Pavé downhill, solution. Designing/technical ?

[Robyklebt]

It's a continuation from this thread

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9668

But really think a clearer solution than the final recommendation by Alk/Flock would be useful. And IMO is kind of urgent, real pavé season is coming soon already.

Ah, background: My guess is that something like this happened:
The old downhill bug, -3 or steeper downhill, when groups that weren't riding were stronger than groups that were riding (and it depended on what the first group did anyway, but forgot if they had to ride or not for the bug to happen) was basically the solution to what we have now? Buh or Luques when playing around with the pavé selectivity in climbs and downhill ended up adding this thing that turned out to be a bug.
And now that the bug is corrected, we have the situation that there's weird behaviour in at least downhill pavé, not sure how it affected the climbs or the flat, if at all.

Behaviour now:
-1 with pavé has become more siebable according to Flockmaster (I didn't realize it during the race). Actually IMO that's ok or even good, was always a bit weird that a -1 makes it so hard to sieb, it's not like it is harder in reality, higher speeds, those that are dropped might be dropped by less, but still dropped.
-High downhill with * just supercharged the downhill skill, which of course is completely wrong. Huge differences.

Then lots that we don't know really. What's the effect at -2? -3? -4? etc. What would be the effect of steep downhill not just with * but with ***, or *****?

That's why the advice "no downhill pavé in designs" right now to me is not that satisfactory a solution.

Job for Alk:
1) Find out what effect it has on other downhills, see above. Knowledge! Right now we know little, guess/assume a lot.

Then find a solution.
That can be: Ban all downhill pavé in designs. Ban certain downhill pavés in designs. Or even put the bug back in, then we have downhill pavé unti -2 at least. I realize that a real solution right now is not possible, other things to do for Alk, analyzing the whole pavé thing will take time. But a better solution then this unclear recommendation we have right now IMO is necessary. AND and analysis of what exactly changed after the bug correction, what did it affect?

[flockmastoR]

Ok the stuff you referenced is just concerning very steep downhill+pave.

Additionally there was this discussion: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7990&p=118554&hilit=1+pave#p118546
which is more concerning as the bug fix shouldn't have an influence on those km (at least as I understood that part of the code)

I think what we need is a discussion about what behaviour we want there. IMO it is not that there is just a small bug that needs to be fixed such that the downhill pave stuff works as expected its more generally. We don't even know how it should work.

So my proposal always was: Go back to the pre bug fix way and allow dowhill with pave until -2.

[Alkworld]

The main problem here is that Buhmann's code for speed, siebing, fighting, etc is really not very well structured and therefore hard to understand the concept behind that. Without understanding it, fixing it properly becomes pretty impossible. My idea is to start a major redesign of the "race physics engine" at some point rather than fixing that mess we have.
And about the bug fix, see above, no idea really what's the impact of it other than no longer crashing.

[Robyklebt]

Ok the stuff you referenced is just concerning very steep downhill+pave.

Additionally there was this discussion: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7990&p=118554&hilit=1+pave#p118546
which is more concerning as the bug fix shouldn't have an influence on those km (at least as I understood that part of the code)

I think what we need is a discussion about what behaviour we want there. IMO it is not that there is just a small bug that needs to be fixed such that the downhill pave stuff works as expected its more generally. We don't even know how it should work.

So my proposal always was: Go back to the pre bug fix way and allow dowhill with pave until -2.

Not really, I said this:

-1 with pavé has become more siebable according to Flockmaster (I didn't realize it during the race). Actually IMO that's ok or even good, was always a bit weird that a -1 makes it so hard to sieb, it's not like it is harder in reality, higher speeds, those that are dropped might be dropped by less, but still dropped.

Just got it wrong a bit, more siebable than 0 or +1 is not what it should be, more siebable than it was ok, hardest km... no

Unlike you I'm not influenced by any understanding of the code Seeing it wouldn't help either, I still wouldn't understand anything. BUT! To me it seems highly likely that it's the bugfix that influenced that. When did it change? After the bugfix, so seems likely that it's connected to that.
My guess is that the code that produced the bug was some kind of balance thing, balance climb/pavé/downhill. Weakening the influence of downhill. Decreasing the speed in downhills. Decreasing it so much if it was -3 or more not riding was faster than riding. Which then created the bug (so it must have been that it only appeared when the first group was riding, check yourselves, I'm slighly drunk. With that balance thing gone, the balance is off. At least in downhill. Might it have influenced + km as well? Worth checking IMO. Not sure if the Andes were a good laboratory for that, have my doubts. I sort of remember a sieb by Matisse that was much weaker than I expected on a + km. Magnificent 7 it was, checked.. expected the 5**** 4**** combination to be much more selective, Gurruwiwi only dropped at the 4, others ah, JongHun Kim with 48-86 and 73.1 pavé at the time (if I read the training thing correctly) the same, dropped at 4**** after surviving 5****. Maybe can be explained with form? But maybe it's an effect of the bug? We don't really know.

And IMO that's not a good idea without first checking how it works exactly now. See above, the last sentence in green, we don't really know. We need to know (or at least the programmers) what changed, that's why IMO the first step is Alk or Gipfel or you testing. Ideally test with the pre bug fix code as well, if you still have it or can re create it. What changed is only the bug fix and later the too weak-game crashes fix.
Do tests, see how it changed. or just see how it is. Run tests with a bunch of different riders on different terrain. To see the effect of downhill/climb, try with 50/60/70 mountain, same skills otherwise, same with downhill, compare with the old code, if that is gone, go from memory.

THEN decide how to deal with it. Just until -2 is ok, then we somewhat realize during Het Nieuwsblad, or even later, STrade Bianche, that really something like 3*** or 6** seems to behave clearly differently than it did a year ago... too late then. Or -2***** during Paris Roubaix. (Not sure there is that, but there are some +/- in PR too, and with high pavé obviously.)

So research now. I know Alk is working a lot on the game, Gipfel and you too, but IMO this one is pretty important, we don't want the pavé to blow up in our faces next spring. So give it some priority, first with checks, then think what to do. (if the behaviour is very different and clearly not good, then re-introducing the bug might actually be the best solution until Alk has time for a full solution)

Ok, done for now, need to write a bug report, wanted to write more here, but time for a bug report now.

[Robyklebt]

The main problem here is that Buhmann's code for speed, siebing, fighting, etc is really not very well structured and therefore hard to understand the concept behind that. Without understanding it, fixing it properly becomes pretty impossible. My idea is to start a major redesign of the "race physics engine" at some point rather than fixing that mess we have.
And about the bug fix, see above, no idea really what's the impact of it other than no longer crashing.

Oh, before the bug report short answer here.

Yes, understand that now is not the time to redo the whole thing, no pressure on that. Complete redesign sometime in the future, even far future, no problem. In general it works all mostly ok right now from a user point of view. Programmer a mess it seems, ok ok.

But, the effect of the bugfix still should be understood now. Talking about both, but mainly about the first fix, the one that took out the -3 pavé bug, then the second one you did a bit later, the one that made the game crash. (IMO likely that the first fix created the second bug, it's the first fix that probably somewhat disturbed Buhmann's cosmic balance)

[Bear]

Too tired to read everything. But maybe we can use a fantasy offseason race to test the current physics for downhill pave. maybe just a random race with different pave sections and min tact. but short in general. and maybe not pay prize money in this kind of race.