Nothing suggested so far has been deep enough. What I'm thinking is divide the cars into classes based on power/weight ratio, A is fastest, F or whatever it ends up being is slowest. The cars are further divided into categories:
CPT or compact for small to smallish cars with insufficient sporting purpose to be categorized otherwise.
MSW or Medium Sedan/Wagon for larger and better equipped cars with little to no sporting purpose. Nissan Primera maybe?
PSW or Premium Sedan/Wagon, mostly for large, luxurious sedans and wagons.
MTP or Multipurpose, for minivans, trucks, and SUVs.
SPC or Specialty, mostly for 2dr coupe and 3dr hatchback sports or sporty cars which have too much "sporting purpose" to be otherwise classed. (Most if not all Skylines, Miatas, RXes, Camaros, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention exotics.)
And CMP or Competition, for racing cars.
(Yes, those were based on Enthusia market segments. They're basically in place to ensure realism, i.e. no Dodge Rams racing against Mazda Proteges.)
Finally, they'd be subdivided into groups based on level of modification. For street cars, I'm thinking:
Street Stock (SS) which would permit no modifications except for a roll cage and maybe sports tires (also livery if it happens to be patched in).
Street Prepared (SP) which would permit a few basic modifications - maybe spoilers and other various low-level aerodynamic mods as well as aftermarket wheels and definitely sports tires.
Street Touring (ST) which would permit more radical modifications but still not full tuning.
Street Competition (SC), which would allow highly advanced if not full tuning including aerodynamics and racing tires (but no nitrous).
Street Unlimited (SU), which would have absolutely no restrictions.
SC and possibly SU could be lumped in with an equivalent class of race car if a livery editor happens to be added by DLC.
For race cars (CMP category), I envision the following:
Track Standard (TS), which would mean, again, no modifications except tire compound and livery.
Track Improved (TI), which would allow advanced tuning, but no stage 4 turbos or anything too extreme.
Track Extreme (TE), which would allow, again, advanced if not full tuning but no nitrous.
Track Unlimited (TU), which would have, again, no restrictions.
To solve the issues with potentially lacking participation, multiple entries would have to be permitted within reason. Buy-in could also be solicited from other GT5 forums, possibly necessitating administration from a remote website to avoid potential bias. To solve time issues with such a massive number of classes, multiple races would have to be run simultaneously. Where space is available, less popular classes could be lumped together into one lobby. The scheduling of each race would have to be arranged around all of this.
I also think we may have to create special S/Competition and X/Competion classes for the F1 cars and the Red Bull X1 (although the F1 issue could be taken care of by creating a special Open-wheel Competition (OWC) category.
We can categorize most of the cars now, since most/all of the GT4/GTPSP cars will be present, but full ruleset will have to wait until we know what the mods are.
Should there be a seperate listing for Tuner-type cars? If so, should every car listed as "tuner" be included or just some of them. Should it be a category or a group? Should they run on sports tires or racing tires?
Finally, how many races should be run each season? Should there be an off-season? If so, how long and when? How long should each race be (I'm thinking 2 hours maybe)? And how should we decide which tracks to use? I know we need 16-car compatibility for each one, but beyond that are there any restrictions? Do we consider only the longest or "master" variant of each course, or do we allow any 16-car course to be used? If it's the former, do we make an exception for oval courses with infield road circuts? Do we want specific numbers of each type of course (say 2 oval, 3 city, and 15 normal courses to round out a 20-race season) or do we just throw them all into on pot and choose the ones we like most? Should we ban or allow the use of more than one variant of a specific course? Again, what about road/oval combined courses? What defines a course - for example if Rome 90's were to be added by DLC, would it be considered seperate from the new Rome circuit by virtue of sharing little to no road? What about Cape Ring North and South which technically share no road but are part of the same grounds?
Wow, that's a lot of questions.
