Hello,
Update August 2021 - Still in development (beta)
This mod is a partial adaptation for F1 2021 of my previous one i made for F1 2020.
Some strange strategies could still appear, this mod cannot fix all the bugs in the game on the behavior of bots ...
At the beginning I wasn't satisfied with the management of the tyres proposed by the game if the race length is set at 25%. There is always only the same strategy proposed (1 stop), and the IA stayed on the same strategy everytime.
Tyre Compounds part
Tyre compounds adapted for a 25% length races and multi stop strategies, to keep a consistent AI behavior, and with a properly updated strategy panel. I updated too the Wet and Intermediate tyres to have more specific (and limited) use. For grip a standard curve is use to keep performances with an acceleration of wear with several phases.
Original grip curves of the game :
The new grip curves (depending of wear) :
"Real" grip for tyres comparisons :
As a result, if you (or IA) try to hold your tyres on for too long, the grip will drop quickly and you or them will waste a lot of time. You can easily feel the grip start to disappear at 20% -30% depending on the tyre. So take care of your tyres.
New starting grip of each tyres :
The new grip(wetness) globaly for F1 2021 :
For F2 cars, the Int and Wet boxes are for the same kind of tyres (wet).
The wear (wetness) globaly :
The result
Different strategies are proposed and used by the bots , also depending on your position (being in the first 10 on the grid or not), and so depending on the condition of the soft tyres you used during qualifying, and for each configuration (C1 C2 C3 tracks, C2 C3 C4 ...) :
New grip makes tyres make cars more difficult to drive when tyre are closed to end of life.
It will be more difficult to "push" than with new tires, combined with the slipstream effects and loss of grip, you will have (or see) more surprising trajectories.
Some other changes & tips :
It's a copy & paste installation:
Just copy and paste the directory /2021_asset_groups in the directory of the game. That’s all.
XML file of all cars is included. This can be useful if you want to add (for example) a skin mod for My Team. It's for who wants to work on it with EGO ERP Archiver. A quick pdf "howto" is include to help if you want to add a livery.
This mod is made for a 25% race time ... so at 50% or 100% I think it could be a nightmare with too many pit stops ...
Recommendation (s)
- Steam have special option for it :
Click on game by right mouse button in Steam library
Choose Properties - Local files - Verify integrity of local files. After this Steam will start checking game files and will restore modded files to originals.
- You made a copy or your original 2021_asset_groups directory. Nice ! You are careful.
This Mod not works in multiplayer (online).
This mod impacts F1 & F2 cars, for Career & My team mode, standard races ...
(not story mode)
There might still be some weird behavior, I tested it for 2 days only just after the release of F1 2021 so difficult to check everything.
I made this mod for myself at the start. But if it can help other players, so much the better ...
Update August 2021 - Still in development (beta)
This mod is a partial adaptation for F1 2021 of my previous one i made for F1 2020.
Some strange strategies could still appear, this mod cannot fix all the bugs in the game on the behavior of bots ...
At the beginning I wasn't satisfied with the management of the tyres proposed by the game if the race length is set at 25%. There is always only the same strategy proposed (1 stop), and the IA stayed on the same strategy everytime.
Tyre Compounds part
Tyre compounds adapted for a 25% length races and multi stop strategies, to keep a consistent AI behavior, and with a properly updated strategy panel. I updated too the Wet and Intermediate tyres to have more specific (and limited) use. For grip a standard curve is use to keep performances with an acceleration of wear with several phases.
Original grip curves of the game :
The new grip curves (depending of wear) :
"Real" grip for tyres comparisons :
As a result, if you (or IA) try to hold your tyres on for too long, the grip will drop quickly and you or them will waste a lot of time. You can easily feel the grip start to disappear at 20% -30% depending on the tyre. So take care of your tyres.
New starting grip of each tyres :
The new grip(wetness) globaly for F1 2021 :
For F2 cars, the Int and Wet boxes are for the same kind of tyres (wet).
The wear (wetness) globaly :
The result
Different strategies are proposed and used by the bots , also depending on your position (being in the first 10 on the grid or not), and so depending on the condition of the soft tyres you used during qualifying, and for each configuration (C1 C2 C3 tracks, C2 C3 C4 ...) :
New grip makes tyres make cars more difficult to drive when tyre are closed to end of life.
It will be more difficult to "push" than with new tires, combined with the slipstream effects and loss of grip, you will have (or see) more surprising trajectories.
Some other changes & tips :
- Puncture wear is set to 90%. Why? because IA doesn't have puncture. I have updated the tyre mixes to have a strong degradation of tyre grip, so you will have to make the right decision whether or not to keep your tires after 65-75%….
- Wear are modify through :
- teams vehicle files : <UpgradeWearFactor value="2.0" /> , for IA, FOM & My Team/Story vehicles. Value is set at 1.4 for F2 cars.
- tyrecompounds.erp file to adjust the wear in the race with the strategy estimates (around 25%).
- Aero slipstream effects are modified to be more realistic and to help for overtake. Lift effect stay globally raisonnable, so keep control of your car when you will try to overtake a slower car which did 1 pit stop only with hard compounds !. Lift value stay below 1 (note: you will always lose grip inside slipstreams .. around 25%.).
- The original grip of each tire is also updated, as the grip curve to achieve a good balance between each strategy, the selection of tire compounds and the tracks.
- Use your soft tires wisely during the qualifying phases ... ... this will have a more or less strong impact on your options after, at the start or during the race. You will no longer be able to do half of the race with soft tires.
- Wet and Int tyres have a very small box of optimum performance. You could be severely penalized with wear or grip if you don't react quickly.
- Focusing on a strategy with only 1 pit stop mainly ... is no longer the only one and best solution in every race. Hard compounds are clearly more difficult to use. It's always possible to come back from the bottom of the grid with this strategy but it will take a lot of effort and defensive skills .
- Obviously the prediction is not 100% correct, depending on your skills and your driving behavior, the settings of the car, the weather, the development of the team too…
- For the 25% version, it's will be only a "hot" version with tyres hot at start. I guess when we're playing at 25% race length, we'd rather not do a formation lap.
- Season wear upgrades effets has been reduce to keep a good balance after several seasons.
- Wet conditions are clearly more difficult to control than with the original set, for F1 and F2 cars. So caution . I tried to keep a behavior relevant with a certain progressivity. The F2 is clearly more difficult to master than before but remains a little less difficult than the F1 on wet ground due to the speed.
- No damage mods included. A specific version has been build for that.
- Real tire damage for Slicks, Inter and Wets Version 1.3 from micmiller. Special thanks to him !
- An alternative is include to use the other version of Real Time damage. Everything explained here.
It's a copy & paste installation:
Just copy and paste the directory /2021_asset_groups in the directory of the game. That’s all.
XML file of all cars is included. This can be useful if you want to add (for example) a skin mod for My Team. It's for who wants to work on it with EGO ERP Archiver. A quick pdf "howto" is include to help if you want to add a livery.
This mod is made for a 25% race time ... so at 50% or 100% I think it could be a nightmare with too many pit stops ...
Recommendation (s)
- I recommend using this mod with a small qualifying phase (18 min). (to keep coherence with the soft mixes wear updated).
- Steam have special option for it :
Click on game by right mouse button in Steam library
Choose Properties - Local files - Verify integrity of local files. After this Steam will start checking game files and will restore modded files to originals.
- You made a copy or your original 2021_asset_groups directory. Nice !
You are careful.This Mod not works in multiplayer (online).
This mod impacts F1 & F2 cars, for Career & My team mode, standard races ...
(not story mode)
There might still be some weird behavior, I tested it for 2 days only just after the release of F1 2021 so difficult to check everything.
I made this mod for myself at the start. But if it can help other players, so much the better ...
You point out the main difficulty to get a good balance for this kind of mod.
In fact, that was the case with my version for F1 2020, the hard / medium compounds were slower.
But in fact the "window" to set the grip, at race start is not that big. By reducing more the grip of hard ccompounds, the consequences were to have enormous difficulties to maintain a certain grip on HARD.
To give you a comparison, in this version, the C1 lose 6pts of grip at start-up compared to the original one, and will lose 2 times more grip after wear than the original C1 compound.
A lot of players weren't comfortable with it, but it was mandatory to be able to "waste" enough time saved by making 1 pit stop less, over a 25% race time. This means losing more than 3 seconds/laps compared to other cars with med or soft tires.
I tried to compensate by increasing the slipstream effets to help bots to overtake and let to the first 10 more chance to come back on second half part of the race.
The result today is not perfect, the bots at the start of the second half of the grid have a better chance of succeeding, especially on tracks with difficult overtaking.
So, i started this week to looking at a new version with only 1 pit stop only for all the grid but with a real challenge for the decision making for the undercut/overcut.
I think it's perhaps the best solution to optain an equilibrium, and to forgot the 2 pits stops vs 1 pit stops on a 25% race length.