It suddenly occurred to me that when balancing my offline races for competitive times with the AI I've been ramping the AI strength higher and higher in the last few versions. Where I once had to start around 100% then go up a few points to get competitive times I'm now finding myself pushing it as high as 110% in some cases and that's with me still just barely matching the 1st place time, and I'm not that fast a guy, never less than 2 seconds slower than the aliens at any given track and car combo when I've put in an inordinate amount of practice, meaning my average lap time with no practice is much lower. It occurs to me therefore that something has happened to the speed of the AI since the devs have started adding and changing so much of the innards of the engine, changing the very core of how all the cars drive. There's also possibly a by product in the more cautious and polite AI behavior they've implemented. When they're chasing each other I often see them drive very stupidly, such as basically braking and coming to a near stop a full car length or two before the corner then having to speed up before slowing again to turn. I don't recall this particular behavior from GSCE or the much earlier versions of AMS. It really seems to vary from car to car. Formula V12 at Kansai definitely has issues as even when I'm following an AI going through the Degners they just seem to near stop dead sometimes even when there isn't a car in front. I wonder if anyone else has noticed stuff like this.
I don't drive the F1 cars much but I've also had the same thought lately especially with the F3. It might just be imagination or maybe it's just me driving more on mod tracks lately where the AI may be slower.
Well even if there's no difference in the overall speed in general there likely seems to be some degradation in the performance of some cars under AI control. The FV12 definitely didn't have the hiccups I saw tonight at Kansai back when the track first came out. Then again the FV12 just had a throttle update. Maybe the AI overall just need a retouch once all the major changes are complete for AMS. The FExtreme was formerly quite terrible under AI control due to its extreme torque yet that was somewhat tuned out by the devs. I figure that's the problem now at least.
It also occurred to me just now that the AI seems to really struggle with curbs now. I got the AI for the Boxers at VIR up around 109% and they're matching me in the first and third sectors but are nearly a second slower than me in the middle sector and their times there are erratic for being AI. Watching them on replay they routinely flip out and lift or starting correcting left and right rapidly even rubbing into a curb and it seems to really spoil their entire run through this sector. It also seems to be what happens to the V12s in between the two Degnars at Kansai.
AI performance is constantly being tweaked but hasn´t dramatically changed. One bug that has been diagnosed but not yet solved is that their fuel calculation is off in time-based races vs lap-based, skewing their performance. For now the solution for consistent AI performance is to always set race lentgh as lap-based.
Definitely something that will benefit me since I tend to use timed length for races. Normally when I observe issues with AI lap consistency there's usually just one section or corner where the AI is a bit slow. What I've seen lately though is with a few cars in a few tracks really bad behavior with curbs as well as extremely conservative behavior trailing other cars, such as the brake to a near stand still well before the corner syndrome which I notice is often worse when they're a bit back of the car they're chasing whereas they tend to be much better at following the other car when they're right up behind it. Thanks for the reply anyway, and I have to confess that sometimes my observations are off the cuff and not necessarily empirically valid.
