I thought I would post my findings for balancing AI speed from track to track to keep from having to constantly adjust AI strength. For many of the stock tracks, the ai seems to be fairly balanced but some mod tracks can vary quite a bit.
I usually keep AI strength around 104-106% for the tracks that came with the game but I have some 3rd party tracks where I would have to turn down AI strength to 95% just to keep up with the AI. Road Atlanta is one of my favorites and I have had to turn up the AI strength to 120% just to keep from beating the AI without a fight.
At 106%, the AI were about 4 seconds slower than me so I performed the AI calibration which helped speed them up roughly .5 - .75 seconds but were still way too slow. The next thing I did was let the AI use my setup of the car which did not seem to help their lap times.
What finally worked was when I stumbled across 3 entries in the track's AIW file. Do a text search in the aiw file for bestadjust= and you will find midadjust= and worstadjust= as well. You want to keep these numbers varied a few hundredths of a percent to keep the cars from being too even so just raise or lower each number respectively until you get the lap times out of the AI you want. I set the AI strength slider to 105% then I adjusted these entries in the AIW file to get the qualifying lap times of the AI right with my times so now as my speed gets better, I can bump up the AI slider a bit so it stays competitive and I can keep AI strength slider in about the same place from track to track. The quick and easy way to see the AI lap times is load a race with a qualifying session and don't hit start. The AI starts their qualifying laps so now press ctrl T and the ai will go in super fast forward so you can quickly see and compare all their times.
Also, if you want the AI to be faster in qualifying than when racing, add "RaceQualRatio=1.00" into the track's AIW file just below the lines for mid, best and worst adjust we were just discussing. A value of 1.00 gives the AI the same qualify speed as racing. A value of 1.05 makes the AI considerably faster during qualifying. I have mine set at 1.02.
I usually keep AI strength around 104-106% for the tracks that came with the game but I have some 3rd party tracks where I would have to turn down AI strength to 95% just to keep up with the AI. Road Atlanta is one of my favorites and I have had to turn up the AI strength to 120% just to keep from beating the AI without a fight.
At 106%, the AI were about 4 seconds slower than me so I performed the AI calibration which helped speed them up roughly .5 - .75 seconds but were still way too slow. The next thing I did was let the AI use my setup of the car which did not seem to help their lap times.
What finally worked was when I stumbled across 3 entries in the track's AIW file. Do a text search in the aiw file for bestadjust= and you will find midadjust= and worstadjust= as well. You want to keep these numbers varied a few hundredths of a percent to keep the cars from being too even so just raise or lower each number respectively until you get the lap times out of the AI you want. I set the AI strength slider to 105% then I adjusted these entries in the AIW file to get the qualifying lap times of the AI right with my times so now as my speed gets better, I can bump up the AI slider a bit so it stays competitive and I can keep AI strength slider in about the same place from track to track. The quick and easy way to see the AI lap times is load a race with a qualifying session and don't hit start. The AI starts their qualifying laps so now press ctrl T and the ai will go in super fast forward so you can quickly see and compare all their times.
Also, if you want the AI to be faster in qualifying than when racing, add "RaceQualRatio=1.00" into the track's AIW file just below the lines for mid, best and worst adjust we were just discussing. A value of 1.00 gives the AI the same qualify speed as racing. A value of 1.05 makes the AI considerably faster during qualifying. I have mine set at 1.02.
