So I am trying to do AI races at Joesville with the Clio just for the lulz (and the ability to beat and bang without any penalty or controversy!). In the beginning they were ridiculously easy to beat so I turned them up to 120% and still wasn't satisfied. I calibrated the AI to get them down to 16.9 a lap optimal and in a test session with 28 AI the fastest anyone drove in practice was 17.1. This is a competitive pace but I find that in the race they don't seem to actually run their ideal pace. I found that it was easy to catch and pass the leader even though I was running 17.5s. Once I passed him he stuck with me pretty well, almost as if there was a little rubber-banding going on. Then someone got side by side with him and they both started driving like grandmothers and I quickly pulled so far ahead I was almost at the back of the field by the end of the 10 lap race. I'm not sure what else to do to make the AI more competitive with this track/car combination. They're at 75% aggression, 120% strength, and have been calibrated. Anyone have any ideas? Of course, if Clios at Joesville is too random and dumb of a situation to be currently (or ever) supported, I understand. But one of my favorite aspects of the sandbox that is rFactor has always been to have fun creating really unusual racing situations.
Joesville itself isn't really supported as of yet. We've only released it as an example in the developer module. However, I think when we do release some ovals (we have two that we need to go back to finish sometime) then Joesville should be looked at.
Ah, ok. Maybe I could play with the track files and AIW. But it wasn't the base performance of the AI that was the problem so much as the change in performance during race conditions. Could I perhaps have an explanation sometime of the meanings of the following variables in the AIW file? definepath=LEFT pathtime=26.4510 definepath=RIGHT pathtime=49.9226 slowwhenpushed=1.00
I just realized that Joesville is not an official track but part of the National Stock Car mod, lol. I also just realized that I cannot edit the files, if I edit a file and then save the mas file, the track disappears from rF2 and Mod Manager reports "damaged mod". Ok, now I read around and realized that there's all this new security in rF2 for mod version continuity. Kind of frustrating for someone who's only working on offline stuff, I wish there was a way to turn off those features in offline mode. ANYWAY, on a hunch I reduced the slowwhenpushed variable in the AIW file from 1.0 to 0.1 and that completely destroyed my problem! Its brilliant now! It went from ridiculously easy to way too hard and I lost 10 positions in 8 laps, lol. The only issue now is something that probably can't be solved as easily, the fact that the AI cars, unless they are making a pass, all drive the exact same line which looks kind of fake. But its a lot better to race with now.
Ok, after successfully loading the first time, my modded version of Joesville is now "damaged" again despite me not changing it in any way. Not really understanding the whole packages / signatures / rfmod / rfcmp system yet but its clearly too much for my tired brain. And here I was looking forward to putting some formulas cars on Joesville and watching the chaos. Hopefully I'll be able to figure it out tomorrow.
The online functionality shouldn't really get you offline too much, you can make a mod without bothering to register it.
