Pit Stops

The stops need a rework.
Did some races with mandatory stops and mine took about 4 times longer as the ones of the AI just for tyre change.
Another issue: Many AI are disqualified for pitting too late (last lap) or not at all.

 

The first one, I think it's because the AI didn't change tires. You can test it by increasing tire wear to 5X for example to try force the AI drivers to effectively have to change their tires when pitting.

The second one, it happened to me if I set mandatory pit stops in a custom championship, it's a known bug, but it worked fine in a single race.

 

Had this issue in single races, too.

 

As have I. My pit stop strategy for a “splash and dash” says pit stop will be 4.4secs but every single time pit stop lasts EXACTLY 8.1secs with nothing else enabled during stop (purely fuel only)

 

Did a race now with 5X tire wear. Positive: All AI pitted in time, no one was disqualified. Negative: My stop still lasted 4 times longer as their's.

 

Are you sure no damage is being fixed on your car whilst pitting?
I'm not sure how the AI deals with damage, but the default for the player is "fix all damage", which takes ages.

 

How long does it take to just pit (so no tyres, nor fuel or damage)? Maybe you can find the delay in this part of the stop.

 

Yes, I am sure. You can see the bars in the pits, showing you what the crew is doing. For this try, damage was switched off in game settings and my pit strategy was set to "only change tires" (20 seconds in this class). It took the crew then 24 seconds to do the job. AI was in for 4-6 seconds, obviously, they did not change anything. Did of course not see it during race and in replays there is no crew you can observe.

 

Did you actually verify the strategy in the ICM? Even if you have damage off and choose a pre-race strategy without fixing the damage, it can still fix (imaginary) damage unless you explicitly go to the ICM and turn it off. I think there's a bug of some kind that gives you some amount of damage by default.

 

Yes, I did verify it. The crew only changed tires. Obviously, if you set mandatory stops in races that do not last very long, AI just comes in for a stop and go and changes nothing. Sometimes, they do not even pit and get disqualified.

Edit: Absolved a small race again in Santa Cruz with the Vee's and accidentally an AI was pitting right in front of me. I saw that his crew changed tyres and it took ~5 seconds. My stop again 24 only for tyres, no repair, no refuelling. This is not well balanced.

 

That's weird. It's like the F-Vee AI has the F1 pit stop duration in their code, while the player has the realistic tire change duration for the class ??

 

Yes, must be something like that.

 

First: AI cars don't pit in many circuits.
Second: mandatory pit stop should be in the center of the race

 

Potentially a joke, but maybe a hypothesis. Do you have pit crew showing for you and not others? Wonder if there is animation structure for the pit crew that gives longer pit time. I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes crazy is reality.

 

I have a suspicion of what the issue might be. Could you please test a scenario for me? Get yourself very light damage (1-2 front bumper damage) and do your regular stop with the repair and let me know how long it takes, respectively if it takes less time than just refueling.

 

F_Vee on Spielberg Short, Damage at 100%. I rammed the wall a bit before going to pits in order to have some damage:

Stop 1: ICM Setting: Do nothing 5 secs
Stop 2: ICM Setting: Only Tyres 25 secs
Stop 3: ICM Setting: Only Damage Repair 55 secs
Stop 4 (after having touched the wall again): ICM Setting: Repair and Tyre Change 90 secs (first the crew changed tyres for about 25 secs again, then came the repair, 65 secs)

 

In general, I had set animated crew only for player, because in former builds of the game, I suffered from microstuttering when AI pitted with animations set to "on". This seems to be gone since one of the latest updates, so the crew is also there for the AI right now. That's why I could see that the AI in front of me had a tyre change which was as quick as in Formula 1 cars.

 

Has the stuttering been fixed for you when you have AI pit crews on?

 

Yes, obviously. Had the animated crews switched on for AI coincidentally for a long time after having deleted the AMS folder after an update and did not have the stuttering anymore.

 

I turned pit crews back on a few nights ago and noticed that the stuttering is gone now, not sure how the fix snuck through without any fanfare.