Formula D League Race 3: Chicago

[hentzau]

3rd please.

[Isgrimnur]

Movement roll is 4.

[hentzau]

Doing this by memory because I don't have the track on my phone, but let's try right one, straight 4. That should be safe I think.

[hentzau]

Doing this by memory because I don't have the track on my phone, but let's try right one, straight 4. That should be safe I think.

[Isgrimnur]

That works. Done.

[Isgrimnur]

Isgrimnur (White 1): gear selection is 5th. Movement roll is 17. Movement is 17 forward.

1st place!

NickAragua (Blue 2): gear selection, please.

[hentzau]

Woo! Go team white!

[NickAragua]

4th gear.

I'm seriously considering phoning it in and going 4th all the way to the end.

[Isgrimnur]

Movement roll is 9.

[Isgrimnur]

Sticking in 4th might give El Guapo the ability to catch you before the line, as he's only a move behind.

[NickAragua]

Ten straight ahead.

Also, El G is on my team so it doesn't really bother me too much if he comes in ahead of me - it'd bother me a lot more if I blew out my engine on the last stretch.

[Isgrimnur]

Done. Turn complete.

El Guapo (Blue 1): gear selection, please.

[El Guapo]

Yeah, 99% I'm going fourth gear all the way, unless Hentzau gets a sudden burst of speed.

So, 4th gear.

[Isgrimnur]

With that, it pretty much establishes finishing order. With consent, I'll call the race in order.

If not, movement roll is 9.

[hentzau]

Nope, I think we can call this one. Stupid jump was my Achilles Heel.

[Isgrimnur]

Yeah, that was extremely bad luck in getting caught by a bad roll twice.

[El Guapo]

With that, it pretty much establishes finishing order. With consent, I'll call the race in order.

If not, movement roll is 9.

Fine with me.

Otherwise, right 2, straight 7.

[NickAragua]

Yeah, let's call it.

[Isgrimnur]

Will do. I'll have updates later today.

[Isgrimnur]

Final Results

1. Isgrimnur (White 1) - 10 points
2. NickAragua (Blue 2) - 8 points
3. El Guapo (Blue 1) - 6 points
4. hentzau (White 2) - 5 points
5. coopasonic (Yellow 1) - 0 points; DNF
6. bb2112 (Yellow 2) - 0 points; DNF

Team Rankings

1. Blue - 34 points
2. White - 31 points
3. Yellow - 29 points

[bb2112]

Final Results

1. Isgrimnur (White 1) - 10 points
2. NickAragua (Blue 2) - 8 points
3. El Guapo (Blue 1) - 6 points
4. hentzau (White 2) - 5 points
5. coopasonic (Yellow 1) - 0 points; DNF
6. bb2112 (Yellow 2) - 0 points; DNF

Team Rankings

1. Blue - 34 points
2. White - 31 points
3. Yellow - 29 points

Wow, having us both blow up our cars put us from first to wurst.

[Isgrimnur]

Yeah, even a finish would have made a positional difference. This race certainly closed some gaps in the points standings.

Any thoughts or feedback on the game?

[bb2112]

Yeah, even a finish would have made a positional difference. This race certainly closed some gaps in the points standings.

Any thoughts or feedback on the game?

Overall I liked it. The crossroads were an interesting touch. Didn't like the jump as much. I also thought the blocking out when it reduced to two lanes was kind of cool even if I was on the outside looking in once.

[hentzau]

Well, I certainly didn't enjoy the jump.

[Isgrimnur]

It was the most scenic route.

I initially had trepidations about using this map because of the gaminess of the board elements, but I think it added something extra to it that made it a bit more fun and challenging.

[El Guapo]

I liked it. Honestly in general this game tends to be something of a glorified game of craps, so I welcome anything that adds additional decisions or strategy.

[coopasonic]

Honestly in general this game tends to be something of a glorified game of craps, so I welcome anything that adds additional decisions or strategy.

That's my complaint about Formula D in general. It's all about the dice. I played a game with my 7 year old this weekend. 2 laps and I basically made all of the decisions for both cars and he won by 4-5 turns. There is no strategic difference in those results. I played both cars with the same tactics. The difference was just the dice.

I'm not saying there aren't decisions you can make that will effect the outcome of the game, but there seem to be very few of them.

[hentzau]

I think I made a huge tactical mistake on the second jump. I was toying with dropping back down to 3rd to ensure that I wouldn't hit the gap, but I gambled thinking there was only a 2 in 12 chance I would hit that gap again. Well, that gamble brought me from 2nd to last place pretty damn quickly.

[Isgrimnur]

Gear selection can be critical. I know of one point where EG screwed himself by entering a 2-stop turn in too high a gear that cost him speed coming out. It would have taken a transmission point to get lower, but it likely made a positional difference against Nick.

What additions would folks like to see to add some in-race strategery? A couple re-rolls/re-hearings per game/lap? Beat in mind that something like that would reduce some of the challenge. As we saw, even having the nitro negated almost all of the opportunities of the jump to have an impact.

[coopasonic]

Switch to powerboats where you have more options and more control... and I just sold that game, why did I do that!?

[Isgrimnur]

I gave up on attempting to figure those out long ago.

[Isgrimnur]

It just dawned on me that the street racing characters each have their own special abilities. We could use those. Since the point leaders are winning, the trailers are getting pole position, we could let the middle drivers draft powers first and work our way out in terms of draft order.

[NickAragua]

To be honest, I didn't really notice the track-specific mechanics too much. I did like the track layout though.

Soft tires are kind of a no-brainer though, especially at the lower gears. Even at higher gears, it makes a decent difference when your chance of fatally undershooting a turn drops by 16% at 4th gear.

I think I got the hang of it near the end, but I'm going to take a lesson from real life drivers in future races: go into the turn at a lower gear and leave it at a higher gear. We'll see how it goes.

[El Guapo]

Gear selection can be critical. I know of one point where EG screwed himself by entering a 2-stop turn in too high a gear that cost him speed coming out. It would have taken a transmission point to get lower, but it likely made a positional difference against Nick.

What additions would folks like to see to add some in-race strategery? A couple re-rolls/re-hearings per game/lap? Beat in mind that something like that would reduce some of the challenge. As we saw, even having the nitro negated almost all of the opportunities of the jump to have an impact.

That's not where I screwed up (I don't care about my positional difference against my teammate). Where I screwed up was going straight on the big straightaway on the second half of lap 1, instead of veering to one side so that I could veer back going into the one-stop turn. Having that option would've allowed me to do the turn one gear higher without risking dramatic overshoot, which would've kept me from shorting that turn (which I still only had a 25% risk of, but of course that happened). That undershoot snowballed with other bad rolls which moved me from 1st to fourth.

But even that I could've come back from fine if the three drivers ahead of me hadn't all rolled exactly what was needed to block me out of the first space of a following turn. And of course that pales in comparsion to Team Yellow, which did fine but got screwed by horrible rolls right at the end (and which allowed me to finish ahead of team yellow through no ability of my own).

So calls do matter, but it's still 90% luck, 10% choices. So I'm all for drivers. Basically anything that adds more decisions and strategy is good with me.

[bb2112]

.

Soft tires are kind of a no-brainer though, especially at the lower gears. Even at higher gears, it makes a decent difference when your chance of fatally undershooting a turn drops by 16% at 4th gear.

Hmmm, I have never finished a race with soft tires. With hard tires I was in first place. I'm just saying...