Survival of the fittest [FINISHED]

[squidhead]

Stage 2 qualification runs posted. Battles yet to come.

[AirJordan]

I wonder if putting mediums on was a mistake... only time will tell

[koolkei]

dat radust's car Comments reference.....

god, you reminded me of that thing again.

also my the stage time penalty... is that 6.85s or 6.85%? i'm assuming it's % since the other are getting %. (almost 7% is pretty big penalty though)


and it seems, the more reliable your car is, the more time you lose on each progressing stage????? the battle is gonna be scary

edit: i mean losing 2% of a 80 reliability car compared to 2% on a 60 reliability is a good 2 Points that may give up to 0.5s time difference per lap in a track?

it may be an exaggeration though

[squidhead]

Penalty is in %, did I miss something?
Also no, reliability starts to be a burden factor only after it drops below 50, up till then everybody is getting similar damage and similar penalties, unless they have coutnered some of them via offroad factor in stage 1

[Madrias]

Okay, now I'm nervous. Actually, scratch that, I'm downright worried. Looks like I'm going to have to hope for someone else to have breakdowns, or the Envy's going to eat it on this track.

[squidhead]

And stage 2 is completed with only 4 guys moving up to the next stage, the pretty damn scary Pikes Peak.

Overall overview of:

What happened
Well, first of all a lot of people did not pay attention to the stages their cars will have to go through and ran out of fuel.
Lots of guys put in a lot of thought and came up with very much different solutions, but a few ideas are shared among pretty much all cars.
The speed of the car matters, but not as much as being able to have good use of boosts and negating penalties, which makes a few cars actually shine.
Every specialization into tarmac or a gravel setup is a huge gamble, which may or may not pay off. Acemaster would walk over all of us in stage 2 if he could get through stage 1
Battle system made sure that RaduST is leaving us, while Koolkei makes it to Stage 3, so that is cool to see working.

What's going to happen

Stensen's offroad gamble has paid off so far, the car received minimal damage on the most difficult stage and now reaps the benefits, but as the stages and damage piles on we'll see his competitiveness drop, will this momentum be enough to pull him through Stage 3? We'll see
Koolkei's car is extremely fast, but the damage is piling on, resulting in some hefty penalties. The "jack of all trades" kind of build is very much a safe bet for this competition.
Airjordan is very much in a similar camp to Koolkei, and is a serious competitor if the damage penalties don't get him first.
Squidhead's car is very tarmac specific, so if by some miracle he isn't shot out in the next round, where he'll be penalized for soft compound tires, he'll have serious advantage in the finals.

[AirJordan]

I've been waiting for this very nice!

So Stensen's got 4-5% advantage in the next round and only Squidhead's car is on tarmac tires... This is looking good I would bet on Fat Minion Michael at the moment

EDIT: I think that with a bit of analysing it's quite clear what will happen. Not sure if that spoils the fun or not. Well I still might be wrong...

[squidhead]

EDIT: I think that with a bit of analysing it's quite clear what will happen. Not sure if that spoils the fun or not. Well I still might be wrong...

Last time I went analyzing without a calculator and an automation open I was certain I'd run against Madrias in stage 2 So yeah... anything seems to be possible, but my chances are slim

[koolkei]

holy crap 0.1s difference.
that big car is just as fast as my mini?

anyway, where did i go wrong? how did i get so much damage?
from 82.4 to 76.7 that's almost 6 points.

i mean it's still the highest so far, but that means i'm losing quite a bit of time.

i'm dropping out on stage 3 aren't i?

[stensen]

the damage for stage 2 has been applied twice. qualification run and the race. wasn't aware of it either and my little reliability margin i left wont suffice... such a shame considering how well my strategy worked out thus far...

[Madrias]

Well, I saw that coming a mile away. Looks like my completely shit luck strikes again. Taken out on the tarmac track when I know the Envy would have survived Pikes Peak.

I'd loan one of the guys with low reliability my car, but, well, obviously your car is much better. I've got plenty to make it home.

[squidhead]

Semi final is now posted. Post 3 for more info

[AirJordan]

Laguna Seca here I come (*Death race soundtrack playing*)

[squidhead]

And posted. Good job to the finalists! You can have cookies now.

Thoughts on what should be changed what should be added for the next competition. etc etc etc.

[AirJordan]

Squidhead I really dig your competitions. They look good, have humorous comments and at the end I win.
Joke aside, it was really fun, thanks for taking your time!

Next topic: business
How did penalised driveability actually affect us?
I suggest what have been said before, that time penalties due to reliability are proportional to our actual reliability. Like this stage one where I got 5% penalty because offroad damaged my car but my penalised reliability was still higher than let's say stensen's.
Another small issue is that after stage 2 it was quite clear what will happen as you were the only one on slicks and not the fastest, koolkei got similar specs to mine but was a bit slower and stensen got upper hand with penalties but had a much slower car than me. So maybe don't show us all the times, just stage time and at the end sheets with all the times and penalties.