All, again I'd like to thank you all for participating in the feedback and dicussions I'm throwing out at you.
Hopefully you can all see where these discussions, questions, requests for feedback are leading - hopefully to better and more satisfying events.
There were some excellent discussions and feedback in the "GTL events - too complicated?" thread, causing me to get some new perspectives and guidelines for events in general.
Summary:
1. Sprint nights should be max 4 to min 3 events (from Practice (P) start to Race (R) chequered flag = approx 30-40 mins of which the actual race should be about 50%). At least 1 default track should always appear in a Sprint Night for familiarity's sake if there are any "New to Club" (NTC) tracks included.
2. Non-sprint nights - Bias the P & Q total length to a longer P and a shorter Q session. 3 event nights should be on familiar tracks with single cars, or 1 track and 3 cars. 2 track event nights can be single or multi car. If the track is NTC, limit it to single track multi car events, and extend the Practice length for familiarity.
3. Stay with the Mixture of classes / multicar / single car as is - tailor the events to the cars as discussed in (1) & (2).
4. Generally blend in default tracks with both the familiar 3rd party tracks and NTC tracks as discussed in (1) & (2).
5. COTM - blend the events, but keep the emphasis on at least one longer duration race.
6. Special events - Generally welcome, but need longer notification and schedule planning. Avoid clashes with any RD League events.
I want to address points 1, 2 & 4 specifically in this thread.
While I think we can all agree that the default tracks in GTL are good, some even great, they are limited in their scope a little. For instance,
1. There are quite a few approx <=1:00 length tracks, and quite a few >=2:00 laps and ony a few in the middle, circa 1:30 laps (Dijon, Donington, Mondello)
2. There aren't that many default tracks with extreme gradient changes (Dijon, Spa)
3. There aren't that many tracks with long enough straights for the faster cars to fully open their legs. (Dijon, Spa, Nurb GP)
To allow me to get balanced events - balanced in the aspects of event length / lapcounts, track type, car choice etc. - what (if any) add-on tracks that we use are now so familiar to us and widespread enough that they can almost be described as "Core Add-ons" or "Default Add-ons"?
I'm thinking of tracks like:-
Cadwell Park
Goodwood
Watkins Glen etc.
Basically, tracks where we have held multiple events, tracks appearing on multiple sims and which are now as familiar to us as the default tracks, and which nearly all of us has.
Once a consensus has been achieved in this thread from (hopefully) your numerous responses, I'll add the list of "Core Add-on" tracks to the list in the Sticky thread, and use them to balance the events the same way as I would use the SimBin default tracks.
There's no limit to the number of tracks you can suggest here.
Core Add-on tracks
Lakeside
Goodwood
Watkins Glen
Cadwell Park
Mid Ohio
Birmingham
Amaroo
Hopefully you can all see where these discussions, questions, requests for feedback are leading - hopefully to better and more satisfying events.
There were some excellent discussions and feedback in the "GTL events - too complicated?" thread, causing me to get some new perspectives and guidelines for events in general.
Summary:
1. Sprint nights should be max 4 to min 3 events (from Practice (P) start to Race (R) chequered flag = approx 30-40 mins of which the actual race should be about 50%). At least 1 default track should always appear in a Sprint Night for familiarity's sake if there are any "New to Club" (NTC) tracks included.
2. Non-sprint nights - Bias the P & Q total length to a longer P and a shorter Q session. 3 event nights should be on familiar tracks with single cars, or 1 track and 3 cars. 2 track event nights can be single or multi car. If the track is NTC, limit it to single track multi car events, and extend the Practice length for familiarity.
3. Stay with the Mixture of classes / multicar / single car as is - tailor the events to the cars as discussed in (1) & (2).
4. Generally blend in default tracks with both the familiar 3rd party tracks and NTC tracks as discussed in (1) & (2).
5. COTM - blend the events, but keep the emphasis on at least one longer duration race.
6. Special events - Generally welcome, but need longer notification and schedule planning. Avoid clashes with any RD League events.
I want to address points 1, 2 & 4 specifically in this thread.
While I think we can all agree that the default tracks in GTL are good, some even great, they are limited in their scope a little. For instance,
1. There are quite a few approx <=1:00 length tracks, and quite a few >=2:00 laps and ony a few in the middle, circa 1:30 laps (Dijon, Donington, Mondello)
2. There aren't that many default tracks with extreme gradient changes (Dijon, Spa)
3. There aren't that many tracks with long enough straights for the faster cars to fully open their legs. (Dijon, Spa, Nurb GP)
To allow me to get balanced events - balanced in the aspects of event length / lapcounts, track type, car choice etc. - what (if any) add-on tracks that we use are now so familiar to us and widespread enough that they can almost be described as "Core Add-ons" or "Default Add-ons"?
I'm thinking of tracks like:-
Cadwell Park
Goodwood
Watkins Glen etc.
Basically, tracks where we have held multiple events, tracks appearing on multiple sims and which are now as familiar to us as the default tracks, and which nearly all of us has.
Once a consensus has been achieved in this thread from (hopefully) your numerous responses, I'll add the list of "Core Add-on" tracks to the list in the Sticky thread, and use them to balance the events the same way as I would use the SimBin default tracks.
There's no limit to the number of tracks you can suggest here.
Core Add-on tracks
Lakeside
Goodwood
Watkins Glen
Cadwell Park
Mid Ohio
Birmingham
Amaroo
