Weird Ai/Player Speeds (3 Explanations)

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ErikJones43

Active Member
Cold Pass Member
Jun 4, 2021
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8
I have been having some problems with ai and my speed nr2003 and I would like to see if this could be fixed

1. Sometimes in the middle of a run the Ai will randomly get some sort of speed boost and just get faster than me and increase speed by at least 10mph and go faster than they usually would going onto straights and turns especially when they are a lap down during a pit cycle. This is also a problem on superspeedways towards the end because there will be one car that pushes by me with a random "speed boost" and I can't get to them even with more cars behind me, sometimes they don't even have a drafting partner

2. Whenever I go a lap down all of a sudden I'm faster than all the ai even when we have the same tires and when I literally blow by the leader and somehow come back around to catch the back of the field then I'm back to normal speed by the time I catch back up to the top 10 its harder to make progress even though I just destroyed the whole while I was a field a lap down. I want to get my lap back by battling through the field not by blasting by them

3. I try to make the field competitive by reducing drag and as a result, it's easy to get by most of the cars but as soon as I break the top 5 then it's either hard to pass the leaders or impossible to catch the leaders. I've also found that at certain tracks (Usually Charlotte 2019 and Texas 2020 for me) on a start or restart I will get a good launch and the as soon as we get into turn 1 the ai absolutely destroy me and pull away while I lose multiple positions or wreck trying to keep them behind me but as soon as we get around lap 5 all of a sudden its easy to pass again and can get up to 3rd at best. ive tried to turn down the accelerate but all that does is let me get better launch then they catch me coming into 1
 

66Fan

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Aug 21, 2021
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I have been having some problems with ai and my speed nr2003 and I would like to see if this could be fixed

1. Sometimes in the middle of a run the Ai will randomly get some sort of speed boost and just get faster than me and increase speed by at least 10mph and go faster than they usually would going onto straights and turns especially when they are a lap down during a pit cycle. This is also a problem on superspeedways towards the end because there will be one car that pushes by me with a random "speed boost" and I can't get to them even with more cars behind me, sometimes they don't even have a drafting partner

2. Whenever I go a lap down all of a sudden I'm faster than all the ai even when we have the same tires and when I literally blow by the leader and somehow come back around to catch the back of the field then I'm back to normal speed by the time I catch back up to the top 10 its harder to make progress even though I just destroyed the whole while I was a field a lap down. I want to get my lap back by battling through the field not by blasting by them

3. I try to make the field competitive by reducing drag and as a result, it's easy to get by most of the cars but as soon as I break the top 5 then it's either hard to pass the leaders or impossible to catch the leaders. I've also found that at certain tracks (Usually Charlotte 2019 and Texas 2020 for me) on a start or restart I will get a good launch and the as soon as we get into turn 1 the ai absolutely destroy me and pull away while I lose multiple positions or wreck trying to keep them behind me but as soon as we get around lap 5 all of a sudden its easy to pass again and can get up to 3rd at best. ive tried to turn down the accelerate but all that does is let me get better launch then they catch me coming into 1
do you have adaptive strength on?
 

J.R. Franklin

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Sep 16, 2016
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Also, one of the flaws of NR2003 is that the A.I. have significantly more grip on cold tires than we do as players. That is another reason why the A.I. are much better on starts and restarts than you are. There is a minor tweak you can try to minimize that (reducing ai_acceleration), but in the end they will always have an advantage on you on starts/restarts.
 
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ErikJones43

Active Member
Cold Pass Member
Jun 4, 2021
6
8
It also depends on how the car set AI strength and the track AI line in these after market edits. BUT yes, having adaptive strength is the biggest problem.
So do you know what adaptive AI strength do specifically to cause this problem
 

66Fan

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Aug 21, 2021
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So do you know what adaptive AI strength do specifically to cause this problem
Adaptive Strength allows (the Player) to keep up with the pack basically if your behind once you get to a certain point the A.I. will gain on you. Basically It's Purpose is to keep the field together.
 

The_Tigg

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Dec 24, 2016
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Actually what it does is match your speed after a few laps so you can be competitive, but there is a draw back. I remember way back in '03 I was doing a long race, missed the pit road and crossed the line slower then race pace, 2 laps later the AI slowed way down in a huge pack that caused a big mess.

The best way to be competitive against the AI is to turn that thing off, put the AI at 100%, let it run a few 5 to 10 laps depending on the track, then go out and see if you're keeping, a head or falling behind, adjust the AI strength to be just a few 10ths better then you so you have to fight to get the win. Keep doing that until you can't finish in the top 3 and adjust again to what you desire, a hard fought win, to I think if I was just a little better I could have won or I never had a chance.
 

66Fan

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Aug 21, 2021
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Actually what it does is match your speed after a few laps so you can be competitive, but there is a draw back. I remember way back in '03 I was doing a long race, missed the pit road and crossed the line slower then race pace, 2 laps later the AI slowed way down in a huge pack that caused a big mess.

Yea that's a way better explanation.
 
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mtblillie

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Dec 3, 2016
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I'm a little behind to this thread but what I will often do is run a quick race first with adaptive on. I usually do this when I have never run a track before. The game will start off a track you have never run before at 70% so typically I am a lot faster than the AI. After a couple laps the AI will bulldoze past me because they will have to be going significantly faster than I am to catch up. After another lap or to you start keeping pace usually somewhere in the middle of the lead pack. When I hit this point I will park and then let the AI finish the race (you have to do this because if you just cancel the race completely it will not save your AI strength). Once the race is complete I will go back to race options and see what AI strength is set to. I will turn adaptic speed off and then manually set AI strength to somewhere around that setting, and that will be my AI setting for that particular track.

Setting AI to 100% on every track is more realistic to general racing - in real life, you will be better at some tracks and worse at others, and setting 100% will keep the AI consistent. The way I do it is more adaptive to each track individually, which will make you more consistent in an overall season. You also have a little more control over where you typically run in the field. You can add more AI strength to make it more challenging, or reduce it to dominate the race. I typically will add just a little more AI strength to put myself generally in upper mid pack. This generally gives me a good top 10 streak, decent top 5, and occasional win.
 

tfp1977

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Hot Pass Member
Aug 4, 2016
4
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I don't remember where I copied this from maybe fortune or someone had this in a forum, but this is what they did.

Hope this helps...


Well, I've finished tweaking all of the tracks ran in the Nexel Cup (more on that in a different post) and have raced 2 complete seasons so far. Both were with the AI strength set on Auto and the Adaptive Speed Control on (I know, I know... I've read that a lot of folks don't like the ASC, but read on...). I had the race length set at 25% and pitting at x4 (I figured 1/4 of the race x4 fuel use and tire wear would equal out to around the same amount of pitting at a full length race). I ran the first season knowing that I'd pretty much wipe out the AI since the default AI setting on Auto is 70% before you race a full race at a track. I did this so that the game would "learn" my speeds. Well after running at all of the tracks, I'm happy to say that my tweaks were pretty close to what I was running at 100%. Most of the tracks came in at 95% to 105% on the Auto setting after racing at all of them. Here's the thing, after racing the first race at a track, say Pocono at 70% and then going back for the second race of the season set at 98%, it's a different race altogether.

So with the first season ended and me looking like Kevin Harvick in the Busch series, I started it up and set up a second season the same as the first, however this time I found a pretty neat feature in the papy_ai.ini file concerning the ASC (Adaptive Speed Control). One thing that has alway bothered me about ASC is that the AI cars will drop back for the first two or so laps and then close in you like rockets after they've "figured you out". Also, I felt like the difference between their slowest speed and their fastest was entirely too big (hence the rocketing after the first laps or the snail's pace if you gett to far behind). Well, I think I've figured it out. Saska Henken from this forum told me about some of the stuff in the papy_ai.ini file, but I can't remember if the [ASC] section was one of them, so some credit should go to him. He at least made me aware of it as I'm not even sure if it's part of the orignial papy_ai.ini file. It looks like this:

[ ASC ]
update_interval = 180 ; Time in ticks between ASC adjustments
max_str_delta_neg = 0.04 ; max ai strength variation per second, when slowing down
max_str_delta_pos = 0.08 ; max ai strength variation per second, when speeding up
kdt1 = 0.0013 ; factor for dt
kdt3_ahead = 0.00000035 ; factor for dt^3 when AI is ahead
kdt3_behind = 0.0000006 ; factor for dt^3 when AI is behind
kddt1 = 1.0 ; factor for ddt
kddt3_fast = 150.0 ; factor for ddt^3 when AI is faster
kddt3_slow = 250.0 ; factor for ddt^3 when AI is slower
str_min = 0.5 ; minimum possible ai strength was 0.5
str_max = 1.3 ; maximum possible ai strength was 1.3
gain_rate = 0.006 ; gain returns to 1.0 at this amount per second
base_bias_low = 0.05 ; % bias towards base ai strength per second, when below base strength
base_bias_high = 0.01 ; % bias towards base ai strength per second, when above base strength

The lines that I fooled with are highlighed red above. I changed them to the following:

update_interval = 05 ; Time in ticks between ASC adjustments was 180
str_min = 0.97 ; minimum possible ai strength was 0.5
str_max = 1.03 ; maximum possible ai strength was 1.3

I think the first line controls the amount of time between AI speed updates to match your speed and position, the reason I say position is because there have been times where I've been in 39th place and flying around the track and the AI will still be crawling waiting for me to get my act together. I'm guessing that "ticks" is refering to seconds with 180 being 180 seconds. Then again, it could mean track segments (if any track builders out there want to elaborate on what a track segment is because I don't want to get too far off topic, please feel free). By changing this to 05, it now updates every 5 seconds (or segments), the ASC adjusts more frequently, and I no longer have that lag of the AI in the first couple laps, after getting into and out of the turn at Richmond, they are up to speed and rolling right there with me.

The second line, which was orginally set at 0.5, is the setting for the lowest range of strength the AI will slow down to to wait for your sorry butt to catch up. This, and the next line should be read as a percent. 0.5 is read as 50% and 1.3 is read as 130%. So originally the AI were running from 50% to 130% strength which causes a BIG lag, especially when pitting occurs. If you stay out and get a lap on the AI, boy look out because now they are going to be coming at you at 130% strength!!! OUCH!!! So what I did was close this setting up to a range of .97 and 1.03 or 97% to 103%. Let me tell you. This makes for some GREAT racing. The AI run much more smoothly and don't go on a rampage or slow to a snail's pace. They keep even and competitive laps. The only thing I'm not sure of is if the AI are running 97% to 103% of what the track.ini file says or if it is 97% to 103% of what your Auto % is set at. I'm guessing the later, but could be wrong.

Anyway, if you would like give this a try, BACK UP your papy_ai.ini file, then copy the following lines into it:

[ ASC ]
update_interval = 05 ; Time in ticks between ASC adjustments was 180
max_str_delta_neg = 0.04 ; max ai strength variation per second, when slowing down
max_str_delta_pos = 0.08 ; max ai strength variation per second, when speeding up
kdt1 = 0.0013 ; factor for dt
kdt3_ahead = 0.00000035 ; factor for dt^3 when AI is ahead
kdt3_behind = 0.0000006 ; factor for dt^3 when AI is behind
kddt1 = 1.0 ; factor for ddt
kddt3_fast = 150.0 ; factor for ddt^3 when AI is faster
kddt3_slow = 250.0 ; factor for ddt^3 when AI is slower
str_min = 0.97 ; minimum possible ai strength was 0.5
str_max = 1.03 ; maximum possible ai strength was 1.3
gain_rate = 0.006 ; gain returns to 1.0 at this amount per second
base_bias_low = 0.05 ; % bias towards base ai strength per second, when below base strength
base_bias_high = 0.01 ; % bias towards base ai strength per second, when above base strength


Hope this adds some realism to your AI races and helps in using the ASC again. Cheers,
 

goose814

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Feb 2, 2018
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What happens if your car gets damaged and isn't up to speed anymore with Adaptive Strength Control turned on. Do the AI adjust their speed down so that they stay with you?
 

mtblillie

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Dec 3, 2016
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What happens if your car gets damaged and isn't up to speed anymore with Adaptive Strength Control turned on. Do the AI adjust their speed down so that they stay with you?
I am not certain, because I typically end up laps down and either the car runs fairly fast after repairs or it runs so terrible that I end up retiring when the engine goes. In the instances where the car still runs fairly well, yes the field will slow down and I start to pass everyone and even can get my lap back. But typically the race is over before I can make something out of it.
 

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