Ok So I'm in my second season from HRT to Williams. 50%(now 40%) race length.
I stopped playing about a few weeks ago at China with the intent to pick the game back up after patch.
So I raced to my heart's content this morning(p1-race) and I figured I'd come do a little write-up so people can get a feel for whats been changed.
So let's start with practice. This practice happened to be a R&D objective. I failed the first one in Melbourne due to the highly-publicized glitch(which is why i paused my career at this race).
So I didn't do anything special aside from making sure to physically drive in the pits and I got my green checkmark.
Before anything I'd try would fail so I was really happy with that change.
In terms of qualli everything was normal; I put my car in P2 on wets in Q2 but I messed up on inters in Q3 so ended up 10th. I'd say AI wet pace was decent, I know before on full wets I would blow AI away but on inters they would steamroll me. Here it was pretty balanced with not a huge change in relative pace between wets, inters and dry tires.
Now to the race where the exciting things happened!
The start is as funny as ever, jumping from 10th to 2nd. I don't think there's alot CM can do about this frankly, the AI just dont want to hit each other. All in all, the braking zones have been MUCH improved; me and Webber were battling back and forth up till lap 5(when he eventually got a clean overtake and left me in the dust), trading overtakes atleast 4-5 times in that period, and usually the AI seemed to brake at the right points(150 mark on the back straight at china, 100 mark going into turn 4, etc etc.). They also seem to brake dynamically, in this overtake war we would be jostling to out-brake each other which was super-cool.
As a side note, on lap7 I saw a sight that made me smile, Vettel(who was leading by about 10 seconds when me and Webby were battling) had apparently made a driving error and planted himself in the gravel pit on the exit of turn 4! This really excited me as he had no traffic to deal with and this NEVER used to happen pre-patch. Unfortunately he did end up catching up and winning the race but hey its Vettel right? And it gets better. Going into turn 11 just after my second pitstop, I noticed Alonso was parked right in the middle of the track with 2 front tyres missing; I checked the RD he had retired and I saw that Button had taken a 3rd pit stop. So the AI are being aggressive with each other, I also saw many cars jostling for position coming down the back straight. And to take the cherry, in the final 2 laps I was going into turn 2 when I had a sudden proximity alert on my right, before I could blink Button was sideways slipping past me heading to the barrier and missed me by a fraction...I checked the replay and he'd lost control in turn 1, cut the corner sideways and slid like a madman; yet another AI mistake in 1 race! He didnt DNF but finished 13th at the end, he didnt really hit anything which would explain his continuation.
AI Aggression: SO MUCH BETTER. I know its not mentioned as fix directly, but the AI is actually semi-intelligent. They are not afraid to go up alongside you and generally only back out if you have positioned your car properly or obviously if you are swerving all over to block them. I had 1-2 instances(especially at the end of China's long straight) where various drivers would put their noses into my sidepod because I didnt realize they wouldnt concede so easily; luckily for me noone went off and I wasnt penalized but at some point in the race I had to yield to alonso as he put me in a position to turn in and cause impact or to give him the corner, which is exactly what we want in the AI.
And my final thing to note; your race engineer says a whole bunch of useful stuff aside from supposed pitting times. I can't remember his exact comments as I was kind of zoned out trying to keep my position the whole race.
All in all super happy!
I stopped playing about a few weeks ago at China with the intent to pick the game back up after patch.
So I raced to my heart's content this morning(p1-race) and I figured I'd come do a little write-up so people can get a feel for whats been changed.
So let's start with practice. This practice happened to be a R&D objective. I failed the first one in Melbourne due to the highly-publicized glitch(which is why i paused my career at this race).
So I didn't do anything special aside from making sure to physically drive in the pits and I got my green checkmark.
Before anything I'd try would fail so I was really happy with that change.
In terms of qualli everything was normal; I put my car in P2 on wets in Q2 but I messed up on inters in Q3 so ended up 10th. I'd say AI wet pace was decent, I know before on full wets I would blow AI away but on inters they would steamroll me. Here it was pretty balanced with not a huge change in relative pace between wets, inters and dry tires.
Now to the race where the exciting things happened!
The start is as funny as ever, jumping from 10th to 2nd. I don't think there's alot CM can do about this frankly, the AI just dont want to hit each other. All in all, the braking zones have been MUCH improved; me and Webber were battling back and forth up till lap 5(when he eventually got a clean overtake and left me in the dust), trading overtakes atleast 4-5 times in that period, and usually the AI seemed to brake at the right points(150 mark on the back straight at china, 100 mark going into turn 4, etc etc.). They also seem to brake dynamically, in this overtake war we would be jostling to out-brake each other which was super-cool.
As a side note, on lap7 I saw a sight that made me smile, Vettel(who was leading by about 10 seconds when me and Webby were battling) had apparently made a driving error and planted himself in the gravel pit on the exit of turn 4! This really excited me as he had no traffic to deal with and this NEVER used to happen pre-patch. Unfortunately he did end up catching up and winning the race but hey its Vettel right? And it gets better. Going into turn 11 just after my second pitstop, I noticed Alonso was parked right in the middle of the track with 2 front tyres missing; I checked the RD he had retired and I saw that Button had taken a 3rd pit stop. So the AI are being aggressive with each other, I also saw many cars jostling for position coming down the back straight. And to take the cherry, in the final 2 laps I was going into turn 2 when I had a sudden proximity alert on my right, before I could blink Button was sideways slipping past me heading to the barrier and missed me by a fraction...I checked the replay and he'd lost control in turn 1, cut the corner sideways and slid like a madman; yet another AI mistake in 1 race! He didnt DNF but finished 13th at the end, he didnt really hit anything which would explain his continuation.
AI Aggression: SO MUCH BETTER. I know its not mentioned as fix directly, but the AI is actually semi-intelligent. They are not afraid to go up alongside you and generally only back out if you have positioned your car properly or obviously if you are swerving all over to block them. I had 1-2 instances(especially at the end of China's long straight) where various drivers would put their noses into my sidepod because I didnt realize they wouldnt concede so easily; luckily for me noone went off and I wasnt penalized but at some point in the race I had to yield to alonso as he put me in a position to turn in and cause impact or to give him the corner, which is exactly what we want in the AI.
And my final thing to note; your race engineer says a whole bunch of useful stuff aside from supposed pitting times. I can't remember his exact comments as I was kind of zoned out trying to keep my position the whole race.
All in all super happy!
