F1 2013 AI Too Hard in F1 2013?

fanpapad · Oct 5, 2013

In all the previous versions 2010, 2011 and 2012, I used to play in Career Mode with Professional AI skills and I used to easily win the Championships. In 2013, I started Career with Professonal AIs and in Melbourne with Williams, I was 10 seconds behind Vettel. Changing AIs skill to Amature, I was 4 seconds behind Vettel. Is anybody having the same problem? Will that be a bug issue?

Michal Moravec · Dec 13, 2013

I don't have much time to play, so I usually do the offline practise and online multiplayer race once per week. For curiosity, I have started my own career in Sauber, Legend AI, no assist. I was really suprised, when the team expected top 6 in qualy and 2nd place in the race!! Well I won the race thanks to better strategy, but this doesn't sound very realistic.. what is your experience?

Karl Fuss · Dec 13, 2013

I only managed P2 in my Melbourne race with Sauber in Career, but in all honesty it probably should have been P6. I had a train of AI behind me for the last 8 laps or so that couldn't get past me.
The next race in Malaysia i cam a dismal P8 but i had a crash and caused a SC and took 2 drive through penalties. And I had a terrible result in China, but i think my setup was off, my wings were too high and my top speed suffered down the straight.
I'm hoping Bahrain will be better. I'll be running 2/1 wings for that i hope.

Michal Moravec · Dec 18, 2013

Karl Fuss said:
I only managed P2 in my Melbourne race with Sauber in Career, but in all honesty it probably should have been P6. I had a train of AI behind me for the last 8 laps or so that couldn't get past me.
The next race in Malaysia i cam a dismal P8 but i had a crash and caused a SC and took 2 drive through penalties. And I had a terrible result in China, but i think my setup was off, my wings were too high and my top speed suffered down the straight.
I'm hoping Bahrain will be better. I'll be running 2/1 wings for that i hope.

Soo, my performance in carreer is droping

I didn't found where to change the engine, so I did Malaysia (p5) and China (p10) with same engine. Seems in Bahrain I finally get the fresh engine.. Struggling with tyres, but the team says, the car is actualy easy on them..

Karl Fuss · Dec 18, 2013

Michal Moravec said:
Soo, my performance in carreer is droping I didn't found where to change the engine, so I did Malaysia (p5) and China (p10) with same engine. Seems in Bahrain I finally get the fresh engine.. Struggling with tyres, but the team says, the car is actualy easy on them..

You have to change the engine in the Practice session, before the end of it. It's in with the car setup section on the same page as the Fuel and engine mix i believe. Do it at the end of the practice session before time runs out as you will lose the rest of the practice session time.

Goatherder · Dec 19, 2013

I have a question regarding AI difficulty.

I'm on season 3 and only just had this start happening. I now drive for Mercedes on Expert difficultly, which i feel is kinda cheating as i lap around 1.5 seconds faster than the rest of the field, but i want to get to red bull and i've lost patience.

Anyway this season i've noticed my partner Rosberg seems to have some AI boost. Spain it was most noticeable. I was 6 seconds clear on lap 5 first pit, i changed onto options and the next lap was informed Rosberg changed to Primes. On lap 8 i was still lapping the same times and slowly getting faster (fuel load etc) with high 1.21s, but Rosberg had closed a 6 second gap in 2 laps and was all over me, again im on options he's changed to primes, even when i changed to mix 3 to try gain a gap again, he was still riding my exhaust.

So is there an AI boost im unaware of, as a 6 second gap gone in two laps when im sat on the faster tire and was on mix 3 at one point, but yet he could easily keep up on the slower tire and i wasn't notified as usual so i don't think he was sat on mix 3 the whole time. I should mention the rest of the field was down by around 8-10 seconds it literally was just me and Rosberg.

Again this has only started happening in season 3.

chlywly · Dec 20, 2013

I drive with an xbox 360 controller, no assists. I play on medium and find no matter what the AI is somehow always able to start the race faster and gain speed on me in any situation, as well as break later and turn corners sharper... just seems a little strange like they're cheating.

Karl Fuss · Dec 23, 2013

Goatherder said:
I have a question regarding AI difficulty.

I'm on season 3 and only just had this start happening. I now drive for Mercedes on Expert difficultly, which i feel is kinda cheating as i lap around 1.5 seconds faster than the rest of the field, but i want to get to red bull and i've lost patience.

Anyway this season i've noticed my partner Rosberg seems to have some AI boost. Spain it was most noticeable. I was 6 seconds clear on lap 5 first pit, i changed onto options and the next lap was informed Rosberg changed to Primes. On lap 8 i was still lapping the same times and slowly getting faster (fuel load etc) with high 1.21s, but Rosberg had closed a 6 second gap in 2 laps and was all over me, again im on options he's changed to primes, even when i changed to mix 3 to try gain a gap again, he was still riding my exhaust.

So is there an AI boost im unaware of, as a 6 second gap gone in two laps when im sat on the faster tire and was on mix 3 at one point, but yet he could easily keep up on the slower tire and i wasn't notified as usual so i don't think he was sat on mix 3 the whole time. I should mention the rest of the field was down by around 8-10 seconds it literally was just me and Rosberg.

Again this has only started happening in season 3.

I don't know about any AI boost, but it seems to me that the AI TM is always kinda altering his pace depending on yours. If i perform poorly in practice and quali he does too, if I perform well he performs at his maximum. It might all be in my head though... lol

As for Spain, the AI are very quick there and don't seem to have a problem with tyre wear. I am in Sauber atm and can keep up to the Expert AI for 3/4 of the stint, but then the tyres go off and the AI's don't seem to have the same problem.

Ben Eastman · Jan 27, 2014

Karl Fuss said:
I don't know about any AI boost, but it seems to me that the AI TM is always kinda altering his pace depending on yours. If i perform poorly in practice and quali he does too, if I perform well he performs at his maximum. It might all be in my head though... lol

As for Spain, the AI are very quick there and don't seem to have a problem with tyre wear. I am in Sauber atm and can keep up to the Expert AI for 3/4 of the stint, but then the tyres go off and the AI's don't seem to have the same problem.

I believe the reason we see these effects is partly down to the setup most people tend to use for Spain(which can be applied to most other tracks).

As we all probably know, you need hard ARBs, hard springs and high camber to be able to maximize your setup around that track for qualli, otherwise you find yourself understeering on certain corners, especially T3(up the hill to the right, you burn out your left front around here), T7(more huge forces through your left side tyres) and the final chicane(which you need to have an ultra-responsive car to be able to slide it through that complex).

So what happens IMO is that the AI has a preset "setup" in terms of tyre wear, downforce etc. If I remember right these are just numbers in the registry that are adjusted track to track to change the AI performance to suit the track, and to get accurate wear compared to the user.

But then when the user alters their setup to have extremes such as the springs/ARB i mentioned, or simply just using too little/too much downforce then what is optimal, your going to have slight performance differences, and most notably your going to be trading 1-lap performance for tyre wear, so that is why Rosberg and the rest of the field will drop away in the early laps, but then when he switches to primes and your on options and burning them out at an extra quick rate, hes going to have a tyre life advantage on you at that point.

If you need to adjust the AI track to track just go DL that registry editor from 2012, go into the settings for the AI pace for individuals tracks, and make slight adjustments as necessary for you to have a competitive racing experience with the AI. That's what I do, as I play through my seasons I'll just constantly adjust the AI performance/tyre wear etc.

Austmazing · Apr 3, 2014

On F1 2012 I always ran legend AI with auto gears and could easily win in career mode. However, now I just started my F1 2013 career with lotus using Legend AI and auto gears and qualified 18th at Melbourne. I began the race and dropped back to 22nd by the first turn because of massive wheel spin that I couldn't help. I'm just not sure what to do. I should be running in the points consistently but qualified 18th and hung around 14th or so all race while kimi qualified 5th. PLEASE help

Austmazing · Apr 3, 2014

OK, I finished Melbourne and got a 10th place finish. Quick lap of 1:29.672. Kimi got 2nd with a quick lap of 1:26.694. The fastest lap was a 1:25.938 by Alonso. Smh. Ugh

Reanimocio · Apr 3, 2014

Ben Eastman said:
I believe the reason we see these effects is partly down to the setup most people tend to use for Spain(which can be applied to most other tracks).

As we all probably know, you need hard ARBs, hard springs and high camber to be able to maximize your setup around that track for qualli, otherwise you find yourself understeering on certain corners, especially T3(up the hill to the right, you burn out your left front around here), T7(more huge forces through your left side tyres) and the final chicane(which you need to have an ultra-responsive car to be able to slide it through that complex).

So what happens IMO is that the AI has a preset "setup" in terms of tyre wear, downforce etc. If I remember right these are just numbers in the registry that are adjusted track to track to change the AI performance to suit the track, and to get accurate wear compared to the user.

But then when the user alters their setup to have extremes such as the springs/ARB i mentioned, or simply just using too little/too much downforce then what is optimal, your going to have slight performance differences, and most notably your going to be trading 1-lap performance for tyre wear, so that is why Rosberg and the rest of the field will drop away in the early laps, but then when he switches to primes and your on options and burning them out at an extra quick rate, hes going to have a tyre life advantage on you at that point.

If you need to adjust the AI track to track just go DL that registry editor from 2012, go into the settings for the AI pace for individuals tracks, and make slight adjustments as necessary for you to have a competitive racing experience with the AI. That's what I do, as I play through my seasons I'll just constantly adjust the AI performance/tyre wear etc.

I play career with default setups and the AI still has much better tyre wear. Like absurdly better. There are samo tracks like Malaysia, Spain, China and Germany where the nature of the layout just overheats the tyres. In Spain I tried lifting off in T3 and going much slower through T4 and T7 and while this manages to get the tyres to better temps the AI still have huge advantage in terms of tyre life. Not to mention that lifting off/going slower results in massive time loss (0.3-0.8 per lap). The problem is that their tyre wear is scripted, you can hear them revving their engines at maximum and yet the have no problems whatsoever with maintaining the life in the rears. But the lifting off to stop the overheating could be very useful in online racing. I was doing that in Spain and in the last 3-5 laps of each stint I was almost on almost a second faster. But that is only useful in 100% races, in 50% the stints are too short so there is no point.

And Australia is not a good place to compare yourself with the AI, they are incredibly slow there. With the Williams I qualified P7 and finished P2 (30s+ behind Alonso and 12s+ ahead of Hamilton) but in the next 4 races I qualified P9-P13 and finished P7-P10 so I'd say the AI in Oz is pretty poor.

Karl Fuss · Apr 3, 2014

Austmazing said:
On F1 2012 I always ran legend AI with auto gears and could easily win in career mode. However, now I just started my F1 2013 career with lotus using Legend AI and auto gears and qualified 18th at Melbourne. I began the race and dropped back to 22nd by the first turn because of massive wheel spin that I couldn't help. I'm just not sure what to do. I should be running in the points consistently but qualified 18th and hung around 14th or so all race while kimi qualified 5th. PLEASE help

I started in LEG but had to drop down one level in order to be competitive while learning the game..... I started in Sauber and didn't win a race until Canada. I'm only 8 races in and sit P6 in the standings with 69 points.
I'm having a ton of fun though...

Austmazing · Apr 4, 2014

Karl Fuss said:
I started in LEG but had to drop down one level in order to be competitive while learning the game..... I started in Sauber and didn't win a race until Canada. I'm only 8 races in and sit P6 in the standings with 69 points.
I'm having a ton of fun though...

Well qualified 8th at Kuala Lumpar and seem to be doing much better. Melbourne has always been a bad track for me and Lumpar had always been a great track for me.

Karl Fuss · Apr 4, 2014

Austmazing said:
Well qualified 8th at Kuala Lumpar and seem to be doing much better. Melbourne has always been a bad track for me and Lumpar had always been a great track for me.

I had a terrible crash at Kuala Lumpur on lap 11 with Button that brought out the SC. I also received a penalty for causing the accident. I broke my wing and needed new tyres so i pitted, but when i was leaving the pits another car was beside me and i wasn't sure if i should let him go past or what... the next thing i knew i had another penalty for passing under the SC. LOL
It was a disaster race for me, but i still managed to finish P10 and also managed to stay on the lead lap (just barely)

Santiago Garcia · Apr 10, 2014

I'm playing Career mode with Toro Rosso in my first season and it seams that the pace of the AI on the qualy session is slower in proportion to the pace during the race.

For example: if I choose any difficulty level below legend on qualy I can easily get into the top ten, something very unlikely with Toro Rosso, so I choose legend to match the team objectives and don't go any further. But then I go to the race and I can't match the race pace on legend, even the pace of the slowest cars. So, to match the race pace I have to drop a difficulty level between the qualy session and the race. From Legen to Expert or from Expert to Professional, for example.

It's something very annoying for me. Because let's say for a momment I don't have the skills to play Legend difficulty, ok then, I wouldn't care to admit it and I'd play Expert difficulty if this were the case. What's annoying is to have to drop a difficulty level because the pace is not well balanced between
the different sessions.

Did anyone else notice this? Is there any way to fix it?

Jonathan Rowland · Apr 10, 2014

I sometimes have the same problem. Best way is too either add more fuel in quali, or to not use rich fuel mix

Reanimocio · Apr 10, 2014

Santiago Garcia said:
I'm playing Career mode with Toro Rosso in my first season and it seams that the pace of the AI on the qualy session is slower in proportion to the pace during the race.

For example: if I choose any difficulty level below legend on qualy I can easily get into the top ten, something very unlikely with Toro Rosso, so I choose legend to match the team objectives and don't go any further. But then I go to the race and I can't match the race pace on legend, even the pace of the slowest cars. So, to match the race pace I have to drop a difficulty level between the qualy session and the race. From Legen to Expert or from Expert to Professional, for example.

It's something very annoying for me. Because let's say for a momment I don't have the skills to play Legend difficulty, ok then, I wouldn't care to admit it and I'd play Expert difficulty if this were the case. What's annoying is to have to drop a difficulty level because the pace is not well balanced between
the different sessions.

Did anyone else notice this? Is there any way to fix it?

I think "the problem" is that the AI wastes no time adjusting to feel loads, they know immediately their new breaking and turning points. My advice is: in the FP sesssion put 100% in your car and start lapping then restart the session and continue doing so until you feel confident.

Or you can change to Expert difficulty after qualy.

Christopher Daub · Apr 11, 2014

In my experience, you rarely see AI wrecks unless the player is involved, and always follow the same racing line. I really wish the individual drivers had their real-life characteristics somehow included in the AI model.

I played intermediate as Marussia/Virgin in previous games and had no problems with winning or finishing in the top 10. I didn't really like that, and wanted more challenge and realism. In F1 2013, I am racing for Caterham on intermediate level and after six races, I have three races scoring points (8th, 9th,10th) and other finishes in the mid to low teens. Highest qualifying place was 15th. The race pace, however, is a huge problem. Even on intermediate, my Caterham is usually 3 seconds a lap slower than the AI, meaning within 20 laps I am usually lapped. The only way to get into the points and keep it is to fight for my places in the first few laps, then hold my place as best I can via blocking. Catching up to someone ahead of me is absolutely impossible unless they have pitted or there is a safety car involved.

I am curious if the AI is affected by parc ferme? I am currently racing Monaco, and FP was sunny, qualifying was predicted rain but ended up with no rain. Rain was expected for the race, so I set my car up for a wet race. Not sure if the AI stayed with a dry setup or wet.... there has indeed been rain in the race and I still have seen no advantage over the AI despite having the best setup for a wet race as possible.

Reanimocio · Apr 11, 2014

Caterham and Marussia are meant to be much slower than the leaders, like in real life.

The AI does not care about parc fermé as they always use the default setup no matter what.

Christopher Daub · Apr 12, 2014

Guess I should have been more clear: I watch F1 every race weekend and I know Caterham and Marussia are supposed to be slow. I have no problem with that and enjoy the challenge of trying to win points with teams that never ever win points in F1. The 3 second/lap difference on intermediate level is pretty even with the real life slower pace of Caterham (or at least it was prior to this season).

Good to know about parc ferme, though it's a bit annoying that even with a better rain setup than what the AI is using I am still falling behind every lap. I guess it's the curse of driving a Caterham!