Ai | Artificial Intelligence

I like how Content Manager adjusts AI skill in AC; you a range of -/+ 5 to the AI's skill level, so I can set the upper range to 1s faster than me, the lower range 1s slower and find myself in the middle of a pack.

 

I agree with Great Ape. For a better singleplayer experience it would be nice if you can configure an AI mistakes like rf2 and also Talent files too, with different individual characteristics.
In most races it seems like racing against a inert train line

 

RaceRoom has great AI. AMS1 was cool as well!

 

Without starting a new thread, I'm going to put this out there. Is there AI elastic banding going on? It seems every race and I mean every race the AI is so bunched up. There never seems to be one car or a group of cars able to escape the pack. If a lead car is able to get a break of half to 1 second or more the following car/s are always able to real it in. It seems every race the winner always wins by less than 1 second. In fact I find a 1 second win is a large win, typically it's only a couple of tenths or less. I have my AI race settings at 99 strength and 58 aggression with race lengths at 30 minutes. Makes for very close and exciting racing but quite unrealistic.
What are others finding?

 

ahpigsy, what you are describing isn't AI rubber banding in the traditional sense. (i.e. when if the player is very fast or very slow compared to the AI, at least one of the AI opponents will speed up or slow down to match your pace so that you have someone to race against and make the game exciting)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from my understanding the AI talents are not currently in the game? So currently every AI follows the same procedures and runs at the same pace if all other factors are equal (same car, no players nearby, no collisions or off-track ventures, etc.)

Also, there are currently other bugs in the AI code in multiclass racing which lead to faster cars getting stuck directly behind slower cars instead of passing them and leaving them behind. My guess is that Reiza for the moment is focusing on getting the general AI speed to a fair baseline and making sure that AI behavior around the player is not too game-braking. At a later point, more work will be done on AI behavior when the player is not nearby, as well as introducing talent files and other factors that can increase the spread in the field.

 

Thanks Roar for your response. Your explanation makes sense. Hope this is in fact the case.

 

Reiza's AI also suffers from the same fundamental problem that all SIM AI suffers from, too much damn stability compensation.

AI isn't at all effected by grass or gravel from what I've seen the last few days and contact with them is like being hit by a moving wall; you go rebounding off and they hold their line and drive on through - yet another successful PIT manoeuvre.

 

Today was my first day to try all the recent updates and hot fixes and I was excited for the new AI.
I jumped into my personal favourite AMS2 combo, the P3 Roco at Oulton Park International.
At 100% AI and 50% Agg I was lapping 8, yes 8 seconds a lap faster than the AI. I changed to AI 120% and Agg 100% and they can’t get within two second’s per lap of me. I’m not an alien!
They did look better behaved, I don’t remember any zig zagging, they weren’t ramming me, side swiping me down the straights or making last second moves as I out braked them going into a corner. All of these improvements seem to have come at the expense of them now being super slow.
I’ve not tried any other combos, because I wanted to jump on the forum and see what other AMS2 fans were saying and experiencing.

 

AI 120% Agg 100% P3 Roco VIR Full tested and the AI have no speed on the straights.
I went from 5th to 1st on the long back straight with no effort at all. I let them get back in front again and in each of the three long flat out straight ish sections at VIR the AI are a raft of sitting ducks.
It’s like they only have the gas pedal down 90% or they are carrying a lot of extra weight.
In the corners they are competitive, but as soon as you hit a long straight they are so slow and you can pass them with zero effort. I spent three races toying with them, passing them, then letting them pass me back and on the final two laps I put my foot down and watched them vanish from my mirror.
120% is the new 70% I guess?

 

I agree the P3 class AI is way too slow. The GT3 class used to be the same way but now the GT3s are fixed. I assume Reiza will fix the P3 class eventually as well. I am looking forward to it because the Roco is one of the most fun cars to drive in the game IMO, especially on the smaller tracks like Brands, Oulton, Donnington etc

 

AI is getting quite "usable", there are improvements for sure. Two main things that detract from the experience (which other members here mentioned as well) is that:
1. AI does not want to overtake, even from faster classes while racing for position or lapping, often AI get side by side and the one behind keeps braking on the straight, not getting into position for an overtake (even on 100 aggression).
2. AI gets really bunched up, I often see the top 3 going 3 wide into corners, swapping positions but nobody gets established as the leader. This slows them down a lot as well.

 

The AI is coming along compared with where it was at release and with some car/tracks combos, it now provides a decent enough race as a one-off experience but I agree with both of SoloWingX's above 2 points.

However, I really do hope that some sort of Talent File system is coming as I don't really see an individuality in the AI - it currently appears to be just a bunch of clones of equal ability who virtually never make serious mistakes and there's still way too much of a tendency for the entire pack to remain together for the whole race, neatly space out at 0.5 second gaps, except when they get involved with the human player. Whilst they do sometimes overtake each other, they very rarely go off (other than an occasion wheel on the grass) and they barely ever a crash, let alone a DNF.

I've not tried any of the offline championships yet but there's little incentive to race a season against an AI field with no individuality, personality or range of attributes and abilities. The fact you can't edit their names doesn't help. For the offline championships to be worth playing, it's vital they don't suffer from the problem PCars 2 did, where the ability of AI drivers was random from one race to the next, so the winner of one race could finish near last the next, so no rivalries were established because each AI driver was so inconsistent. It amounted to a series of one-off, disconnected races against random nobodies, so had no immersion and was barely any different to doing a bunch of one-off quick races.

The Talent File system in AMS1 worked very well - AMS2 needs an equivalent.

 

Some great points here. I’d also add in the tendency for AI to drop back after being passed.

While in general the AI is sort of consistent between classes, at the moment there is a tendency for some AI classes to be extremely difficult to keep up with, while others can be thrashed with ease at the same settings. I’d love to see a per class difficulty multiplier slider, same as the per class FFB gain. At least then the user could set a global AI difficulty that generally works, and apply a per class multiplier for those outliers.

 

Totally agree with the above 3 posts. A few things that would improve an already greatly improved AI system:

1. Talent files (I'm not familiar with AMS1 though so not sure what this includes. Skill/Aggression/Consistency/likelihood to make mistakes - would be what I would want)

2. If not included in the talent files - AI should make a few more mistakes. I'd like something like the following: When racing behind a particular AI player and pushing him, he starts to make mistakes like locking up the tires or oversteering out of corners because he's giving a bit too much throttle. Obviously not all the time, but a few times in a race would be good. This would add a "human" element that is so much fun in MP, making your opponent nervous and waiting for him to make a mistake.

3. Better AI skills in terms of being consistent. As mentioned above some corners they are too slow, and others they are too fast.

With all that said, I just did a 40 lap race against GT1 AI at Silverstone and they are so much better than a few months ago. Plenty of wheel to wheel action, they will not give up a position easily and will fight you over multiple corners. They give me space but also hold their line, depending on the corner. I'm quite impressed with the recent updates to the AI. Also after a few laps I pause and look at the last lap/best lap of the top of the pack and the back of the pack, and it appears the front of the pack are running faster times than the back. So it looks like the AI are not just identical to eachother, which is good. Looking forward to more improvements from here.

 

The talent files had about 9 main parameters. Most could be altered from values between 0-100, and even included decimal places, so very fine tuning was possible.

Speed - how fast they are
MinRacingSkill - how poor their worst laps can be
Aggression - how aggressively they attempt overtakes
StartSkill - how good off the line they are
TireManagement - how quickly they wear their tyres
Composure - likelihood of error
Crash - likelihood of crashing
Recovery - likelihood of avoiding imminent crash
Courtesy - how quickly they will react to blue flag

These were sufficient attributes to make for reasonably interesting and distinct AI personalities.

By keeping the speed stats fairly close, I found that over the course of a season, the better AI drivers usually finished in the top half of the field but the finishing order varied every race, so it was genuinely competitive and not just a case of the the driver with the best speed stat won every race. The other attributes all played their part in creating variety and randomness with enough errors and crashes to make you feel that you weren't racing against error-free bots. If you made a mistake and found yourself detached from the back of the field, it was worth carrying on as you never knew when you'd come round a corner and see a couple of AI crashed at the side of the track. In AMS2, once you're off the back, your race is pretty much over as all of the AI will invariably finish in their neat procession.

A few additional attributes would be ideal, such as qualifying ability, and as you suggest, composure when under pressure from behind and perhaps composure when leading.