More balanced competition against AI

[TED MEAT]

I was wondering what would be the best way to improve the competition against AI?

First of all I'd like to match the performance to the car I'm driving, both grip and powerwise. Is ArgEditor the best way to adjust player grip / power? Does adjusting player grip in ArgEditor affect AI driver grip? 

Also, even if you adjust the grip / power, it still doesn't make the racing balanced. The problems are the slow turns, where the AI breaks super early. Would it be possible to increase the braking distance for the player? 

Often if you try to match the overall performance (lap times) of your car with the opponents, you end up being a lot faster in slow turns and a lot slower on straights and fast turns, which results into crashes when the AI pushes you from behind. I'm looking for a result to this problem. So that you'd be somewhat on the same level  with the AI, all around the track.

Thanks! 

TED MEAT 

[F1GP Archive]

Hello,

You can change the AI driver performance by changing their horsepower, skill level and AI grip level. The skill level for each driver acts like a negative grip level (the higher the skill value, the slower they will be).

You can do this using the ArgEditor or any other F1GP game editor.

 
For the human driver you can only change the horsepower. The AI grip level will not improve the cornering speed of a human driver. In fact, it will cause some strange steering behavior. If you use an AI Grip level other than 1, I strongly recommend using the GPLAP patch, which will set the human grip level to 1, ensuring normal car handling.

You can check the expected AI lap times using LapCalc, in order to match them to your performance.

Like you said, it's not really possible to match the AI braking performance to the human one. But it is possible to make the AI cars brake a bit later. 
This can be achieved by using the aggressiveness setting in tools like gpcsetup/gpcwinset, or by using a PowerShell script.
This won't have a significant effect on their lap times, but it will make them brake later. The higher the AI grip level, the more you can push their aggressiveness level. However, if you overdo it, they will tend to spin out in heavy braking zones. You can also play a bit with the setup of the AI cars using the same tools.

As for the human car, you can try to compromise your braking performance by using an extreme brake bias setting.

But even if you're not able to match the AI behavior perfectly to yours, I find it fun to fight the AI with a car that has different strengths and weaknesses compared to theirs. Personally, I typically use AI grip level of 10 and increase their HP by 100.

Cheers,

Hrvoje

[TED MEAT]

Thank you very much for the help Hrvoje :) 

One more question: How about wet weather? The AI is quite overpowered in wet. Would there be a convenient method of decreasing their performance in wet races? You can of course reduce the difficulty level, but that doesn't work during an ongoing season.

 

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[F1GP Archive]

In the wet you normally want to use a lower difficulty level in order to balance the performance.
This will result in the AI having better cornering performance and traction (low-speed acceleration), while the player will have better braking, high-speed acceleration and top speed.

Alternatively, you could achieve a similar result by reducing the AI horsepower and increasing their skill values (lower performance/grip). 

Maybe you could also play a bit with the AI car setup, e.g. reducing the wing levels would make them slower through the corners, but faster on the straights (to match your top speed).


The issue with an ongoing season (loading from a savefile) is that all settings will be reloaded from the modified game executable, except for the AI car horsepower.

So in a scenario like we discussed before, where you've increased the AI horsepower and grip level in dry conditions, you could try the following:
- Revert the AI Grip level back to 1.
- Use the SetLevel tool to lower the game difficulty level. Keep in mind that if you've increased the AI horsepower, you will have to lower the game difficulty level more than if their horsepower is set to the default level (e.g. lower to Semi-Pro or Amateur instead of Pro).
- Additionally you can increase their skill values (lower performance) to further reduce the grip.
- Optionally play with the AI car setup a bit (wing levels, gearing).
- Alternatively, you could increase the player's horsepower. But in the wet, that's likely to cause more problems than it will help.

Keep in mind that the qualifying is always dry, so you'd want to reduce the AI performance only for a wet race session.


Personally, because there is such a big difference in performance, I prefer to do separate seasons. Either full dry or full wet.



Best regards,
Hrvoje

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