Official General AI Comments & Discussion Topic

Well, today, I did another race with them, driving the Nissan. 1h10min around Hockenheim 2001, 3x fuel and tyres. Not really looking to test anything, just for fun, but found some interesting things. Once again, every AI in each car went for the same strategy, except for the Nissans, and, considering the leading cars were mostly them, I had a blast racing with them and a few Mercs (the Nissan is by far the quickest car at Hockenheim), and, due to the slight variation of strategies, I never really knew for sure where I'd come out, which was always one of the things I always loved about there races, the unpredictability.

I could go for 8 laps per stint, and, like last time, the race would have ended 1 lap after the end of my last stint (33 laps in total), but this time I realized it earlier, and shortened my final two stints to make a more cohesive strategy. A lot of the Nissans had done that from the start of the race (most of them alternated between 7 and 8 lap stints, a few only did 7 laps, but no one did only 8 lap stints), which was actually really good behavior.

But the interesting part is this. With about 20 minutes remaining, the Porsches did their 3rd pitstop, and I was thinking that they'd probably manage to go to the end, but then I remembered that they could also only do 8 laps, so I thought that they'd run out of fuel like the McLarens and Mercs there, but no. They all pitted on the final lap, put on a single lap of fuel and no tyres, and finished the race. With that much shorter stop, the leading Porsche actually came back in the lead. Before, the first Porsche was well outside the top 10.

If only the Porsches had done like the Nissans, and shortened their earlier stops, this would have been pretty much perfection. The fastest among them would probably be in contention for victory anyway, or at least a top 5, taking slightly shorter stops than everyone else and slowly gaining time through every round of stops until they ended up in the first few places. It would have been a lot more natural. They didn't win (the leading Nissan and me passed the Porsche on the last lap, because it's so much slower) but on the end results, 5 of the 7 Porsches in the field were in the top 10, when not a single one of them had ever ran there before the final lap.

 

Yes, I know, but Spielberg would definitely be a track with more space for more cars.
You could simply change the track in the .trd file to 47 AI opponents, and suddenly there were more. It was extremely easy.
Unfortunately, that's no longer possible since the update.

 

An Overtake.gg article:

Is Automobilista 2 AI Finally Good at Endurance Racing Strategy?

 

While running a simulation at Daytona, I noticed that cars in the slipstream gain an almost ridiculous amount of speed. This makes it very difficult for any real gaps to form — unlike in actual races — and leads to excessively long battles. It also creates critical situations during lapping, where cars remain tightly bunched up.

One thing I really hope gets addressed is how cars often stay glued together, nose to tail, for extended periods.I'm not sure if it's the slipstream effect itself causing this, but it definitely seems to play a big role.To be honest, I don’t recall seeing this kind of behavior in any other sim.

 

Just tried a short little GT3 Gen2 race at the Nurburgring 24h layout (2020), initially to see if the AI was finally balanced at the carossel (which it is, finally), and it turns out the AI is completely incapable of doing one full lap without an incident, especially the Porsches. Every single lap, at some point, someone, probably but not always a Porsche, will swerve too suddenly, get the already familiar pendulum effect, and spin out, possibly dragging more cars with it, and frequently coming back onto the track unsafely, with no regard for the presence of other cars on the racing line. So, when there aren't any pileups, the pack turns into a bunch of trains of 5+ cars that are completely glued to each other, a few seconds away from the next train. And, running so close to each other, the AI is constantly trying to make moves, which then prompts another accident.

 

Why does the AI feel more determined to overtake and follow cars when its aggressiveness is set to low compared to max? When I set it to max, the AI often gives up wheel-to-wheel battles after just a few corners. What setting do you think creates the most intense battles?

 

I think it heavily depends on a car class chosen. Max aggression is asking for trouble in Formula Ultimate, but totally feasible in Copa Fusca.

I tend to play on medium which seems to work reasonably well* everywhere.

*doesn't mean it's perfect, sometimes the faster cars get stuck behind slower and so on. Totally playable though.

 

I don't often play again AI, but when I have done, I have always had the same feeling, on max aggressiviness, the AI becames a lot more aware of the player when trying to do overtaking and avoids making contact, which is abusable for the player (you can drive dirtier against them and get away with it more easily). On lower aggressiviness, it feels like the AI is less aware of the player and that leads to AI crashing into player way too often, as player would be a bit blind to them.

I remember somebody explaining that on MAX, the individual AI driver aggression settings get overwritten and set to max for all AI cars and that makes them then act more in the same way. Not sure is this correct or not.

I usually have much cleaner races again human drivers in MP than AI when driving with AI on lower aggressiviness level, where it feels I get rammed way too often. AI often follows the car in front it way too close, so if the car in front makes even slight mistake, it get's rear ended very easily (also limits it from having good and safer overtaking opportunities).

 

When the "max" setting is used, the AI appears overly cautious in avoiding the player, making it unable to maintain side-by-side racing for more than a few seconds. Only when set to "low" does it stick closely to your tail, applying relentless pressure. **Is there no single setting that works for all car types?** I’ve also noticed that for highly responsive cars like Formula vehicles, setting the aggression too high leads to frequent accidents.

 

Max settings makes every AI driver behave exactly the same, meaning they all have their aggresion set to 100%.
Low, Medium and High uses the AI driver's aggresion value and it adds or subtracts a specific amount (Low -20%, Medium 0%, High +20%, for example).

So in theory, if you use Medium aggresion you can still find drivers that are set to "Max" aggresion, if their aggresion is already at 100%, but you can also find drivers with a "Low" level of aggresion if their aggro is set low by default.

Low aggresion shoudn't make the drivers more prone to defend positions, maybe they're just sticking to their line with little intention of overtaking, less aware, but AFAIK there's nothing making the drivers more eager to overtake with low aggro.

In my personal experience, I always use medium aggro and I find that in some cases it's easy to overtake the driver, and in other cases some drivers are very difficult to pass, it just depends on who you find on track. Max aggro can make drivers overly aggresive which could lead to mistakes which could make them exploitable, so maybe thats what you're finding, but I'll always recomend driving on medium aggro.

 

"This is the most detailed explanation. Thanks, boss! I noticed during races that setting it to LOW rarely gets you torpedoed. Also, it seems every driver has unique aggression stats, and sometimes these drivers aren’t necessarily the front-runners in qualifying."

 

I cant speak for every combination since I haven't tried them all, but in theory thats how the Aggresion option works. To examplify it further here's an example of 2 drivers in the F12025 skinpack by KRRTDustin and what the aggresion option changes (Max for example is pretty much already at Max aggro):

<driver livery_name="Max Verstappen #1">
<name>Max Verstappen</name>
<country>NLD</country>
<race_skill>0.94</race_skill>
<qualifying_skill>0.97</qualifying_skill>
<aggression>0.95</aggression>
<defending>0.99</defending>
<stamina>0.98</stamina>
<consistency>0.99</consistency>
<start_reactions>0.99</start_reactions>
<wet_skill>0.97</wet_skill>
<tyre_management>0.96</tyre_management>
<blue_flag_conceding>0.97</blue_flag_conceding>
<weather_tyre_changes>0.99</weather_tyre_changes>
<avoidance_of_mistakes>0.94</avoidance_of_mistakes>
<avoidance_of_forced_mistakes>0.94</avoidance_of_forced_mistakes>
<vehicle_reliability>0.93</vehicle_reliability>
</driver>

<driver livery_name="Lando Norris #4">
<name>Lando Norris</name>
<country>GBR</country>
<race_skill>0.98</race_skill>
<qualifying_skill>0.99</qualifying_skill>
<aggression>0.575</aggression>
<defending>0.85</defending>
<stamina>0.87</stamina>
<consistency>0.865</consistency>
<start_reactions>0.7</start_reactions>
<wet_skill>0.9</wet_skill>
<tyre_management>0.9</tyre_management>
<blue_flag_conceding>0.865</blue_flag_conceding>
<weather_tyre_changes>0.92</weather_tyre_changes>
<avoidance_of_mistakes>0.7</avoidance_of_mistakes>
<avoidance_of_forced_mistakes>0.85</avoidance_of_forced_mistakes>
<vehicle_reliability>0.99</vehicle_reliability>
</driver>

 

So it turns out that the abilities to run QUAL and RACE are separate.

 

During endurance races on the new Nürburgring 2025 DLC circuit, approximately one-third of vehicles consistently retire from the competition. The extreme length of these races prevents comprehensive recording support, making it impossible to review the causes of incidents. Affected vehicles span multiple categories, including LMDh, GT3, GT4, and others.

 

How the aggression works just feels like the opposite to what I would expect. On max aggression values, AI actually sees the player, tries to avoid collisions, defends more I think and feels more like you are driving against human. Unfortunately you can exploit that behavior then too. On lower aggression, AI feels more like dumb bot that causes collisions because it's just keeping the line and not taking avoiding action as much.

Intuitively, I would expect highly aggressive AI to do Verstappen - like moves, bold dive bombs when there is even a gap, highly aggressive defense moves, not giving room properly, pushing others off track and be more willing to risk a collision (so generally a lot less hesitant). Other attributes would define the marging on what it seen as safe enough or would it go for moves that have less change of succeeding.

 

While I think it'd be cool to see an AI being insane like this, I think this would quickly become a problem, combined with the superior control that the AI drivers have vs the player on a collision, I can imagine people would quickly complain that racing against the AI is imposible, because you'd never expect the AI to dive bomb you and force you off the track, and as a result, the AI aggresion number on the Custom AI files would also become unusable.
In regards to my experience with the AI aggro I don't feel like the Max aggro AI is easier to exploit, I find the behaviour of the AI to be somewhat what I would expect

 

AI-driven Porsche GT3s still suffer from serious stability issues.
The Gen1 in particular is the most affected, showing the classic pendulum effect. This can be observed on nearly every track.

Lately, I’ve been running exclusively in dry conditions, and I’ve noticed that the Porsche often loses control, either going off track or spinning out. This frequently leads to rather awkward pile-ups.

 

The AI will still get in these groups of 3-5 cars strung nose to tail and just won't move or break up. You have to try and pass them on a straight if possible.

The AI in general moves too slow through medium and low speed corners. I've tried raising AI strength to try and get them faster through the corners but it has the negative effect of making those front two cars insanely fast and let's them build a huge lead.

The other AI issue I still have is when you come up to lap them yes they do slow down a bit but when you get even with them, now they want to race especially in slow corners. I ran a V12 race last night at Barcelona '91 and had a 22 second lead with two laps left. I ended up winning by 8 seconds because the AI ran into me twice in those last two laps running me off track once.

 

I've been racing the AI a fair bit since the latest release, my thoughts on that & past issues unresolved;

• Side by side racing has certainly improved in recent updates, at some tracks i can go side by side with the AI for many corners which makes it a thrilling experience.
• It's still too easy to "push" the AI onto the grass without contact, you start to run them out of road and they move over instead of holding their lane and door banging into you, so they end up with two wheels on the grass instead.
• On that note it doesn't seem to slow the AI down too much when they're on the grass and also I've noticed when they make a mistake and understeer they're still just as fast round a corner as though they had full grip.
• Rolling Starts are much better now, they used to weave all over the place but now they're smooth and steady on the tracks I've raced on.
• Sudden "snap" lateral physics issues still persist.
• The "stickiness" when you get stuck to an AI opponent I fear may never be solved, it still happens and is very annoying.
• There's still the issue of a gap behind being maintained whereby the AI won't close up on you, they stay at a certain distance instead of being right on your bumper.

Overall though the AI is the best it's been IMO since release, I've had some great races with them recently that always bring a smile to my face. A few more little tweaks and they'd be excellent, the few niggles above are just that, "niggles", there's nothing major that detracts from the experience.

 

During some downtime over the summer holidays, I spent a bit of time experimenting in order to refine my custom AI drivers. This gave me the chance to closely observe the behavior of the AI-driven cars.

On the straights, it almost feels like the chasing car activates a sort of DRS, followed by a braking boost that would make Gilles Villeneuve proud. From my perspective, if the right balance can be found here, the AI as a whole works fine.

I also believe this might be the reason why cars often end up running nose-to-tail in certain sections, almost like they’re hooked together in a train.