F1 2013 AI - slow behind you, impossibly fast ahead of you

[IHazABone]

Hi, I'm pretty new to the F1 series, but after only a few hours of play I found something insanely frustrating that ended with me restarting almost every race a multitude of times to get anything in the top 75%. The AI, when behind you, is easy to keep behind you until you make a mistake. However, once they pass you, it becomes literally impossible (after about one lap) to pass them. They NEVER make a mistake, their lap times go from, for example, in my most recent race, 1:46 in second (me in first after three laps at 1:39) to 1:32 two laps after I dropped into seventh after I made a bad corner. They had a seventeen second gap between eighth and ninth (me), while 10th-22nd was all within three seconds behind me. I ended up losing one more corner, dropping to one and a half seconds behind 21st, and after four more flawless (the same 1:36-1:39 as the rest of my good laps) I was THIRTY TWO seconds behind 21st. If this continues, I might not even be able to play without frustrating myself to utter oblivion and uninstalling. Sorry.

 

[Graham Laing]

http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/threads/out-of-sight-bug-once-again.76303/

 

[IHazABone]

Hi, that explains a lot. I HAVE NOT ONCE recovered a position after 30 seconds of losing it and I've racked up 50 hours of play. Last almost every single race.

 

[IHazABone]

Is there any fix for it? Because, quite frankly, I'm not going to play until I find one. It's too frustrating and I hate it.

 

[IHazABone]

Something I've just discovered - this "out of sight bug" isn't occurring in F1 Classic Grand Prix. It was much more enjoyable, but I'd like to play the actual career mode.

 

[Graham Laing]

There is probably nothing you can do, except try an AI mod, perhaps the one below. It's the 1st one I came across in a search of the mod forum :-

http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/resources/true-to-life-ai.1050/

 

[IHazABone]

Yeah, that's the one I just downloaded a couple of hours ago. Have yet to try it.

 

[IHazABone]

Well, just did Melbourne in an RB9, and I was 8s behind 1st and 5s ahead of 3rd (until I botched the veeery last corner on the final lap >.> ). Seems good. Times are more spread out.

 

[Reanimocio]

To be honest it doesn't look like a Out of Sight bug to me. What difficulty are you playing at?

The AI is pretty clueless when it comes to overtaking (they have decent aggression on Legend) so keeping them behind is quite easy as they cannot brake late, drive off the racing line or plan a move with the next few corners in mind. To me it looks like the AI is simply much faster than you and that's why they are bolting as soon as they pass you, otherwise they are just stuck behind you.

Try lowering the difficulty and/or go to proving grounds and start putting lap after lap until you see significant improvement in your laptimes.

 

[IHazABone]

I'm on the easiest, haha. I did 80 or so laps of Melbourne and my time did increase decrease (oh.). My little problem was that they actually significantly improved on their qualifying times once they got ahead of me.

 

[Jacob Fræer]

They are slow behind you because you are blocking them. Their speed in front of you is their ideal speed.

 

[Luigi Clemente]

Hmm it s real that AI is fast but yesterday for example I was racing korea gp mode wit lotus and I was second behind vettel that was keeping his incredible pace but me with a great setup and avoiding mistakes in 5 laps I got him to the lead of the gp and I was with a lotus against a red bull and I play on legend AI with a controller, all assist off except for abs

 

[IHazABone]

Hey, back on this thread after almost 100 hours on the track using the mod.
I'm driving the RB9. I've recently come to hate the AI. Again. List order:

• The AI DOES NOT pass on any difficulty aside from Legend.
• The AI NEVER passes another AI unless a very large mistake occurs. I've never seen it once.
• The AI ALWAYS performs better in a race than qualifying.
• The AI adjusts to the player.
• The AI DOES NOT CARE if it hits the player. In almost every race I use all four flashbacks in the first 45 second start.
• The AI's traction is perfect. Always. For example, I was just at Montreal, and they take a number of corners at full speed, including the very last one, whereas no matter how many laps I try (I think I've racked almost 200 laps there, it's my favourite track in Grand Prix mode) I can't keep up to their speed in corners.
• The AI can easily close a four second gap on a straight (only seen from Expert up)
• The AI occasionally runs a full race without pitting
• The AI beat my by almost ten seconds at Monaco, 50%, started raining halfway through but none of the AI pitted - they EASILY won on Primes and Options (and once again, perfect traction).
• Once they're at least two seconds ahead of you, it's impossible to pass them unless you fly into a hairpin at 280km/h (again, over 100 hours race time, have only done it successfully twice)

And that's that. Does anyone else notice any of these things either on the stock AI or the True to Life AI mod?

 

[Tom Lancaster]

Yes your right the ai is just broken on the base game. They are completely un enjoyable to race against, never put up a challenge and have some very strange and erratic behaviours.

The problems I noticed with the base game were

• Ai much slower in qualifying than the race. To counter this dont use fast fuel mix in quali and also dont fast forward the time. The generated laptimes are usually much slower than if they run around the circuit in real time.
• Ai tyre wear is completely broken. They have seemingly no tyre wear, this is especially evident in wet races with intermediate tyres.
• They never overtake even on legend. The slightest movement from you on the straight is usually enough to make them completely give up the pass and fall back a ridiculous amount(usually about a second) They also never pass other ai's because they have ridiculous follow ai and will often fall back 0.5s just before the DRS activation. Silverstone sector 1 is an example of this.
  
• Your completely right about the traction. Its the only area that the ai is faster than me on legend. They are unbeatable exiting corners, Canada hairpin and India's hairpin are 2 examples.
• They have extremely weird fuel usage in the race. A lot of the weird stuff you see is caused by the ai having absolutely massive pace differences based on what fuel mix they are in. A lot of the time even when they have the opportunity to catch the car ahead they will rather sit in lean fuel mix and lose 2 seconds per lap.
  
• They are terrible on the brakes and also awful at any circuit with fast direction changes.

Even with a lot of ai modding its almost impossible to get them to function correctly. They still do stupid things and they still run ridiculous strategies. Getting a tyre wear mod is a must unless you want to pull your hair out wondering why the Mercedes are setting fastest laps after 20 laps on options while you are 2-3 seconds down on your opening pace. I thought the ai in the this game was very poor and a big step back from F1 2012.

 

[IHazABone]

Then things like this happen almost every race - look at the difference between Alonso and Massa, then Button and Rosberg - if I come in first, it's not like this. It looks like everything below Rosberg - no super huge differences.

I'm playing on professional, but whether I move up the Legend or not, it looks pretty much the same (although on the same track, this one, I got 22nd in qualifying with 1:35:xx and 21st (Charles Pic) was 1:29:xx).

 

[john griffin]

I have the same problem. The ai really is poor in this game no matter what level i play.
In practice and qualifying the expert level is perfect but in the race the leaders are so far ahead its unreal. I can keep up my pace in a race but have no chance of catching the guy infront as he speeds away, also the drivers behind me have mostly the same pace as me until near the end of the race where they seem to be using warp power to catch me by this time the guy infront is 30 seconds ahead.
If i drop i difficulty level to pro then is too easy, im faster than everyone.
I have use true ai mod but it totaly screws up the game for me, i want to try to keep it to the original game as posible with only minor tweeks.
I need someone to explian the numbers in the database ai section so i can make the game better.

 

[Graham Laing]

I need someone to explain the numbers in the database ai section so i can make the game better.

You best bet is to ask here :-

http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/threads/modding-questions-thread.68653/unread

 

[IHazABone]

Back. Again.
This time with AI and pitting. In the last three races I've done (wow, consistency in this game!?), I've started out fourth or fifth, moved up to first very quickly, and when I pitted, I'd lose one or two positions. And never gain them back. I'd end up a full minute behind someone every time I pitted. What's up with that?
I watched Alonso for the last one at Monza, and where I went S-O, 6-P, 16-P, 23-O, he did S-P, 8-O, 21-O. How the **** did he manage to keep on options for THAT LONG?

While I love the game, I also hate it with a fiery passion. The AI is ridiculous. I'm too fast for Legendary in the 90's cars, especially the FW14B, but Professional is where I'm experiencing such difficulties in Career.

 

[racingmaniac]

In practice and qualifying the expert level is perfect but in the race the leaders are so far ahead its unreal.
If i drop i difficulty level to pro then is too easy, im faster than everyone.

Try using a mixture of the 2 difficulties. Like driving half of the race in expert difficulty and then mid session save > exit to career menu > set difficulty to professional and then load the mid session save and try to catch up and regain lost positions

 

[racingmaniac]

Main problem is with the fuel usage of the AI which is not exactly applied like the player. You can observe a few minutes after you finish the race in the results screen when cars are passing in the background, when your car passes it's fuel is finished (it's obvious from the engine sound) even if you still had a lap or so of reserve fuel when you finished race, but other cars are still going without fuel problems. So their fuel usage is not simulated using a gauge or something like that of the player, and I firmly believe their fuel mix in use is based on the stint they are on, so if you think about it you'll see it can hardly be an exact simulation in most of the circuits as they are always using a few laps more or few laps less than you based on their fuel strategy.

Actually if my reasoning above is correct and there is no fuel gauge defined for the AI cars then that should also mean they have unrealistic pace (specially through the corners) regardless of what fuel mix they are using because that's strictly based on the fuel they have on board (which is not defined for them).

And add to this the AI's unbelievable traction (noticeable in most of the traction zones), coward passing moves and so on. The game really needs upgrade here but I'm not hopeful of an improvement any time soon looking at the obstacles they face for the new season and the complexity of entering a new era and simulating the new power units... Oh well if they couldn't make a good AI this year, things can only get worse for next year.