[Maciek Sobczak]

No automatic system will ever be perfect, SRS for now is a good compromise, there are a few things that could be ironed out, i agree about the multiple hits for short timeframe but the only thing that could be a real step forward i think would be having race marshalls, with a huge community im sure some could be interested into doing it. At least for top splits to give time penalties, drive through, trigger yellow flags etc.. and go 100% damage instead.

I`d say even 120% damage, if possible. Not only realistic but ruthless enough to make anyone think twice about not taking it easy on the first two laps. Some people love to trade paint so a bent suspension would end their race too, let alone a punctured radiator. Sadly not doable currently in R3E.

[Russell Sobie]

There are a number of factors that promote reckless driving at the start of a race and I don't think increasing the damage is going to address the issue. Firstly, it's sim racing, not real racing. No actual risk to bodily injury or financial ruin. Secondly, everyone starts out right next to one another, so overtakes may be easier now than they will ever be once everyone starts getting away. Especially if they are 3+ seconds faster than you per lap (lol).

But most underrated reason is that the start of the race is literally the START of the race. You haven't even invested 1 minute into the race, so if it all goes to shit you can always just disconnect immediately and go do something else. These people DC whether they have a broken axle or a single tiny scratch on their bumper if they get spun out on turn 1... so increasing the damage would only hurt people who want to stick out a race even if it DOES go to shit.

Like me.

[Alex Leif]

There are a number of factors that promote reckless driving at the start of a race and I don't think increasing the damage is going to address the issue. Firstly, it's sim racing, not real racing. No actual risk to bodily injury or financial ruin. Secondly, everyone starts out right next to one another, so overtakes may be easier now than they will ever be once everyone starts getting away. Especially if they are 3+ seconds faster than you per lap (lol).

But most underrated reason is that the start of the race is literally the START of the race. You haven't even invested 1 minute into the race, so if it all goes to shit you can always just disconnect immediately and go do something else. These people DC whether they have a broken axle or a single tiny scratch on their bumper if they get spun out on turn 1... so increasing the damage would only hurt people who want to stick out a race even if it DOES go to shit.

Like me.

^ this

If every time some idiot makes a silly move and takes you out, your car is completely wrecked, how enjoyable is that going to be? With the current damage levels in SRS, you can usually get away with it, and carry on and finish your race. For me, that is a good thing!

[James Blint]

The 'interesting' thing about damages in AC at 100%, is it turns out, you ll always have more sensible damages if you hit the front, and i mean more than it normally would. Funnily enough, you can even toast the engine hitting a wall straight on, while the car has the engine...in the rear. I discovered this recently, i was amazed it has never been adressed.

So increased damages would rather disadvantage people prone to silly moves behind you as they would get more dramatic damages to engine and direction, instead of what we are used to, which is mostly just slight aero damages that wrecker clearly don't care about, but maybe they would a little more if it was ending their races each time. I find it also silly that you can completely wreck almost every lap without dramatic consequences, at 60% you are a fair share slower and clearly you can't win anymore, but you can still be that unpredictable moving obstacle on the track.

[Jaroslav Černý]

I`d say even 120% damage, if possible. Not only realistic but ruthless enough to make anyone think twice about not taking it easy on the first two laps. Some people love to trade paint so a bent suspension would end their race too, let alone a punctured radiator. Sadly not doable currently in R3E.

100% damage is not very realistic as the damage model is broken. Most servers run reduced 60-80% to avoid a single scratch causing massive damage. It doesn't deter anyone from causing damage at all, it only hurts everyone more.
The damage model is poor, I've been able to even take mirrors off of a Caterham by hitting a rail and we never figured out where we could control such damage, how it was possible or that it could even happen until Ben saw it from my photo, it's not just physics that can get damaged but the model can somehow disintegrate as well either a bug or very difficult to do collision. We would gladly have stuff fly off of the model but AC doesn't seem to have a support for it at least not one we know of. And the whole physics damage is what ever AC wants, there is some minimal stuff that can be changed but that's it, it's all automatic otherwise.

Engine can die no matter where it is and what collision was done, there are some engine explosion bugs too where the physics will overrev the engine to destroy it, ...

The biggest carnage consistently seems to be lagging people connected from far away distances to where the server is and some very unstable lower latency (aka forgot to close background downloads etc.).

https://youtu.be/xaDNVfJOuNw?t=12m53s

Red Alfa top right teleporting like crazy again causing subsequent mayhem, it's not well seen on the automatic camera though but watch driver list as some 4-5 go out of track and maybe 10 are affected. 12:55 the car has teleported literally inside another car, damaging it and so on.

This kind of stuff such as too high 150ms+ latencies and inconsistent connections are not such a big issue on servers with KMR and should not be a big problem to get working protections on SRS so that the latencies and their consistency are kept withing sensible values for online racing.

I don't even bother with qualifying anymore. I always try to start last.

I'm not fast enough to get into top 5, and if I run a full 10/10ths pace qualifying lap, i'll end up somewhere 8-15, which ensures I'll get destroyed in T1 / Lap 1.

I run qualifying for practice, and stop right at the start/finish line, and "go back to pits" then run a fresh lap and repeat to get warmed up. I don't post a lap time in qualifying with the hopes of gridding in position 20-24.

You can start race from pits instead by being late on joining race. As such you can drive in P and Q freely then start last if you want to, I do that on public servers for fun. But it doesn't help to escape the carnage, you simply run into it and cars spun on track, recovering, etc. then have to go through a field of inexperienced drivers.

[Michal Janak]

Oreca today SPA syndrom again, on server 1 so many bad moves. T1 i was otside and got 1st hit there and then in chicane bumped hardly by same driver lost many time and finaly spinned car after a while offtrack drive cross the track from side to side and cant avoit hit him so nice minus 15 points ((

and what to do if a can be faster and start from 1st and stay there ?

[Russell Sobie]

Oreca at Spa was wonderful today! Every bad move made by others directly benefited my race! Michal got taken out by a bad re-entry as well as someone else (forget who), and at least one person ran out of gas right at the last turn! I went from 16th to 8th in the last two laps. And with me getting 0 incidents and others above me racking up 2 or 3, I actually place 6th! Thanks, everyone! It was truly a team effort!


(Get your shit together, folks.)

[Jaroslav Černý]

There is no solution to it other than to redo the penalties and points awarding systems to penalize offenders reliably (and not victims as is often happening now) and make the penalties severe enough that it limits what kind of races offenders can join if any, what server they get put on, etc.
Sort people onto servers based on cleanliness and performance instead of a magic black box rating that doesn't include much of either and performance gets ignored for 1st race of a season too.

But in the end it may turn out as useless as MR app was where if you set MR-A almost no one would race, using MR-AB it started to be a wreckfest and MR-ABC+ was a royal mess as if the app was not even used.

Sometimes it helps to join sessions where you don't see infamous wreckers you don't  want to race with again, join races where you see people that you do want to race with. As in any racing: qualifying higher is advantageous as you have fewer cars in front of you that can mess up.

Choosing series that has sensible cars, not cars with high aero, high power and slicks most people will be unable to handle properly and safely.
Anyway I'm onto updating the Caterham so you guys have something slower to race with.

Also someone requested DTM on Spa via PM couple days ago, it's not the best lap but you get the idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3qDXuhYaYo