Talent Files in AMS

HarryHibbs · Jan 5, 2021

Hi there, I'm trying to figure out if the talent files I'm creating are actually working / being used in my custom championships. A central piece of info I lack is how the overall in-game AI strength slider acts upon the individual driver values in the talent file. I see that I get slower times from the drivers overall if I lower the AI strength slider, and visa versa. Is it a scaled offset perhaps? How do I know if the AI talent file I've created is actually being used? I've tried some extreme settings in the talent file to create a mix of supposedly very slow and very fast drivers, but the lap time spread never seems to go beyond 3 sec over a 1m 30s lap. Perhaps the game's AI is somehow constrained to ensure a more close, competitive field. Either that or my talent files aren't working for some reason.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated. I've found that AMS still provides one of the best offline racing experiences out there, but I would occasionally like to create championships with a wider variance in driver speeds. Thanks in advance for any info or advice on how to achieve this!

mungopark · Jan 6, 2021

first of all: the talent files work, but the series file of the mod must refer to it (something many modders forget)

example: let's say, you have created talent files for a custom v12 1991 mod and all your talent files are packed in a folder called "1991" as subfolder of GameData/Talent/F_V12.
then,within the series file, you must have an entry like this when you open it with editor or notepad:

ConfigOverrides
{
DriversDir=GAMEDATA\TALENT\F_V12\1991
}

now, the game knows that it has to use your files when racing the cars of your 91 mod.

within the single rcd-files files, the values for aggression, speed, reputation and min racing skills are the main thing. game can handle values between 1 (bad) and 100 (top).
you won't see much difference between the ai cars, when you set the fastest guys to 100, but the slowest still to values about 80. in this case, the backmarkers will not lose much time per lap, but you can have close races this way.
if you want to portray a certain season, where backmarkers lost some seconds/lap, do not hesitate to give them really low values within their file (1-10). this will have the effect you want.
top drivers 80 - 100 (100 for the best, 95 for second and so on)
midfield 40 - 75
backmarkers 1-20
play around a bit with the values and see which affect it has (as you have already done). keep in mind that also fast cars can set poor times in qualifying when they are stuck in traffic.
you of course are right with one thing you stated: even with values about 5, the backmarkers will not lose more than about 4 seconds.

one last topic is about the naming of the talent files. the files must have exactly the same name as the driver in his veh-file.
open the veh, and when you see something like "Driver="Mika Hakkinen", the rcd must be named MikaHakkinen.rcd (without blank space here).
inside the rcd, it must look like this:

Mika Hakkinen
{

// Driver stats
Aggression=xx
Reputation=xx
Courtesy=xx
Composure=xx
Speed=xx
Crash=1 (standard)
Recovery=x (5 is somehow standard, i leave it like that for all cars)
CompletedLaps=xx
MinRacingSkill=xx

}

to see if it works, start a race with qualifying and full grid and skip the session. the game now will set a qualy result according to the talent files. so, the faster cars will be set in the front rows. restart the session several times by always skipping the qualifying. should have similar results. if there is a backmarker in a top position all the time, this means that there is some mistake in naming or inside the rcd and the game does not read the file properly or ignores it. in this case, leave the game and check the file.

i hope i could help, cheers.

mungopark · Jan 6, 2021

edit: yes, you are right: when you increase the ingame ai strength, all drivers will set faster times, but the game still respects the talent files, so that there should be the same difference between fast drivers and backmarkers.