[THESLOTCARGUY]

First let me say I have done extensive testing on both Pc Lapcounter and SSDC and they are both great programs and I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into them. At this time I am leaning more towards SSDC because IMHO it has the best features and ease of operation and a lower price point.

If Andy has the time and is able to I would like to see the following features added if possible and I would like to hear suggestions from others also.

A variable pace car lane change option so pace cars could change lanes less or more frequent.

also a penalty system similar to PC Lapcounter where the driver initiating a track call either has to serve a black flag in the pits or their speed is reduced to pit lane speed for a time during the restart

Again both systems are great and each has it's positives and negatives. I just thank God there are people like Andy and Guy who devote the time and energy into this hobby so we can all enjoy more.
I would appreciate feedback and your suggestions also. Thanks

 

[Ulli_Berlin]

First: SSDC is great! We love it!

We developed a "penalty" for a track call crasher by setting the time of automatic track call recognition to 2.5 sec, at the moment.

Result is, that the still-in-the-slot-cars may go on for some meters (sorry - we are Germans. I mean lots of inches, of course ;-)), until electricity is cut off and the deslotter guy may pick up his car and re-slot it. He's not allowed to do so, meanwhile this 2.5 sec.
And my children are in a bad age - around 20, so they want to play with me and don't want to stay around the track to re-slot cars ;-) And they don't have own children, yet, who could do so ...

Being a newbie, still thinking of how to combine this method with re-fueling, not having a Pit-Lane Pro (meanwhile I got what it is ;-) - it's not the money, but the time to send it to my favourite European island, waiting for being re-built and sent back) and doing this with a normal pit lane change, only, counting on the fairness of players, so that they don't re-fuel on the normal track.

Didn't test this, but it should work if you start re-fueling within 2.5 sec, so no track call will be set, if re-fueling is in progress, right?

 

[Martyn_]

I think Andy is looking into penalties in the next major release. I hope so, as it would add that little extra something to a great race system.

Interesting thought there Ulli, I like the logic. Our crowd are racing with no track calls at all, we just have one marsall, but we have te luxury of 6 or 7 drivers turning up once a month. I'll be interested to see ow it works for you.

 

[awallace]

Welcome SlotCarGuy - both of your requests are coming. The penalty system is in the works, and the variable pace car thing is very easy to do, and on the list.

 

[THESLOTCARGUY]

Another idea - is it possible that at the end of a race that after each car finishes its final lap it stop after the finish line instead of continuing around the track till the last car finishes. just makes it easier for people with really large tracks.
Also would it be possible to have points for the fastest lap run during a race?

Thanks for the consideration.

 

[THESLOTCARGUY]

Okay how about a countdown on restarts, I'm sorry for all the ideas just kicking things around that have come to my warped mind.

 

[distantkiwi]

I don't know why Andy didn't mention it but he does have this feature on his site. It is a brilliant idea and gives others a chance to voice their opinions even if the idea has already been suggested.

 

[MrFlippant]

Kiwi beat me to it, but here's what I wrote:

Everyone, go here and read the current list of suggestions. Please read the WHOLE THING, as some people have been adding duplicate suggestions.
Then, log in and vote on the ones you want, up to three votes on one idea. Use all your available votes.
As ideas are added, those votes will be released so you can use them on other ideas.
If you can't find ANY suggestions that are already what you want, then add a new one. But, there are many suggestions, so be sure not to create a duplicate.
Here's the link: http://ssdc.uservoice.com/forums/83857-general

 

[distantkiwi]

Wahoooo, not often I can beat MrF to the punch.

 

[MrFlippant]

hehe

 

[Ulli_Berlin]

Added a feature to Andrew's feature list, but additionally, I would like to hear your opinion, still being a freshman.

Could be nice to have Teams (grouped drivers with results added) in SSDC, I think.

How do you build up races with a mixture of strong and weak drivers? F.e., my wife's pretty tolerant to our new hobby, and here and there, she wants to join. Even friends come around and want to spend some time with us, pulling the trigger.

But Leon and me (Leon's my younger son, 20 yr, still living with us) already got somewhat more experienced - so we Newbies would win against the Even-More-Newbies, mostly all the time.

We solved this by building up Teams. Racing for lets say 10 min, and the TEAM (not the single driver) with most driven laps wins.

Same result could be by racing 50 laps, adding times of the members of a team. But here, it would be more obvious that these are dummies-helping-rules ;-)

Other modes of races you can think of, giving fun to less experienced drivers?

What do you think of teams?

 

[ss67]

Obviously you can have teams for endurance races where people share one car but I take it that you are talking about teams of multiple cars like say the two car teams in F1?

I hadn't thought of this before but could be good fun with lots of tactics & team orders (no longer banned in F1)

 

[awallace]

My other passion is sailing, and team racing is perhaps the most exciting format. 2 teams of 3, and the team with 10 points or less wins. There is the possibility to "take out" the competition by forcing them to break the rules, which is slightly harder in slots. Nevertheless, I can see why it might be fun.

 

[thoefnagel]

Ulli,

As I am in the same situation as you do, with my wife and random friends joining now and then, what I do is give them cars that stay better on track. I did downgrade some of my cars (magnet to front and higher and add weight) and two others stay 'out of the box' with the magnet in front position. This combined with a little tweaking of the max power settings (great feature Andrew!) of the drivers very exciting races are possible, even with newbie newbies.
I believe you had the same set (Digital Platinum) as where I started with.

But teams would be fun too, if the differences between teammates are not too big i think. Nice idea

Teunis

 

[SJW]

QUOTE (awallace @ 7 Mar 2012, 07:43) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>My other passion is sailing, and team racing is perhaps the most exciting format. 2 teams of 3, and the team with 10 points or less wins.

I'm a sailor also. What kind of boats do you sail? I've been racing on San Francisco Bay for 20 years on mostly larger one design boats (J/35,Express 27, Beneteau 36.7).

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Steve

 

[MrFlippant]

Team racing is a great idea!
There's also handicapping, as Teunis mentioned, such as using a lesser car, or reduced power. You could also require that the better racers not start until they are a lap or two behind (or however many laps they usually win by). Our club is trying a new idea for crashers, the poker chips. Each player gets 3 chips that they turn in when they crash. If they crash a fourth time, they are out of the race. Something similar could be done, but give the better drivers less chips than the inexperienced drivers. Another idea is to use fuel and make the better driver run out much faster so that he has to stop in the pit lane more often.

 

[Damo]

I don't have SSDC yet as I am still planning and slowly building up my track but the one thing I would really like in it is support for oXigen. That's because I have decided that I really want Slot.It controllers and I want them to be wireless. My track is 15' long and 6' across so we'll need to be able to walk around it to self-marshall.

Cheers,
Damo

 

[Ulli_Berlin]

Thought and tried handicaps for the better drivers, yes.

But with my wife, this definetely only works for the Japanese board game "Go", where it's clearly part of the rules, even in competition tournaments. And I had to proof it to her by showing her the rules and even tournament results. She's a proud one (I'm German, so I don't know words of higher language niveau as "stubborn"

), better loosing then getting a bonus or the better one a penalty.

But this way, it's easy. Normally we race with our two sons, or our two daughters, or a mixture. Mostly, we are four people. But would work with 6, equally.

First, we run a qualification, best lap time of 20 laps.

Then, teams are built: Fastest and slowest build team #1, second and second last team #2.

Then, we do it Le-Mans-style, running/racing for 10 min. Best would be, if the leader board directly would show the actual team result, adding finished laps of each team driver. Maybe even not showing the single laps of single drivers, to avoid shame and so on (maybe optionally with a checkbox for the more hardboiled looser^del^del^del "less experienced" drivers).

Two or three teams, would be fun!

Could be done, already, of course, by adding results, manually, but an updated leaderboard would be fun!