Unfair AI advantage

[brettt777]

Okay, this is probably beating a dead horse but....
I was racing Troy Daltons fine Speed GT series the other day at Road Atlanta. Now that track is hard enough to be competitive (for me anyway) with it being so bumpy and all, and I know the issue of the off track gravel that sucks you in if you look at it wrong has been discussed before. But I had never really noticed till the other night that it doesn't affect the AI at all!!! If any of them went off track, they didn't even slow down. I actualy started intentionally trying to run other cars off the track just to verify this and it's true. If I even touched the gravel with part of a tire it would yank me completely off track and slow me down to a crawl. I forced another car off track into the gravel while we were doing about 120 mph down a straight and he kept right up with me and actualy passed me! Is there anything that can be done about this to at least make it even for us and the AI?

[Nothegger]

I really despise AI in GTL/GTR2 sometimes, totaly cheating bastards... I have witnessed COUNTLESS times when they go of track, gravel, grass, no matter, they never slow down. Often they actually seem to accelerate and overtake me. Over gravel! And when they chrash/spin, they get back on track so quickly that it looks cartoonish. If I werent mad, I'd drop on the floor laughing, how they hit reverse, pull out, get back on track, and in full speed in two seconds alltogether! Not to mention the crashes. At least 9 out of 10 times when there is any kind of contact between my car and AI and someone spins out, it's my car, even if the cars are same size/weight.
I have another example from GTL, when I started playing it. I downloaded the LeMans track and went to try it out. I wanted to play the game in PRO (SIM) mode, and I took the Cobra, the fastest car in astraight line in that class (that was before I unlocked any locked cars). So I'm driving down Mulsane straight in a Cobra doing >160mph, and guess what I see? Lotus Elan! Driving by me?!
I know it's not easy to program a good AI, and that they need advantages to be competitive and provide a challenge in SP, but what's too much...

[David Wright]

Originally Posted by Nothegger

I have another example from GTL, when I started playing it. I downloaded the LeMans track and went to try it out. I wanted to play the game in PRO (SIM) mode, and I took the Cobra, the fastest car in astraight line in that class (that was before I unlocked any locked cars). So I'm driving down Mulsane straight in a Cobra doing >160mph, and guess what I see? Lotus Elan! Driving by me?!

I have never seen an AI Elan be anything like as fast as a Cobra (in a straight line) on any of the standard GTL tracks. Which LeMans track is this - the 67 version or the modern version with chicanes?

It always amazes me how we seem to have very different experience of driving against the AI. I really love the AI in GTL - it is the best AI I've ever driven against. I recently did a 60 lap race against the AI at Monza and had a race long battle with a Pantera and a Corvette. They drove very cleanly, perhaps too cleanly - they seem to try to their best to avoid hitting you. In 60 laps of close racing I was only hit once and even though the Corvette is heavier than my BMW I certainly didn't spin out. The AI make the odd mistake which is nice too. I just think its great that they spin out - it doesn't worry me how long they take to recover.

No AI is perfect of course and I agree that with the introduction of "sticky" gravel in GTR2, the fact that the AI are not affected is much more noticeable. But I don't have any experience of what I would call AI "cheating". If they routinely used the grass and gravel to gain an advantage it would be "cheating" but in my experience on Simbin tracks they stick to the road, only going on the grass if avoiding action is required (usually as a result of my actions ). If I force them onto the grass or gravel then who is cheating? With reference to the first post, I do not have any experience of the AI at Road Atlanta and it may be the AIW is poor which is often the case with add-on tracks. If it's like the Riverside conversion which has gravel traps adjacent to the track edge then I do sympathise but the real problem is the track rather than the AI.

[Nothegger]

Originally Posted by David Wright

I have never seen an AI Elan be anything like as fast as a Cobra (in a straight line) on any of the standard GTL tracks. Which LeMans track is this - the 67 version or the modern version with chicanes?

It always amazes me how we seem to have very different experience of driving against the AI. I really love the AI in GTL - it is the best AI I've ever driven against. I recently did a 60 lap race against the AI at Monza and had a race long battle with a Pantera and a Corvette. They drove very cleanly, perhaps too cleanly - they seem to try to their best to avoid hitting you. In 60 laps of close racing I was only hit once and even though the Corvette is heavier than my BMW I certainly didn't spin out. The AI make the odd mistake which is nice too. I just think its great that they spin out - it doesn't worry me how long they take to recover.

...

Well, it happened to me exactly as I described, on modern LeMans with chicanes. It was on the straight section between two chicanes, I was driving a Cobra with long gear setup, floored it, perfectly straight without any mistakes or slowing down, about 160mph according to speedo. And then I see the Elan overtaking me right there I mean there is no way I could drive the Elan at 170 or what mph. When I saw that I decided to back down and play the game in Semi-pro mode. The AI becomes faster as you go to higher difficulty, and I think they also get faster cars, not only drive better. There are also differences between AI drivers even if they all drive same cars, obviously, so I guess there is some multiplier or something in the game that is randomized for every AI car when you load a race. It might have happened that the Elan got the really fast setup randomly, but it is nevertheless possible for situations like this to occur.

Maybe you are better driver than me, but when AI car clips me from behind, it often causes me to spin out, especially if I drive one of the higher powered cars. And they do that quite often, when we are in the race, AI car coming up behind me, if I don't let them overtake, they will clip my car, sort of like "bump" me out of the way. And if I hit them, usually nothing happens, if I keep at it, there seems to be equal chance that I will chrash my car instead. Anyway, if I saw a player on the server not being affected by gravel/grass, I'd consider him a cheater even if he doesn't regularly use this to his advantage.

Look, I know that AI has to be extra resistant to pushing of the track because they can't complain about people wrecking them, unlike human players in online games, and there is no penalty in game for wrecking other cars. I'm just saying that IMO they are a little too resistant, and that can be frustrating, especially for people who are not very good sim drivers. Personally, I like them to as realistic as possible in every way.

[Grasshopper]

I have been meddling around with track building in gtr2, from what i learned so far, i don't think it is good to test the ai on addon tracks. There are track-specific parameters (like in the aiw file) that can make the ai have a lot more grip than the player etc. With my very first aiw file (i think it stands for ai waypoints) the ai just rammed me out of the way like they didn't even saw me, after a lot of improvements (thanks to greybrad), they became a lot more 'careful'.

The ai drivers are supposed to simulate the cream of the crop in gt racing.
so at 100% they should be able to handle 'nudges'. In real racing there are
often little 'contacts' between cars too.

just my 2 cents