No controls for the second race running

I'm so sorry about that Adam.  Please extend my apologies to your friend.

I do think we need to publish a solid policy about what to do in the case of races that do not start or otherwise have significant problems for the reasons you mention.  I am considering one that says that if a race doesn't start or has a serious problem for up to half an hour after the official race start, then the race will by default be postponed to start on the next race day.  If it can be fixed within half an hour, then it will continue from where it left off or be restarted.

I know from our league that next day postponement is best as some guys have to go offline shortly after the race for work reasons.

Are you suggesting that we should postpone by default if there is any amount of disruption to the race, Gary?  What about if it can be resolved within 15 minutes, or 5?

Thanks Andrew, i'll pass it on.

Something like you mention would be good, a default plan that kicks in in the event of a serious issue so we know that if the race doesn't run properly we can get on with other things without the cercern that if we leave it'll get re-started without us. Even today there were a couple of messages saying along the lines of "I have to go now, please dont let them restart the race, just postpone". I think as long as things are clear everyone will be alot happier.

Thanks Adam.  It sounds like perhaps you would argue for a smaller cutoff too?  Maybe 10 minutes is better than 30?

A restart cut-off of about 15 minutes would probably be best. Ofcourse its upto yourself to decide this and also gain the opinion of other users.

Andrew - Strategies are ruined quickly when we have no access.  I am with Adam, a clear policy is all we need.  I would ask that you give yourself some time to deal with things as well.  Rebooting servers and services often gets things up and running but seldom resolves the core issue.

Brent: Absolutely.  We will be going flat out to get this well and truly resolved.  A policy along these lines is something we have been talking about for a while though, and now may be a better time than any to actually get it set.  I'll leave it open for discussion though.

Gary: That sounds good to me.  Lets see if others agree.

I guess it kinda depends on how much of the race has been done, if we start at 6pm gmt and do 30 mins racing then totally dies and have to have a complete re-start then we may already be to late  cus the re-start will happen maybe 15 mins later at 6.45pm then u got to do a 45 mins race, thats 7.30pm finish when normally finished at 6.45pm, u almost need a cut of finish time if u see what i mean?

I would support the 15 minute cut off.

Gary - Seems to me they need a one size fits all strategy.  Everyone knows what happens if the system crashes.    To me, if the game has major issues (system wide 2D failure, crashes etc) the race should restart the next day.  Doesn't matter if it is the 1st lap or the 20th, the race starts again the next day.  This gives the devs/admin a bit of space to deal with the issue at hand and lets users know what to expect. 

I don't claim to speak for anyone but myself, but my issue is having to sit around hitting refresh not knowing what will happen.

Issue for devs/admin is they have to determine when a problem is a user and when it is system wide :-)  I have seen races were 2 or 3 people say they can't connect when everything for me is just fine.  I have never had an issue that didn't effect everyone.  I know others in my league always seem to have issues.

Best of luck!

15 mins sounds good. As Gary says, the game crashing when 2/3rd's of the racing complete would be difficult on the times too, In that case maybe an automatic postponed re-start or as in real life declare the result if the race has gone more than 2/3's or 3/4's before any issues crop up. Again as long as its down in black and white we will know what to expect.

Good point Gary.  If a race becomes disrupted 1 minute before the end of a race, it would almost certainly be more annoying to redo the whole race rather than just let the race complete.  It would be easier to measure that based on laps.  So for example, if a race becomes disrupted when the leader is on the second last lap (say), then the race will by default resume and continue to completion regardless of the length of the downtime.

I'll be back in the morning to continue this discussion.  Long day tomorrow.

Thanks.

Hmm.  2 more posts while I was writing mine.  Lots of food for thought. Thanks!

Perhaps a race restart should happen no more than 30 mins after the scheduled start of said race? That may gain more support but as you can see myself, gary and adam are coming up with different ways of doing it and we are all in the same league so a game wide rule/advisory is going to be really difficult haha

I will be difficult but at least if there were a rule in place, whether we all agreed with it or not, we'd know where we stand. We saw it during the problems around our German GP last season, no-one knew what was going to happen, messages were being passed backward and forward, and we were all waiting until Matt could get back online to make the decision as host. Maybe if a fault happens at the start or in the first 20% of the race (5 or 6 laps in our case) and the Dev's can do a quick re-start then fine, we do that. Then if it all goes wrong between 20% and 80% we have a re-start postponed 24hrs. If it goes wrong in the final 20% (5ish laps when most have completed all there pit stops and its just the run to the flag) then the result is just declared from the lap before we all got booted out and lost control. Then we can move on to the next race, albeit probably annoyed that we missed the end but we would have a valid result. 

However it is resolved i dont really mind as long as it clearly defined.

Good luck Dev's, i dont envy your job! lol

Im sure most users in our league would back that plan. Dont think there is much that people would get upset about and it would be handy to use percentages and not time/laps as people run different length races.