Hello men from Sector 3 studio. I am admin from ONLINERACING.EU and ingineer from ARC BRATISLAVA (LMP2) and I have some ideas about Cuting track penalties. A lot of penalties is not caused about cuting, but collision in race, a lot of penalties is not in "inside parts" of track but outside, driver lost a lot time and get plus a gift = drive thru. Version 1: Keep current penalties + add more warnings in current cut sector of track (for expample corner 5-6), for example: WARING no1 - HARD CUT WARING no2 - HARD CUT DRIVE THRU PENALTIES Version 2: Keep current penalties + directly calculate lap time, if current CUTTING TIME is faster as BEST driver lap, get drive thru Version 3: Keep current penalties + NOT directly calculate lap time after cross finishline in current lap and compare with best lap (different can be for example 1,0s and better) example in times: Best lap time: 1:32,000 Cutting in current lap: 1:33,100 = OK its +1,100s Cutting in current lap: 1:38,000 = OK its +6,000s Cutting in current lap: 1:32,400 = DRIVE THRU its <1,0s its 0,400s Cutting in current lap: 1:31,000 = DRIVE THRU its < best laptime I think, easiest version for programer is VERSION 3, in this version you dont need directly calculate time and compare it, you dont need check track sectors and count how many times who CUT track. So its best choise and easy for repair this problem.
VERY good input -- I personally would prefer Version 3, FWIW. What I would NOT like to see is a "slow down" penalty similar to what iRacing uses -- that can cause literal chaos on-track. That said, I have to admit that I did like how they dealt with cut corners in the original NASCAR Heat game -- if you cut a corner the game would automatically cut back your horsepower by 10 - 20 percent for 5 seconds or so and it would feel like your engine was "missing," thus forcing you to "give back" some time. This worked surprisingly well, much better than forcing a driver to "slow down" on their own because it was much more predictable for the other competitors and easier to anticipate.