AI and penalties

To my way of thinking there's not much use in having penalties if they only affect human drivers.

I spent a few hours coming to grips (pun intended) with Zolder last night. I tend to learn a new track by following the AI, but doing this on Zolder just gave me track cutting penalties from following them as they consistently cut through the chicanes. Not really a fair race when the AI can approach a track differently than you can. In the end I turned the penalties off and kept up.

Looking at various replays on various tracks I see pretty much constant abuse of the track limits by AI in a way that would penalise a human out of contention.

So question to the devs: is there planned to be some kind of penalty system applied to the AI? Or failing that, adjustment to their behaviour so that they don't flout the track limits with impunity?

 

I can't say I have seen a lot of this, but have only done 10-20 races with the new AI so far.
But I have seen a few cut tracks by the AI on some tight spot battles, and from what I've seen they haven't gone in for a drive through or get disqualified for not doing so..
Not as big of a problem as in pcars where the AI constantly go off track and cutting corners, but I hope penalties and such will be implemented for the AI as well in the future.

 

+1

 

This is exactly what I just logged on to find out. If anyone else has experienced this. I just finished a race on Eurospeedway Lausitz with the Formula 2 car and was passed twice by the AI cutting the track in turn 2. If I did this I would get a penalty (evidenced by the numerous track cutting penalties I've inadvertently taken in different events, D'oh!!!) but they were able to just keep on racing like nothing untoward had happened. This is a very frustrating oversight, in my opinion. It's incredibly annoying having to adhere to the track limits when the AI can just casually ignore them. I could just turn off penalties and not have to worry about it, but I do like to try and stick to the rules. The AI has recently become a helluva lot more fun/challenging to race against (kudos to the AI programmers) but this is something that needs to be addressed.

 

This is annoyung to say the least. I was driving on Suzuka last weekend and AI was constantly driving wide the last fast turn before the last chicane. If they'd had penalties, whole grid would've been black flagged for penalty many times.

 

While I agree that this could do with some attention, be careful what you wish for. There are 2 issues here, and just handing penalties out to the AI without first fixing their lines & waypoints is going to make matters worse - you'll end up winning every race because every AI car gets DQ'ed or spends half the race in the pit lane

 

Or fix the racing line so the Ai dosnt cut the track. (having proper blonde moments today)
Or introduce an Ai learn mode so they learn the track maybe even the ability to create a ghost for the ai to use as its base race line and race speed then auto balance it out so some are a little faster and some slower.

 

Yep, I was just about to post the same thing. AI driving lines need to be adjusted on several tracks, before AI penalties can be implemented, that is for sure.

 

Thanks for the "heads up" Robert

 

But it is nice to see them do mistakes, overshoot / cut on occasion, as long as it's not all the time.
And they need to get the same punishment as the player gets if they do.

 

I have no real problem with this, but I just turn off the penalties and act as my own police.

 

I'm the same but when/if 'co-op' with ai becomes a thing it would be nice to run with the penalty system.

 

I haven't found this to be a big problem either although I bet its the Kleine Chicane (T5) at Zolder that's causing you grief tpw - it's very unforgiving to human players, particularly the entry.

Thanks Robert - its great to have such a responsive developer!!

My five cents worth on track cutting:

(1) I find it very tough in some locations (e.g. Kleine Chicane at Zolder) and very slack at others (can't think of one for the moment although from memory running very wide at T1 at Hockenheim is allowed).

(2) I have wondered if it would be possible to have a 'show track limits' overlay (similar to racing line overlay) that marks the outer limits in red? It should be a low priority but if easy to do it would be nice as a 'fast track' (pardon the pun) to learning each circuit's limits (and quirks!).

(3) In qualy I'm happy to have cut-track penalties on but I race against AI with penalties turned off as I have been forced to take evasive action by an AI incident on occasion and found myself with a disproportionate race-ruining penalty. Like others, I police myself in these cases and drop behind again if I gain from going off or cutting. I've also found sometimes that going off and losing time can, on top of that, incur a penalty which makes me .

(4) I realise it would be hellishly difficult to code a 'steward' that could assess (a) the reason you cut the track i.e. 'forced' or not (b) by how much (c) whether you gained or not and (d) whether you'd done it on previous laps. But it would be nice wouldn't it? At least as a goal.

 

what annoys me is less the cutting of the corners. what annoys me is that in some corners on some occasions when I'm in front but slower than they, they hit me, turn me around and keep going.

 

That's very rare in my experience especially since the AI update.

Not meaning to be rude in any way but if it's happening a lot I think it means you need to either (1) find a way to go faster on that particular corner - e.g. use the leaderboard challenge to hone your skills on that track - the laps there show what's possible for human players or (2) ratchet the AI down a notch or two - I find the hit from behind thing only happens when you are WAY slower than the AI (not just a little bit). You can't have close racing if the AI are too timid.

Hope this helps.

 

i think off track penalties are mostly usefull in MP racing against intentional cutting .. when you race SP, just set penalties off as you are the creator of your experience .. AI is not really gonna cut, you probably don`t wanna cut either and it leaves more space for mistakes, aviodance, etc ... also it is more realistic that way

 

Learn the track gain the knowledge, the white line is the track limit in theory, should be all you need, two wheels on the track at all times, even that will get you a penalty in places.

 

I have seen several occasions when AI cars "cut short" in turns and hairpins while being locked in a dogfight with other cars close by. But it never came to my mind they were cheating, but avoiding collisions, chassis contacts, or simply showed a "human imperfection". I see no reason to tackle the issue, since I am not certain I even see an "issue". In case of doubt, better leave things as they are, I'd say.

About AI cars behind me pointlessly crahsing into me, I canot complain, since I do not see it happoenb with at least the car classes I use. When it happens, I almost always can and must attrubute it to me driving in a way that left the AI behind to little space or time to react to my stupid move. Again, I see no urgent need to address something here. As a matter of fact I am pleased by the way the AI cares for not slamming into me.

 

that what sux about off track penalties .. recently I had race in AC .. GT2 on monza .. two cars in a front of me spinned in first chicane completely blocking passage .. so me as good guy I slowed down and slightly cut the second curve through those retarders .. doing what everybody would do even on real race .. certainly not gaining any advatage ... I get slow down penalty and was overtaken by several cars I just overtook .. I know it is impossible todo perfect automatic system for situations like that but there must be a better solutions (some car class - corner related parameter that determines whether it is gaining advantage ... If it takes me to 7 seconds to pass through chickane in GT2 car when cutting corner, I`m clearly not gaining any advatage, it is some nonstandart situation and I shouldn`t be punnished for it .... maybe have another parameter that counts how much off tracks I have and than give me warning/drive through or something ....)