I hate the connection system

[J4p032]

I am suffering a number of blackouts in my house. They are not mine but all the village we are.
Last tasks was in the middle of the race, and because I have a SAI I could continue. Today when the entering time was only 2 minutes left I had a blackout. Thanks for the connetion reject system I couldn't do the race. Great.

I don't understand why it don't allow you to enter. It could allow you and put you a penalty, or at least leave you enter until the race gate is closed. Totally frustrated and ungry.

[janjansen]

If you allow entering the game until the closing of the gate, in most races, people joining late would not have a fair chance, and would have no way of knowing that before they join and enter the game. And then they would complain that its not fair that they still need to be towed up and climb 1000 meter while gate is closed.

And there is another reason; a task setter cant know if 5 or 50 people will join and need a tow. So how much warmup time is needed? For 5 people only a few minutes, but for 50, that may take 30-40 minutes. So to solve this, condor delays opening the start gate start until everyone is launched. If people could continue to join during this time, this could take forever, and the sun may have set before the start line opens. People could also rejoin to restart the task if they fluttered or had a bad start. Or just to mess with everyone so no one can start. So you would have to disable this function, and then you get the previous problem again, where everyone will complain on full servers that they didnt get enough time to start, or everyone needs to wait an hour before the line opens, even if there are only 3 players. Neither are acceptable solutions.

So there is no perfect solution for this. I do wish for the ability to host tasks on free flight servers (which can always be joined) but I think the current system is a good compromise for most races. Its not great when you have blackouts, I do get that, but being honest, thats much less common than people joining late and no amount of code changes can solve your electricity supply

[J4p032]

Don't agree. I have seen in many games how disconnection don't mean don't be able to reconnect. The server knew that I was there connected for how many time I was.

1. If I am disconnected before the start but I was there waiting (as I was today) the game could allow to reconnect again and maintain the plane as invisible but with the entity still there. I have seen that in many online games.

2. If the disconnection is in the middle of the race, the same. The plane could disappear but maintain the offline client flight and when connect make it appear again but without collision for 1 minute or so, so others could see the plane re-connected.

I know it is not easy, and understand the tow problem (something that in 2 months on competition still didn't see any task with tow), but what I don't agree totally is with the complains of the people about not beeing fair. These Low and Slow races lots of users can race the same task twice so they can upload the better time. I don't complain about that, so hear someone that complains because I just login 1 minute before the end of the gate (not saying after the race is started by the close of the gate), I don't understand it... Even with someone like me that is slow as hell.
Because the way it is designed Condor, now I have to spend 50 Euros in a Sai to connect it to the router. I understand is the way it is and it is not going to be changed, but at least I need to rant a little because my frustration of a system that could be better.
Right now because blackouts or because poor internet connection I have been finishing 3 tasks alone (disconnected) and one of them not been able to start it even I was waiting the 20 minutes to be online before the end of the connection time.

[janjansen]

Don't agree. I have seen in many games how disconnection don't mean don't be able to reconnect. The server knew that I was there connected for how many time I was.

1. If I am disconnected before the start but I was there waiting (as I was today) the game could allow to reconnect again and maintain the plane as invisible but with the entity still there. I have seen that in many online games.

2. If the disconnection is in the middle of the race, the same. The plane could disappear but maintain the offline client flight and when connect make it appear again but without collision for 1 minute or so, so others could see the plane re-connected.

Reconnecting after a dropped connection is something else. That might work, although it would likely be abused, for instance by pilots trying to hide their start or a strong thermal by temporarily disconnecting, and as you mention, probably wouldnt be trivial to implement. It may even be impossible with the DirectPlay protocol that condor uses, its pretty old and not flexible at all (time outs are hardcoded, to name just one thing). But if you disconnect after having been connected, you can continue the race offline, this is fully supported and also prevents the cheating. You can hide your own strong thermal, but then you wont see anyone else's either.

and understand the tow problem (something that in 2 months on competition still didn't see any task with tow),

Low and Slow uses airstart, low start line and extremely short time windows. This is not the norm, most competitions use tow and have 60 minute start windows.

but what I don't agree totally is with the complains of the people about not beeing fair. These Low and Slow races lots of users can race the same task twice so they can upload the better time.

Again, that is only low and slow. It is unique in the sense that it has moderately difficult/realistic tasks, but everything else is the opposite of a hardcore competition. LnS was designed -quite literally- for you, to allow people in underserved time slots to experience "tough" races, but to get a reasonable number of participants able to fly at that hour, I had to compromise everywhere else; made it instant action: no tows, no difficulty getting in to starting position, extremely short time windows making restarts unfeasible. And because it attracts a disproportional number of new condor pilots, the focus is not on measuring skill but rather in gaining experience and improving skill.

Even so, I would have made it at least a little more hardcore if I could. I would like to punish crashing (teaching people to minimize risk and land out safely) but because condor club doesnt let me configure the competition in a way that avoids cheating, I allowed it, allowed flying the tasks twice. Also because this helps in gaining experience and filling the server. And it may help if you have lousy internet But people do complain about that, which I understand. It is easy to take advantage of this and as a result, you cant take those results too seriously, and no one should. If you want serious, fly CWC or Condor GP or Medlánky Cup. But lets not undermine condor so those competitions are no longer fair. Especially considering those attracts 5x more pilots than Low and Slow.

I don't complain about that, so hear someone that complains because I just login 1 minute before the end of the gate (not saying after the race is started by the close of the gate), I don't understand it... Even with someone like me that is slow as hell.

Again, you are basing this on your LnS experience which is atypical. On a tchintchin race on a busy day, you may literally spend more time preparing for the race than flying it, which explains why I do it differently for the late hour LnS. I set the tasks deliberately so you can join even 10 seconds before endjoin, and you can be racing 1 minute later and still have a fair start. Because you always airstart above the nearby start line and almost always near a good source of lift. But most races use tow and have a start line way above tow release, usually 2000+ meter, you may need 40 minutes to get everyone airborne, 30+ minutes or even multiple attempts to get in to position to start. .

But letting someone join a more typical race shortly before closing of the start window, depriving him of the time needed to gain altitude, even PLP would have no chance of even making the upper half of the result table. Of course people would complain, and they should. Maybe you wouldnt, because your goal is not winning or a top classification result. Yet. You probably also wouldnt mind this would enable anyone to recover from a bad start by simply reconnecting, but competitive pilots would find this unfair.

Im all for catering to new pilots or recreational pilots as much as we can, I would like to see some changes to condor to better serve them, and I go out of my way to cater for them with the tools I have; but we cant allow to undermine condor for the hardcore competitions pilots who do fly it seriously as they form the backbone of the condor community.

because the way it is designed Condor, now I have to spend 50 Euros in a Sai to connect it to the router.

I would say you had to spend that, because you have an unstable internet connection.... which sucks, but its not something condor can solve, and the solutions you propose would undermine condor for most others.

BTW, I think we have all been in your situation at some point. Too late to join, or computer freezing at the wrong time, internet getting disconnected, or some popup causing a loss of control and a crash, joystick, pedals or trackir not working and no time to fix it, and a planned condor evening is ruined. We know its frustrating. I have thought about solutions for this for the past decade, but honestly, there are no simple solutions for this, a gliding race is not comparable to other online games. Every solution I have heard or thought off so far, has undesirable side effects and most of them would require major changes taking a lot of development time, that most of us would like to see spent on other issues, especially since those solutions generally dont really fix the problem without causing new ones.

The best I have come up with, is free flight servers (infinite join time) with tasks and always open start lines. Possibly with a static time of day so the weather remains more or less constant. This would be a solution for recreational pilots and might even be used for not so serious competitions like LnS. But its not suitable for highly competitive races where people carefully chose their start time, or even fly back to the start line to have restart etc, as they do in RL. For those, I simply do not see a good solution. Well, except maybe having much more condor players so if you cant join one race or you drop out for whatever reason, you have other populated servers to chose from. But thats not something easy to achieve either

[UrosM]

I am suffering a number of blackouts in my house. They are not mine but all the village we are.
Last tasks was in the middle of the race, and because I have a SAI I could continue. Today when the entering time was only 2 minutes left I had a blackout. Thanks for the connetion reject system I couldn't do the race. Great.

I don't understand why it don't allow you to enter. It could allow you and put you a penalty, or at least leave you enter until the race gate is closed. Totally frustrated and ungry.

Did you considered an option to introduce your flying schedule to your electric supply company and maybe they will adjust black outs to your desire?

It's not the Condor to blame for every and all of your problems

[OXO]

If these are momentary interruptions, then a UPS is the solution.