Because with the system you are proposing for someone who wants to win the competition no score is better than a bad score. So players could be incentivised to use dirty tricks and lie. That possibility does not make me a fan of the system you are proposing.
The payoff just isnt there, the point of LLC scoring is not to catch every potential rule bender who tries to get away from an inevitable crash (a crash that wouldnt matter in any other competition anyway); its that everyone is always incentivized to fly as close to RL as possible instead of being incentivized to roll the dice and take stupid risks no one would ever contemplate IRL. Any half competent pilot flying for a result is pretty much never going to get himself in to a position where he is likely to crash, because there is no pay off to taking big risks. Cheating only makes sense if first you decide to take some big risk against your own interest, and then for some reason you count on no one else seeing or recording this
and being able to disconnect or somehow hide your bad outcome, but convince the jury it was some act of god, while at the same time, taking the risk of getting zero points, or even disqualified or banned if they find out you are full of sh*t. Its just not a sensible strategy and its definitely not a winning one.
Its quite possible someone someday will make a big mistake but get away with it through deceit, and thus may get a free pass or at least reduced penalty for a bad decision (which again everyone gets all the time in every other competition), but I dont see how its feasible to game the system systematically in some premeditated way. And if the prospect of someone rolling the dice and possibly once getting away with a reduced penalty after a bad decision annoys you, then how do current competitions make you feel?
And this is the other reason as it doesn't matter which way the decision is made it will always carry some shadow of a doubt. If you allow someone's race to be cancelled others might think that the pilot disconnected on purpose (like in my example), lied to you and got away with it.
Thats what the appeal is for. Doesnt every RL competition have a jury? If you dont trust their judgement based on the same evidence you have, then I guess dont participate?
On the other hand, if I suddenly lose power I don't want to be at the mercy of the organisers and I don't feel that I should be required to prove that I am innocent and have done nothing shady.
What happens in an FAI final if you lose power? You are not gonna win, are you. Is that unfair? LLC rules aim to minimize the effect of "bad luck" as much as possible, but its impossible to fully eliminate it. If a tree fall on your glider IRL, its not something rules can fix either. If you dont want to fly in a competition where a badly timed power outage potentially reduces (but never eliminates) your chances of winning, I suggest buying a UPS.
But its also worth pointing out that if you compare with something like CWC; the reality is that for almost every CWC pilot, a power outage actually results in zero points. Glancing over the last CWC, there seems to be only about 20 pilots who even managed to get just the bare minimum 17 counting starts and only 3 or 4? players who got at least 19. Those are about the only ones who might have a power outage and blue screen without undue penalty. Not a lot. I think we should focus more on the experience of the 200 other participants, or at least the 100 or so who fly semi regularly, whos end result in CWC is completely meaningless. It may be difficult to win an LLC style competition if you can fly only 10 out of 20 tasks, but its not impossible, especially since those flying many more tasks also risk a bad result every time they fly; but for sure your result will be far more representative.
Do you think the system you are proposing will be popular and appeal to a large 'audience'? I know this competition was successful a long time ago, but I think it was when we had over 500 pilots signed up for Skybattle... In the current day and age with lots of new pilots trying to find their way around the complicated world of C3 will they be interested?
If nothing else, I hope at least anyone flying IRL would be very keen in being able to use a condor competition flying as a training tool for safe mountain flying and familiarizing themselves with actual outlanding fields in regions like the Alps, and I suppose actually having a competitive benefit from your FES plane would be a welcome change too. People who are consistent, but not fast enough for frequent podium finishes ought to be interested, as no other competition will give them better odds of good results. Lastly, CC competitions are almost all essentially the same and have been for more than a decade, I think we agree enthusiasm seems dwindling. Would an LLC style competition change that? I dont know, there is only one way to find out.
