Issues with AI and the ASR mod - I am dumbfounded

[Booth.the.doberman]

I am using the ASR 1991 F1 cars and running a 1991 season. I usually spend all week learning, training and tuning with Friday nights being race night. Tonight was Monaco with the RaceRFactor Monaco track. I have 22 cars running a combination of the Ferrari, Benetton, McLaren and Williams. I finished first. Congratulations, right? I was the only car left on the track after the 28-lap race ended. On lap 1, six cars retired. Four of them were fuel, one accident and one simple DNF. On the second lap, three accidents and a fuel. By lap 18, the fourth place card expired. In the end there were 7 fuels, 10 accidents, 2 engine, 2 DNF. Okay, now I am pretty bad, so I have the AI set really low as I learn this sim racing thing so I can be competitive (I qualified 15th so I'm not running away with the races). But I just don't understand the fuel issue...especially on the first lap. A whole bunch of them went into the pits. Why didn't they refuel? I think they went in when the safety car was out; I remember reading something about pitting when the SC was out.

I should add this: I started the race twice. The first time, a ton of cars left the track on the first lap (the SC was out again because of a crash). I thought there was something wrong so I restarted the race (the results of the second start is what I describe above where I was the only one to finish). Anyway, I looked at the LogAnal report on that start and it shows that 12 of the AI cars retired for fuel on laps one and two.

I am dumbfounded. Anyone have a wild guess what the hell happened here?

 

[Tomas Torasen]

Theres definitely some wierdness going on. I've seen AI that just steer off track and go into a wall, perhaps mechanical failure, I have no idea. I've seen AI acting like I'm not on the track just blocking me off. But mostly I feel AI racing feels more dynamic and fun than in most games I've tried. A restart or two is'nt a big thing for me.

I too like these cars very much. Perhaps we could do some practicing on some track online together, work on setups and so on if you'd like. I cant find any online servers with this car that actually has people racing on it.

Did you try oulton park yet? It's super with these cars.

 

[fortyfivekev]

No idea about the fuel issue but you are expecting a lot if you think the current state of AI "drivers" will put up a good race around Monaco. Maybe adjust your season to more open circuits and you'll get some good races.

 

[Emery]

3rd party mod, 3rd party track. Best if you talk with the developers of each.

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

I am recreating the 1991 season, so I will at least work through that and see what's what. I reported the incidents to both mod makers. The fuel issue is a serious concern. It also happened on all four cars, so it wasn't like it was just the Benettons that forgot to gas up. In the end it was evenly split among all four.

As for expecting a good race at Monaco, when I've been running practice sessions I've often had very good sparring matches with other cars on the track. The next race in the series is Montreal and it rained there in 1991.

It occurred to me while I was lying in bed last night that maybe the mods really aren't designed for AI use except to fill in when there are not enough real drivers in online racing. Maybe they're just not designed for offline, solo racing. I really, really like the 1991 cars. I don't want to abandon them and move onto something else.

 

[Emery]

It occurred to me while I was lying in bed last night that maybe the mods really aren't designed for AI use except to fill in when there are not enough real drivers in online racing. Maybe they're just not designed for offline, solo racing. I really, really like the 1991 cars. I don't want to abandon them and move onto something else.

Some mods are designed for AI, some aren't. For instance, the Apex GT3 mod originally had zero thought for AI and now the devs have given a small nod to AI, though the default setups hamper the AI quite a bit and a player intending to use it with AI should probably assign setups.

 

[TobiasR]

You're silly booth. Dogs aren't supposed to simrace

 

[Melv]

@Booth.the.doberman

For the AI crashing you could try the below -

1. Reduce the aggression settings just for Monaco. Usually for open wheelers anyway you should keep it much lower than for tin tops
2. Try using the AI learning (calibration) feature so that the AI will tidy up their driving a bit. Check this post on how to do it. http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/plugin-to-change-values-in-track-aiw.115730/#post-2162790

The above two should help a bit.

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

The aggression is set way back anyway (5%) and I've tried doing the training thing. On several of the tracks, the AI was never able to find the line and quit after 200+ laps.

 

[Melv]

Then I assume its a track (AI line) and mod (AI settings) combo.

For Monaco(or any street circuit) the AI lines have to be done smartly. You cant have a wide line, this would inevitably mean the AI will try to overtake and outbreak in places where it is sure to end up in disaster. Tapering the AIW lines into the corners on street circuits ensures there is only 1 line through a corner and the AI get into single file before the corner.

In this case I guess the track creators need to tweak the AIW or you will need to do it urself.

 

[fortyfivekev]

You're silly booth. Dogs aren't supposed to simrace

I'd like to see you try and stop that dog simracing

 

[Gijs van Elderen]

You're silly booth. Dogs aren't supposed to simrace

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

You all seem to be missing something here. A bunch of the AI retired after running out of fuel on the first lap. How could that possibly happen?

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

I noticed something else and I'm not sure who to notify about this one. At both Imola 2006 and RaceRFactor Monaco, the laps run under full course yellow with the safety car out are not included in the actual length of the race. By that I mean, I set the race to be 20 laps. Twenty-eight laps were run; eight of those were under full course yellow. I should have run out of fuel after 22 laps, but since these eight laps were "free," it didn't count them.

 

[fortyfivekev]

You all seem to be missing something here. A bunch of the AI retired after running out of fuel on the first lap. How could that possibly happen?

I don't think anyone missed it but this is hard to answer. I suppose either race distance or fuel consumption (or some other strategy aspect) are being reported wrongly when the fuel loads are calculated. If either of the mod teams are still active you can report it to them. Whether they care or not who knows? ISI are never going to investigate problems with mods as it really isn't their problem so there is no point in reporting it to them.

Sad fact is those free mods you got have bugs.

 

[hexagramme]

Could be that the mod creators forgot to properly simulate fuel usage for that particular track. Or there's something wrong with the car's fuel consumption. Or there's a setup forced on the AI that sees them start with not enough fuel.

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

Is there a way to check the internals of the mods by looking. for example, at the mas files?

 

[Simon Christmann]

Which internals do you want to check?

With Carstats you can for example look at some informations:
http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/21325-CarStat-2

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

Carstats looks reasonable to me. There aren't any glaring errors such as a tank size of 0L or something that shrieks "Trouble with a capital T."

 

[Ace King]

You all seem to be missing something here. A bunch of the AI retired after running out of fuel on the first lap. How could that possibly happen?

I just finished a 28 lap race at RaceRfactor-Monaco using the ASR 1991 F1 mod against a field of 24 AI. Nearly all 24 AI finished my race except for: 2 AI: fuel (lap1) and 1 AI retired with suspension problems!

With my results it doesn't appear to be an issue with the ASR 1991 mod or RaceRfactor-Monaco