Inconsistent AI Times

I believe the main trigger has been when quitting and resuming mid event in championship or career. The ai can very suddenly become slow, 2 or 3 minutes per stage slower on any ai setting. 

Personally, I have not had the same issue whilst playing an event all the way through but others have, particularly it seems, when creating an event outside of career or champ with more than 9 stages per event though I haven't tested this. Possible tyre selection issue in this case? 

Others have reported random mid event pace inconsistency even when playing an event all the way through but I have not experienced this recently and the only trigger suggested is that it tends to be later in the event when these issues occur..

As above, I have found the AI times to become several minutes slower when you quit the event and continue it later. Almost as though the game unintentionally resets the AI difficulty slider to 0 when it reloads offline events.

It doesn't appear to be game mode, location or vehicle class specific. It always does it

Glad it's finally been acknowledged 🥳

AI Difficulty Setting: 100

Stage: Vargassen, Sweden

If Career, then which career event it is: FIA Junior WRC Championship 

Time of Day: I think it was Evening but can't remember really 

Weather Condition: Clear 

Vehicle Class: Junior WRC

I just booted up the game and went into the rally. Drove the first stage quite carefully but I still won by 40s. I usuallg win by around 5 or 4 on this difficulty so I knew something was off

• AI Difficulty Setting: 86
• Stage: Malewa, Kenya
• If Career, then which career event it is: FIA, week 26
• Time of Day: Afternoon maybe?
• Weather Condition: Clear
• Vehicle Class: WRC

The AI shoots off crazy fast, leads me for 10s at the first checkpoint and 20s at the finish on my best try. Usually we’re quite even.

 Detailed report:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/AI-super-fast-in-Malewa-Kenya-career/m-p/13246737

• AI Difficulty Setting: 100
• Stage: Mexico
• If Career, then which career event it is: FWD Classics
• Time of Day: Night
• Weather Condition: Dry
• Vehicle Class: H2 (FWD)

It's normally decently competitive between the AI and me, on this rally in particular I was about 5/10 seconds off the pace, then all of a sudden I was 2 minutes behind in one stage (Driving similar pace, no big errors). Other times it's been the opposite, it's competitive for a while and suddenly the AI starts driving way slower from one stage to another. It's happened across a multitude of rallies and vehicle classes, even though I am pointing out the latest one. 

When I play too long, Unreal Engine crash and close the game. I return to the game, load the championship, do the next stage and in the result of this stage, I am 2 minutes ahead of the second.

Additionally to the already named issues with resuming saved championships there is also a problem with the AIs tire strategies. During longer rallies the AI will use almost every service to switch to new tires leading to them running out of tires way to soon. For I example I created the 2023 Finland Rally in Quick play with a setup like this:

Day1: Service - Stage 1- Service - Stage2 - Stage3 - Stage4 - Stage5 - Service - Stage6 - Stage7 - Stage8 - Stage9 - Stage10

Day2: Service - Stage11 - Stage12 - Stage13 - Stage14 - Service - Stage15 - Stage16 - Stage17 - Stage18

Day3: Service - Stage19 - Stage20 - Service - Stage21 - Stage22

With this rally the game grants you 1 set of Soft tires and 2 sets of medium tires, with an addition set of your choice through the shakedown. A proper tire strategy might look like this:

Day1: 1x Set of Softs (from Shakedown)

Day2: 2x Sets of Mediums

Day3: 1x Set of Softs

Instead the AI will always show a fresh set of tires at the beginning of Day2 with them never changing afterwards, which makes me suspect they go through their 4 sets changing at every available service (marked above with underline). This leads to them falling back minutes each stage after around stage16 or stage17.

The expected behavior would be for the AI to check the overall rally length, number of available services and spread of the services to try to minimize the number of stages running worn out tires.

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Side-note: It would also be cool to give the option to set the number of available tire sets as a rally option somewhere. While I actually like how it plays out in the example above because you have to actually think about how to use your tires and you will have to run a few stages with low grip, it still might be cool to make it easier if wanted or at least spice up the tire choices a bit.

Still it's worlds better as DR2.0 where you got free tires every service making the choice trivial, so kudos for that!

AI=96

Stage=Littichedda (Sardinia)

Career Event=penultimate round of Major championship (Summer Tour, Gravel)

Time=Dusk

Weather=Dry (cloudy)

Vehicle Class=Rally2

AI dropped 4min30sec.

For future AI improvement, when you are chasing down AI (O/A leader) and taking some time of their lead the AI has slightly bigger chance to make a mistake.