On Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 8:10:44 PM UTC+3, Steve Leonard wrote:
To try and get this going separate from the discussion of the ongoing World Championships,I think we can agree:

Any scoring system will have an unintended consequences.

Current FAI scoring system used at World and Continental Championships tends to encourage group flying (reward for striking out on your own and completing when nobody else does is very small, but the penalty for coming up short is very large). It also does not provide speed point in proportion to the best speed. And it can compress (or expand) scores by having people intentionally land out.

Pilots don't like the idea of being 20 KPH faster than the slowest guy, but still getting the same number of points as him (minimum speed points).

Now, feel free to discuss various scoring system options, and be prepared for people to comment on the "unintended consequences" of that method.

Ready.... Go!

Ok .. how about ...

rawScore = speed/referenceSpeed * distance/referenceDistance

finalScore = 1000 * rawScore/max(rawScore)

For those who don't finish the task, their task time and distance are to the GPS fix immediately before they declare a landout (by pressing a button, or possibly by a radio call). The pilot might then proceed to land out, or return to home, or start some means of propulsion.

If someone lands out just short of home they will score a little less than someone who overflies them as they land and makes it home. For concreteness, if pilot A lands out 2 km short on a 300 km task, after 3h20m on task, they'll score the same as someone about 90 seconds behind them but who makes it home.

If two pilots land in the same field, then the one who go there first will score more points.

I specified "reference" not "winner" deliberately. It doesn't actually matter what the reference distance and speed are, as everyone is normalized relative to them. Make them the task length and 3 hours (or 5 hours). Or the task length and the fastest finisher's speed. Or the distance flown by the longest landout, and their speed getting there. It doesn't actually make any difference.

This formula would work equally well for conventional tasks and AATs.

The astute will have noticed that in ...

speed/referenceSpeed * distance/referenceDistance

.... speed = distance/time and therefore this is actually proportional to ....

distance^2/time