I checked out the set-up options for online and system link play, and the answer to the question is a disppointing "No."James_E wrote:Can anyone comment on pit stops yet? Have you needed them online? How do they work? Is the work done by your crew configurable while you are driving (ala Nascar Racing Season 2003)?
And... can you race really long races online (real life lengths.) Can you put in accelerated wear so that you have to pit even on shorter races?
As far as I can tell, in "unrated" races you can set race length from 1 to 100 laps for any track. But there is no accelerated fuel consumption, and no option to set mandatory stops.
I set up a Formula Ford system link race and set the lap count to 42, and my fuel guage was just over 3/4 full at the start (I can't remember what circuit it was). When you go through the pits online, you drop to the pit lane speed limit and cruise through the thing, no weird windows or pop-ups as would appear in the single player. I did see that whatever damage I had on the car, just vanished, but I didn't notice any new fuel going in (why would there be? I started the race with enough to finish), and there was no indication I had acquired fresh tires.
What makes this so disiappointing to me, is that in the single player "free race" mode, you can set mandatory stops for races as short as 5 laps. But not in System Link or XBL play. Very frustrating, and frankly, a bit odd.
No qualifying for online races, either. You have some options for how the grid is set, including 'lowest rated at the front,' but 'qualifying' is not one of them (it is in the single player 'free race' mode).
The game sets a cap on the number of racers you can host after checking your connection. You can only put in CPU drivers to fill out any empty slots within that maximum number. So, my system would only allow 6 racers, so if I had 5 human players, we could have no CPU racers in there. Since the single-player game has as many as 24 or 28 cars on the track (at least as far as I have seen, which is not far), I had hoped to be able to race with 5 other humans and then maybe 10 more CPU cars or something, but that ain't gonna happen Nor does it work like MotoGP2 where the CPU field online is the full field as it would appear in the offline game.
Man, that MotoGP2 really has the slickest online set of features. Auto-posting of lap times, ability to check friends' lap times at any time, full 16 racer support online, fill out the field with CPU racers. It was my first XBL racing game, I thought they all would be like that!
