Online Competitions - Things to Consider

[witor]

I think we have a bit of a crisis regarding the number of available competitions and an even bigger issue with the number of competitors participating. Organising a competition is a big commitment, requires a lot of effort, and is not easy, especially for someone who hasn’t done it before. With all that in mind, I thought we could come up with some guidance to help create competitions that will hopefully attract more participants. My perspective is, of course, highly biased, and I understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Things to Consider Before Starting a Competition:

1) ccRating Pilots have different views on ccRating. Some think it is important; others couldn’t care less. Those who care about ccRating are often reluctant to participate in ccRated competitions organised by inexperienced organisers with a small number of participants. If this is your first competition, consider starting with an unrated one. If your competition is ccRated, it is absolutely vital that the results of each flight are uploaded so participants always know what to expect. If results are not consistently uploaded, it can cast a shadow of uncertainty and even lead to suspicions of unsportsmanlike behaviour. We had some teething issues with Condor 3, Condor Club, and DSHelper, but I hope those are behind us.

2) Task Setting This is probably the biggest factor that can make or break the competition. Condor 3 introduced new possibilities, but also made task setting more difficult than ever. There are a number of online servers that run on a more or less regular basis, some of which allow others to submit tasks. Try setting some tasks for casual flights before organising a competition. In my opinion, a good competition task should have as many features as possible that could potentially decide the race. This includes interesting terrain to allow participants to showcase their strategic thinking, a maximum wing loading to make glider choice less obvious, weather with a few zones that may even move to make the conditions less predictable, and airspace to test navigation skills and multitasking. Start speed and finish altitude limits are also useful to give pilots a chance to earn penalties. Try to avoid tasks where pilots have to catch a thermal in a specific spot. Avoid "impossible" tasks, such as when a turnpoint is in prohibited airspace and cannot be turned without penalty. Also, avoid tasks where only a few climbs are needed, as fewer climbs mean luck plays a larger role in the final results.

3) Difficulty This is another aspect that is very difficult to get right. More difficult tasks are more likely to be won by experienced pilots and outlanded by less experienced pilots. If you suspect that your task will be difficult, consider making it a bit easier just in case. Easier tasks are still challenging to win, but newer pilots will feel satisfied simply reaching the finish line. Of course, there is a fine line between tasks that are too easy and too difficult. If the winner completes the task in an 18m glider with a speed above 160 km/h or below 100 km/h, it generally means that the task was either too easy or too difficult.

Realism and Other Settings This is potentially the most divisive aspect. Here are my preferences and sugestions:

In-air start: Everyone is busy nowadays. The whole point of a competition is racing against others, not wasting time in a queue or climbing to the start altitude before the race even begins. If someone wants to practise aerotows, they can do so offline without wasting everyone’s time.
In regatta races, make sure that even those who enter the game just before the end of the join time will be able to start the task without disadvantage. This can be achieved by carefully choosing the task’s max start altitude and release altitude. The race should start after the start gate is opened, not before. The max start altitude should be significantly below the cloud base to avoid flying for an hour to find a lucky cloud with a high cloud base, which would provide more energy at the start line. A start speed limit could also be useful.
Flying with others around is quite enjoyable. A 6 km icon visibility is a good distance. Allowing mid-air collision recovery with no penalty is also a good idea. Height recovery should be off.
External view should definitely be off in a ccRated competition, as it gives a ‘God-like view’ of cloud streets or shows the exact location of a cloud, which is not possible in the real world. Having aerotows for the sake of realism while enabling external view, and then complaining about the auto-rudder not being as it used to be, is quite interesting—to put it mildly, but I digress…

Feel free to share other tips, and let’s hope we will have more well-organised competitions.

[wickid]

Hi Witold,

I think this is a good summary.

I think we have it pretty well sorted out now. CC-rating should be working again now with the new version of DSHelper. I think it worked yesterday on the Marburg Open. I've updated my server for the DCG as well so we'll see on monday.

I've been mostly following the same guidelines as you put in the summary for the DCG. Only thing we have different is external view, which we have enabled.

Some other interesting things I think

Live scoring:

People seem to like having it on. I have it on in the DCG because it allows you to see your penalty and gives you a chance to correct. However for truely serious competitions this should be off.

Start window:

For the DCG we use regatta or a 20 min window. The 20 min was chosen to keep the pack relatively close and to prevent endless waiting games. We all want to race, not aerotow and hang around for more than an hour before actually racing. A short window does provide for some tactics without it being an overly long wait.

Task difficulty:

We are recieving mixed feedback on the tasks. We try to mix it a bit with airspace on and off depending on the task. Some people are loving the harder tasks, but some people are fustrated by not being able to finish. Also the airspace and navigation is proving quite hard for less experienced people. We've been trying to mitigate by posting airspace briefings via our facebook. I also try to set my tasks around airspace and the cloudbase so that airspace infringements vertically are unlikely when on the courseline. We are still trying to find a ballance.

I would also like to add that Alex is trying his best, like we all are, with getting to grips with Condor3. And I'm glad we have two different but interesting competitions right now. I'm really hoping we get a CWC this year as well. Otherwise we might have to set something up Witold...

[witor]

Live scoring:

People seem to like having it on. I have it on in the DCG because it allows you to see your penalty and gives you a chance to correct. However for truely serious competitions this should be off.

Agree. I don't mind live scoring being on, especially with a short start gate. In a very serious competition it should be off

For the DCG we use regatta or a 20 min window. The 20 min was chosen to keep the pack relatively close and to prevent endless waiting games. We all want to race, not aerotow and hang around for more than an hour before actually racing. A short window does provide for some tactics without it being an overly long wait.

I am very happy to see that you agree with me on that. 20 minutes is fine for the reasons you mentioned but could lead to a waiting game and 'regata' start after 20 minutes. This is better however than a long waiting game and 'regatta' after an hour Until we get PEV starts I guess this is the best we can do.

I would also like to add that Alex is trying his best

I am sure he is. We fly together on my server very often and I hope my tasks somewhat helped him to get a better feel. I believe that racing experience is absolutely necessary in order to be able to set good tasks. Alex is a hard-to-beat racer, so I am sure his tasks are great. It is a shame that your competition collides with my basketball...

I'm really hoping we get a CWC this year as well.

So do I. My worry is that people who set tasks for CWC in the past are not really active in Condor 3, which means that it will be difficult for them to set good tasks.

Otherwise we might have to set something up Witold...

I hope that this will not be necessary. I wouldn't mind doing it, but I don't like the idea of organising one of the most prestigious Condor competitions and participating in it. I would hope to achieve a decent result, but if I succeed it could lead to discussions about fair play, which I would prefer to avoid.

To be honest I thought that some bits in my post could potentially be controversial and I am very happy to see that we are pretty much on the same page when it comes to what a good competition should be. The only thing I strongly disagree with is the external view.

[Tom]

I agree pretty much with everything. Only difference being we kept player Icons off as they dont exist in r/l in the Gladiators comp. The main reason we kept them on in Aces High was the lack of FLARM. And they were a way to help mid air collision avoidance plus it stopped players tailgating others and also on No PDA tasks stopped players relying on others to navigate round a task.

Live Scoring was off as it could make people speed up / slow down take more risks etc.

[Vertigo]

Ill toss in my 2 cents. Im l largely agreed with witor. TBH I had not even considered the first point about CCrating, I thought the point you were going to make was that ccrating matters to some, so make sure its enabled; but what you say I guess makes sense.

I slightly disagree on airstart and external views. Tow start with 100 players is not a good idea, but there is some charm to it in servers with ~30-ish players, especially if its a competition with longer tasks. I think it does add to the immersion, but Im just as fine without it.

As for external views; I usually fly with TT, and he uses it all the time to scout ahead, I almost never use it in flight because Im too busy flying. Over the years I dont think its happened more than a handful of times that he spotted something relevant, that I hadnt seen by just looking out the cockpit. I reckon its happened more often that he deviated far from course of flying way too fast because he was using external views. OTOH, external views are a nice distraction after finishing/landing or before take off if you dont use airstart. Maybe after the release of condor 3.9.6 we can ask uros for external views only before starting or after finishing/landing, and then we can all be happy

And to add a few personal pet peeves about competitions; tasks should be tested if at all possible. I know how hard that is and how much work, but in C3 its a lot easier as you can move the airstart to anywhere. If a competition organizer never finishes his own tasks, something is wrong. Dont be shy and reach out for help, ask for experienced task setters to help you out or at least check your task.

There is no good reason to disallow (or penalize) midair collision recovery. Lag happens, even if it doesnt happen to you, it can happen to someone else who ends up crashing in to you. And even if you use trackir and look out diligently, someone else may not be able to, or for whatever reason crash in to you. The fact you will lose altitude, and need to repair is penalty enough, arguably too much if you are not at fault, unless you want to manually assign blame to the responsible pilot (if any, again, lag happens).

Lastly, an appeal to Thierry; IMHO the greatest difference between RL and current (CC) condor competitions is the almost complete lack of stress/risk in multiday competitions. If you have time enough to fly most or all races, it doesnt matter if you screw up once in a while, or you can take stupid risks and hope for a miracle by trying something that you know probably wont work out, because if it fails, your race will simply not count as almost all CC competitions use a best X out Y days scoring system. In reality, if you have a single bad day, you almost certainly wont win the competition, period. If you have a really bad day, you are 300K in the hole or maybe in the hospital. I have never flown RL competitions, but I feel pretty confident that makes you think twice about taking stupid risks. The very least we should try to achieve in condor, is that a bad piloting decision or excessive risk taking puts at risk your competition result, allowing competition leaders to tumble down the ranking when they do mess up, and give pilots an incentive to land out safely or finish slowly instead of doing hail marry ballistic trajectories over mountain passes. To be clear: of course ive done them too! Im not criticizing pilots, the problem is as Charlie Munger said: “Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome.” Details on how I think we can achieve more realistic incentives, without being blind to the reality of condor races/RL issues, computer issues etc, in the beta forum.

[witor]

I usually fly with TT, and he uses it all the time to scout ahead,

I think this says it all. Pilots use an external view to scout ahead, which is as unrealistic as unrealistic can get. Do you see a cloud ahead and you want to know if it is above the ridge or beyond the ridge - no problem just switch an external view on. Do you want to see which way the cloud street goes even if you are at the cloud base? No problem just switch the external view on. Do you want to have a look at a mountain pass 15km ahead? No worries just switch the external view on. Do you want to see exactly how high and how much behind your opponent is during a tight regatta finish? No worries, just switch an autopilot on and have a look using an external view.

One little thing, Condor is an information game. Even if you think a piece of information is not very useful, believe me there are people out there who will find it very useful and will take full advantage of it.

Lastly, an appeal to Thierry; IMHO the greatest difference between RL and current (CC) condor competitions is the almost complete lack of stress/risk in multiday competitions. If you have time enough to fly most or all races, it doesnt matter if you screw up once in a while, or you can take stupid risks and hope for a miracle by trying something that you know probably wont work out, because if it fails, your race will simply not count as almost all CC competitions use a best X out Y days scoring system. In reality, if you have a single bad day, you almost certainly wont win the competition, period. If you have a really bad day, you are 300K in the hole or maybe in the hospital. I have never flown RL competitions, but I feel pretty confident that makes you think twice about taking stupid risks. The very least we should try to achieve in condor, is that a bad piloting decision or excessive risk taking puts at risk your competition result, allowing competition leaders to tumble down the ranking when they do mess up, and give pilots an incentive to land out safely or finish slowly instead of doing hail marry ballistic trajectories over mountain passes. To be clear: of course ive done them too! Im not criticizing pilots, the problem is as Charlie Munger said: “Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome.” Details on how I think we can achieve more realistic incentives, without being blind to the reality of condor races/RL issues, computer issues etc, in the beta forum.

I am not sure what you are trying to say here and what Thiery has to do with anything... Condor Club is just a platform where anyone can create a competition and all the settings are up to individual organisers. The whole point of this thread was to help establish the most sensible framework for future competitions.

But this reminded me of an important point worth mentioning. Flying in a condor competition is simply not the same as flying in a real-world competition. Flying in a condor happens when people have a bit of spare time to have some fun. We do not take 2 weeks of work to go somewhere and focus on every race. Often life happens and people can not participate in all competition days. Other things beyond our control happen as well. Blue screens, Quest link disconnections, microprocessors overheating because someone never cleaned it, Cats spilling drinks over our laptops etc... There must be a number of spare tasks in every competition. I would say about 70-80% of tasks counting is a good number. I am not sure how many people had the required number of tasks at the end of the last CWC, but there were not that many...

The very least we should try to achieve in condor, is that a bad piloting decision or excessive risk taking puts at risk your competition result, allowing competition leaders to tumble down the ranking when they do mess up, and give pilots an incentive to land out safely or finish slowly instead of doing hail marry ballistic trajectories over mountain passes.

I believe the ccRating helps with this. I know for a fact that some people fly more carefully in ccRated competitions. Even if the race doesn't count towards your final competition score it can still hurt your rating pretty badly... Of course only if you choose to care.

[arneh]

A lot of good points brought up here, and I agree with pretty much everything Witold writes (as well as Wiek and others)

Often life happens and people can not participate in all competition days. Other things beyond our control happen as well. Blue screens, Quest link disconnections, microprocessors overheating because someone never cleaned it, Cats spilling drinks over our laptops etc... There must be a number of spare tasks in every competition. I would say about 70-80% of tasks counting is a good number. I am not sure how many people had the required number of tasks at the end of the last CWC, but there were not that many...

Of course everyone can not participate every day. Maybe another scoring method could be used. E.g. the average score through all the days you do take part (with a minimum number of days needed to get full average so someone does not win the contest by having a good first day and sitting out the rest).
There is of course problems with such a scoring method too, but maybe it's still worth to have it as an option?

The very least we should try to achieve in condor, is that a bad piloting decision or excessive risk taking puts at risk your competition result, allowing competition leaders to tumble down the ranking when they do mess up, and give pilots an incentive to land out safely or finish slowly instead of doing hail marry ballistic trajectories over mountain passes.

I believe the ccRating helps with this. I know for a fact that some people fly more carefully in ccRated competitions. Even if the race doesn't count towards your final competition score it can still hurt your rating pretty badly... Of course only if you choose to care.

I feel that hits me very closely
Considering the impact on the ccrating I fly more carefully and if approaching a risky situation keep reminding myself not to do something which can get me into a crash. Because the impact on ccrating is brutal for a top rated pilot if you have a non-finish - I've had times where it took a year to make up for the points lost with two bad results.
And even when I have a bad day I try to make up as much as I can for the rest of task, and try to at least gain some positions to limit the damage. While previously I probably would just have exited as the result would not matter in the contest anyway.

[witor]

Of course everyone can not participate every day. Maybe another scoring method could be used. E.g. the average score through all the days you do take part (with a minimum number of days needed to get full average so someone does not win the contest by having a good first day and sitting out the rest).
There is of course problems with such a scoring method too, but maybe it's still worth to have it as an option?

Unfortunately, there is no perfect scoring solution. Condor is a probability game. If someone was a bit lucky and did quite well at the beginning of a competition they would be incentivised to stop flying as soon as they reached the minimum number of races and we don't want people to stop participating. To reduce the effect of luck the minimal number would have to be quite large, which brings us quite close to what we have now.

I did think at some point that instead of counting best n results we could count first n results, which is kind of what you are suggesting. Unfortunately, it would be difficult to prevent fair play violations. If someone is not doing great in a race they could always pretend to have a 'blue screen' and I strongly believe that genuine random events should not decide competitions. With a large percentage of races counting (that's why I suggested 70-80%) I don't think that the scoring system makes that much of a difference. I think our biggest problem is just a lack of participation. I wish we could have competitions with 500 pilots like in the old days...

[janjansen]

[reposted below using correct account]

[wickid]

Witold, Tom and Vertigo. I wrote you guys on google chat. Seems we are on the same page. Lets work something out!

[Vertigo]

I think this says it all. Pilots use an external view to scout ahead, which is as unrealistic as unrealistic can get. Do you see a cloud ahead and you want to know if it is above the ridge or beyond the ridge - no problem just switch an external view on. Do you want to see which way the cloud street goes even if you are at the cloud base? No problem just switch the external view on. Do you want to have a look at a mountain pass 15km ahead? No worries just switch the external view on. Do you want to see exactly how high and how much behind your opponent is during a tight regatta finish? No worries, just switch an autopilot on and have a look using an external view.

You must have better camera skills than me . The external camera points towards you does it not? You can move it out, but its still pointing to you, making it at best very tricky and confusing to look at terrain ahead, and IMO far less useful than your flight computer. You can also move the camera up in to the stratosphere and yes that gives you a view of cloud streets, but unless you are against the cloud base, you can see 99% of that by just looking out the cockpit, and then you also have a better view of the terrain, when you look from above its all flat. Do you actually use F2 often if its enabled? I almost never (and not because of any moral qualms, if its allowed, its allowed, I just dont see the benefit most of the time). But like I said, I dont have strong feelings about this either way, it just wont bother me if someone enables external views.

I am not sure what you are trying to say here and what Thiery has to do with anything... Condor Club is just a platform where anyone can create a competition and all the settings are up to individual organisers. The whole point of this thread was to help establish the most sensible framework for future competitions.

Check my post on LLC in the multiplayer section in the beta forum. In short, we need manual scoring options so organizers or a panel of judges can distinguish between someone disconnecting 5 seconds before hitting trees from someone whos computer actually crashed while clearly established on final glide. If you have that, and especially if people record or live stream their flights, judging shouldnt be too hard (we did it based on FTRs in LLC), then it can become reasonable to score every started flight, making outlandings a big deal, giving zero points to actual crashes or suspect disconnections, calculating/estimating distance points or finish times when RL stuff interfered etc etc.

To strike a balance between not being able to start every flight (or in some cases having to abort a flight for "valid" reasons) and still having an incentive to fly, even if you placed first on the first flight, my proposal is to average all started flights, but give everyone a few low (500-ish) or zero score results to start from. That always allows you to improve your score (you can never reach 1000 avg), but especially for the highest ranked pilots, there is also always a very real risk that you worsen your score if you mess up or crash.

Last thing I would love to see, is the option to differentiate safe out landings from lucky ones on 45 degree inclines. Streckenflug has a database and cup files for outlanding fields which could be used for that:
https://landout.streckenflug.at/
I can be loaded in to the LX or xcsoar (hopefully one day in to the condor PDA too). Land out within say 1 or 2Km of such a field, or on an actual airfield, and its all good. Outlandings elsewhere in a mountain task could be penalized or lead to disqualification. And even if you have FES or turbo, you would still need to safely land somewhere (and thus get there), pressing engine start button shouldnt be a magic savior, but having a fes would be an actual advantage (as it is IRL). All this would give people a strong incentive and useful training to learn and try and stay local of real world outlanding fields, rather than hone their ballistic mountain pass and 45 degree incline landing skills

Aside from the outlanding fields, what I describe above is essentially how LLC worked, but this requires support in Condor Club .

[Mikko]

Lately I have seen Marburg Open using wingload limitations in 15/18m class to even the performance, and I would like to see it being used much more going forward. JS3 performance is so unrealistically superior to others and it's just sad to see nobody flies V3 or others after all the hard work done bringing those to Condor. People are now waiting to get AS33 released and for what? To fly with JS3... AFAIK, in RL JS3 pilots fly usually around 54/55m2 wingloading, unless very strong day expected, it's just too heavy when fully loaded. Windloading limitation would bring nice variation to the competitions, encouraging people to fly the gliders they like and still be able to finish well in the results, or at least not take that hard beating

Other thing not too commonly used is weak or very weak thermal settings with low varation. There's been a lot talk about realism in here and other threads but if you really want realism and learn how to fly in competitions and about tactics, these settings should be used more often. Very weak weather requires pilots to consider how much ballast should be carried on task and when to dump, and what are the optimal speeds during glides. We are currrenly completly missing this aspect in current races. In RL, one of the usual questions after the day I have to people I race with, is: "how much ballast did you have today". With normal weather settings we don't even think about the ballast as everybody can go fully loaded 230 km/h glides, Every.Single.Time.

Generally my feeling is that Condor's thermal presets are bit off. Normal thermals settings are just way too strong. Weak weather setting corresponds to actually good, normal gliding weather in RL. Thermal averages and mc settings are closer to real life (1.5-1.8m/s) than the 2.5+ averages with Condor's normal thermal settings, which corresponds to strong weather in RL. So maybe this is something for dev's to think about from realism perspective for future patches: What is considered normal weather, is it 2.5 m/s average thermals or actually 1.5 m/s average.

Then the Cc rating. Currently the award for success is small but punishment for failure is way too hard, especially when taking into account all the issues witold mentioned about BSOD, quest links, etc. that pilots cannot do anything about. And what arne said is right, this about winning without losing with current Cc rating. It's a bit harsh to need to fly the next year without mistakes to catchup the ratings lost due to few mistakes. Yes it makes pilots to fly carefully but there should be better balance. Condor has also developed to completely new game during the 10 years. I don't know why Cc rating is taking into account ancient scores from all the way from the beginning of the time. Old scores (at least 10+ years) and pilots who have not flown during C2/C3 period, should in my opinion be removed.

Finally, I really appreciate the good work done and patience with releasing C3, I love how the cloudstreets work and the addition of weather zones. I think flying is now much closer to RL and we can make the competitions more fun than they ever been so far.

[wickid]

Lately I have seen Marburg Open using wingload limitations in 15/18m class to even the performance, and I would like to see it being used much more going forward. JS3 performance is so unrealistically superior to others and it's just sad to see nobody flies V3 or others after all the hard work done bringing those to Condor. People are now waiting to get AS33 released and for what? To fly with JS3... AFAIK, in RL JS3 pilots fly usually around 54/55m2 wingloading, unless very strong day expected, it's just too heavy when fully loaded. Windloading limitation would bring nice variation to the competitions, encouraging people to fly the gliders they like and still be able to finish well in the results, or at least not take that hard beating

Actually, the issue is not that the JS3 is "too good". The performance relative to the Ventus, JS1 and ASG29 is correct. The issue is we usually have bombastic weather in Condor. Over 3 m/s thermals is where the JS3 with its high wingloading excels. The AS33 has almost the same wingloading as the JS3. The JS3 has 60.4 kg/m^2, the AS33 has exactly 60 kg/m^2. So they should be pretty similar in the "regular" Condor conditions.

Restricted wingloading favours gliders with larger wing areas. They are heavier for the same wingloading, thus will perform better. Yesterday's TchinTchin task was won by a JS1. It was restricted at 45 kg/m^2. The JS1 is actually the best performer in the 180 kph+ range at that WL. The Ventus3 was designed more for European conditions and SGP style competitions. That is why it has a slightly bigger wing area. The JS3 is more a pure racer, designed for the strong South-african conditions. JS1in 18 meter is a compromise, as it need the the tip to be wide enough to fit the 21 meter span tips. Knowing all this, I think, is also part of being a good competition pilot.

Other thing not too commonly used is weak or very weak thermal settings with low varation. There's been a lot talk about realism in here and other threads but if you really want realism and learn how to fly in competitions and about tactics, these settings should be used more often. Very weak weather requires pilots to consider how much ballast should be carried on task and when to dump, and what are the optimal speeds during glides. We are currrenly completly missing this aspect in current races. In RL, one of the usual questions after the day I have to people I race with, is: "how much ballast did you have today". With normal weather settings we don't even think about the ballast as everybody can go fully loaded 230 km/h glides, Every.Single.Time.

Generally, I have found that dumping water only pays when the thermals are less than 1 m/s when fully ballasted. Condor tasks are relatively short, so there is a lot of DH from start to finish. A relatively large part of the task is spend gliding, where ballast is important. Making thermals weaker means you are spending more time in thermals. If you want to keep the tasks a reasonable length time wise, you have to shorten the distance, making the problem worse, as the FG will be an even larger part of the task.

Generally my feeling is that Condor's thermal presets are bit off. Normal thermals settings are just way too strong. Weak weather setting corresponds to actually good, normal gliding weather in RL. Thermal averages and mc settings are closer to real life (1.5-1.8m/s) than the 2.5+ averages with Condor's normal thermal settings, which corresponds to strong weather in RL. So maybe this is something for dev's to think about from realism perspective for future patches: What is considered normal weather, is it 2.5 m/s average thermals or actually 1.5 m/s average.

This depends hugely on more factors. Higher cloud base gives stronger thermals at medium. Mountains also add some strength to thermals. So medium on one task is not the same as medium on an other. You can also play with the high cloud setting as that also weakens thermals.

Then the Cc rating. Currently the award for success is small but punishment for failure is way too hard, especially when taking into account all the issues witold mentioned about BSOD, quest links, etc. that pilots cannot do anything about. And what arne said is right, this about winning without losing with current Cc rating. It's a bit harsh to need to fly the next year without mistakes to catchup the ratings lost due to few mistakes. Yes it makes pilots to fly carefully but there should be better balance.

The higher you are on the ranking, the more severe a mistake is punished. If you are low down on the ranking, a crash or an outlanding doesn't nearly give you as much of a penalty as it does for us (talking about you, Witold, Arneh and me). If you are low down on the ranking and win a race however, you get a massive haul of points. We only get a few tens of points. It is just how the rating system works. We are expected to do well and not land out.

I've contacted Vertigo, Witold and Tom. Maybe we can arrange something with the LowLandsCup 2.0 branding. I'm waiting on feedback from AGO if he is planning on launching the CWC2025. If not I think we can have something like:

DCG and Proving Grounds on Mondays
US nightly soaring on Tuesdays
US nightly soaring on Wednesdays
LLC2 or CWC on Thursdays
Marburg Open on Fridays
E-glide on Saturdays
LLC2 or CWC on Sundays

[Vertigo]

It shouldnt matter, but it kinda does matter to me, Im not going to call a competition lowlands cup (2) if it doesnt work with similar rules and spirit as the original one (and hopefully better). Next year would also be its 20 year anniversary I believe, so if I do it, I want to do it right; but if we need to launch a series of competitions next month, I dont think we can expect Thierry to implement whats needed for LLC style rules, so it will be like previous CC competitions and not "LLC". In short, I want to give it another name. Ill head over to chatgpt now for inspiration .

[witor]

we need manual scoring options so organizers or a panel of judges can distinguish between someone disconnecting 5 seconds before hitting trees from someone whos computer actually crashed while clearly established on final glide. If you have that, and especially if people record or live stream their flights, judging shouldnt be too hard (we did it based on FTRs in LLC), then it can become reasonable to score every started flight, making outlandings a big deal, giving zero points to actual crashes or suspect disconnections, calculating/estimating distance points or finish times when RL stuff interfered etc etc.

What you are proposing requires too much manual work and is not sustainable in the long run. Competitions need to be easier to organise not more difficult. What Condor Club offers is fine. Record or stream flights? My PC already struggles to just run the game... Sorry but jur proposals are just not practical which makes them unrealistic to achieve. Outlanding already is enough penalty for someone who wants to do well in a competition and we really don't need to make it any more complicated.

Then the Cc rating. Currently the award for success is small but punishment for failure is way too hard, especially when taking into account all the issues witold mentioned about BSOD, quest links, etc. that pilots cannot do anything about. And what arne said is right, this about winning without losing with current Cc rating. It's a bit harsh to need to fly the next year without mistakes to catchup the ratings lost due to few mistakes. Yes it makes pilots to fly carefully but there should be better balance. Condor has also developed to completely new game during the 10 years. I don't know why Cc rating is taking into account ancient scores from all the way from the beginning of the time. Old scores (at least 10+ years) and pilots who have not flown during C2/C3 period, should in my opinion be removed.

ccRating works exactly as it should. Please keep in mind that ccRating reflect a probability of a player to win against other players. If your PC crashes often that means that you are more easy to beat so your rating is lower. Ideally, ccRating should purely reflect the skill of players, but that is practically unachievable and what we have is in my opinion pretty close to the best we could hope for.