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2008-01-18: ProPilot FAC reset

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EHM-0654 Murray:
As promised, this thread will allow you the pilots to discuss the upcoming reset.

For those that are interested, the problem is best described thus:

When you finish a PP flight, all the FAC scores from all your PP flights, along with the new FAC score, are averaged, and that becomes your new, central FAC. If the central FAC gets reset to 0, it makes very little difference because next time you fly, a new average is calculated from all your PIREPs.

To fix it, I've figured out a way to calculate a rolling average based on the central FAC average, rather than relying on the individual flight scores. That way, you reset the central FAC and it will indeed start again from 0.

As mentioned, I'll be implementing the fixes and testing away from the live site, so if anyone wishes to comment/complain you can do so here. Are we all happy with using 1 Jan 2009 as the start fresh date, or would you prefer working from "today" (whenever that happens to be; I've got to write all the new FAC calulation code first)?

EHM-1570 Bruce:
I think that resetting the FAC to 0 is very unfair on pilots who have been with EuroHarmony for a long period of time, and gained a lot of experience and improved their flying skills to see their FAC wiped out, once this happens there is no difference between a new pilot and a pilot with lots of flying hours with the VA.

EHM-0654 Murray:
Hi Bruce,

That's why I'm suggesting going to 1 Jan 2009; there's a month (and a little bit more now) of ordinary PP PIREPs, the Barrack Obama event, and the ongoing Crossiere Noire event flights to go straight into the new FAC - you'd see immediately that it's anything but a clean slate.

I understand your frustration, you are (I would suggest without doubt) our most prolific PP pilot, and your current FAC reflects the vast amount of time you put into your PP flying; but I also understand that there are a lot of our pilots out there with hugely negative PP scores, and that under the old regime don't have a snowballs hope of recovering to 0.0 (let alone the multiple thousand positive score you have) and they find that to be tremendously dispiriting (we've had pilots leave because of it...).

Going back to a fixed point in time and recalculating from there will (a) make the FAC fairer for everyone, and (b) make it far easier to look after. We (mostly Bruno at this point) are rightly proud of PP, it is very much unique in the VA world, but I am fully aware that the current FAC mechanism is all stick and no carrot (and with FLv3 it cannot be changed very much more); I see this move as but the first step in fixing it to be the envy of the VA community.

EHM-2387 Eric-Jan:
I don't mind being reset to 0, with my FAC of -6700 or so, "earned" in a very short time (I am only member since last december). I'm still learning to fly, so I still make a lot of mistakes. But I am definitely progressing, so that's a good thing about the ProPilot system.

But I do understand that Bruce doesn't like to see his records wiped. On the other hand, Bruce, if you keep making the hours as you do now, you will always be "in the lead", if that's your thing.

What I do think ik that with the current calculation method, penalties count too severe. It is hardly impossible to regain point after you end up in a situation like mine. I just did a perfect flight, that got me from -6720 to -6680. 40 points in the plus direction. Whereas the other day I had a flight with some bad weather upon arrival, which cost me 900 points due to two penalties for excessive G-forces. I would need about 20 perfect flights to erase that one error...

But as you said, Murray, you are working on a new agorithm, so I'm sure you'll iron out this effect at least somewhat.

If you still have all historical data, I would probably vote for a reference date as far back in the past as possible, to accomodate the Bruces of this world (Sorry Bruce, you are becomming a landmark, like it or not). If that be 01-01-2009, then that be it. If the first consecutive PP PIREP be 26-10-2007, then that date would have my preference. I think it's the fairest to all.

Again, I don't mind if you took "today" as a start date, but I can see that others would feel cheated out of their hard-earned points.
Keep up the good work!

EHM-0654 Murray:
Just to give everyone a little more info to work with, using our three correspondents so far:

Me, 42 PP flights total, 8 since 2009-01-01
Bruce, 1,189 PP flights total, 23 since 2009-01-01
E-J, 20 PP flights total, 9 since 2009-01-01

(260 PP flights since 2009-01-01 for all pilots, Bruce remains most prolific pilot)

And I can say without any shadow of a doubt, I've got the most penalties so far of the three of us in 2009 :) (I'm not going into specifics)

And regarding carrot, I don't know if it would be feasible, but how would we all feel about a 100 FAC point "bonus" if you complete back-to-back clean flights? Get two 0.0 flights one after another and you're given 100 points. Would that be enough incentive for those of us less good than Bruce? (;D)

EDIT: Ooh, now here's a thought... We could easily have 2 FACs. One that goes back to PP starting (i.e., the current one), plus a second, just this calendar year, FAC. The historic one would feature on your pilot information etc etc, but we'd use the this year one on the front page of the website - 2 "competitions" for the price of 1! In actual fact, it wouldn't be too much further work to allow the FAC to be calculated for any time period; the front page currently lists the top ten in the last 30 days, but that's using the historic FAC score. There's no reason why it couldn't be calculated for the last 30 days specifically...

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