[Tim Wilkinson]

AI attrition

Some mods have an element of attrition built-in, while others don’t (or it is so high that it will never be a major factor). This comes in two main ways, which I’ll deal with separately. These are accident damage, and mechanical failure. How you set these is down to personal preference, and the aim of this post is purely to let you know how to change things; as before, make sure you have a back-up of the data!

Handy hint 2 – test the effect of your changes by starting a race, accelerating time, then retiring. Let the race run to the end in time acceleration; don't click on the button to finish the session as the simulation won't complete fully and the outcome won't be the same as if you'd driven the whole race. I suggest running a few tests to get an “average” outcome.

First thing to do is load up the game, customise settings and set Mechanical Failures to time-scaled. I have heard that time-scale doesn’t work with all mods, but I have no ideas which have issues and which don’t, except TCL which works fine. This should mean that the mechanical failures are adjusted to take into account the length of the race – a 10 lapper will have the same amount of failures as a 50 lapper. Of course if you don’t want that, leave Mechanical Failures as Normal (or even off altogether, in which case don’t read any further!).

Mechanical Failure
The rate of mechanical failures for vehicles is determined by two lines in the engine file. The example I’ll use here is the BMW 635 in TCL. Go to the folder C:\Program Files\rFactor\GameData\Vehicles\TCL\635 and open the document 635_engine (text file, so use notepad or similar). This determines the engine characteristics, so there’s a lot of numbers in there, but the ones we are interested in are 6 and 7 from the bottom:

LifetimeAvg=55000 // average lifetime in seconds
LifetimeVar=100 // lifetime random variance

If you read my last post, you’ll see that I have set every default race distance to be standardised around F1 race distances, and if you’re using that base, along with % time-scaled races, then you’re looking at a race lasting around 8000 to 10000 seconds (depending on average speeds at the circuit). You can see from the figures quoted that the 635 will make this easily. I decided that I wanted mechanical failures to be throughout the whole race, so the LifetimeVar will have to be the same as the LifetimeAvg. The next key decision is what rate of mechanical failure I want; a LifetimeAvg that is too low will result in too many retirements. The 635 is pretty reliable, so I’ll go with a 20% mechanical failure rate, over an assumed 10000 second race (about 2hr40mins). That equates to this –

LifetimeAvg=25000 // average lifetime in seconds
LifetimeVar=25000 // lifetime random variance

10000 / 20% = 50000, halved to take into account that the variance is the same as the lifetime; although the lifetime is stated as 25000, a mechanical failure could strike 25000 seconds either side. Apologies for my explanation not being the greatest here, but I hope it makes enough sense to be useful.
Not every car is going to have the same reliability. I set the 635s and Corollas pretty high, and the Sierras (for example) lower:

LifetimeAvg=15000 // average lifetime in seconds
LifetimeVar=15000 // lifetime random variance

Total range is 30000 seconds, so in a 10000 second race 1 in 3 Sierras will suffer mechanical failure.

You’ll notice this if you change these settings, but the failures don’t always manifest themselves as “Engine”. “Brakes”, “Suspension” and “Gearbox” also appear, and the way the car visually exits from the race corresponds; plume of smoke, lock-up or straight-on at a corner, car suddenly veers off, pulls over or into the pits. I think that this variability is hard-coded into the game, as I’ve yet to find anything in mod data that influences it. The variation of exits is nice, though.

Damage run-through later.....