Heyho, some friends of mine and me have decicded to have a little party these days and running a long distance race against AI. Nordschleife for 4-6 hours with driver change. Now I wonder if some of you have already some expierence with the AI behaviour regarding pitstops in very long races. How often is AI going for a pitstop ? Is AI pitting only when running out of fuel ? So are we forced to run also as long as the fuel load gets us or can we change tires without losing that much time ? What about if I set up the race with mandatory pitstop ? Lets say we are running a 2 hours race with mand. stop ... is AI just doing this one or some more ? Another thing...lets say the AI is able tun run 1 hour with full fuel load. What about a race with mandatory pitstop when the distance is 80 minutes ? Is AI pitting twice ? Once for the mandatory for mchanging tires and another one after 60 min to get fuel ? And if so is AI also changing tires for a second time ? I know questions over questions...this is one thing I really do not like for SIM racing at all. I wonder if one of the studios could explain everthing about AI as they should know how they set it up. Where is the problem to explain how the AI behaves for different race distances and so on. Why I have to figure out all these things by myself ? But still I really love R3E also I have a new love ... the second factor is calling very very loud
What I seen so far only in practice is, they seem to do fuel, repairs and tire changes... I always use 20 - 35 Ai during practice and usually I practice about 30-60 minutes non stop and I see Ai some time even same Ai go in for pit stops the lap after his previous pit stop, some are long some are really short.. So from what I seen yes they do it all in pit stops how often and when they do it is still a mystery. ( Think I even saw a Ai doing what I think was a drive thru once in a race with Ai but not confirmed. Edit: think I remember seen a Ai even retire from same race and park in the pit )
Well regarding a practice session the devs implemented a various way of setups concerning fuel load with the last update. This is the reason why AI drivers are pitting with various behaviour during p session.
Yeah! I seen Ai pit frequently during both practice, Qualify and race... if it's for repair, change of tires or what beats me but I like the fact that they do pit. Seem to be a broad variety of why, when or if the Ai pit which IMO make it so much more immersive.
For a while I was running races with double and triple tire wear. With forced pit stops. And it was weird and frustrating at times because in a 30 to 40 minute race many would pit twice before the end of the race. And I would go from 14th to first in a couple of laps. Some would even pit on the last lap literally when they could have won the race. The devs told me they were making bad tire choices for the first pit stop and not correctly estimating tire wear. It has since been fixed. But I think that gives you some idea of how they will behave in longer races. They are supposed to consider many factors and will pit as often as necessary to finish the race.
Thx for this input...I will run some tests...tonight I will let the AI run a race for 6 hours and will have a look for the replay tomorrow evening.
One Test done ... 3 hours of Nordschleife. Well well well...hm...sadly I must admit the AI is not performing very logical. The Race itself was a pleasure watching. Ok. For pitstops : AI performed first one after 7-10 laps WITHOUT tyre change to do this 2-3 laps later...grmpf... Hackländer and another driver missed the first stop and run out of fuel in lap 11 !!!! One other car (Audi) did stop the race in lap 6 which I can not investigate any more as the save of the replay failed. One time the AI stopped for refueling and changing tyres. But again the AI did stops without changing tyres just to do so 3-4 laps later. It seems to be that there is no the best correspondence between fuel load and tyre wear. So if AI is running out of fuel and tyres are still at 70% (I have a feeling this is it) they will not change them. The race was won by Porsche (Henzler #4) because he did a very long stint with 10 laps while his hardest and always leading opponents Johansson on Vette c06 (still much to fast by the way) and de Doncker on Mustang did a stop just one lap left...perfect timing..
I find that the only 'fair' way to run endurance against AI (on pretty much any race game) is to turn off tyre wear and fuel use. This is obviously not a good solution, but highlights that it is not just RRE that suffers the problem. If we can't rely on the I of AI, then perhaps an option to set all this ourselves prior to the race, maybe choosing pit-windows based on time or laps. From what little I know of modern coding, I suspect this is not an easy fix. (Unless you are coding in UE4, from what I have read....) Thank goodness we don't have weather making it even more complex. Have some pity and understanding for the devs : look at how much technology and brainpower is thrown at deciding pit strategies in formula 1. And they still get it wrong on occasion. But I definitely agree that I would like some concrete information on HOW the AI decides strategies - a background in boardgames and role-playing games just makes the need for plainly written rules all the more desirable to me.