The community vote stage is now open; please go to…
>>Crossover Challenge Community Vote Google Form<<
…and cast your ballot!
Everyone is welcome to vote, including those who did not enter. If you leave your e-mail address, we will enter you into a random draw for a special prize at the end of the challenge!
With just 21 people entering into the TCT part of the competition, everyone but one of them will get ranking points for the first event 
It also means there is a lot of more points to grab with a little more effort put into that… I hope that more will be joining the later rounds and the ones who have joined the first round improve to get closer to the top! 
Oh boy, I just realized I’ve submitted the wrong image 
I have next to no idea how to approach the massive mountain in the TC:T challenge. I’ll have to give it my best shot tonight.
Before we get into the first round of results, I’ve unfortunately had to disqualify four contestants, as their entries did not comply with the rules, and they did not reply in time with an entry that was compliant.
SwedenVirre
Rekludere
Pontoumporcento
fillman86
Better luck next time!
And with that…
Looks like we’re going to have a very close field on the Automation side! @Killrob sets the benchmark, but @AndiD is hot on his tail, and a number of others within five percent of the benchmark time; how this plays out when we get to tracks that favour other traits will be interesting to watch, for sure! The field is especially close in the P10-P25 range, with only six seconds separating @T0M in 10th place, and @dylansan in 25th…anyone in that group could make big waves on the final scoresheets by being consistent with the times in The Cyclist!
An extremely close finish at the top of the field, with @Der_Bayer exactly matching the benchmark time set by Killrob in the Prologue Event!
How is this possible, you ask? With the way that The Cyclist plays, there is - somewhere deep within the nearly infinite permutations of how to approach an event - the perfect score. On shorter events, it is a lot easier to find that perfect score, since there are fewer turns and fewer permutations of how to approach the event!
There are also a number of other solutions that are very, very close…AndiD once again is right at the top of the field; with a solution that had them lose out to Der Bayer by 0.01 turns! AndiD’s times with James and Wolfgang were actually faster than either Killrob or Der Bayer’s times, but in doing so, they sacrificed two riders instead of just one, and lost out by the slightest of margins! Shroominator is right up there too, with a solution that was very close to AndiD’s, but just slightly slower, losing out by only a quarter turn for third place.
The results were very tight in the Prologue too, with only two combined turns separating @karhgath in 5th place from @Maverick74 in 13th place - it’s a long challenge, and I’m almost certain that times in The Cyclist are going to tumble…it’s going to be exciting to see just how much everyone improves over the remaining five events!
And a big congratulations to @Ludvig, who won the random draw for a $25 US Steam gift certificate, for completing the Prologue Event!
AndiD leads the field, less than three behind Killrob’s benchmark, with a very strong performance on both sides! Karhgath in second place, showing consistently good pace in both Automation and The Cyclist, and @Xepy and @Riley close behind, both of them also showing good consistency as well. Der Bayer was let down a bit by his performance on the Automation Test Track, but his strong finish in the Prologue event brings him right back into contention, holding a slight lead over @LS_Swapped_Rx-7 and Roadkill.
The challenge pulls up stakes and heads east, through the densely populated Great Lakes region of Gasmea, through the bustling metropolis of Harford, the nation’s capital, on their way to the heart of stock car racing, the very fast and very challenging Ellisbury Tri-Oval! The cars will be doing a hot-lap challenge on the road course, while the cyclists will be doing another challenging two-stage time trial event, with the field proceeding from downtown Ellisbury to the Tri-Oval, where they will complete five laps, before heading south of town to Ike’s Peak for the second day, where they face a brutal climb up the mountain on the storied hill climb course.
And just a friendly reminder that Community Voting continues until August 2nd, so get your votes in soon!
Hmm, seems like I can expect lots of zeroes for the Automation portion of the challenge. Kind of wish there had been more incentive to stick to something more realistic in terms of performance, but I can only blame myself for not pushing the laptimes of my car further. It’s not like the scoring method was a secret.
Hmm my car and engine complied with all the entry rules and requirements as stated for this competition.
Did you check your e-mail? I explained the situation.
I did, so I double checked the rules and it did not mention a specific value for engine or turbo reliability, if it had that would have been fine as I would have designed it to adhere to those rules from the outset.
Reliability wasn’t the issue, it was that you managed to find a way to break the calculations and got infinite power with that. Your engine blows up as the turbo spools (around 4k RPM), but runs fine till 8000+ RPM on the track and produces practically infinite power. That is where the problem is. Thanks for a nice test case! 626 km/h on the salt flats from an engine that delivers (according to the graphs) just a little more than 1000hp (where it breaks) can’t do that. 
This is entirely game breaking by using a bug, i.e. it is not simply an exploit. I loaded in your car and tried to see if I could fix it while keeping the general build. Making the turbo not blow up was simple, making a few other changes to reoptimize and get you below the competition limits meant you made around 515km/h on the salt flats (in line with what it should do) and your ATT track time went to 1:58, still very respectable for the build with probably a second more to grab from optimizations.
So no, there is no good basis for you to claim “not breaking the rules” because, while you didn’t, you created a car that obviously should have broken down before the first corner (as soon as it spools the turbo) and have found almost infinite power by doing so that should have raised an eyebrow. If you did that knowingly, then shame on you, if not, there is no reason to be dismissive of the issue the way you are.
Whew, that went much better than expected!
If anyone’s interested, I exported my contraption to BeamNG and gave it a spin (not literally, thanks traction control):
Good thing the Autostig is a much more competent driver than I am…
The new build of TCT and its demo are cooking, they will be up shortly. I will post here once they are and ready with the new event.
In the meantime, you should check out my solution for Event 1 (prologue was before then) to see a very good but just barely beatable solution!
TCT Event 2 is now up in the just pushed version! It is the first proper big tour event; there’s a lot that can go wrong on 4 stages.
Have fun!
Happy to take the Random Win, as my car won’t be winning anything! Even the stage 2 tune, that I shoulda submitted, wouldn’t touch the top 5.
Congrats to @AndiD and @Der_Bayer for almost (so far) beating @Killrob at his own fracking game!
Wow, I’m surprised; Was expecting CT to be my weak area compared to Automation, but I guess the practice I put in the former is working out.
With how fast the competition in Automation is, I’m starting to regret sacrificing some performance for economy. I hope that Hetvesia board appreciates this choice! :D
Well, my Automation creation turned out to be a tiny bit underperforming to say the least 
Funny thing is initially I wanted to make it FWD with 350-400hp engine and at the last moment re-considered it’s chances to compete and went for 500hp and AWD thinking that would be more than enough. Turns out I should’ve went all out and make something more similar to Koenigsegg Gemera rather than Alfa Romeo Giulia QF or Audi RS4. Oh well, it’s my fault for not trying to test if it’s possible at least.
I hope those of us who went for… let’s just say more conservative builds will have their time to shine during Hetvesia TZS evaluation.
On a plus side I’m surprised I managed to score that good in TC:T. Probably just me being lucky. I imagine my results in following stages will be far less impressive but we’ll see
I see my creation fall in the same class as yours, may the Hetvesian inspectors have mercy on us
Scoring for this challenge has been very tight at the top in the first round, and there’s a good chance it will continue to be right to the very end; playing through the events in The Cyclist might be the difference between finishing in the top 10 or not!
Ellisbury Road Course plays fairly similarly to the Automation Test Track, but with slightly more emphasis low to medium speed cornering and a bit less on top speed, so the results here broadly match what we had in the Prologue round. A very tight race has developed for the last few spots in the Top 10, with @Der_Bayer recovering somewhat after a slow start to the challenge, and @AndiD holding the top spot in the scoring category. @Killrob once again remains the top of the heap, but with AndiD’s constistent results in Automation, basically the only gap between the two is down to the differences in their results from The Cyclist.
The field has tightened up considerably between the Prologue Event and Round 1, with barely more than a single turn separating Killrob’s benchmark time from @MrdjaNikolen in 10th place, and only six one hundredths of a turn between Killrob and @karhgath in second place! A bit of a shocking result from AndiD; a miscue handling their riders sent them tumbling down the rankings, finishing a disappointing 12th place, which surely will make the rest of their Cyclist results that much more critical, especially with the big challenge events coming in the next three rounds.
This event was a challenging one, as it basically forced you to abandon one of your riders on the steep climb up Ike’s Peak, in order to allow your best three riders to get the best possible time - this is a theme we might see again in later events, so check out the scoring metrics in the original post for more information on how your riders will be scored…there are good clues in there!
And a big congratulations to @Maverick74, who won the random draw for a $25 US Steam gift certificate, for completing the Prologue Event!
AndiD leads the field the field after the completion of Round 1, but after a bit of a rough outing in The Cyclist this time around, Karhgath, Der Bayer, @Xepy and @Riley have managed to close the gap fairly significantly on the challenge leader.
The challenge now takes a long jaunt south, deep into the Hetvesian Alps, for three very challenging events; the infamous Der Rücken Hill Climb, which will test the acceleration and low-speed handling of the contestant cars to the limit, on the brutally hard climb up to the Ost-Altgau Astronomical Observatory. This is followed up by a statistical analysis by the Hetvesian Technical Certification Authority, where data from the contestant cars will be analysed to determine which is the safest, the most comfortable, and the most reliable of all.
On the Cyclist Side, the Alpine Tour of Hetvesia is no less challenging; a four-stage tour forces with dramatically different conditions on all four stages forces constants to carefully consider their resource usage, so that they can make the big push on the final stage to set the best time!
And just a friendly reminder that Community Voting continues until August 2nd, so get your votes in soon!
