AI Leader Runs Away from Field

[MANashTTU]

Offline racer here (Need a pause button). Really enjoying AC and find the AI to be a joy when doing close racing.However, when I make a grid of cars, it seems no matter what AI settings I use in
Content Manager, there is always one car which is a good two or more seconds faster than the field in practice and qualifying, and runs away from the field in the race. This means if I set AI where I'm in line with the field, the field and I finish 25 seconds back in an hour-long race. If I set AI to run with the sole leader, he and I have a great race and finish 25 seconds ahead of the other dozen cars.

This is happening on Sebring, Daytona (both nice mod tracks). I've used it with endurance grids like 911 RSR 2017, Corvette C7R, and other comparable cars, as well as GT3 field based on 911 GT3 R 2016.

It also seems that it's related to order of grid in Content Manager list. The cars at the top of the list outqualify cars below, even when they are inferior cars. This does not seem to be affected by using a spread of min and max AI strength and aggression, or fixed strength and aggression.

Am I missing some settings in Content Manager or ini files to improve this?

Thanks for any help you all can offer.

 

[AlBell1967]

I have noticed the same thing. Wondering if there is a way of setting this.

 

[Ryno917]

No solution from me, either, but I get the same behaviour on my end.

Doesn't matter what track or car combo is being run. Kunos content and mods alike.

 

[JoelGL]

I agree (with 100% and 77.5 aggression). Also, with random start position, if I start 2nd or 3rd and am able to overtake the leader, my gap from them suddenly keeps increasing... weird.

 

[Ryno917]

I agree (with 100% and 77.5 aggression). Also, with random start position, if I start 2nd or 3rd and am able to overtake the leader, my gap from them suddenly keeps increasing... weird.

That's another thing; once you pass them, they fall back inline with the speed of the other AI, which is odd.

 

[AlBell1967]

Its not just the leader. If you have an AI in front of you that you have slowly ran down over the course of a few laps and you have to plan to make a move on them to pass them and then afterward you can just drive away. I know since I caught them I am faster but after passing them I can literally just drive away within a few corners. Maybe its simulating their tires getting dirty from being off line?

 

[Jason Mullin]

The only mods I'm aware of were you used to be able to adjust AI setups and paths.
The path mod would be interesting to adjust the rabbit car away from the fast line, I'm reading after 1.7 it no longer works.

 

[gecco]

I've noticed several times, that the individual difficulty setting in CM seems not to be properly recognized, and drivers I set on e.g. 99% or 98% are quicker in quali then other drivers at 100%
I really have to turn down the difficulty to like 95% or 90% for making a certain driver noticeably slower.
So far I was suspecting, that AC itself puts some variance to the difficulty of the drivers, and that therefore the difficulties set in Content Manager sometimes seem to not match the lap times.
That, or the implementation of the individual driver difficulty in content manager is not working properly.

 

[Majuh]

Something regarding the variation slider is bugged, it's also like that in the original launcher.

 

[Ryno917]

I can confirm that in vanilla AC launcher there's a huge variance in AI skill level when set to the same percentage, too. Not a CM issue, but I'm guessing something built-in to the AI system itself.

 

[MANashTTU]

I can confirm that in vanilla AC launcher there's a huge variance in AI skill level when set to the same percentage, too. Not a CM issue, but I'm guessing something built-in to the AI system itself.

This is all good information...at least confirmation that this is a characteristic of the sim. I will do some looking at ini files and see if there is something to fiddle with. It is hard to imagine there is something to fix now that AC...has been around so long.

 

[MANashTTU]

I found an old post that suggested higher aggression makes the cars behind the leader fixated on trying to pass instead of turning good laps.

Well, I ran a 50-lap race at Laguna Seca in the new VRC NA 2018 mod. I set aggression at zero, AI at 95.5 fixed strength in Content Manager. Actually got a very nice race, with a fairly realistic spread of cars and competitive racing with the AI.

The mod is a blast, by the way. I was exhausted trying to finesse a car through two full fuel runs and ending the stints on worn out tires. Tremendous fun.

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

I found an old post that suggested higher aggression makes the cars behind the leader fixated on trying to pass instead of turning good laps.

That's very interesting. Can anyone else confirm this?

I'm wondering if the problem of the AI leader going way far ahead of the pack is made worse when you do a qualifying beforehand - i.e. is the problem lessened when you just do a quick race?

 

[AccAkut]

I've noticed several times, that the individual difficulty setting in CM seems not to be properly recognized, and drivers I set on e.g. 99% or 98% are quicker in quali then other drivers at 100%
I really have to turn down the difficulty to like 95% or 90% for making a certain driver noticeably slower.
So far I was suspecting, that AC itself puts some variance to the difficulty of the drivers, and that therefore the difficulties set in Content Manager sometimes seem to not match the lap times.
That, or the implementation of the individual driver difficulty in content manager is not working properly.

Its probably down to the car's ai.ini settings. If you set AI to 100% it will use all limits set by the ini, if those are too high it may slow the car down. Also really track dependent (like on the Nordschleife the AI tends to overall run quicker at ~97% than on 100% as the cars tend to run out of road at 100% (breaking to late on bumpy sections, dipping tires in the dirt, overtaking in unadvisabel places etc).