I’m afraid. The physics don’t feel quite right compared to what we have in DR2. Looks great, but drives mediocre.
1 Like