[Pete Parisetti]

There is no particular penalty for failing to start a race (complete 2 laps). You simply get no points and the consequent ratings hit.
What you're asking is that when you DNS a race you should get last place points. Or maybe your race shouldn't be counted at all, as if it never happened? I think it's pretty easy to see why those scoring methods can be exploited for the wrong reasons.
But this mehod is more like in real life; if you fail to do something for reasons outside your control, you still suffer the consequences. If that enrages you maybe you should try anger management sessions?
Also, what David said.

Martin, there is considerable extra penalty for DNF, on top of what you would get anyway for finishing last. Otherwise, why would I have written the post to begin with?

[Sergio Mendez]

I appreciate the "system" and the hard must be to create and maintain it. It's a really awesome work. But I think sometimes it doesn't care much about us (regular drivers). If ratings are "only numbers" without any value, why do we need it? Why do we care about it? We are here for racing and beat ourselves, but ratings are important to have an improvement feeling, RPG-like. This numbers could be useful as we talked in some topics., but unfortunately are only used to split drivers. But some of us try to care about our numbers, especially inc. ratio, but rating too. More ratings doesn't make you a better driver, but it writes about your work, perseverance... and it's so unrewarding to lose it for a system crash. It's like when you have a very low incident ratio and without any warning you get a suspension for an incident. I would get dissapointed like Pete did. The system doesn't care about community, only cares about itself. It's respectable, but unrewarding, and makes some of us feel distant of it.

[Tim Masson]

Ok... my 2 cents:
Most of you know I'm an old hippie - so please take that into account when reading:
I would prefer it if we just ditched the points system all together - a safety rating and/or inc count/rate is sufficient, then just count wins/podiums and points places if you wish to be competitive.
Server splits could be done on safety rating.
Everyone start on 50%, and you don't get into split one until you have, say, an 85% safety rating.
It would have the added benefit of making those split 2 races less like Armageddon, as people would (hopefully) be trying to have clean races.
I picked up sooo many incs early on at SRS because I was stuck in split 2 and it was just like a Normandy beach landing most evenings.
Love and hugs to all.
Zimbabwe out.

[Jim C Russell]

I agree with James in everything he wrote.
This said, I would like to point that worring too much about rating/incident number is totally useless. They are just numbers, they don't really say if you're good or not, so I wouldn't pay much attention to them as long as they are good enough to be in the first split. Just try to have fun and forget about the rest.

Unless you  have a teammate!  I must stay in front of my bro.....teammates, dying over every 1/10 lost and lauding over the inky dink count retreating by 1/1000 pt for 0 contacts.  I only have to beat them and all is good    , finishing in front of anyone else is a bonus. (esp m.j.)

B
m.j. ?

Exactly 

[Martin Smith]

There is no particular penalty for failing to start a race (complete 2 laps). You simply get no points and the consequent ratings hit.
What you're asking is that when you DNS a race you should get last place points. Or maybe your race shouldn't be counted at all, as if it never happened? I think it's pretty easy to see why those scoring methods can be exploited for the wrong reasons.
But this mehod is more like in real life; if you fail to do something for reasons outside your control, you still suffer the consequences. If that enrages you maybe you should try anger management sessions?
Also, what David said.

Martin, there is considerable extra penalty for DNF, on top of what you would get anyway for finishing last. Otherwise, why would I have written the post to begin with?

If you compare the result of a DNF with the results of a last place finish then of course it will seem like a DNF is an extra penalty. That's because they're almost opposites.

If you want to suggest that disconnects should be awarded last place then fine, then there will never be any DNFs and as I said, that can be exploited. For example someone could sign up for a race and then just go to bed. The next morning they wake up with a rating boost and lower incident rate.

As it stands we get 0 points for a DNF, which isn't special; many series around the world score this way. And with that 0 points we get the same hit to our rating regardless of whether we finished the race or not. So that's not special either.

One possible way to minimize the penalty and also minimize the exploit might be eliminate DNFs as you suggest, but only award 1/2 points to people who don't complete 2 laps.

The bottom line is that anyone who signs up for a race should at least try to compete in it. If it's due to reasons outside our control, then welcome to life.

[Michal Ringes]

Well the penalty can be pretty severe even if you actually try to race as i found out today Got hit from behind on first lap, spun and as i revved the engine it exploded, the race was done and it really did not occur to me that i should go again from the the pits with a new car and a brand new engine because that kinda makes no sense. So i just waited in the pits for the race to finish. Imagine the surprise after seeing -10 rating penalty afterwards, to get 10 points back for me atm that means i have to win 4 or 5 races without any incident

[Russell Sobie]

You have to do 2 or 3 laps I think to not get a DNF. And while it doesn't make "real world sense" to just get a new car, this is still a simulator. No sense leaving the server if it allows you to get back in there. Just don't get in anyone's way when you are down 1-2 laps and blue flagged to the grid.

[Martin Smith]

The whole SRS rulebook is a single page, and the first paragraph says to complete 2 laps or suffer ratings loss. Worth reading.

http://www.simracingsystem.com/regulation.php

[Bogdan Bodnarescu]

Hello, is there any way of joining after exiting in Practice?
The Server does not appear anymore, even if I had 20 minutes for Quali and the whole race ...
I find this really frustrating ... My Sound crashed and I exited to fix it

[Tim Cullingworth]

You should be able to find the server in the online list of servers.

As long as you were registered to race you can join any time.