Hi folks, I have rented a server at emperorserver to have some races with friends. To fill up the field we usually use AI drivers, but here I have some issues since early October now. 1. AI not showing up, when someone else is host. It can be reproduced 100% of the time. This makes the server pretty much unusable if I cannot join an evening. If I‘m host AI is there every time. 2. AI is far to slow (much slower as in single player or local hosted lobbies), in a 15 minute race on Laguna Seca I can lap the whole field after 10 minutes, AI is set to 100 3. Aggression level can‘t be set on P2P servers, I don‘t know why but the staff from our hosting server is hinting that this is a AMS2 issue. Here are the answers I got from the provider regarding my issues (of course I started on this side first): Hi, thank you for the kind words and for choosing to host with us, I'll run through your points as best as I can. 1. Unfortunately this is a behaviour of the server itself and as far as we can tell it is outside of our control. The Manager tells the server how many AI to add to a session (via the event configuration) but it is not in charge of actually adding them and does not link them to a certain GUID, the server is meant to add them. This issue seems to have appeared as of a recent server update, so we are hoping it will be fixed soon. 2. I am afraid this is also outside of our control, the AI seems to behave differently on the dedicated server tool to when hosting via the game, we've had a few reports of this recently after an update to the server itself. From the reports we've had it seems like the AI can seem very inconsistent, on some track/car combinations they are much slower than on others. We are investigating to see if there is anything that can be done in the configuration to change this, but as far as we are aware currently only the AI difficulty setting is available. 3. As far as I am aware it is not possible to set the AI aggression level when using the dedicated server. So any hint or support from Reiza on these topics would be appreciated.
I can only think there is a configuration issue here somewhere, We have been racing with AI in our races on dedi with different hosts during this dev cycle to test the new AI behaviours and have never seen this situation. Previously there was some discrepency in the handling of AI strength settings on the dedi depending on which method was used to configure it. If your management tools have been making acount of that issue it's likely that they are setting your AI skill 20% too low on the latest build. Dedi expects all config types to now provide a value in the range of 70-120 as it does in the game ui. Until your tooling can be updated you can achieve the same thing by setting your server up with 20% higher. On P2P servers aggression is at the host's level. Agression is not yet directly configurable in the dedi but is planned for a future update.
Thanks Dave for the reply, I will try the work around with the difficulty and try so get some assistance regarding the first matter from the provider
@Dave Stephenson I think I found a bug which led into our problems. Maybe you can use it somehow. Your statement, that the aggression level comes from the host made me curious. So I made some tests. I setup a new preset on the server GT3 Gen2, Spa 2022, AI level 120 I joined the lobby and let the AI drive the qualifying. Result fastest lap 2:40 (which is way too slow) I opened a local multiplayer lobby and checked my initial settings. As somehow expected the AI level was on 70 and aggression on low. So I set it to 120 and max aggression, started the lobby and let the AI do the qualifying. Result fastest lap 2:16. I now joined the same lobby of my emperor server again, still set to AI 120. Same test scenario as before, fastest lap 2:15! This all leads me into thinking, that you somehow have to create a local online lobby first to set an initial AI level in order to let the P2P server work correctly. Best thing is, after my results I called one of my friends, to see if we can solve the „AI not showing up, if someone else is host“ problem, and it could be solved the same way. As my buddy opened his initial lobby setting there was no AI set for multiplayer racing. He opened a local multiplayer session and now it does not matter who is host on our P2P server, AI is racing with us Thanks again for your hint which pointed me in the right direction. I thought I share my results maybe you find a reason for that behavior. By the way, now I can change the AI level on the P2P server and it‘s working fine, no need to lower the level again in the local settings.
It sounds like you have the server set to not control the game setup so it's taking the local setup of the host user. If that's the case I'm fairly confident it's expected behaviour and you have two options. 1) ensure 'controlGameSetup' in the server config is set to true This will force the server's player count, session lengths, weather setup etc to any host. If you run multiple races in the same session and would like to be able to change track and vehicle class you can set 'ServerControlsTrack', 'ServerControlsVehicleClass', and 'ServerControlsVehicle' to 0 in the config and the host will be able to change those items any time the game is in the lobby phase. 2) Setup your event settings in the client prior to joining the server. In this scenario, whoever will be host launches the game with the launch command '-selectds' set and creates a game setup locally the same way they would if they are going to host from game without a dedi in the loop. When they have completed the setup and try to loaunch the game the server browser will be shown and it will list servers that are available to be the dedi for the game, select your server from the list as normal and join and it will create a game on the dedi but with all your local settings for oppoenents ai etc in place
