Cheating within the Rules

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boiltheocean

boiltheocean

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Samoa
I can't figure out why people would want to use a slightly lower PP on English Stock Car - London, well i can with a lower PP you start further up the field which on a course like london is very helpful but wheres the fun i ask you, wheres the fun?
 
I used to do that at HSR 800PP but either way I was on my own in 1st place from 4th or something below. Starting 12th did make it fun to play catch up and when you win you know you just destroyed them all lol


I would say reasons for lowering PP

Stays away from traffic
Less chance of meeting a punter while infront (depends how much infront)
They want to win badly
They are a punter lol
Suck at the game which is why they want to start first for bett money?


:)👍
 
Your placement on the grid in an online race is determined something like this:
1. Car PP (lower PP = higher up on the grid)
2. Past skill/win/etc history (you're pushed back the better you are)
3. Car type (higher/lower depending on disadvantage/advantage)
If PP is the race max, then you're placed by 2 & 3 alone.

Adjusting PP is part of the tuning process, just like deciding which tires to use. Lower PP gets you a better spot on the grid, but makes you slower later in the race; its a trade off. The key is that everyone has to do it to make it work.

PP adjusting happened all the time back in the Spec 1 days.
One guy would drop to 649 and gain advantage, next race many others would respond by dropping to 649 themselves, and over time people pushed the PP levels lower and lower - you'd see entire races with an average PP of 644. You usually had to run 647PP just to stay mid-grid.
That's where it would get interesting. You couldn't push low PP too far (<639), or else someone would enter with a full 650PP, and destroy everyone from the rear; the races were self-balancing. If you ran a slow-starting car - say, an Elise - you could sacrifice a PP or 2 for front row advantage hoping you could make it to the first corners before the GT-Rs caught you, etc.
You had to strategize and take chances if you wanted to win.

That's why adjustable PP is not cheating and is fun.
 
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I hardly declare that cheating. That's like saying someone is using a slightly lower camber angle because they want a little more speed on a straight. They're utilizing the limitations to their maximum effect, and are winning by doing it.
 
SweetshopUnion
I can't figure out why people would want to use a slightly lower PP on English Stock Car - London, well i can with a lower PP you start further up the field which on a course like london is very helpful but wheres the fun i ask you, wheres the fun?
Click to expand...

Maybe because alot of people who have fast cars cheat and ram people of the road? At least this time for once we can have fair racing. Also the London Event we never use for racing that much especially for English Cars hence it;s London
 
SweetshopUnion
I can't figure out why people would want to use a slightly lower PP on English Stock Car - London, well i can with a lower PP you start further up the field which on a course like london is very helpful but wheres the fun i ask you, wheres the fun?
Click to expand...

The FUN is passing them with the lower pp and you still finish in the top 3 and thay dont:sly:
 
AsteroidSHDTV
Your placement on the grid in an online race is determined something like this:
1. Car PP (lower PP = higher up on the grid)
2. Past skill/win/etc history (you're pushed back the better you are)
3. Car type (higher/lower depending on disadvantage/advantage)
If PP is the race max, then you're placed by 2 & 3 alone.
Click to expand...

As I understand it, history and type have zero bearing on start order. Instead, the game uses a bubble sort algorithm which is applied every time a car joins the lobby, running from the back of the field to the front. As a result, the only two factors that affect start order are PP and join time.

This means that if the lowest PP car joins the field later in the assembly process, it will be swapped with the car on pole, and the car on pole will be placed in the rear. It will then take this car in the rear to see if it can be swapped with position 2. If so, it will do the swap (moving position 2 to the back of the field) and then check this new car against position 3, and so on.
 
AsteroidSHDTV
Your placement on the grid in an online race is determined something like this:
1. Car PP (lower PP = higher up on the grid)
2. Past skill/win/etc history (you're pushed back the better you are)
3. Car type (higher/lower depending on disadvantage/advantage)
If PP is the race max, then you're placed by 2 & 3 alone.
Click to expand...

1.YES
2.How did you make this one up? :lol:
3.NO...
 
Hmm, I wondered if it was done on power-weight ratio when the car PPs are level.

How do you know of the bubble sort? Or is it just a hunch?
 
bicycleshorts
How do you know of the bubble sort? Or is it just a hunch?
Click to expand...

Someone over at the official Sony boards worked this out some time ago. It's easy enough to verify, provided you can determine the entire grid at the start.

Also, when there's only one swap, you can easily check to see where the host starts: if their grid spot equals the lobby position of the other swap, then it's consistent.
 
Do you have a link to evidence of bubble-sort only?

That's exactly how I thought the game did it at first, but anomalies kept repeatedly showing up. I figured the game didn't sort the stack thoroughly enough, leaving mismatched people mid-rank and behind.
But as I continued playing, I would see things like a pack of 7 full-PP GT-Rs at the start, or consistently-winning players moved to the rear with PPs lower than the front runners.
Eventually as I got better I moved to the back myself, despite a lower PP and being 1st or 2nd player to join the race.

I'm sure its possible that incomplete sorting explains all the phenomena (and that everything else is in my head) especially considering how inefficient Bubble sorting in particular is. But everybody's known how crap Bubble is for some time, and i doubt Polyphony would use it. And if it IS Bubble, its quite amazing that 16 networked Cell processors can't complete the sort...
 
Also Some cars cant be tuned up to the max PP, but they can still compete.
I've found a few cars that end up a point or two below the max PP with the tune I like. I dont want to compromise my tune by losing downforce or adding weight (to gain power) so I settle for being a few points down.
 
Just rolled at London an I see what ya mean...


Using a DB9 S1 and N1 for drift and came last (5th by half a second from the lotus's)

It seems that event is easy if a S1/N1 car can drift and stay :)



Overtaking is like impossible lol so maybe thats why people play with the PP's
 
My lotus tune puts me up the front but me mini tune puts me at the back.The mini is max pp though.Its much of a muchness due RBE but i know I prefer to start at the front due to a tight track and punters everywhere.
 
How can you cheat within the rules? Cheating by its very nature attempts to circumvent the rules to give an unfair advantage to the cheater.

There is nothing wrong with lowering your point limit either. It is to your advantage to use as many power points that the race and car allow. If lowering your points limit is the only way you can stay ahead of the grid, then it says something about the driver in question.

Remember as well, some cars can be maxed out without ever reaching the point limit for the race, is that cheating as well?
 
AsteroidSHDTV
I'm sure its possible that incomplete sorting explains all the phenomena (and that everything else is in my head) especially considering how inefficient Bubble sorting in particular is. But everybody's known how crap Bubble is for some time, and i doubt Polyphony would use it. And if it IS Bubble, its quite amazing that 16 networked Cell processors can't complete the sort...
Click to expand...
It is at most a 16 element list! The sorting algorithm used is virtually irrelevant for such a tiny list provided it's stability (whether it changes the order of elements with the same sort key) is suitable. If you care about the speed, which should be very low on your list of priorities if you're only sorting a tiny list infrequently, you absolutely should not use a clever algorithm like quicksort because for tiny lists the additional overhead of each iteration is likely to add up to more than the cost of doing many simple iterations. In the special case of sorting a short list which has just one unsorted element at the end a bubble sort would be a perfectly reasonable choice. Bubblesort does not fail to sort lists, it just has a very poor worst-case runtime, but that only matters for large lists. We're talking about a worst-case of 15 comparisons and 15 swaps for bubbling a car from the back of the grid to the front, which is so trivial it's barely even worth the time to think about. The only sensible choices for such a list would be the "dumb", "slow" bubble or insertion sort algorithms. Either one would work, perform well, be easy to understand in the source code and the results of either would look identical to an external observer, so they may well be using an insertion sort. The choice between the two would be based on which would have the cleanest implementation, which would depend on what their data structures look like. End of anti-cargo-cult-programming rant.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I've been winning a lot in the No Mercy races and other than the pp sorting my position on the grid, subjectively at least, still seems to be pretty random.
 
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Cant say its cheating at all.

Consider it to be like choosing a fuel level in formula one.. run lighter and you qualify better but your race will be hindered by having to stop earlier for fuel

PP is kind of like fuel level in that respect... can lower it and get a better grid position but the cars behind you will be faster.


I ran a lower PP at Fuji when I was playing online more. It used to work out really well as you could usually clear T1 and avoid being caught up in the mayhem that followed. The trade in was that towards the end of lap 3 I was being caught which is where the fun comes in as your in a worse car and being caught.... now to reverse what you say what would be the fun in being in a higher PP car when your chasing cars with a lower PP like that?
 
I always run with the maximum PP I can - personally, I'd rather start at the back. Firstly, because (especially on a track like London, or Suzuka) it reduces the risk of me being punted to kingdom come if nobody is behind me, and secondly because it's much more fun attacking for position than it is defending.
 
It's not cheating is it? It's no different to somebody in F1 running less fuel in qualifying to get a better grid spot but they'll usually fall back to a realistic position after the pit stops.
 
It's not cheating but it's not particularly sporting. Fair enough if the car can't actually go as high as the PP limit even tuned to the maximum but dropping one PP off the limit doesn't disadvantage your speed to any extent but does grab you a higher place on the grid which could be considered unfair.

But as I mentioned, if you start further back you're possibly less likely to be punted off at the first corner anyway.
 
Well for everyone questioning my title "Cheating within the rules" its mainly to do with that track as its alot harder to overtake on but I feel that it really makes racing alot less fun when you intentionally put yourself at the front of the grid.

Cheating was the wrong word to use i admit that but its rather unsporting on such a tight course
 
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Fujiwara-kun
I would say reasons for lowering PP

Stays away from traffic
Less chance of meeting a punter while infront (depends how much infront)
They want to win badly
They are a punter lol
Suck at the game which is why they want to start first for bett money?


:)👍
Click to expand...

He pretty much summed it all up right there , could not have said it any better. 👍
 
i don't see it as cheating it's strategy. Like said having less fuel would make you a few tenths quicker so you get pole, but you need to come in earlier.
i race qith what i think handles great for me and just race if i'm in front okay, go as quick as you can through turn 1 and otherwise slow down.(isn;t that also "cheating")
i would love to see how things go online when fuel/tyre wear would become an issue.
it's just strategy and is part of racing in general.

like last wtcc race, Tom Coronell's car is slower then the seat tdi's but he was able to win the second race, just on skill and stretagy.
 
In ways I believe its cheating and just useful.

Rolling starts at HSR 800PP used to roll with 799PP and usually came top easily. When I used 800PP I was usually at the back and only one penalty was allowed to have a chance for 1st. Then there are problems with overtaking safely and 1st may have lower PP and also be a fast as you dont lose much in about 3-5 PP...

Full PP is more fun I can say that as when you come 1st, you know that you have just wiped them :)
 

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