Mandatory pit stop Custom Championship

[SirDewritos]

Putting this here to bring attention to it, i realized after doing my first Custom Championship that AI won't pit even with the mandatory pit stop option on, i know the Custom Championship tool is kinda of a WIP and probably been worked on, still want to bring some attention to it.

Edit: Did some testing based on the input below, went to Single Race and made a 5 lap race with Rental Karts on Interlagos Kart One layout which was the track and car configuration that i had on my Custom Championship, put mandatory pit stops on and the AI pitted some on lap 3 the rest on lap 4 and this happened on the 5 times i did it to make sure it wasn't a fluke. After that i went to Custom Championship and made the exact same setup of track, car and number of laps with mandatory pit stop on, none of them pitted, so i ran the test again with top 10 standard scoring system and also turning off scoring altogether to make sure it wasn't somehow interfering and same result no AI pitted, so my conclusion is that there's something wrong with AI behavior on Custom Championsips.

[pavig]

I haven't tested this myself but I believe ai generally won't pit in a race under 15 mins. There is some cutoff logic for the shortest race they'll pit mentioned by the devs at some point.

[David Sedunary]

I did a 30 lap champ race at Adelaide yesterday with a mandatory stop and the AI didnt pit. Race length exceeded 15 minutes.

[pavig]

The logic I heard was for timed races. Just mentioned it in case that was the issue.

[pavig]

It is quite possible the custom championship is not working as intended, but it could be settings too. When first setting up a custom championship you can choose a scoring system - this alters a few parameters such as the number and length of races etc, and possibly pitting. Certain cars also have pitting for fuel disabled for their class, which might override mandatory stops. With tyre wear off they won't pit unless they need to change to wets too.

Not sure why it's not working for you guys, as I've had it work for me in the past.

[SirDewritos]

Thanks for the replies, i will do some more testing on this, forgot to mention that it was a 45 lap race, almost an hour of running with tire wear and fuel usage set to x5 and i had to pit for 6 extra liters in order to finish the race cause i had use all the tank by lap 30ish while the AI didn't stop as mentioned before.

Hopefully next updates adress this as i'm quite excited to run custom championships

[Jason Bradshaw]

Finally some one else has mentioned this!! its so crucial to the immersion of the race especially in open wheel races where your tyres wear out but the AI's don's lets hope this issue is fixed soon

[Nats]

I thought they had fixed this? Obviously not. The fact you cannot choose mandatory pitstops for timed races only lap races is stupid as well. They really need to get these things sorted. They have had three or so patches come out since this was first brought to their attention.

[Thor Kirienko]

Totally agreed: mandatory pitstop should be available also in timed races

[Fluid Druid]

I dont know why they just cant make it so we can force as many stops as we want and leave it at that, i quite like the idea of running a 1hr race with 2+ pit stops, makes it interesting and gives you a mini break.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by Fluid Druid:

I dont know why they just cant make it so we can force as many stops as we want and leave it at that, i quite like the idea of running a 1hr race with 2+ pit stops, makes it interesting and gives you a mini break.

The AI programming logic becomes a nightmare. Since the Madness engine doesn't use static tables, trying to calculate pit strategies and ensure every AI car doesn't all pit at the same time would be extremely difficult (basically trying to programmically do what real life teams try to do on the fly today).

[Nats]

Originally posted by Mahjik:

Originally posted by Fluid Druid:

I dont know why they just cant make it so we can force as many stops as we want and leave it at that, i quite like the idea of running a 1hr race with 2+ pit stops, makes it interesting and gives you a mini break.

The AI programming logic becomes a nightmare. Since the Madness engine doesn't use static tables, trying to calculate pit strategies and ensure every AI car doesn't all pit at the same time would be extremely difficult (basically trying to programmically do what real life teams try to do on the fly today).

Well having pitstops is nothing new - most racing games have pitstops in them. This is just forcing a pitstop at some point in the race. That cannot be very complex.

IMO its just a variable that is either on or off. And if its on the pitstop routine needs to be followed at some semi-randomised time within the race to suit the tyre condition of the car and avoid having two team mates pit together. If tyres are not relevant for shorter races then the pitstop should occur sometime near the end of the race (to avoid two pitstops being carried out needlessly). If the car pits for some other reason any earlier than that the variable would be set to off.

I dont see anything very difficult in that.

[Fluid Druid]

Yeh no need for complicated pit strategies just in, deal with any user changes then back out, pretty binary stuff. We already have 1 pitstop forced so just open it up to more.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by Fluid Druid:

Yeh no need for complicated pit strategies just in, deal with any user changes then back out, pretty binary stuff. We already have 1 pitstop forced so just open it up to more.

Originally posted by Nats:

Well having pitstops is nothing new - most racing games have pitstops in them.

Most racing titles also use static physic tables as well. The Madness Engine doesn't use static tables so the calculations have to be dynamic. Basically, you are asking the Madness Engine to do on the fly what professional race teams have an entire bank of engineers figuring out during races for pit stop strategies. Not going to happen with this version of the Madness Engine but maybe it's something SMS brings to a future version.

Keep in mind, all that would need to be calculated "per AI car" as just having all the AI do the same strategy would annoy people if all the cars pit on the same lap (Madness Engine sort of hacks that now for the 1 pitstop). That means it's taking CPU cycles for those calculations. Personally, I'd rather have those CPU cycles go to having an AI tire model closer to the player.

[Nats]

Originally posted by Mahjik:

Basically, you are asking the Madness Engine to do on the fly what professional race teams have an entire bank of engineers figuring out during races for pit stop strategies.

I honestly don't think it needs to be that calculated. What the devs should do is enable the player to choose the mandatory pitstop lap before the race for their own car so he can configure to suit fuel and tyre strategy. F1 2021 does it, and even suggests the best strategy for the player, so why not here as well?

Then each AI team would do a similar thing based on their own strategy BEFORE the race begins. No need to calculate these things on the fly during the race.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by Nats:

What the devs should do is enable the player to choose the mandatory pitstop lap before the race for their own car so he can configure to suit fuel and tyre strategy.

I don't play AMS2 as I don't really like it, but PC2 supports this... This is not enabled in AMS2?

If not, that is an easy thing to enable since it's already built into the engine.