Championship Formula Racing Rankings

Speed Circuit is one of the earliest games I got into when I was still at home.  I played it frequently with my parents but picked it back up again many years later at then Avalon Con.  For the last 15 years or so, I've been running the tournament there (now WBC).  In fact, the flavor of that game that became associated with me is now officially getting its own name (Championship Formula Racing) and published version in 2015!

I've been doing driver rankings on the sly for a number of years now so that I could seed qualifying races at WBC.  But, a couple things happened that have led to a more public ranking.  I wasn't really trying to keep it a secret and people eventually started peeking at the list and making fun of their friends -- so the data was out there and people were interested.  A couple of other large series started using very WBC-like rule sets with no restriction on who could participate -- so I now figured I should take those results into account and so a new ranking is born.

Lets skip to the end.

Here's the current rankings (PDF).

That number on the left -- the score -- is the main factor.  Everything else is a data dump and tie-breakers. What makes up that score?  In short: race results from WBC-like series; from the last 3 years; scaled and normalized based on the series they occurred in; per event participated in.

Lets unpack that.
Race results from Championship Formula Racing-like series. Right now I've identified three series that I include in these rankings: WBC itself, the WBC PBeM, and my own PBeM which I've been using as a test bed for Championship Formula Racing rules changes.  In theory series and tournaments using different flavors of the rules could be included, but I don't think I'd include tournaments that used drastically different rules then Championship Formula Racing or that are not broadly participated in.  One person's version is nothing like another's when all of our rule modifications are longer than the original rules.

From the last 3 years.  What I really mean here is the last 3 instances of each of the approved series/tournaments.  The WBC PBeM has only occurred once (although iteration two is just beginning) and my personal PBeM just started using WBC-like rules last iteration, so the current scores include any results from the last 3 WBC events plus the only WBC PBeM, and the most recent of my PBeM.

Scaled and normalized based on the series they occurred in.  This is where the math is.  Of the three series I'm looking at, two are very similar in structure and the third is very different so I deal with the two types differently.

My PBeM is run as a series of 3 races with points given out for race finishes.  After the three races, the driver with the most points wins.  This is actually pretty easy to deal with.  In order to normalize points, I re-scale points given out in the series so that first place is worth 100 points.  There is one complication in that the series is broken down into tiers, so that the best drivers from the last season race against each other, then the next tier, etc.  In the series, lower tiers are given less points for race results, so that scales easily enough, but I also end up discounting race wins in lower series for the purpose of this ranking.  For instance, Grant Guillard won a couple races last season but he did it in the second tier and so his entry in the PDF shows his best finish as a 2nd.  The end result is that most race finish positions are worth some number of points in this series.

The other two series -- the WBC based ones -- are run as elimination tournaments where a series of 2 or 3 qualifying races are run and the best finishes from those races get to participate in a winner takes all final race.  The ultimate goal is to win that final race, in the qualifying races it is most important to finish well enough to get to the finals.  Otherwise, a 4th is just as good as crashing if neither gets you to the finals.  However, a first is marginally better then a second because there are some advantages garnered for the finals.  For these series, qualifying race results are discounted by at least half.  So a race win in qualifying would not be worth more then 50 points.  In qualifying, only the top four finishes gain you any points at all.  This is because, no one has ever qualifying for the finals based on anything worse then a 3rd place finish.  Fourth place is getting some points, because there are rare times at WBC when a 4th will get into the finals as an alternate.  While there are multiple qualifying races in these series, only a driver's best performance gains them full points.  Second or third best results are discounted even further because their impact is even less.  For the finals race, I used WBC's laurels as a way to scale final result points.  So points go all the way down to sixth in the finals.

Since each series has a different number of races and/or scoring systems, the total points in play are different for all three.  So after adding points up for each series, I normalize against an event maximum of 100 points.  So, if someone were to win every race they could possibly enter in an event, they would get 100 points.

Here's a real world example:
2012's WBC Champion Bruce Rae ran in two of the three qualifying races -- one win, one dnf -- then won the finals.  Bruce got 50 points for his qualifying win.  Then he got 100 for the finals win.  A perfect score at WBC would be 187.5 (100+50+25+12.5 since each successive qualifying result is halved).  (150 / 187.5 ) * 100 = 80.

Per event participated in.  And this is why Bruce is ranked 6th and not 2nd.  A driver's final score is the average of their points from the events we scored for them.  So, while Bruce got an 80 in that championship run, he scored 16 points in 2011 at WBC, 0 in 2010 at WBC, 0 in the WBC PBeM, and 31.88 in my PBeM.  So we add that all together and divide by 5 to get Bruce's final score of 25.58.

There is one tweak to this averaging.  If a driver only has one event being scored, I halve their score.  Only two and I deduct 25%.  One example of this is Turyko Suky.  He participated in the WBC PBeM but that was his only scored event for this ranking.  He did reasonably well in that event: winning one qualifying race, finishing 7th in another, and finishing 5th in the finals of the WBC PBeM.  For that he got 40 points.  Unmodified, that would have put him 4th -- in front of the last three WBC champions, who also happened to participate in at least 2 other scored events.

Obviously, there is more detail to the maths, but I didn't want to spend too much time on this.  Feel free to ask detailed questions and I will be happy to answer.  I plan to update these rankings every time one of the scored series is completed and also immediately before each WBC.  If you are aware of a series or event that you believe is WBC-like in its rules set and open to all participants, let me know so I can try to include it in future rankings.

UFO Racing League, The Battery

Last post I promised we'd talk about collisions.  But lets talk about the battery first.

Each UFO comes with a battery where energy can be stored.  If you have energy in your battery -- we have two chips on the battery circled below...

...you can take that energy and add it to the base new thrust you got this turn.  You can take some or all of it.  But you can not put it back.  If you take it, you must use it.

So how do you end up with energy in your battery?  When you are placing new thrust, instead of adding it to the 3D compass rose, you can add it to your battery.  For every 2 thrust put on the battery space in the new thrust area you can put 1 energy in your battery.

Below we are putting two chips on the battery space, along with a couple thrust on the compass rose.

When you move the new thrust up to the current momentum compass rose in order to figure out your movement for this turn, you can move energy to your battery.  In this case, the two chips becomes one chip and is added to your battery space.

You can not put only 1 thrust in the battery space in the new thrust area... all energy put into the battery is rounded down and the remainder discarded.

Next, we really will talk about collisions.  Or... Tracks.  I know completely not the same thing.  Maybe I'll tease you forever promising to talk about collisions.

UFO Racing League, Basic Movement Walkthrough

Before I get too far into talking about the status of UFO Racing League, I figured I should walk through the game as it is.  Not too many details here, just the basics.

In the future, we race space ships instead of race cars -- of course.  The UFO Racing League is akin to NASCAR in space in style.  The space ships in the series were nicknamed UFOs because that's what they look like.

Each player gets a control board that they use to track the status of their ship's momentum, height, damage, battery, and set new thrust.  Below is the control board for the Blue #3 UFO.  For now, we will just worry about the parts related to movement -- the core of the game.

The top left of the board is where the ship's current momentum is tracked (close-up below).  Note that momentum is tracked along 3 axis: one vertical; and two horizontal axis.  Small blue poker chips are stacked in the circles to indicate how much momentum the ship currently has in that direction.  In the middle is a picture of your UFO.

The momentum chart shows us how to move your UFO when its your turn to do so.  Below we see some blue chips in different places on the compass.  One chip on the up side of the vertical axis, one chip on one side of one of the horizontal axis, and two chips stacked on one side of the other horizontal axis.  This shows us that on our turn, we must move our ship up one, one space this way , and two spaces this way .

Note, UFOs do not have a front or a back.  So horizontal movement is made in the absolute direction of that axis.  In order to facilitate this, everyone's board should be placed on the table perpendicular to the track -- not at an angle.

So lets see how this movement works on a track.  Below we are looking at an overhead of the UFO on a piece of track.

When we move our UFO, we must move one axis at a time, but we must move the entire thrust in an axis when we move it.  We can not split up the move.  So, lets move this way  first.  We have to move two spaces that way so we end up here (translucent marker show where the ship was before).

Note that we could not have moved only one space, moved a different direction and then moved another space in this direction.  We had to move both spaces at once.  Next lets move this way  the one space we need to.

Finally we must move up one space.  Each UFO sits on a plastic base with a series of 7 steps that indicate the UFO's current height.  Below, we move from height 4 to height 5:

Now that we've seen the very basics of movement, lets learn how to change our speeds or momentum in these different directions.

The bottom of the board is where you set set your ship's new thrust at the beginning of a turn (close-up below).  Note that the basic, 3-dimensional compass rose is essentially copied with the addition of a space where energy can be ear-marked for your battery (more on batteries later).

At the beginning of every turn, you will receive some number of small blue poker chips, which represents the energy output of your ship that turn.  This energy is placed anywhere on the thrust chart or onto the battery area next to the thrust chart.

Below, we have placed four energy in different places around the thrust chart: one up, one this way , and two this way .

This is how we change our momentum from turn to turn -- by adding this thrust to our current momentum to find our new momentum, and thus how we will move our UFO this turn.

After everyone has had a chance to set their thrust for this turn (done secretly behind a screen), we must consolidate new thrust and old momentum.  Step one is to move all thrust from the thrust chart up to the same compass rose locations on the momentum chart.  In the example below, I changed the color of the new thrust tokens to red to highlight what was new and what was old.

We don't normally want momentum in two opposite directions, so its time to simplify.  Lets look at this  axis first -- highlighted by the green arrows.  Last turn we had one momentum this way .  This turn we added two thrust this way .  In all situations like this we subtract the smaller amount from the larger amount.

That will leave us with one momentum going this way .  We see the result of that below, and our next axis highlighted in green.

Now we subtract 1 new momentum  this way from the two momentum we had this way .  That leaves us with one this way .  And we move on the vertical axis.

In this situation, we added 1 thrust up to the one thrust we already had going up to end up with two thrust going up.  Now we know have our resolved momentum for this turn and can move our UFO again.

Next Time: Collisions! Or maybe Batteries! (I know, it doesn't have the same ring.)

Ground Floor

from an image posted by user yzemaze on Board Game Geek

I got introduced to Ground Floor Wednesday night.  That was a fun game.  Earlier that evening I noted that I am leery of many Eurogames these days.  Its not because I don't like Euros.  In fact, I often do like Euros.  But I prefer flavor with my game and most Euros are really abstract games in disguise.  So when I hear worker placement, I figure its just some abstract math engine with farms or castles on the board.  I own that game in many forms already, I don't need to play it again.  Which is a shame.  I almost never tried Stone Age because of that and I like that game.

This is a long intro to saying that Ground Floor has little wooden cubes and disks and uses a worker placement mechanic, but the mechanics' tie to the theme (building a company) is well thought out and I really enjoyed it.

It also has some other mechanics in it.  Its got a widget engine in there as well (not uncommon in worker placement) but I felt a bit of tableau building going on as well.  One aspect of the game is that you can upgrade your office space as you go and that gives you better / different capabilities.  So as the game progresses each player has very different capabilities.  Also, that tableau -- your office, is where 99% of the victory points come from.

Perhaps no higher compliment to a game than that I really wanted to play it again.  But the night was late and I had to go home but I look forward to more plays.

UFO Racing League at UnPub 3

First post will be about the game I've been developing for several years now --UFO Racing League.  More about the game itself later, but last month I had the opportunity to take the game to UnPub 3 for some playtesting.  It was a fabulous experience that I recommend to anyone with a game in development.

One of the best things is that players are given a form to fill out after they play your game and then John sends them to you. I glanced at them when I got them but then saw Daniel Solis' quantitative review of the data he got from his play test of Belle of the Ball at UnPub 3 and couldn't believe I had not thought to do the same.  Yesterday I did the same.

17 different people played the game over the course of 4 games -- three 4-player games and one 5-player game. I had two families play. One husband, wife, and 2 young boys (~8-10 maybe). Another father with his two tween daughters (who texted between moves). There were also a number of other designers who played the game so a great mix of play testers.

The first 5 questions on the form ask people to rate various aspects of the game.

That's good. Of course, some of this is the fact that I was there to teach the game. The real test will come when blind testing starts and people have to learn from the rule book.  I found teaching the game to be a great experience. My second play test was near the end of Saturday's session and I suspected we would not have time to finish the game so I tried to really compress teaching and that was great because it really focused the teaching to the important parts -- in turn I think it helped me focus the pitch for the game.

The game is not designed to have much luck.  Even less now then in previous versions. Although how you view luck may help answer this question. While there may appear to be no luck at all in the game, because other people's moves can affect your moves, there is some luck there.

Always great to hear that people think your game is fun.  I was a little surprised that some people found it humorous or hilarious, but I think that may stem from running into opponents -- that can be funny for everyone who did not get run into.

That's great news.  Its something that has been a work in progress for the game. I've been spending a lot of time on track design lately which has been a big contributor to the game taking too long. The games that weekend all took right around 1.5 hours. That seems pretty good to me.

This is also great news. Previous versions of the game had some very artificial forms of interaction that I have removed because it was obvious that they were artificial and they just detracted form the best parts of the game.  After doing that I held my breath hoping that the core mechanic would be enough to carry interactivity.

The next six questions asked more yes/no quesitons.

I thought this was a very interesting question. I think most people answered this with the thought that predictable is bad. But planning ahead is a huge part of the game, so some amount of predictability at a tactical level is required to keep planning from getting frustrating.  One of the Yes answers noted in the margins that the yes answer was a good thing.

The rest of that set of questions:

Yea!  You really do love the game!  Well, at least these 17 people did.

The end of the questionnaire asked if you liked the game, why, and asked what other games you like and don't like. 16 of the 17 said they liked and 1 said they didn't know.

Whys:

• It was a quick, interactive game more based on strategy then luck
• The physics is fun. Having to think ahead about where you need to be when you get to the later parts of the track was fun
• Lots of fun, fast paced.  Opportunities for player v. player
• Physics is a fun, unique aspect in a game
• A lot of fun and very quick, and very interactive
• because it was strategic and interactive
• I felt it required a good amount of strategy
• because it was fun and could spend time with the family
• I enjoyed being able to bump players into walls
• I have never played anything like it
• cool take on racing game with concise, clear mechanics
• fun, light (feeling) but still interesting
• great 3-D. momentum is really neat
• simple, fun and its racing
• it was enjoyable with good mechanics
• it was very cranial + strategic w/o being tedious

Favorite parts:

• the player interaction
• racing, persistent momentum
• the way the physics worked
• I dunno, using quick thinking to outwit my opponents? I like competition.
• I loved crashing into people
• ramming into people
• the interaction with others
• interaction with others
• preventing players from moving forward
• 3-dimensions
• movement mechanics
• getting a feel for hot to control your ship
• imagining the 3-D space
• the math
• collisions and movement aspect
• the visualization of reakl thrust/momentum, etc.
• managing the momentum - preparing for changes in the course - strategic use of expert pilot

Least favorite parts:

• none
• collisions feel like, with all of the cool persistent movemebt, the collisions feel a bit unrealistic
• tough to say, it was all fun
• Math problems, haha
• keeping momentum
• getting trapped in the corner
• none
• none
• damage
• downtime? (maybe streamline movement resolution (time limit))
• hard to visualize the ceiling
• nothing
• make the expert pilot card once per turn
• the parts falling apart
• the math :)
• as the learning round it was too long

Favorite games of the testers;

• strategy, RPG
• rog (?)/themed
• tabletop role playing games
• word games
• anything really
• mystery
• trivia
• table top RPG
• card/dice
• strategy/euro
• heavy w/ tension (diplomacy, agricola, I do like RFTG [race for the galaxy?])

Least favorite games of the testers:

• fluffy, non-strategic party games
• worker placement
• poker/gambling games
• lifestyle(?) games.  Games where you just set up a life
• sports
• trivia
• artistic
• trivia
• I do not like racing games
• dicefest
• luck
• abstract

Thanks again to John for all his hard work and Tim for making the slog out to Delaware to play some games.