ai question

[Droplin]

Hey guys,

I was curious about the ai programming in game, when does the ai decide that it uses a pitstop? there is no mandatory pitstop option but there's got to be something that controls it. I set up a 20 lap race, on my first attempt i ended up rage-restarting @ lap 13. Here's the point though, during my first attempt every ai car had pitted for fuel (presumably) by lap 13. So I went ahead and set up my car to do 2 fuel stints as well. But during my second run, pitstop and all, None of the ai cars pitted and I ended up last from 2nd.
Is there any way to at least know if the ai is going to pit? or is it totally random?

Cheers

 

[Droplin]

PS.
Now that I mentioned it, what are the prequisites for the ai choosing a specific tire for races/quali (supersoft/soft compounds)? is there any way to control ai tire choice as well?

 

[Bruno Iwanczuk]

If you accelerate the fuel consumption in order to make the AI stop for refueling they will randomly make more pitstops than necessary, and there is no way to control it, forget it.

You can also accelerate tyre wear, but the AI does not stop for changing tyres doesn't matter how worn the tyres are.

I already tested it.

 

[Stereo]

The AI decides to pit at a random number of laps of remaining fuel, which means the multiplier behaves a little strangely.

Eg. if a normal tank is 20 laps then at 1x it might pit at 15-18 laps of fuel, on 2x it'll do 5-8 laps, on 3x it'll only do 2-5 laps. Which is much more than 2-3x as often.

It doesn't remember between launches of the game so it has better fuel prediction for the start of a race if you did practice/qualifying sessions before the race with enough time for the AI to do some laps at pace. Or if you restarted the race after they'd completed some laps.

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

Isn't the TL;DR basically: don't count on AI to do any kind of predictable pitstopping? So you can't set up races with AI where they pitstop in any dependable way that makes for fair racing.

That right?

 

[F_B]

Yep. Switch off fuel usage and tirewear if you want to race against AI, otherwise you’ll bite in your wheel.

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

Yep. Switch off fuel usage and tirewear if you want to race against AI, otherwise you’ll bite in your wheel.

That advice is for longer races, right?
I'm asking cos I usually do 11, 12, 13 lap races (20 or 25 mins max) and I have tyre wear on and have never had to pit stop to change tyres but I have had a loss of grip from tyre wear (which adds to the fun).
After how many laps/time would you expect to pit stop for new tyres?

 

[F_B]

Yes, for longer races, as the AI doesn’t know how to pit properly respectively use a strategy which makes sense.

 

[dhmotor]

I find that in longer races you can set the AI to max and still be competitive (I am a 98% racer on short races) on longer races, at 100%, the AI will bunch up behind a car exiting the pits, have trouble negotiating a crash scene and (to OP's point) have pit strategies that don't make sense- that way I can catch up to 100% AI. When racing in the open though, they are able to catch and pass me - which makes for a more realistic experience. I usually try to have 3 pit stops in a 1 -1.5 hour race so 3-4x on fuel consumption depending on the track.