Balancing of the AI

[pacers101 19]

I absolutely love F1 2020 and I haven't enjoyed a game like this in a long time. But I really think that Codemasters need to look at the balancing of the AI in this game (or F1 2021). There are a number of key issues which keep getting raised again and again:

- AI differences between tracks

- AI differences between qualifying and race (seems to be a particular issue in myteam mode)

- AI difficulty changing throughout career as cars develop

There are numerous threads and articles discussing these issues:

https://realsport101.com/f1/f1-2020-my-team-has-changed-the-game-but-it-needs-a-more-balanced-ai-trailer-gameplay-formula-1-ps4-xbox-one-hamilton-mercedes-british-gp-silverstone/

I appreciate that we all have tracks we are good and bad at, but the swings are very noticeable in a game/sport which is all about fine margins. There is general consensus in the community that the AI is significantly weaker at some tracks such as Austria, and stronger at others such as Silverstone. I also appreciate that we can change AI season to season, race to race, but there is something very unsatisfying about that when doing a career mode, especially when you get it wrong. 

I only find it frustrating because otherwise the game is incredible. Some small tweaks to AI pace would make it even better. @BarryBL, please could you raise this with the developers?

Many thanks

[Voznik 37]

1 hour ago, pacers101 said:

I also appreciate that we can change AI season to season, race to race, but there is something very unsatisfying about that when doing a career mode, especially when you get it wrong. 

Well said.

[s00zster 262]

In my experience, the more straights and less corners there are, the slower the AI will be overall. The more corners and less straights, the quicker the AI will be.

This is because the AI does a perfectly programmed lap every time - they are programmed to keep a specific time (each difficulty level equals 0.100 seconds, so you're really manipulating a set pace for the AI), whereas a human player has to physically and mentally manage each corner. The more corners there are (Monaco, Singapore), the more likely it is for a human player to make a mistake, or be not on the pace for certain corners and therefore cause themselves to lose tenths every lap and fall backwards.

On tracks with more straights (Monza and Austria are the best examples) you'll probably notice that you have to turn the difficulty up. Straights are obviously easy, and the corners on those circuits are relatively simple.

This year the AI are supposed to be prone to make more mistakes but it's nowhere near what is required to balance things out. In nearly 3 seasons, I have seen a total of 2 saves by the AI. There could well be incidents that I'm not seeing but on the whole there have been zero accidents, zero DNFs from incidents - still all DNFs are from mechanical failure. We need more incidents, more brainfarts, more examples of the AI not being quite up to scratch, not making corners as well as they could, more humanizing of the AI, then things might just balance out a bit better. The AI are still on rails at the moment and it's a shame.

[DRT-Apophis 101]

2 hours ago, s00zster said:

In my experience, the more straights and less corners there are, the slower the AI will be overall. The more corners and less straights, the quicker the AI will be.

This is because the AI does a perfectly programmed lap every time - they are programmed to keep a specific time (each difficulty level equals 0.100 seconds, so you're really manipulating a set pace for the AI), whereas a human player has to physically and mentally manage each corner. The more corners there are (Monaco, Singapore), the more likely it is for a human player to make a mistake, or be not on the pace for certain corners and therefore cause themselves to lose tenths every lap and fall backwards.

On tracks with more straights (Monza and Austria are the best examples) you'll probably notice that you have to turn the difficulty up. Straights are obviously easy, and the corners on those circuits are relatively simple.

This year the AI are supposed to be prone to make more mistakes but it's nowhere near what is required to balance things out. In nearly 3 seasons, I have seen a total of 2 saves by the AI. There could well be incidents that I'm not seeing but on the whole there have been zero accidents, zero DNFs from incidents - still all DNFs are from mechanical failure. We need more incidents, more brainfarts, more examples of the AI not being quite up to scratch, not making corners as well as they could, more humanizing of the AI, then things might just balance out a bit better. The AI are still on rails at the moment and it's a shame.

More specifically, AI are especially fast on tracks with lots of mid-high speed winding corners, like Suzuka & Silverstone, but notoriously slow on low speed/tight 90 degrees turns such as Baku & Singapore (Especially when they avoid cutting pass the curb in these tracks like players usually do)

They do make mistake quite a lot, quite often locking up brakes or lost traction at exit when you really start pushing them.

My biggest issue is how they're so much faster on qualifying (especially when you speed it up), and how they could suddenly gain nearly a sec or even more at the final 2 laps of each race. It's very difficult to set up the AI difficulty with this because you always either set it too low and they aren't competitive through majority of the race until the very end, or you set it too high to have yourself driving at the limit the whole race to catch them thinking this is as fast as they could go, only to get your ass headed to them on the final laps.

Edited October 8 by DRTApophis

[Nuvolarix 51]

Hi there,
just to add my little experience, in few words:

- AI looks slower in high speed tracks like Monza/Spielberg, and faster in low speed tracks like Monaco;
- AI looks stronger when accelerating rather than braking or at least that's their driving style;
- I also noticed AI is damn fast in the last 2 laps of the race. I feels the car light as well but it's really impossible to match their pace, that's why I save ERS and FUEL for that purpose if only I have someone even 3-4 seconds behind, to be safe.

In general I think the AI balance is really difficult to find and to adapt to all the tracks simultaneously, that's why I slightly adapt the AI myself tipically up to 5 points race by race. With this little trick I always have so great racing experience both in qualifying and in race, I am very happy with this  ... and yes I also would like "automatic" adaption but really really hard for sure.

About the 3rd point I guess this may be considered a little bug, easy to fix, hopefully they will do it with one of the next patches... 

Cheers,
Nuv

[pacers101 19]

The OP in this thread raises the issue again. It appears that the myteam / career AI as the cars develop is quite a severe balancing issue.