reading that , you havent spent much time with the ai , racing R3e against them ... or spent time using adaptive ai
I've spent over 100 hours in the game in single player.
I have tried it but it seems to go
- Win trivially
- Lose
- Win but less trivially from here on out.
Again the qualifying thing seems to break it because if they are as good as you in qualifying you trivially beat them in the race and no amount of programmed in "race type behaviour" matters if you are 1 or 2 seconds a lap faster than everyone else.
At least in the free content. Perhaps with different tracks and cars there are some where you need to set over 100% and others where you need less for the AI to match. But, given I have one track and a couple of cars to play with, adaptive AI doesn't really achieve much.
At that point - when I was winning but less trivially, I wanted to stretch myself and not just win every race so I started using the %age setting.
I can easily set the slider to a %age where I can see the lap times the AI get and know where I will be (ignoring, as I said, the bonus they get in qualifying)
What I do is threefold
- Set the AI to a low percentage so I can learn a track by driving around following them in an easy relaxed way. i.e they are slow, slow, slow.
- Set the AI to a percentage where just a couple of them are quicker. So I can ride around in the practise like above but now I try and keep on the tail of the 2 faster drivers (and hence get better myself)
- Set the AI to a percentage to have fun - like a race where I'm in the middle of the pack after qualifying and I try to win.
Of course in a race it isn't just about lap times. Perhaps this is what some of you like, the illusion they have created of human drivers, with spins and behaviour? Sure. That's pretty good. The niggles I would have is the ridiculous flashing of the lights and brake light spamming, c'mon Sector 3, it was silly in race 07, drop that from this game please.
I said it was an illusion but it's a reasonable illusion. I just think for the 2 things I described above when it comes to me using the AI to learn to drive faster (by either watching them in 'race monitor' or by chasing them trying to sit on their tail and hence, get the same time in each sector as they do) AI that have the same physics as you would work better.
As, obviously, if they get more grip or better brakes etc, you cannot replicate that.
Maybe I'm wrong though. Right now I'm about 1.1 seconds off the top of the Bridge leaderboard which is about 1:06.7, around 20th or so and when I watch the AI doing 1:05.xxx laps and compare with the leaderboard ghosts doing the same times, I'm thinking it's obvious things aren't the same, but perhaps it is possible to do the AI's lap in the players physics. Only time will tell.