Automobilista 2 V1.5 Officially RELEASED - Now updated to V1.5.0.5

To be honest it is also difficult to satisfy every player regarding AI. Some find it too aggressive while others miss any initiative on their part to overtake. Personally, I don't really have trouble with too much aggressiveness on the part of the AI. If I leave a gap you can bet that the AI will use it. However, as far as AI vs AI is concerned, it could actually be more dynamic and, if you will, more merciless.

 

And for those exact reasons you have the Aggression setting. And as is, even at Maximum they drive like it was set to Minimum instead because they do not go for the pass basically ever.

 

Not sure that I agree with this part. I see them do it regularly, and I don't just mean in a train on the racing line like in the third picture.

 

But do you see them benefitting from the draft? Easier to see them not benefitting from it with open wheelers, but I've not raced in quite a while. Wondering if anything changed.

 

What Skill setting are you using, what track & what car. From the example given in the picture it looks like Adilade and Brazilian Stockcar no?

 

Ahh, the benefit specifically is the issue. Hm. I'd have to observe more to really answer this. Look at replay footage and such. My instinct says they either don't benefit as much as a human or they don't use the benefit in a way that a human would, but I'm not sure if that's accurate. (Although technically saving fuel in draft is one of the ways a human might use it.)

This might be challenging to balance between equal-pace AIs. You don't want them to end up constantly swapping places and losing time against the drivers ahead as a result of a fight that gives them no benefit.

I'll get back to this if I get curious enough.

Edit: Technically saving fuel in draft is something a human might do, but I'm not sure if that's a reason for the AI to stay behind without using the pace difference, especially since most AI races I've seen people do don't have enough fuel strategy involved to make it useful.

 

While I agree with you that AI is not perfect, it does matter what track and car combo you are driving. Different combos show different AI behavior and some combos are better than others. As example, I had fantastic races at Spa or Watkins Glen with multi class setup (DPI/GTE/GT3/GT4) as well as doing Imperio Endurance Brasil at Curitiba or Interlagos (P1/GTE/GT3/GT4). Usually I do 1 or 2 hour races which is really fun. If you like it more hard core, try a multi class race on the Nordschleife. AI is using every little opportunity to attack. Sometimes I also do Stock Car but only on tracks where they also drive IRL and the AI actually is acting pretty good.

 

I've always had the impression the AI is tailored to fit tin top racing, hence why you get better races with those classes.

For open wheelers, which is what I race with, the AI really doesn't resemble that much how a real race would go.

 

You are probably right, I never raced open wheeler and don't know how the AI is acting.

 

Well, one of the most glaring issues is that Reiza opted to polish a turd. The turd being the madness engine AI from Project Cars. There are so many AI's shortcomings in AMS2.

 

How many users can the ignore list hold? It is getting pretty loaded now.

 

First and foremost, if your immediate reaction is to block a user for expressing their opinion, then that is on you. I can't help you with that, buddy.

Secondly, if you're able to get enjoyment out of the AI in its current state and consider it 'good', then fair play to you - keep doing what you're doing. For people like myself who are a bit more aware, I can load up any combination of car/track and within seconds, I can identify the same fundamental flaws that carry over after each update.

Again, this all stems from the AI that they adopted from the madness engine. I understand the convenience and the financial reasons for it but all of the issues can be attributed to several factors, including the simplified physics model, logic, navigation, etc. The unnecessary weaving, motion and the race craft are completely immersion killing.

 

This has been an aspect that I feel AMS 2 has greatly improved on in 1.4.8/1.5 , atleast with the F-classic Gen 4 with the 1991 skin pack. In no way perfect, but there have been so many races were an interesting story is being told through the AI that remindes of real life racing, it's at the point where I can watch a full 1991 season in AMS 2.

You get storylines like Williams being dominant but Patrasie leating the team down with either mistakes he has to claw back from or just bad luck with mechanical issues, Alain Prost having a Ferrari that keeps breaking down, and of course teammate collisions from a midfield team throwing away points.

Only two games come close to emulating this aspect of racing, GP4 and NR2003. And if you really analyze the AI in those sims like we do with AMS 2 you will see some real "unacceptable" behavior. I'm only gonna speak on Nr2003 because I'm much more familiar with it. To get the AI to have an interesting race that isn't just a pack race you have to drag it kicking and screaming. Up until the BBMC and MB modded tracks there were almost zero tracks that actually had some level of multi-grove racing. Road Courses and other tracks with little banking struggle to provide good racing because the AI is super timid and won't make many (if any) mistakes. Unless you have the AI strength at 110% which breaks most tracks due to the AI over driving every single corner. Whether you're gonna get actual pit strategy battle instead of everyone pitting at the same time depends on whoever made the track. The AI will very rarely go away from the racing line

The crashes are the worst, the AI loves to just pile into carnage, and the cars flip over way too easily. Under yellow, especially at short tracks the AI will bunch into eachother often times leaving some drivers in the back of the field with terminal damage. That's if you're lucky, if you're not then you'll have to deal with 100MPH moving chicane that is gonna race you just as hard no matter how many laps down they are. I've had so many interesting battles ruined because a guy that was involved in a big crash on lap 1. Despite being able to manually throw cautions, you can't manually black flag AI drivers, so you're stuck with them.

This isn't a case of "standards naturally getting higher" because Nr2003 far surpasses the current standard for AI in sims. Despite all the "inexcusable" issues Nr2003 is still considered atleast top 5 in terms of AI racing.

I don't say this to go "oh you're not allowed to criticize" but to instead add context. To not only say that I've had some fairly realistic races in open wheel cars but that even the most well regarded AI have issues that are just as or even more immersion breaking than AMS 2's. Of course I want Reiza to improve the AI (especially with tires, wet racing, and drafting) but I feel that without this context people are gonna get the wrong impression about the state of the AI. Plenty of work to do, but miles better than most of the competition and only out done by the best of the best.

 

This is what I thought, so if they've stopped the apron being a track limit its gunna allow folks to effectively break the rules. I wonder if they are doing this just to stop folks getting penulties if they get pushed over the apron on a straight, just to simplify things a bit?

 

I just drove the GT3 cars (not my favorite cars). But I wonder what's wrong with the Porsches? Incomprehensible steering behavior, even more so in the Porsche Cup than in the 911GT3

 

How about instead of that just add the "double yellow line rule - ON / OFF" as a setting ? People who want maximum realism will be able to use it.

 

I've been browsing the MP server list from time to time to check what people are racing and something caught my attention: has the dirt racing been a massive flop? So far I've not found a single server hosting dirt races at all.

 

Yea, but I thought people would love dirt racing. However every time I browse the server list I see the usual suspects (GT3 or Multiclass, being the multi classes just GT3 and GT4) and not a single dirt class server.