Here is a Poll to see what sort of format people would want to race for Mondays but also this could possibly be expanded to other night scheduled races if there is interest for that. Currently its still pre season fun runs but this will also see the interest in future full seasons, pit windows and driver swaps are not currently working well in ACC 1.0.7 but will hopefully be stable league ready features not too far down the road.
Thanks for putting this up Marty. I think if people join this discussion then this thread will help us understand many of the reason why the ROOZ fun runs are low on numbers. So ROOZ members - please vote and then add to the discussion here. You may have other reasons for not joing the ACC fun runs, or have other suggestions for improving the situation. My Thoughts: Personally I've been mostly avoiding the Monday races because they are too long. A three hour session (2hr race + prac & qual) on the server is a serious time and energy commitment, especially on a weeknight. Also with ACC's less-than-optimal VR implementation long races take their toll on my eyes and concentration. It's possible ROOZer's are just used to the 45 min race format with occasional 90min enduro thrown in. Maybe that's the sweetspot for a weeknight league? I am still keen on longer races with driver swaps once that feature is working. So maybe we could try making Monday races the standard 45min format (with pitstop) again for a while to see if we can get the ROOZ regulars back. Then we can use the Wed/Thurs races for experimenting with different formats. We could alo look at longer special events with driver swaps (eg 2.4 hrs of Spa) perhaps run on the weekend.
I really enjoy the longer format races but perhaps 45min - 1 hour is more realistic for most people. I'm happy to do whatever gets more bums on seats.
My priorities have changed with 2 littlies to get into bed at race time (for us Westies). I'll come back to it eventually. In the meantime just trying to keep a finger on the pulse. 30min races are more my bag if I can make it. Less prep and an opportunity to miss one opting in late, or opting out early.
I think a mix of race distances is the go, but the 45 min races were the historic sweet spot. The sprints and enduro's were thrown in to add a bit more of a challenge and mix the field up. Finding the right mix to suit everyone is impossible, if the platform is stable enough for a season, let's just run it. As for me, work has been stupid for the last few months and I was spending weekends and nights working on my old mini for a car show this weekend. Sadly we have run out of time with some parts from the UK being held up so I'll be going with my camera instead. Also my daughter has dance on Mondays this semester so I have started working late and picking her up on the way home, meaning I'm not back until 8pm most Mondays - once I've done dinner etc I'm ready for bed. I will get back into the Thursday (or whichever day) in the next few weeks. Mael must be missing me running into him each week!!?!
I voted for an hour race... purely because of it being more similar to what the ACC CP servers are... *but* with a forced pit when we ever get that enabled on pub servers in ACC Also a 90min race with a force pit inc driver swap would be pretty cool... that would get the likes of @KoAStR to be able to take part... and possibly @Bogor and others that struggle to be able to commit to such a long race... Just again ACC missing/disabled features... grumble...
My personal choice would be mix of 60 minute sprints and longer enduro's be it 90 minute or 2hrs. Both ideally using Blancpain rules so sprint rounds with pit window 25-35 minutes in and optional driver swap. The enduro races have 65 minute max stint limits and also optional driver swaps. However for this to be used we need to be able to set these rule packages in servers which are currently not possible, also driver swaps are still not currently a stable reliable or solid feature. This way the regular Sprint races can be run solo for 1hr or in a team of 2 doing around 30 minute stints. The enduro's if a 90 minute race and 65 min max stint time would mean in a team 1 driver would only need to run 26 minutes or others could do 90 minutes on their own. Hopefully 1.08 brings these options to the server and we can run an actual season. Driver swaps will allow race lengths to meet more peoples ideal distances. I wouldn't want to enforce teams and have compulsory swaps as this will just reduce fields more, if we had 60+ sign up sure but that's realistically not going to happen. If it allows those that only have time for shorter races and also those that want longer ones to both get what they want it seems win/win for me.
Looking at Poll results currently the current 90 minute format for Mondays and a 60 minute sprint format are considerably the most popular option. It also shows numbers really arent down due to more people wanting shorter races but overall numbers are still very low. Seems about all that have ran some ACC races here have likely made a vote but with our current base numbers we cant expect very big fields in a closed aussie server.
Yep the 1hr format has the most votes (13) followed by the 90min format (10) but clearly not a lot of people have voted in this poll so far making it hard to draw strong conclusions. It's possible a lot of rooz members have lost interest in ACC due to it's overall problems. I still think it's worth trying some 1hr Monday night races to see what happens.
I was hoping to hold off on the 1 hour races until sprint format is available with pit windows as that what the votes indicate is the more popular option. As people can vote for more then 1 its likely the 4 that voted for 1 hour sprint also voted for 1 hour race as I did. Im going more by actual percentages per option then adding different options together. Using that format it shows 19 votes for 90 minutes or longer races but again likely those that voted for 2hr+ also voted for 2hr and 90 minute races and a few other options. No reason we cant do a 1 hour race next Monday as the 90 minute one also shows the fuel usage and tank size issues between certain cars allowing some to no stop while some others cant. A no stop 1 hr race means all cars can make the distance without a stop so worth a run.
Since gentleman’s agreement of having to pit is out the window let’s just see who can blast an hour...
With 1.0.8 we get a preview of extra server rules that we can force, these are currently in private passworded servers only for the test. Should be available in public servers once final but we can test these for the next Monday race on a private server, either do anouther 60 minute sprint with a pit window or an endurance race of 90 minutes with max stint time. Being a private server run this will be on the Aussie server too. Here are the extra settings we have control over. { "qualifyStandingType": 1, "superpoleMaxCar": -1, "pitWindowLengthSec": -1, "driverStintTimeSec": -1, "isPitstopAllowedInPractice": true, "isRefuellingAllowedInRace": true, "isRefuellingTimeFixed": false, "maxDriversCount": 1, "mandatoryPitstopCount": 0, "maxTotalDrivingTime": -1, "isMandatoryPitstopRefuellingRequired": false, "isMandatoryPitstopTyreChangeRequired": false, "isMandatoryPitstopSwapDriverRequired": false } I think a test of these next Monday and if it works we can actually get an official Monday night season started soon after that running 1hr Sprint rounds and 90minute or longer enduro's. We will probably also want to try and test driver swaps which is the only other feature that would be wanted for an official season if there are guys that would rather not run full format races on their own.
