What's up with the AI?

AI is extremely fast in qualify. Even at 0% they are setting very fast laps (super v8 car). In race they are not that good. Anyone else noticed the same?

 

I've only done quick races so far but I've observed the Ai are very fast in the 'junior' cars (Formula Vee, Caterhams, Trainer Advanced), and quite slow in the faster cars (P2, P3, V10). This doesn't seem very logical if an aspect of the game was to encourage players to climb the ladder. I don't know if anybody else would agree with me on that but I'm finding the Ai a bit baffling.

 

I've struggled to find a happy medium with AI. There are races I cannot keep up and they seem to have a massive advantage and other races where the opposite happens and they cannot keep up with me. I find the most level based racing I've had is with the sprint cars. Tight pack racing and only won or lost on my mistakes. Would like to see that level of consistency with all cars as EA progresses.

 

Yeah, my biggest negative so far is with the AI, granted it's a BETA so I expect problems. The Strength and Aggression adjustment, seems almost useless to me. It wasn't until I dropped the strength to 70% that I was mid pack, I am not that slow. The AI also seem to swerve to get back on the racing line, lots of zigging and zagging going on, not holding their line.

 

Nothings up with the Ai. It's early access it's not finished

 

It's contradictory to say there is nothing wrong with Ai and then imply it's the way it is because it's not finished yet. It is either ok, or it is wrong and hence needs to be fixed. If nobody says it's bad how will anybody at Reiza know?

 

The AI has current issues, it will have issues during EA and it will have issues post "Full Release", AMS2 all over will be an ever improving product for years to come and the AI are no exception to this.

 

Don't get me wrong, AMS2 is very good, Ai are always a work in progress, I understand that. But, so far, that's really been the only weakness other than a few bugs here and there. As a whole, the Sim is Super Stable, Amazingly Stable. When the Ai go through refinement and improvement, game play is going to be unbelievable. AMS2 in Beta form is impressive.

 

Racing against the G1F1 AI I can detect no difference between 0% and 100% skill level settings. Understand fully about EA etc, but looking forward to introduction of scale-able AI that I can begin to compete against (although I'll probably need a Granny Driver level).

 

I wonder if there's any value in creating an AI thread similar to the bug report thread, eg

AMS version: 0.8.0.1
Car: Caterham Supersport
Behaviour dry: AI has 5km/h speed on the player in straights, much higher speed through corners, much higher acceleration out of corners
Behaviour wet: As above, but even more pronounced cornering ability than player
Noticeable on these tracks: All
Comments: The lower power Caterhams (this and the academy) are particularly prone. However all Caterhams have too much cornering grip, speed and control in the wet. Dropping AI difficulty to 70% barely helps, just makes the cars slower off a standing start and for the first couple of corners.

This might help the devs identify common problem areas.

 

Exactly what I experience...

 

Same problems pcars2 had, SMS never got it right, hope Reiza will do.

 

I think it makes sense to talk about the AI - not to bash Reiza but to give them feedback. I found the AI in the first AMS excellent and I think the AI here in AMS2 has solid potential.

I feel like the slider does work, but I've only tried short, 5 lap races and haven't paid attention to their times, just my feelings on track.

At the moment, the only real noticeable weakness is the first lap, they are quite slow when bunched up together. Other than that, at AI strength 80 and Aggression 60 they're quite fun to race against, I appreciate that you can race very close to them.

In general, I agree that the game is very, very good for where it's at in terms of development and I can't wait for more!

 

The main things I dislike about the AI in its current state are the same things that I disliked about the PCars2 AI. I'm assuming the AI is part of the whole SMS engine Reiza have purchased because the AI charactersitics in AMS2 are so similar.

From my experience of both games, the AI basically don't race each against other....at all...they just go round in a neatly spaced procession (other than perhaps the first few hectic corners of lap 1).

Individual AI cars, usually just one at a time, only come to life when the human player's car is within a certain proximity. The now "alert" AI car will start to wobble about a bit, making it obvious it's now aware of the human players proxmity and has entered the alert state.

Bizarrely, this can sometimes give that AI car a temporary speed boost, as has been clearly demonstarted in numerous videos on Youtube. eg. all the AI cars will be going at the same top speed along a straight but if one of those AI cars goes into the "alert" state because the human player is in close proximity, it will do its charateristic wobble and will sometimes even speed up with no plausible explanation, sometimes overtaking numerous other AI cars which are not in the alert state, so are not being given the speed boost.

Whilst in this "alert" state, that AI car will do kamakaze lunges at corners against the human's car but will never do this against other AI cars. This is often accompanied by unrealistic braking and grip and going completely off track whilst cutting the corner. Once you get clear of that AI car, it settles down and goes back to being asleep in its neat procession.

As other have mentioned, the AI also tend to have unfair extra grip in certain situations, particularly the wet.

Unfortunately, SMS abandoned their game after a fairly short period of support, so their AI remained in a state that felt unfinished and not satisfying to race against. The AI in AMS2 clearly needs work for it to be a credible selling point but given the AI in AMS1 was very good (albeit a bit processiony), and given what Reiza have said about their intentions to support this game in the long term, I'm hopeful they will be able to eventually deliver something significantly superior to what the AI in Pcars2 offered.


And just to add, the other characteristic of the PCars2 AI that I found frustrating was that (other than that hectic first few corners of lap 1, or when they were in the alert state racing against the human) they literally never make mistakes - probably because they are not actually racing each other. The final result of every race was always the same - every AI car finishes, all neatly spaced out by about 1 or 2 seconds, other than any slightly larger gaps in the field created by interference by the human player. No DNF, no overtaking, no crashes, no errors.

 

I found that the A.I copy your setups - or fuel level anyway.
I ran a few Formula Classic Gen 1, 2 & 3 races (16 laps) at Azure(Monaco) and Adelaide 1988, all with mandatory pit stop turned off...
Whenever I under-fuelled my car, the a.i also pitted in the fuel window. For races where I had enough fuel to not have to stop, the a.i also didn't stop. Interesting.

 

Well said

 

Yeah, I hoped what I was stating was the obvious, but as it was not actually explicitly spelled out in this thread, I thought it was worth someone doing so...just in case.

An additional comment I'd make, this time in support of the PCars2 AI. Quite a few sims have physics which seem to favour the AI in collisions - ie. you tap an AI car from behind, you spin out, the AI car remains glued to the track, but if the AI car taps you from behind, once again you spin out and the AI car remains glued to the track. In PCars2, the AI cars would often come off worse in minor collisions, which I found very refreshing to see.

 

To me that seems like quite a good way of doing things. It ensures the player gets full-field pit stops if they want them, and also ensures the AI never under or over fuels... at least, not unless the player does, in which case it evens it out anyway.

 

That effectively rules out having an alternate strategy then, which doesn't really help.