Adjusting AI strength has no effect

storkace · Sep 19, 2021

Anybody know how to make the AI behave as they would have historically?
I've created a custom 67 championship with all the historical participants.
Unfortunately, the AI times seem to be random. It's as likely for a back marker to get pole as it is for Jim Clark.
I've adjusted the individual strength of each driver in content manager without any effect (eg, Jim Clark is 97 and Guy Ligier is 70 with everyone else somewhere in between).
I've tried various AI global strength levels, aggression levels without effect.
I've added ballast and restrictor to the historically slower cars but without any apparent effect.
I always save whatever changes I've made.
Any ideas on what I might do to get more historically accurate results?

Kevin Troschinski · Sep 20, 2021

I run allot of Championships against the AI, but i don`t use CM.
With vanilla-starter the adding of ballast or restrictor gives good results.
Try to create it again with vanilla version.

Ad_Schneider · Sep 20, 2021

- Expired -

gecco · Sep 20, 2021

Hmm, not sure for vanilla AC, but with CM, it kind of works for me with regards to the AIs sticking to their assigned strength. There seems to be a general problem though with every AI driver being given some inherent variation to his set skill level in AC, so as to reflect variation of day to day performance typical for humans.
My guess is that this built in variation is +/-1 %, (but really, it's only a guess, based on how the AI performances differ, I've got no clue...) and till now, there seems to be no way to do anything about it, neither with vanilla AC nor CM.
So when putting together a grid (in CM), I also go with some restrictor and/or weight penalty for the slower driver of a team instead of making him 1 or 2 % slower. Performance is somewhat consistent this way.
For really slow drivers setting the skill to like 95% or so also does the trick though, as it outweighs the game engines (assumed) automatic spread of AI performances.

storkace · Sep 20, 2021

Thanks for the replies, folks.
I'll try some of these suggestions, see what happens.

Rodger Davies · Sep 21, 2021

Interesting to see the ballast idea @Ad_Schneider - why do you do it that way?

I use a field spread from 100-96 for the 'Pros' and 95-92 for the 'Ams' and this has served me well and gives roughly the results I'm looking for.

@storkace do you have the CM setting that lets you see the skill rating when in game? Would be interested to know if it's not keeping the value into the game or if it is and they're not having the desired effect.

storkace · Sep 21, 2021

I don't have the CM setting to see skill rating. That would be interesting, not sure how to set that up.
I tried adjusting just the ballast and restrictor through CM but still had a back marker near the top of qualifying, so I guess that didn't work for me either.
I'll try adjusting this within AC as suggested by Kevin.
Thanks again.

Rodger Davies · Sep 22, 2021

storkace said:
I don't have the CM setting to see skill rating. That would be interesting, not sure how to set that up.
I tried adjusting just the ballast and restrictor through CM but still had a back marker near the top of qualifying, so I guess that didn't work for me either.
I'll try adjusting this within AC as suggested by Kevin.
Thanks again.

I'm not at my machine now, but I think in Settings > Content Manager > Drive there's an option to show AI level after the driver name.

There's another one in Settings > CSP > GUI that says similar; I can't remember which one actually activates it in game.

@storkace are you running a Race Weekend with practice and qualifying? If not, I can't recommend this highly enough, even if it's a short-ish 10-15 minute session; it'll sort their order and the AI cars will make some tweaks to their setup for the track.

storkace · Sep 22, 2021

Thanks Rodger for the info, I'll check out the settings. I am in fact running a custom championship with practice and qualifying for each race. I'm doing the 1967 F1 season. I actually ran Kyalami yesterday and had a nice battle with Jochen Rindt for second place. I'm going to see how Monaco goes as after reading various posts it does seem that the AI varies track to track. But at least at Kyalami, despite adjustments to strength/ballast/restrictors the AI seems pretty random in terms of who's up front and who's in back.

Ad_Schneider · Sep 22, 2021

Rodger Davies said:
Interesting to see the ballast idea @Ad_Schneider - why do you do it that way?

I use a field spread from 100-96 for the 'Pros' and 95-92 for the 'Ams' and this has served me well and gives roughly the results I'm looking for.

@storkace do you have the CM setting that lets you see the skill rating when in game? Would be interested to know if it's not keeping the value into the game or if it is and they're not having the desired effect.

AI sometimes is too slow in some mod tracks that is why i set 100% for all of them. I tick"show AI level in game thing" and it show the same in game evertytime. These settings are working as intended;
This AI level thing is not absolute though. Im still testing but

Norse1957 · Oct 5, 2021

Hey guys,
Is there any apps for AC that allow you to make the Ai drivers faster than the 100% setting? Or is there anyway to make them faster? I'm running in a '67 GPL league and most of the drivers are at least 2 seconds faster than the Ai, and I'd like to practice racing with the Ai each week leading up to our race, so I'm more able to compete. Any ideas on how to do this?

gecco · Oct 5, 2021

Yes, but it's a brute force approach, and it comes at a price...
You can open the ai_hints.ini file of the track, and modify it like this:
[HINT 0]
Start=0 --> start of lap
End=1 --> end of end
Value=1.1 --> speed they go at (1.0 = 100%, 1.05= 105%, 1.1 = 110%)

The AI will then try to go 10% faster around the whole of the track then they normally would.
The higher you set this, the more the AI will crash out. More then 1.1, and it gets very suicidal for the AIs very quickly.
At 1.1 I usually loose half the field during a race, but hey, motorsport is dangerous, and those AIs that do not crash out, really are a good 1-2s a lap faster then at 100%.

@Itcars has uploaded a mod that modifies all Kunos tracks this way here:

Faster AI for all tracks

Kunos makes the ai about 10% slower than they could be. This mod solves this "problem". Note: If the ai can't handle the 10% plus, you can change the value in the ai_hints.ini file down to 1.0. Don't blame me if the mod does not work, it should...

www.racedepartment.com

Then, if you have made a setup, you can have the AI use it (partly) too, by naming it "AI_default". This will usually also make them go faster, most of the time.

Lastly, the AIs are not very fast with the older race cars, so that might still be a limiting factor with regards to the '67 cars.

Norseman · Oct 5, 2021

gecco said:
Yes, but it's a brute force approach, and it comes at a price...
You can open the ai_hints.ini file of the track, and modify it like this:
[HINT 0]
Start=0 --> start of lap
End=1 --> end of end
Value=1.1 --> speed they go at (1.0 = 100%, 1.05= 105%, 1.1 = 110%)

The AI will then try to go 10% faster around the whole of the track then they normally would.
The higher you set this, the more the AI will crash out. More then 1.1, and it gets very suicidal for the AIs very quickly.
At 1.1 I usually loose half the field during a race, but hey, motorsport is dangerous, and those AIs that do not crash out, really are a good 1-2s a lap faster then at 100%.

@Itcars has uploaded a mod that modifies all Kunos tracks this way here:

Faster AI for all tracks

Kunos makes the ai about 10% slower than they could be. This mod solves this "problem". Note: If the ai can't handle the 10% plus, you can change the value in the ai_hints.ini file down to 1.0. Don't blame me if the mod does not work, it should...

www.racedepartment.com

Then, if you have made a setup, you can have the AI use it (partly) too, by naming it "AI_default". This will usually also make them go faster, most of the time.

Lastly, the AIs are not very fast with the older race cars, so that might still be a limiting factor with regards to the '67 cars.

Awesome! Thank you gecco, I'll try that out tonight.

Norseman · Oct 7, 2021

gecco said:
...Then, if you have made a setup, you can have the AI use it (partly) too, by naming it "AI_default". This will usually also make them go faster, most of the time.

Lastly, the AIs are not very fast with the older race cars, so that might still be a limiting factor with regards to the '67 cars.

So gecco, do you put the AI_default where all the other setups go in the track folder?

gecco · Oct 7, 2021

same folder, yes.
But just load your setup in game, and save it again with the name "AI_Default".

storkace · Nov 18, 2021

Hi, to anyone interested, I wanted to update this post.
By adjusting the driver strength, along with adding ballast and restrictor plates to the slower drivers, I've been able to get the '67 GPL cars to behave fairly consistently where Clark, Hill, Gurney, Hulme and Brabham are typically in the mix for podiums and keeping the slower cars to the back of the pack.
I think this is just a trial and error thing but it is possible to get more realistic AI behaviors.
FYI, I'm running another championship with the Porsche NFL car pack. These cars seemed to be much more responsive to simply adjusting the AI strength, making for tight races but keeping the better teams/drivers up front.
Thanks to all who gave suggestions.

Apocalypse2112 · Oct 22, 2023

storkace said:
Hi, to anyone interested, I wanted to update this post.
By adjusting the driver strength, along with adding ballast and restrictor plates to the slower drivers, I've been able to get the '67 GPL cars to behave fairly consistently where Clark, Hill, Gurney, Hulme and Brabham are typically in the mix for podiums and keeping the slower cars to the back of the pack.
I think this is just a trial and error thing but it is possible to get more realistic AI behaviors.
FYI, I'm running another championship with the Porsche NFL car pack. These cars seemed to be much more responsive to simply adjusting the AI strength, making for tight races but keeping the better teams/drivers up front.
Thanks to all who gave suggestions.

I'm trying to do that in the 1986 season but get low tier drivers Dumfries and De Cesaris constantly taking pole positions no matter what restrictor, ballast and driver skill I use for them. Senna, Prost, Mansell can often be found from the bottom of the lists.

None of these settings seem to have any kind of effect. Frustrating.

Edit: Only now when I set the slowest cars / drivers at 70 I saw some effect. Why doesn't this "relative" slider always come up when you set the championship skill level from the "MISCELLANEOUS"? Even when you set the skill level to say 84-99 in the misc menu, the main menu only shows the static skill slider.

It looks like only then the settings have any effect when you have that "relative" slider appearing in the main championship menu. Does anyone know what determines it when you get it to show up here?

Apocalypse2112 · Oct 23, 2023

I think I finally found a way to keep it consistent. Make the driver skill changes in the championship.champs file directly and don't mess with the content manager at all.

For some reason only the 1st race of the season works well when you do the CM changes with ballast, etc. But when you quit CM and come back to your season the relative AI skill bar is gone and pole takers in the next race are random low tier drivers again.

I have no idea why but that seems to be the case.

When you do the changes to the champs file there is no such problem. I'm a relative newb to these adjustments but at least it looks that way.

As your own skills improve just increase the individual driver abilities straight from the champs file. I'm now seeing decent results Senna, Patrese, Mansell, Prost taking the poles.

Now we're talking. This finally worked for me. I don't know why the CM settings won't last during the season for me. Perhaps I have some kind of permission issue but this seems to be bullet proof way.