Also, 2 things to improve the league if there is a second, 1: Double points for Bonneville, to shift the balance away from cars that are super glued to the road and 2: Double bonus points. Again, very few cars anywhere near the top have a significant amount of bonus points.
This league, by the way, is definitely a good idea. 
Absolutely, I was actually in the process of rebalancing the points system for future iterations (I plan for there to be a second at least). I agree bonus points should be proportionally increased, though you haven’t yet seen the vast majority of the points, so you may find doubling may be a bit excessive. Also scoring race position more stingily would work. I will also be altering the point distribution for various races… At first I tried to keep it simple because I was worried complexity would deter participation but given 21 people joined, I guess as long as I don’t allow retunes I shouldnt worry 
Bah! The BSLL is nearly perfect as is. It’s a forum game, and should be more about the forum than what you actually built. This is by far the most entertaining challenge to date. It’s entertaining to participate, and it is also entertaining for casual bystanders!
I would make a suggestion, however. Driver Aids available should be for current tech year and not chassis year. It makes it harder for older chassis to compete with newer, stiffer chassis who already have an advantage based on chassis year alone. They shouldn’t get extra points for using brand new chassis/materials which gives them new aids to ignore. They should be penalized for not having enough guts to run old shit which was way more fun anyway! 
[quote=“07CobaltGirl”]Bah! The BSLL is nearly perfect as is. It’s a forum game, and should be more about the forum than what you actually built. This is by far the most entertaining challenge to date. It’s entertaining to participate, and it is also entertaining for casual bystanders!
I would make a suggestion, however. Driver Aids available should be for current tech year and not chassis year. It makes it harder for older chassis to compete with newer, stiffer chassis who already have an advantage based on chassis year alone. They shouldn’t get extra points for using brand new chassis/materials which gives them new aids to ignore. They should be penalized for not having enough guts to run old shit which was way more fun anyway! [/quote]
I both agree with this and find this vaguely insulting, 
The BSLL is excellent, I entered to see where I came out at the end and I find it kinda comforting that my crazy car is actually on the saner side of lunacy than I first thought
Old shit is old, and fragile, plus if you watch vids of old cars doing the statuatory crash tests you’ll see cars literally disintegrating into their component parts! Anyone who puts a modern, precision manufactured, Holley carb onto their fresh cast crate motor from, say, GM racing isn’t exactly being kosher about their “old tech” either. Dig up an old engine, rebuild it with old parts and an old carb from the actual day and you’ll have issues with it… That’s why we have new stuff and that’s why there are so many company’s making IRS/IFS kits and disc brake conversions; the old days were just older, not better!
That being said, there are too many modern cars that wrap you in cotton wool and distance you from the driving experience. That’s why cars like the new FT86 (Scion FR-S or Subaru BRZ) and the Lotus Elise exist; people who love driving still exist! 
Yeah that trim tied to chassis year bothers me a bit, I’ll see if it’s been raised in car designer discussion. It might make things a bit too complicated for the main focus of the game though, since it’s rare in real world markets to produce cars with new trim and old bodies.
Wrt scoring: my main objective with the balance is to have as much as possible a different winner in each category. Of course I can’t control that directly (especially not if somebody stumbles across a build that can actually match the GG cars!!!), but the general principle is to sort of have a pretty even emphasis on madness and racing.
Loving this controversy though, “degrees of madness”. All the cars I entered have full complement of aids… But if I took them off, guaranteed you would die! Is that different?
[quote=“HighOctaneLove”]
[quote=“07CobaltGirl”]Bah! The BSLL is nearly perfect as is. It’s a forum game, and should be more about the forum than what you actually built. This is by far the most entertaining challenge to date. It’s entertaining to participate, and it is also entertaining for casual bystanders!
I would make a suggestion, however. Driver Aids available should be for current tech year and not chassis year. It makes it harder for older chassis to compete with newer, stiffer chassis who already have an advantage based on chassis year alone. They shouldn’t get extra points for using brand new chassis/materials which gives them new aids to ignore. They should be penalized for not having enough guts to run old shit which was way more fun anyway![/quote]
I both agree with this and find this vaguely insulting,
The BSLL is excellent, I entered to see where I came out at the end and I find it kinda comforting that my crazy car is actually on the saner side of lunacy than I first thought
Old shit is old, and fragile, plus if you watch vids of old cars doing the statuatory crash tests you’ll see cars literally disintegrating into their component parts! Anyone who puts a modern, precision manufactured, Holley carb onto their fresh cast crate motor from, say, GM racing isn’t exactly being kosher about their “old tech” either. Dig up an old engine, rebuild it with old parts and an old carb from the actual day and you’ll have issues with it… That’s why we have new stuff and that’s why there are so many company’s making IRS/IFS kits and disc brake conversions; the old days were just older, not better!
That being said, there are too many modern cars that wrap you in cotton wool and distance you from the driving experience. That’s why cars like the new FT86 (Scion FR-S or Subaru BRZ) and the Lotus Elise exist; people who love driving still exist! [/quote]
Re-read what I wrote. I never said it was better. In fact, I said it was at a disadvantage. I said it was more FUN!
And, my car is hardly all old shit. It’s a 1986 BMW (replica) chassis/body and a modern LS7 from an 07 Corvette. It’s complete with direct injection and twin-turbos. Like I said…FUN!
[quote=“07CobaltGirl”]Re-read what I wrote. I never said it was better. In fact, I said it was at a disadvantage. I said it was more FUN!
And, my car is hardly all old shit. It’s a 1986 BMW (replica) chassis/body and a modern LS7 from an 07 Corvette. It’s complete with direct injection and twin-turbos. Like I said…FUN![/quote]
I did read your post, your position was that because new cars are stiffer etc. they shouldn’t qualify for the “have no driver aids” bonus. You assume that a new car with no aids whatsoever would somehow be inherently easier to drive than an old car without driver aids… You stated something here about “not having enough guts” 
I disagree with this position.
I’ll take this opportunity to disagree with your statement about your competition car being fun as well… More power doesn’t equal more fun! All things need to be balanced and the scenario you’ve simulated just isn’t. It would be a pain in the ass to use for more than a dry weather weekend, it would constantly eat through clutches, diffs and driveshafts and the tyre bill would be hideous. The body would feel looser than “a lady of the night whose addicted to crack” if it didn’t twist up on your first hard launch. Constantly fixing your car isn’t fun; buying new tyres every month and a tank of fuel a day isn’t fun; looking for a new shell every six months definitely isn’t fun!
The car I’ve modelled isn’t a good design either; it would be a horrible, stressful experience long after the flush of pride at making all my mates jealous had worn off. The most fun cars built are those with sweet chassis balance that put a smile on your face and leave you relaxed and wanting more after the drive is over; not battered, bruised and deafened! Cars like the Mazda MX-5 and RX-7 series, Honda CRX and Integra Type R, Lotus Elise, Caterham 7 (road versions), Skyline GT-R, Subaru WRX, BMW M3 (and some I can’t remember, ) are special because they work with the driver not against them. The key to automotive nirvana is balance…
And what about introducing a budget in future BSLL challenges? Cars would be more balanced in that way? What do you think?
Okay, so I was kind of enjoying the little spat until I read this:
dafuq? What are you doing in the BSLL then??? 
But really, consider that the qualifying prerequisite for this competition is a 1:1 power ratio or 1000hp minimum. Given we aren’t working with fancy trick diffs etc., the very premise of this contest are cars that are by and large so impractical that while technically streetable, you really wouldn’t want to do it. And then I force people to drive halfway around the world in street conditions while driving them. It’s fun if you’re a masochist, and I presumed that everybody who rocked up to this contest in cars with no entertainment, basic seats -15 quality with no sound insulation and rock hard carbon fiber chassis with ride heights so low that every time you run over a pebble you hear a horrible scraping noise on top of the din of your barely muffled exhaust… and so forth, which, I add, covers most of us, would have understood that this ‘fun’ is a different brand of fun. It’s fun in the way that the Baja 1000, or the Paris-Dakar rally is fun. Making the cars in real life would be *&^%ing hard work, and as you correctly point out you’d have to overhaul most of the components after this (most of the cars here wouldn’t even be serviceable once the BSLL is over. I know the Peapod’s old F1 block is going to have thoroughly had it by then). Yeah, that’s hard work. It’s also, given the size of the engine blocks in most of these cars, going to be really frustrating work, so strictly it’s not ‘fun’, but the ‘fun’ in that is in the labour of love, knowing you’re doing something utterly mad and celebrating death-defying, death-inviting madness.
So that’s the kind of perspective Kristina is presumably talking from, and hamming it up. As the host, I welcome all cars that make the cut. Even the relatively well-balanced ones (the MX-5 NA being a dream car of my own in real life)… though for the purposes if you want to bring a car like that to the contest, it better be slammed and blown but good 
That would be anathema to everything the BSLL would stand for. It’s free for those who have a shoestring budget, to those who have obnoxiously expensive tastes. Any and all are welcome as long as you make the madness cut!
It would need to be a very high cap100k+, or just award more bonus points to the cheap and nasty winner as incentive.
As for old cars, my 86 ladder frame with a 74 engine and a 60’s 70’s style body has been doing fairly respectably, after all it was faster then yours on the downhill. Some people like cars that try to kill them, I suspect miss cobalt is one of them, though for the kind of power she’s making I’d guess that as long as you keep it probably below3-4k rpms and out of boost her car would be pretty tame to drive. Mine would be less so what with a 9.7 liter v8, but it still has the highest tameness to sport ratio in the group andby that measure is the easiest to drive. So when you see the old school m3 lighting up the tires at every turn and on every straight just remember Jeremy clarkson’s face driving the viper or the corvette or the first Koenigsegg, all cars that consistently try to kill you but look like great fun to drive.
It’s worth mentioning I’m a huge fan of “stuff so crazy it will kill you if you look at it wrong” (less so people who’d do the same). That’s why I made BSLL after all.
(OOC) Are we done with this discussion?
IC Boys!and Mad Maiden… I will spend the night in Britain and cross the Canal de La Mancha (English channel for you anglospeakers)at full boost full rev at late night where it will be mostly empty.
Anyone would want to Join?
A 200-300kph chunnel run at a million decibels? A move sure to bring all the cops for miles around? Lets do it!
Oh, is there a way for cars to drive through the tunnel? And I thought it was rail only! I’m i- oh, erm, looks like my colleagues are giving me that look again, maybe… I’ll sit that one out and be good…
The tunnel hasn’t got a driving lane, You can only cross the channel by boat or by train.
It would be cool if it was possible though
About the discussion on bonus points, I really think they shouldn’t take a key role on the competition, that would only reward mediocrity. I mean, some people deliberately made their cars worse, in hope to get some bonus points to win the competition and I don’t think this is what this competition stands for. You should all go flat out to the max, doing whatever you fancy. And then, in the end, reward who had the craziest idea, not having that as the starting point. If some of the cars here were more balanced, the races would be closer and the madness awards could still be given.
By the way, having a 2000 hp+ wagon can’t be considered sane by anyone, no matter all the AWD and driver aids it has. The tameness to sportiness ratio still is around 1/4. It broke Clarkson’s back, for gods sake
(IC) and (OOC) shit… so ferry will be lets gtfo of here then
[OOC] One thing I am thinking of for the future is disallowing the use of “basic” or “standard” seats, only “superlight” as a minimum. That would only be for real world reasons: I’m assuming that the basic and standard seats don’t come in bucket form and so if you do happen to brake or take a corner hard, you’ll probably get thrown out of the seat regardless of how many points your harness has, and that would ruin the drive But I’m not sure. What do you guys think?
More story to come shortly, and then tomorrow, the next round begins, Circuit de la Sarthe!
You can’t but shhh!
[quote=“strop”][OOC] One thing I am thinking of for the future is disallowing the use of “basic” or “standard” seats, only “superlight” as a minimum. That would only be for real world reasons: I’m assuming that the basic and standard seats don’t come in bucket form and so if you do happen to brake or take a corner hard, you’ll probably get thrown out of the seat regardless of how many points your harness has, and that would ruin the drive But I’m not sure. What do you guys think?
More story to come shortly, and then tomorrow, the next round begins, Circuit de la Sarthe![/quote]
I’ve stole some pillows from grandpa and installed them in my seat, in the doors sideways and even in my steering wheel…just in case!
But in future races i agree to equip the cars with racing seats!