F1 2018 Review: Perhaps One of the Best Racers Ever

[GaloVingador]

Well, I think I found a way to objectively assess this.

Instead of gauging it through my own performance, I decided to compare CPU pole laps in clear midday short quali sessions to the Steam TT leaderboards (adding exactly 5.7% to the 199th fastest dry lap with modern cars in every track and seeing how 78 AI compared to it):

Australia: just right
Bahrain: 0.8 sec faster
China: 0.2 sec slower
Azerbaijan: 0.9 sec faster
Brazil: just right

So it looks like I suck indeed in Australia (managed to shave 1.9s from my PB after my first post and I'm still behind the pace), but yeah yeah, there are still some AI performance differences between tracks. Anyway, this makes it possible to set individual difficulty levels for each track to keep AI performance consistent (I'll go with 71 at Baku and Bahrain and 80 in China).

I'll repeat this experience in all the other tracks and share the findings. Even though I'm using a noobie difficulty as baseline, I think this is useful information.

[GaloVingador]

Codies made a good job in this game, it's hard to see a racing game with consistent AI. And it looks pretty consistent between tracks, with the exception of a handful.


- Track where the AI is slowest (+0.9 seconds):
Austria

- Tracks where the AI is fastest (-0.6/-0.8 seconds):
Bahrain
Azerbaijan
Russia
Abu Dhabi


- Tracks where the AI is slightly faster (-0.2/-0.4 seconds):
Britain
USA

- Tracks where the AI is within +- 0.2 seconds from where it should be:
Australia
China
Spain
Monaco
Canada
France
Hungary
Belgium
Italy
Singapore
Japan
Mexico
Brazil


I'm not 100% sure about this, as people usually complain about Canada being easy and Monaco being freakin hard. Maybe Monaco is super popular in TT and more competitive because of that? Or perhaps it's just because it's so easy to crash then people drive more carefully and this makes them slower when not hotlapping, idk.

I'd advocate setting difficulty some 5 points down in the "fastest" tracks and increasing difficulty a lot in Austria.

But this is purely maths. I haven't even raced in most of these tracks. Yeah, I'm a nerd.

[GoDucks1224]

Quote: Originally Posted by GaloVingador

Codies made a good job in this game, it's hard to see a racing game with consistent AI. And it looks pretty consistent between tracks, with the exception of a handful. - Track where the AI is slowest (+0.9 seconds): Austria - Tracks where the AI is fastest (-0.6/-0.8 seconds): Bahrain Azerbaijan Russia Abu Dhabi - Tracks where the AI is slightly faster (-0.2/-0.4 seconds): Britain USA - Tracks where the AI is within +- 0.2 seconds from where it should be: Australia China Spain Monaco Canada France Hungary Belgium Italy Singapore Japan Mexico Brazil I'm not 100% sure about this, as people usually complain about Canada being easy and Monaco being freakin hard. Maybe Monaco is super popular in TT and more competitive because of that? Or perhaps it's just because it's so easy to crash then people drive more carefully and this makes them slower when not hotlapping, idk. I'd advocate setting difficulty some 5 points down in the "fastest" tracks and increasing difficulty a lot in Austria. But this is purely maths. I haven't even raced in most of these tracks. Yeah, I'm a nerd.

Part of why people might think Canada is easy is because a lot of people get away with significant corner cutting on Canada. I know I used to before I started driving more realistically and strict lol. But it’s definitely one of the easiest tracks to cut corners and gain big advantages on the AI.

[GaloVingador]

I'm loving this so much I bought a G29 only for this game. Able to shave some half a second of my times using the wheel, btw.

I'm racing on Austria now and the difficulty adjustments above worked very well to me so far, except for Monaco, where I'm 2 seconds behind the pace, this track is a nightmare. I'm using a baseline difficulty of 80 at qualis and 82 at races.

I've been running 25% races but found that to be very short, no time for cars to spread out and things to develop, it's far too rushed. I've been contemplating a change to 50, but I'm worried with some things:

1. At 50%, 1 stop strategies are far too op. Unlike in 100% races, there's no way to recover the time lost in an extra pit stop. But I noticed it's usual for the AI to stop twice anyway, especially front runners. Can this be mitigated somehow? Maybe if I play short quali instead of full so everyone starts with the same tyres this could be more balanced?

2. I heard the AI doesn't take advantage of the safety car to make it to the pits. I'm playing with SC off just because of this, as winning a race taking advantage of these circunstamces would be very unrewarding. Is this still the case on the current state of the game?

Many thanks!

[GaloVingador]

Quote: Originally Posted by GaloVingador

1. At 50%, 1 stop strategies are far too op. Unlike in 100% races, there's no way to recover the time lost in an extra pit stop. But I noticed it's usual for the AI to stop twice anyway, especially front runners. Can this be mitigated somehow? Maybe if I play short quali instead of full so everyone starts with the same tyres this could be more balanced?

I just realized only the top 10 are obligated to start the race with quali tyres after short quali as well. Never noticed that. So it seeems if I want balanced pit performance, my only options would be 25% so everyone pits only once or 100% for different strategies to be viable, right? Such a bummer...

[Godgers12]

Quote: Originally Posted by GaloVingador

I just realized only the top 10 are obligated to start the race with quali tyres after short quali as well. Never noticed that. So it seeems if I want balanced pit performance, my only options would be 25% so everyone pits only once or 100% for different strategies to be viable, right? Such a bummer...

I think that tire wear is calibrated to race length. So I don't think it would really matter.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Operation Sports mobile app

[GaloVingador]

From my understanding, wear is doubled for 50% races, but 25% races have the same wear as 50%, this is why every 25% race is an one-stopper.

The problem is, while tyre wear is scaled at 50% distance, the time lost in a pit stop is not, making any strategy with an extra stop included.a very clear loser, especially on circuits where it's hard to overtake