[Dario Bucalo]

Hi, I have a proposal to suggest, and of course I would like to know what the community also thinks about it.
I would like to propose to bring mechanical damage to 100% instead of the current 60%.
I list my considerations in this regard:

1. a simulation level closer to reality;
   
2. mechanical damage leads to a decrease in the performance of the car, adding one more variable to the course of the race, making it more unpredictable and interesting. The current level of mechanical damage is not very influential and allows in most cases to have the same performance of the car throughout the race despite the accidents;
   
3. A greater risk of permanently damaging the car, with a drop in performance or withdrawal, would lead the drivers to have a more prudent approach in contacts, just like in reality.Unfortunately, sometimes it happens to find someone who dares to overtake apparently without paying attention to the consequences, giving a door that perhaps with the damage at 100% would have led to a damage to the suspension, which however in that case did not change anything in the performance of the car. . Obviously, the problem of accidents would not be solved, those occur at all levels, both in simracing and in reality, but having a more prudent approach, as if we were really driving and risking our lives would not be bad.
   
   Maybe over time, after it has been learned that accidents lead to consequences, which are not the usual protest, we would all be a little more cautious in T1 Russian roulette, although certainly in the early days of adaptation it will cost more than someone a race ruined.However, due to the high risk of losing a race and compromising a championship, perhaps not our fault, I would propose to make this change only to the daily series, in order to have the possibility to repair the unfortunate race and be able to continue having fun.I hope a constructive discussion can arise and I would like to see what you think too.
   Dario

[Simon Speth]

I guess the idea of 60% damage is that if you are the unlucky one being hit in T1 your race is not completely destroyed.
Then the penalty is dealt by incidents giving to each car one incident point, with the further idea of wrecking drivers having higher incident counts than clean driver which get punted from times to times.

But here is where I would like to discuss:
1) I've seen multiple times that for slight contacts one involved driver (often the crashing driver) gets no incident points.
2) You crash out on your own and get only slight aero damage (because set to 60%), But, you additionally get an incident point. In my opinion this is not what incident points are for as a wall contact is always better than taking out an opponent.
3) As so often discussed incident points only minorly affect your rating with not actively keeping risky drivers on thier own server.

[Dario Bucalo]

I guess the idea of 60% damage is that if you are the unlucky one being hit in T1 your race is not completely destroyed.
Then the penalty is dealt by incidents giving to each car one incident point, with the further idea of wrecking drivers having higher incident counts than clean driver which get punted from times to times.

But here is where I would like to discuss:
1) I've seen multiple times that for slight contacts one involved driver (often the crashing driver) gets no incident points.
2) You crash out on your own and get only slight aero damage (because set to 60%), But, you additionally get an incident point. In my opinion this is not what incident points are for as a wall contact is always better than taking out an opponent.
3) As so often discussed incident points only minorly affect your rating with not actively keeping risky drivers on thier own server.

Thanks Simon for the reply. I understand your point of view and I agree with most of it.
I have also written about accidents because I think it is an aspect that could help prudence, but I understand that it can also totally ruin a race. For this my idea would be to set 100% only in the daily series, so we can have other opportunities. Let's say my point 3 is more a consideration of the consequences than a real reason to bring the damage to 100%. What I care about most are my points 1 and 2. Having greater realism and having more unpredictable and interesting races.
An example comes to mind: From a hard-fought race in the top 2, where perhaps there was some contact, there would be more tangible mechanical consequences that would lead to worsening times, thus giving the rider in third position the opportunity to take advantage of it. and reopen the fight for victory.
This is what I am referring to and I understand that mine is purely a matter of entertainment and fun, an opportunity to have more emotions during the race, but if not for this, what are we racing for?
And if something goes wrong, patience. By now after months I no longer get very angry about accidents, I have learned that they are part of the game and sometimes happen, as happens in F1 in the first corners of a GP.

[Andrea Piovanelli]

You're both more experience than me and I read with pleasure your considerations, but I tend to agree with Simon on his thoughts about damage. I'm recently driving in Assetto Corsa Competizione and a couple days ago, in a race I was in a good position, I made a breaking mistake and slightly hit the wall with the front left of the car. This cost me a lot, like 2-3 seconds per lap, as the performance of that GT3 got really influenced by it; a 100% damage ratio, even if more accurate from a simulation point of view, can really be frustrating.
I don't really get very well how big is the influence of incident points on driver matchmaking, but I saw myself, when registering to a race, being on a higher position in the queue than drivers with a lot more rating points than me, so I assume incident points are already quite punishing and "cover" what a looser simulation doesn't.

[Gianluca Roncaglia]

As for what Simon said: the incident calculation algorithm is not on SRS but on AC, so I think there's nothing that can be done (although these are good points for sure). Point 3 is a consequence of points 1 and 2: in most of the cases of contact (or at least in the majority of the cases) there is one "guilty" and one "victim". Overpunishing incidents would hit hard both, and I wouldn't like this scenario. (My 2 cents of course.)
As for what Dario said: what he describes is the perfect racing world i'd like to be in  but I think it's hard to apply this damage ratio in a public server with thousands of racers, ruled by a protest/warning/suspension system. Every race in SRS counts 10 or more incidents: the halfth of the racers would not be able to make it to the end. Maybe in the midterm/longterm this would lead to a big reduction of incs, but getting toward would be painful in my opinion  On the contrary, it would perfectly fit a single racing league with less and more disciplinate players.

[Omer Kinay]

In my opinion, the damage engine of AC is detailed enough to make a big difference between %60-%100 settings, e.g. no damage can cause a loss of downforce. Yes, you'll probably have some extra aero drag if you hit someone from behind. But unless you hit a wall with full speed or get t-boned by another racer, a driver who cannot lap consistently or cannot drive close to the limit won't be able to tell the difference of an aero damaged car. The only significant punishments will be broken axles, which is not so common for racing incident type of contacts.

[Tim Cullingworth]

For my two cents worth, if we were to change points and penalties, I would make it so that you have to finish a race to get points.

I had a race the other day where I got hit 5 different times during a 1 hour race. I ended up with less points than a racer that just did the minimum of two laps with 0 incidents.

Lets make it so that points are similar to RL racing, where only people who bother to finish the race get the points. We would then have less rage quitting.

[Russell Sobie]

Sim racing has a number of things working against it from being a realistic racing experience. It'd be silly to list them all out, but the most obvious one is that no one is putting anyone's health at stake (unless you have a $2000 DD wheel and like sticking your arm through it for kicks). Does that mean in order to make up for that, the damage to cars should be as close to real life as possible? I would argue the opposite. Here's why:

Real life racing is populated by people competent enough to be comfy risking their lives doing it. In sim racing you are surrounded by people who by definition are most likely not even close to that competent. So what you want to do to help "simulate" a real life race situation is offsetting the amount of damage to your car done to make up for the fact that it is more likely to have damage done to it by incompetence. Either someone else's or even your own! So basically I'd say the amount of damage to your pretend car should be inversely proportional to the average expertise of those driving them. That means 60% might actually be too much damage for some of this crowd.

In conclusion, 60% is fine (possible to really ruin your car by doing something ultra-risky/dangerous/stupid, but not so much as to make it impossible to survive a few taps in turn 1). 100% would annoy me because probably half of my races I at least get touched by someone doing something sub-optimal... and if I bothered to practice for a race and carve out 30-60 minutes for an actual race to have it all go down the drain at Turn 1, I'd find a new hobby.

[Andrea Piovanelli]

Honestly, looking at the number or drivers who don't complete races is already a good signal on how 60% damage is punishing. Even if some of them just rage-quit the race.

[Ilmari Ylitalo]

100% damage would be horrible to anyone starting in the mid-grid. 20min race offers no real option to pit and fix your car without completely ruining your race, and very often you crash into someone who spins out and is sideways in the middle of the track. 100% damage would totally wreck your performance in a situation that is very common and often completely unavoidable so I also agree 60% is quite a nice balance.