Assigning an aggression rating to individual CC drivers

Is it possible to assign an individual aggression/personality rating to individual CC drivers?

In real-world F1 racing (all racing really), some drivers develop a reputation for consistency. They might not be the fastest or bravest driver on the circuit but they can usually relied upon to bring the car home (and as a result of their invariably gentler treatment of their cars), they tend to have fewer mechanical failures also. There have been many examples of drivers like this over the years and I think of them as 'workhorses'.

At the other end of the scale, there are drivers who tend to develop a reputation for being unusually quick and courageous. They are great to watch, but their aggressive personality only pays off some of the time, because they are harder on their cars and are more likely to spin off and/or crash into something. This type of driver is more like a 'stallion'.

That these two extremes exist is one of the reasons we love racing. It is why a race is more than just a simple mathematical expression; there are human emotions at play too.

We can use performance files to reflect the outcomes of having one of the personality types above in the results of the race (by varying qual range, race range and failure probability), but is there a better way to replicate it on the track, in terms of actual driver race behavior?

This sounds like a good idea. I've added it to the issue tracker.

What I can try for a first test is to apply the qual/race variation in the performance file to the same variable that is changed by the aggression range in the magic data.

Can you tell me what values are realistic for the aggression range currently? I know it is anchored to the grip factor. As far as I know the aggression actually controls how late (or early) the drivers brake for corners?

René Smit, Independent Software Developer.
Download my GPx tools here.

Thanks René. That's the first time I've come across your issue tracker. Looks like there is plenty of interesting info in there. I'll be reading that through later.

Good to hear you think it might be possible to pursue this. I find it fascinating that I tend to drive differently when I control the car of drivers with particular personalities. I realize it's all in my head but it would be the icing on the cake if we could make the AI do the same with the CC cars!

If you are referring to desc=51 and desc=52 (CC aggressiveness) in your last post, Atticus recently described them as;

Quote
Atticus

CC aggressiveness (added to car.field_108. related to cc grip factor, 32769 low, 65536 & 0 mid, 32768 high) formerly AI grip and “track improvement value” – This value regulates how sensitive the CC cars are to direction changes in the CC-line. Near its minimum (so around 32769-45000), the AI almost stops for the low-speed corners while near its maximum (so around 20000-32768; I know, it’s tricky), the AI is spinning off everywhere. You can see it is CC-line dependent, because at really low values the AI adjusts its speed at every single change of direction in the line. Likely affects the auto brakes driving aid as well, not tested yet.

CC aggressiveness finetune, formerly AI grip finetune – Just a confirmation that this one, like its “parent” is related to the CC-line and not grip in general.

I'm not sure I understand this fully and unlike you and Atticus I have no idea what car.field_108 refers to so I generally leave CC aggressiveness as it is. Perhaps Atticus can shed more light?

In terms of the Q&R range settings in the perf file I'm still experimenting really (and do most of the work with the individual CC failure probability); but looking at the perf files I've created using my spreadsheet, Q&R range values tend to fall between 50 and 1000 or so, with an upper limit restriction on the value of QR perf + QR range to avoid a top driver being unrealistically dominant.