Formula BOINC in 2027?

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all

There are just THREE more Sprints left this season (even if Formula 1 decide to relocate events due to take place in the Middle East - if they change the F1 race dates, then the relevant FB Sprint will also change dates).

And so we must start thinking ahead, about the 2027 FB Season and whether there should be any changes to FB.

My personal view is that we could consider:

a) Limiting the Sprints to only those weekends when an F1 Sprint is taking place - so for 2027, there would be 10 Sprints, instead of the current 24. This would solve the issue of trying to administer 24 Sprints, with an seemingly reduced number of projects that can actually sustain a full on Sprint, due to the bandwidth required to sustain multiple host machines downloading work units and uploading completed tasks within a limited time window.

b) Widen the number of Teams and/or Members in each League. Currently, I've tried to "group" both Teams and Members into Leagues where each group all have comparable capabilities in terms of credits earned per Sprint. This was done in the hope that those who have only a limited number of hosts can genuinely compete against other Teams and Members with similar capabilities. And hence FB points would be awarded for the efforts made by those Teams and Members who do NOT have a large farm of host machines. And so some healthy competition can take place in the lower Leagues.

c) Stop running FB (either the Sprints or both Marathon AND Sprints),due to fewer projects needing volunteers help, higher energy costs to run host machines and a general feeling that BOINC has had it's day, as many projects might be considered to be irrelevant or they are not publishing their results, so volunteers might be less interested in them.

d) Something else?

So, I'm open to ANY suggestions about how FB should run in 2027...the door is open for your opinions and suggestions.

best regards
Tim

[UBT - wbiz]

With the current scoring scheme, the more members per league means the more people that get nothing for their efforts and the more that might simply give up sprints or give up half way through a sprint. I'd like like to see a bonus award for substantially taking part in a sprint. The fairest compromise I can think of is if the marathon boinc credits for a project are doubled during a sprint. This can be achieved fairly simply by adding the sprint credits to the marathon credits which doubles them up.

10 sprints sounds a bit small, less than one a month, I'd like to see them roughly 2 weeks apart, when you get three sprints on the run its very disruptive to the marathon projects and life in general. Could they be limited to a minimum of two weeks apart, I think it will have been 15 sprints in 2026, or a maybe max of two on the run which ends up with more (brain failed to count that). Somewhere in-between would be two weeks apart but slip one by a week where it would have been deleted immediately before a F1 break.

I'm sure everyone is aware that electricity prices in most countries are going to take a very significant hike again over the next few months and we have to expect another lull in boinc participation. We already have the large discrimination of cpu/gpu, there is another very significant discrimination between those with off-grid electricity with grid-only. Anything that crunches up the playing field would help but I understand that the point awards are not really up for negotiation due to the F1 association.