For me the keypoint is still the difficulty to put together individual legitimate objectives with equally legitimate team goals.
I think that the challenging issue - after all - is not the scoring system (which is indeed a tool), but the fact that there is not (yet?) a well developed "culture" of team flying in Condor. In other words: when we speak about team flying we all understand that it's about exchanging info during the flight, we still might value very differently different aspects of it (membership, personal costs, limitation of autonomy...).
IMO, being a team is something more but also something different than just summing up the scores of the players. I don't think a team is a real team unless it demands to individuals to give up on something personal (like a football player who passes the ball to a team mate even if he could attempt to score, because the team mate has better chances to do so).
Thinking back to LLC 2006, I believe that country cup had nothing to do with "teams": there was no price and no prize for being associated with a country team. I think the country cup was something closer to a geographical-based way of representing data, than to a team competition.
Maybe our mistake in thinking to LLC 2007 is to try to bring individual competition and team flying together (it might be too early or it might simply be impossible).
A different approach could be to organise a LLC "team version" to be ran in parallel with the LLC "classic". The LLC-C would look pretty much identical to the one experienced last year (with the new scoring system, of course). The LLC-T would contrarily only score team results (no individual ranking). The LLC-T could be just flown one per week (people could enroll any or both of the LLCs), using one of the two last tasks with changed weather, if the LLC organisers have no time to think to new tasks.
The LLC-T could serve Condor community to develop a common "culture" of team flying, and could be inspiring for future competitions that could put together individual and team flight.
Teams or no teams ?
Well, thats the whole point isnt it ? How can there be a culture if its rarely if ever done ? Not to tooth my own horn, but when I started the first condor competition almost a year ago, there wasn't much of a competition flying culture either. Any server you'd join, if you where lucky to find one with at least somewhat realistic settings, 80% of the players would land out or disconnect after 20 Km, and you where flying all alone after 40 Km because people only flew for instant victory and only turned in 5+m.. I got so frustrated about this that I started BB's competition to give people an incentive to try harder tasks, and try your best even if you can no longer win that task.
Now if you bring teamflying to LLC, and add a little incentive (maybe just the ranking and "honour" alone would be enough), people will find ways and learn how to fly in teams. Won't happen the first day, but Im pretty confident by the end of LLC, we will have taken giant leaps in effective teamflying. Maybe I'll just go ahead with this regardless of the poll. If you don't like it, shoot me
Now if you bring teamflying to LLC, and add a little incentive (maybe just the ranking and "honour" alone would be enough), people will find ways and learn how to fly in teams. Won't happen the first day, but Im pretty confident by the end of LLC, we will have taken giant leaps in effective teamflying. Maybe I'll just go ahead with this regardless of the poll. If you don't like it, shoot me
LLC 2007 is 4 months away... what about launching a low-scale experiment on team flying?
It could be something like a server up once or twice a week troughout the summer.
The very minimal and inexpensive proposal could be to just have a thread on the forum where people agree on team formation (these could be modified every race) and shares ideas, opinions, reflections and impressions. No particular committment (summer is holiday time for most of Europeans and RL soaring season) but the one of talking about it and beginning to reflect.
As somebody commented for AATs, I think there is not enough experience to draw conclusions, therefore there is the need for more experience!
However, for various reasons, I fully support the development of the "team culture"!
It could be something like a server up once or twice a week troughout the summer.
The very minimal and inexpensive proposal could be to just have a thread on the forum where people agree on team formation (these could be modified every race) and shares ideas, opinions, reflections and impressions. No particular committment (summer is holiday time for most of Europeans and RL soaring season) but the one of talking about it and beginning to reflect.
As somebody commented for AATs, I think there is not enough experience to draw conclusions, therefore there is the need for more experience!
However, for various reasons, I fully support the development of the "team culture"!
