The Nearest FarAway Place Rally 2018

Internet Table-Top Rally Championship 2018-2019
Round 1 - The Nearest FarAway Place Rally

The results are now final for this inaugural Real-Time Rally. After the months of development and testing I am relieved that the event ran with only a few minor problems.

This was a major shift in the MO of table-top-rallying which has endeavoured to bring some real-world challenges to rally navigators/co-drivers. Many were unused to the demands of a real-time event as opposed to the "bit-now-bit-later" less pressured route-card events. But that's what real rallies require: timely decisions about a route and the ticking clocks. There were reports of unwanted interruptions as competitors attempted to focus on the tasks in hand: phones ringing, partner demands, cats jumping on keyboards, sudden realisation you haven't ordered the on-line Christmas present you needed for Uncle Bert. Real rallies require discipline and focus; those compromised will have to learn to barricade themselves against outside influences.

Entries and participants are well down on last year. Based upon income for the charities we have only reached 30% of the 2017/2018 total. I am hoping that the TTR regulars who have opted out will latch onto the positive feedback that has been coming from the "real-time" devotees. The relaxed plotters will see that I have adjusted the balance of the legs for the Panglossian Rally, with half real-time and half route-card. And many of the, possibly, off-putting features of the practice events, have been re-engineered.

There must be something in the United States air that seeds the mind for real-time rallying with the winner and runner-up coming from Maryland and Pennsylvaia respectively. Congratulations to Chris Bean and Keith Irvin. Third and best Brit was Marcus Duyzend, who has provided me with valuable feedback in his comments and messages.

I do like feedback, since the alternative of hacking into your PC's webcam to watch what you are doing might be complicated and illegal. As an example of entertaining and illuminating comments I have reproduced Marcus Duyzend's responses below.

Thanks to everyone for being Real-Time guinea pigs. The Panglossian Rally is a few days away with another set of rally and navigational challenges for you.

Enjoy.

"Crow"
December 29 @ 23:00

Marcus Duyzend's feedback:

1. Nice simple one to start with, though a bit dull to drive for half an hour with not much going on.

2. The marshal names are a nice touch. Might be a fun enhancement to change up the order a bit between rallies. Even though this rally was not too challenging, it kept me busy with all the stopping and restarting! I had not realised the DSO locations would (always?) become visible once I had passed them, since I had not seen any on the practice rallies. I thought the officers might remain in hiding and only reveal themselves to drivers in violation!

3. Bit of a game of chicken with those speed limit points!

4. A fun one! I found the right route for the first few instructions quickly, but had the misfortune of happening to put a point on an "off-router" and not realising I had done so, so when I hear the the "Off route" audio I thought I was completely off and wasted about ten minutes trying to find alternatives before returning to my original plan. That "off route" audio can be helpful at times, but in this case it most certainly wasn't! Only other place I had difficulty was at the end, where I went up the wrong yellow. Not quite sure why there was no "Off route" audio here, where I was in part relying on it.

5. Another fun one. It is much more challenging when you have to switch back and forth between plotting ahead and managing current speed than when you are doing only one of the two. I like it!

6. A bit of a nervewracker, this. I chose to play it safe and arrive a few seconds late rather than to risk exclusion or long delays due to accidents.

7. Had a bit of a panic in the middle when I realised I'd used the wrong corner of the Romer and avoided the wrong point. Involved a bit of stopping and backtracking and made me a couple of minutes late at TC4, but still better than missing both PC4 and PC6 (or even missing just one of the two), which I got uncomfortably close to doing.

8. My favourite one so far. Road rallies are my favourite of the three types of real-time rally, and I like having to plot several route cards. It does take some getting used to plotting online for these real-time rallies: For the route card rallies I usually plot on A3 paper first, and I miss being able to see the whole plotting area at once at a decent level of detail. In this case, I particularly missed being able to see all grid labels at a glance. But it's all part of the game.

9. I saw a 'Recording results' message pop up briefly when the 5-4-3-2-1-CROW countdown ended, and then the rally began as normal. Not sure why that happened. I'll check the results records after I submit this, and send you a message if some erroneous result was indeed recorded. As for the rally itself, there wasn't much brainpower involved. It was just a question of how much you wanted to risk being lectured by a DSO. As it happened, there weren't many of them about, so more riskiness would have paid off.

10. You might want to hide or redact the logs and time cards of other competitors until the competition is closed. I used those to my advantage so that I knew in advance exactly where each PC and TC were located, and exactly what time I was due at each TC. Kind of defeats the purpose of a regularity when you know where the TCs are and when you are due! I did not need to take heed of the speed changes at all! I also knew where to expect incidents, baulking, speed limits, etc. On rallies with SCs, later competitors can tell their exact location from previous competitors' time cards, which makes them a bit less secret! It's also possible for later competitors to get a sense of where the particularly tricky spots are by checking where earlier competitors incurred penalties. It would be fairer and more realistic if the time card and log information for other competitors were not available until after the competition had closed, or at least not until the logged-in competitor had had a first go at a rally.
I enjoyed the navigation on this rally, but due to the above, I did not have to pay much attention to the timing, so after I had plotted the route it was pretty much a sit back and watch event.

11. A fun one. I didn't find the navigation too difficult - I had enough time between arriving at each TC and being allowed to depart to plot the next section.

12. Nice one! Learned some lessons that I can apply to future rallies. I neglected some important information due to time pressure. Firstly, I failed to notice that the OTL was a generous 30 minutes - had I noticed that, I would have felt under less pressure. Secondly, after I found a route that conformed to the grid line requirements on the route card, I forgot to check that it also conformed to the road colour change requirements. As a result, I missed a handful of control points. But I'm pleased about how quickly I managed to recover, and at how well I managed to stick to the required average speeds after I had done so, now that I no longer have the crib of previous competitors' time cards (you responded to my previous feedback quickly!). I'm pleased that I was able to have a go at all 12 rallies before the competition closed, and pleasantly surprised at where it looks like I'll place in the standings.