Xtreme Gaming Network
Simulation Racing Leagues => Assetto Corsa => Australian Assetto Corsa League, Tuesday nights => Topic started by: Wally on November 25, 2015, 06:17:50 PM
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While the season's still fresh in people's minds, would you like to use that ballast system again in some future season?
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I thought it worked very well. In most qualifying sessions, there was only about 2 seconds from front to back in lap times, so it certainly brought the field's capabilities closer together. Like Freezer said, it mixed up the pack a bit, and hopefully got people racing closer with people they might not have raced against otherwise.
Stan thought the fast guys were unfairly burdened, but I don't think so. It just takes that much ballast to get them to a more middle lap time. They still had good results, and probably more mid-pack battles than they're used to.
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Not sure how to vote. Ballast was generally good and worked well I thought. But also when the fastest guys are consistently not at the top you have to ask why.
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Not sure how to vote. Ballast was generally good and worked well I thought. But also when the fastest guys are consistently not at the top you have to ask why.
That's because in theory, there are no ”fastest guys”, with everyone doing comparable lap times.
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no - I said my piece about it
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It works for me. ;D
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So like Wally said, at the moment the ballast is designed to give the GB's 180kg or more ballast and will swing them towards 16th position or worse on occasion because the ballast is designed to make everyone equal. Therefore it has to be quite brutal to slow down the fast guys in respect to the bottom half of the field. I think that's just too soul sapping for the fast guys.
If we had a cap (either 100 or even 50kg) in play, the result would be to make the mean lap time go down (because GB and his fellow aliens would have less weight and be faster). Consequentially, less people would get ballast because it would be harder to beat the mean time. The result of this would compress roughly the top half of the field and still leave the GB's competitive.
That's my $2 worth :D ($2!! Where's my $2!!!! :-X)
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Not sure how to vote. Ballast was generally good and worked well I thought. But also when the fastest guys are consistently not at the top you have to ask why.
That's because in theory, there are no ”fastest guys”, with everyone doing comparable lap times.
Well when you put it like that...
Personally I didn't mind how it affected me. At the beginning of the season I expected it would work by bringing the gaps way down but with the fastest/most skilled drivers still at the top.
I think there's a debate in here somewhere. Better with the current system than no ballast at all so it gets my vote
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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So like Wally said, at the moment the ballast is designed to give the GB's 180kg or more ballast and will swing them towards 16th position or worse on occasion because the ballast is designed to make everyone equal. Therefore it has to be quite brutal to slow down the fast guys in respect to the bottom half of the field. I think that's just too soul sapping for the fast guys.
If we had a cap (either 100 or even 50kg) in play, the result would be to make the mean lap time go down (because GB and his fellow aliens would have less weight and be faster). Consequentially, less people would get ballast because it would be harder to beat the mean time. The result of this would compress roughly the top half of the field and still leave the GB's competitive.
That's my $2 worth :D ($2!! Where's my $2!!!! :-X)
No, its not designed to put them 16th. It's designed to move everyone to the middle.
The target lap time was actually the median - i.e. where half the people were faster, and half were slower.
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No, its not designed to put them 16th. It's designed to move everyone to the middle.
Yes but on the way to the middle, because of the swings in ballast, it seems to over-penalise, then under-penalise etc. But regardless of the finer points of your system (thought it was fine :D), with a cap the end result wouldn't be as extreme.
The target lap time was actually the median - i.e. where half the people were faster, and half were slower.
No big difference if it's the median or the mean or the average time (I would have thought mean was more accurate, but meh!!).
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To me it just seems like too much of a lottery. I haven't looked at all the results but I'm sure the pecking order from race to race varied wildly. This sort of takes away from the satisfaction of performing well, as really, what's the point of trying to be quick? Even if you are under-performing you can still win or compete at the front. And that's not taking away from the winners this season.
I think a good ballast system would compress the field, not turn it on its head every race. I do think Ballast can be really good if the system is tweaked, but I believe at the moment the desire to have everyone racing as close as possible to the exact same time results in swings in competitive order.
I also think more people probably need to put more time into determining how much ballast has what time effect on the cars. I think the penalty increases further the more weight is added, so 200kg v 100kg is more than simply double the time penalty.
All things considered though, for the first season of use I think Wally should be commended in making this work and it did produce some close racing, so well done Wally and thanks. I'm sure there would be very few admins that could make something like this work.
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It is a bit of a lottery. Imagine if everyone did exactly the same lap time. Who would win? Anybody could win. The ballast was always intended to promote closer racing. Perhaps as Stan has implied, the goal should not be to try to squash the field right into the middle, which jumbles up the ”natural” order, but just compress it a little, to leave the field in the ”correct” order, but just bring it a little closer. That could easily be done by reducing the amount of ballast that is given, to say half, or even less. That could be interesting.
What you don't see is that I constantly calculated, in spread sheets, how much ballast has slowed down people's lap times based on actual times, and refined the ballast amount. It ends up being pretty accurate, bearing in mind that it can vary from person to person, track to track and even how you drive on the night.
Thanks for the kind words GB. It's not the first season of use... it's something like the 16th. It started in the netKar days.
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In support of GB's comments I do think there could be a bit of fine tuning to dull the amount of change in weight so that you more gradually gained or lost weight. You did appear to get a lot of weight following a hot lap.
As Wally said, 16th season and we have always found it pretty good and well accepted.
I had heard about GB racing but this series I actually saw him once or twice... :)
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I add myself to those who say that the swings were excessive and that while the ballast system was designed to compress times a bit it ended up by mixing the order too much. As GB said: not a criticism of Wally's work, which is great. Just a point about the current implementation.
Regarding GB's comment that we should try to work more on understanding the effects: I tried to offer some work, but was rejected. 8)
Personally: I prefer to lose knowing I lost against somebody better than me than winning a lottery. That's why I still watch F1 while I do not get series with too much bop and ballast or pure lotteries like NASCAR.
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Thanks for the kind words GB. It's not the first season of use... it's something like the 16th. It started in the netKar days.
Yes, but a first for AC. Not sure if the system is the same, but with different cars, tracks, drivers, etc. It worked as intended :)
To reiterate, there is definitely, definitely, definitely a place for ballast I think, if it is compressing the field.
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I already damped the ballast changes by only applying 70% of what the change should have been. I think what exacerbates the swings is that everything in racing is so damn variable. E.g. with the same ballast, I did the middle lap time at Monza, and then won realitively easily at Barcelona.
Next time, I'd definitely only apply a little ballast, like 30% of the calculated amount, to just tighten the field a little.
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(http://emojipedia-us.s3.amazonaws.com/cache/9b/91/9b91736b776daabcdeb6c83c2399d8d6.png) Wally
:D
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(because GB and his fellow aliens would have less weight and be faster)
I like that you're talking as if you aren't in the group... :D
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Ha Ha!! I wish!! :P :P :P
I just got the probe!!! :-X :o :-X