Discussion: got enemy AI buffed too much ???

[Sir Max Magic]

Hey Guys and Devs,

this question bothers me since my last fight and me wants to know your thoughts about it

 

But before going into topic, i want you to know where i am coming from:

I have roughly over 1.000 hours in gameplay, but honestly the majority i did some 2 years ago and only recently coming back. I am familiar with manual sailing, overall maneuvering, angling and know when to shoot my broadsides...

...but besides that i am lacking any skills for PVP recently and have also problems with enemy AI ! So i would rate myself currently as the usual casual, something in between a new player and a seasonend veteran, knowing most of the game but lacking the skills to master it 

Which is very important in my view when we look upon release when most of the fresh and returning players will probably be like that !

 

2 - 3 years ago, most of us were leveling to RA doing the same "Kill" - Missions we have now and when i considered the AI those days challenging, acting very smart in terms of maneuvering, sailing and tacticalwise in principle (thumbs up for the Devs for their decent KI !!), we never had the feeling that enemy AI got buffed in any way !

Okay, they were shooting very accurate, like a Pro Player but thats it...

Ofc, for many Pros they were no match, but the decent player got a nice but doable challenge fighting them...ideal for levelling and accumulating the necessary skill in this game !!!

I have the feeling, this has changed over the last 2 years ?! AND, i observed a HUGE difference between ENEMY and your own FLEET AI

 

I had a PVE Fight lately, which made me wondering and i would like to share it with you:

 

My Fleet consisted of:

- Teak/Teak/Very Agile Bellona Carro equipped (me)

- Teak/WO Connie mix of Longs and carros (Fleet Perk 1)

- Teak/Teak Diana full Carros (Fleet Perk2)

and i attacked a lonely AI 3rd Rate !!!

 

This Fight should be easily doable regarding my experience, even solo with my Bellona and 2 years ago, i had no issues doing it...but this Fight turned out different:

1. My Diana got sunk after getting 3 broadsides from 3rd rate !

She was first at the the target because Wind was against me and she was the first to hit the enemy, so she took the first beatings...when her broadsides did minimal damage to the 3rd rate even at close range, those 3 broadsides of 3rd Rate took away ALL her armor on one side PLUS most of structure !!!

...even withdrawing her from enemy with "follow me" command didnt helped anymore, she sunk after 3 minutes of fighting...

2. Now myself and the Connie were exchanging shots with 3rd rate at close to medium ranges...i took now all the aggro and between me and the enemy were a maneuvering fight developing, me firing with Double Shot and Carros ONLY when presented a fine broadside and angling otherwise or trying to sternrake the enemy...

3. After exchanging some broadsides, the 3rd rate had still Half of her armor on ONE side left, stern was completly dismantled but my own armor was in much worser shape and had only 1/3 armor left on ALL sides and i had to withdraw for repair !!

This despite the fact that most of my shots were hitting at good angles and i was distributing her shots on BOTH of my own broadsides and me hitting the 3rd Rate only at one side and Stern...

4. During my repair, my Connie was in close fighting against the 3rd rate and when coming back from repair, we finally managed to took her armor on one side completly away and managed to sink her soon

So far, so good

 

But what were the results of the Fight:

- 1 Teak/Teak Diana sunk

- 1 Teak/WO Connie Armor depleted to 1/3 on both sides

- my own Teak/Teak Bellona Armor depleted to 1/5 on both sides despite a FULL repair !

When i would had entered the Fight alone, i had never managed to survive !

 

I ask you, how could this be ???

- Why did my broasides do so much lesser damage than his ones ?

- Why did my armor melt away, and his armor seems to be endless ??

- Why did he penetrate from impossible angles and my shots were sometimes bouncing even with perfect 90° ??

when a Bellona is even a better 3rd Rate and Teak/Teak isnt the worst wood combo

 

 Okay, many Pros would come out with much better results, but again, i am no noob, just a decent player and most players especially after release will be like this...

 

So the question is:

Is AI buffed too much for the decent player ???

/Discussion

Edited January 1, 2019 by Sir Max Magic

[Sir Max Magic]

I should add, just coming back recently, my 3 ships had ofc only decent modules at maximum AND no Skill Books...

OFC there are much better modules out there and ofc you can accumulate 5 skill books over long time, which may make your life easier...

 

But this is exactly the setup you would expect from a decent casual player ! Not to speak about people coming absolutely fresh and innocent to the game...

 

Edited January 1, 2019 by Sir Max Magic

[Kejsaren]

I have to agree that AI can give some really devastating broadsides, at near impossible angles. They are much tougher then the average player, good thing they don't have repairs or snipe mast.

With that said i dont' mind the toughness of ai (since they lack ability to repair) but the angles which they manage to shoot should be looked into. Had really good ships sunk by AI because I forget about their "Godlike" angling, thinking only a couple of guns will actually hit and probably not even penetrate... but too my surprise they unleash a perfect full broadside smashing into my structure like cannonsballs from hell.

 

 

Edited January 1, 2019 by Castañon del Rey

[Thonys]

atyq: buffed too much? no, i don't think it is too much.

but,

yes ai is stronger than 3 years ago(they were just too easy, and now they are a challenge)

 

understand also teak/ teak is not the best wood type if you don't angle with it.

it is soft compared to other wood ships  (at 90 degrees)

3 rate is using carronades, so the impact of that shot is huge especially at medium and close range (they don't miss)

every ship below 3 rates that is engaging the 3 rates will not survive 3 full broads in close range (it will sink)( ai vs ai)

also, your fleet is not as effective as you might want (no upgrades no knowledge) so not very effective.

bluntly engage a 3 rate vs 3 rates in a brawl with the teak/ teak build is not the smartest thing to do  you have to focus on angling with it otherwise it will seek your back and stay in a defensive position and shoot at you when you turn, the best thing is to force it in a medium combat position with the wind and make a run with it.

and sent the fleet away, they are only useful as a distraction with players and for inflicting collateral damage, and mostly fleets are used for escorting merchants vessels for hauling goods. 

if the ai was also shooting sail you probably will not survive the battle.

so to make an advantage of that shoot his sails to 70 % that will give you the upper hand

also when fighting ai most players use tank ships and not teak/ teak PVP ships.

teak /teak is more usable for PVP fights.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 1, 2019 by Thonys

[AeRoTR]

A challenge ?

Laser accurate single shots, turning on a dime, no reduce in sailing performance due to damaged rigging, these are stupid things the AI can do.  This is not smart, this is fake. Only smart thing about ai is, they try to protect their weaker side to the extreme, with extreme turn rate.

Imagine if AI was shooting at our masts, we would have no masts remaining in few minutes. As it can snipe the stern from 500 meters away with single shots. Your stern armour gone, now he is gonna lots of crew with single shots as if he is aiming at the sailors individualy.

*** Gun fight the AI with lo/wo ships with thickness mods, angle hull when they gonna broadside, they will bounce, stick on their weakside if you can.

*** How to win easy, put some basic boarding mods, go straight to board them, done in 2-3 minutes. 

This game is a punishment for casuals, they will keep losing ships to stupid predictable terminator ai which is really difficult to take down in smaller ships.

 

@admin please fix ai laser shooting and super turn rate. The stupid AI is very easy to kill for veterans ( boarding) but very difficult for newbies. Thus another brick wall to get into the game for new players, a point where they may stop playing. 

[Sir Texas Sir]

OP the biggest problem I see here is your AI fleet was very weak wood like as was you.  Teak/Teak is a very poor option to grind AI.  Teak/Wo only if you have planking or HP mods on it (since fleets can't use skill knowledge).  Remember that pretty much all guns pen under 250m's (unless your stupid insane angled) so they are going to pen almost every broad side against you.  Hin t the reason your Dianna went down so fast.   You should of keep that in the distance and maybe shot sales.  

Oh and just for the record, AI steal XP and such from you.  So you using a bunch of AI just cute your own XP gains to 1/3 of what you should of gotten, not to mention fleet AI's are pretty stopid and don't use repairs.  If anything you should of had a ship the same tier as you and only that one ship not a bunch of them.  They tend to be a major crush too when folks get so use to using them against AI and than get into a real PvP fight and all they do is harm you (your short Combat Perks cause of that extra fleet you have).

Also don't use special cannons on AI, they are stupid and tend to not know how to range them so they waiste shots (if you got them all Carros).  It's best to just load them with Mediums unless it's a ship you will use (like switching from Trade ship to your AI in combat if you get tagged).  

I think AI are fine as they are other than as listed above the stupid turn rates and snipe angel shooting they do some times.   As many vets think they are extremely easy though I know a lot of casuals (I play US after all) that have a hard time fighting them. I seen guys that are RA been playing for years get handed there arse in a hostility mission against 1st rates cause they don't know how to protect there ships or when to fall back and repair.  I broken a lot of guys from using AI in battles in US that use to depend on them all the time.  Many of them where guys I use to fight and kill all the time on GLOBAL/PvP2 so I came in with a learning/teaching attitude to help them and a good number of the older guys listened and actually learned (can't go in screaming and yelling at them like Rax and others did).   

So I'll say take your time in those AI battles, don't go in with soft ships (teak teak use to be a PvP ship, now it's only for special builds.  Stay to the harder tank builds for grinding.  Take less fleets and more combat perks.  Speaking of such what was the rest of your perks other than Fleet 1&2?

[Kejsaren]

22 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

NPCd behaves quite poorly.

Waiting for the patch that hugely improves the AI. Good pve content will help to achieve a healthy pvp and rvr.

Issue is not their behavior, i.e sailing/maneuvering. 

[victor]

30 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

NPCd behaves quite poorly.

Waiting for the patch that hugely improves the AI. Good pve content will help to achieve a healthy pvp and rvr.

They move poorly because we are vets and then we know learned to predict what they do. Fact is that if you are not live/white, cag/white or white/white, IA can be a pain. Thus you HAVE to be slow to be effective against PVE (and then you are screwed in case other players jump you). This is a bad design choice per se.

But mind that this games does not need vets, rather new players that do not quit after two weeks.

So - after the future rework of IA (that will be also aggressive) that you seem to like so much - it's not that good in my view that inexperienced players (besides having to mind about PVP) also may be "ganked" by aggressive (and "buffed") super smart IA NPC fleets.

Making each aspect of the game each day more difficult since now has not given any result but scaring off more and more people.

 

Edited January 1, 2019 by victor

[Kejsaren]

Just now, victor said:

They move poorly because we are vets and then we know learned to predict what they do.

But mind that this games does not need vets, rathre new players that do not quit after two weeks.

So - after the rework of IA (that will be also aggressive) - it's not that good in my view inexperienced players (besides having to mind about PVP) also may be "ganked" by aggressive (and "buffed") super smart IA NPC fleets.

Making each aspect of the game each day more difficult since now has not given any result but scaring off more and more people.

 

If we make this game challenging only for new players then people will get bored soon as they are not new anymore. Not the way to go.

[victor]

1 minute ago, Castañon del Rey said:

If we make this game challenging only for new players then people will get bored soon as they are not new anymore. Not the way to go.

hey, if we make the game challenging for veterans, new players will NEVER get veterans. 

Edited January 1, 2019 by victor

[Kejsaren]

Sure they will. They won't improve by taking on AI that can't sail. 

But again it's not AI maneuvering/sailing skills that is the problem. More about they able to shoot at impossible angles etc.

 

 

[Kejsaren]

Besides AI maneuvering will never be better then a veteran, the things that make it "challenging" to a veteran are things like "super" aim, "super tougness" and stuff like that.

And no I don't support that.

Fighting an AI as a veteran, to make it challenging would be to fight several of them or being outgunned by a much bigger ship.

 

So AI can be challenging for both new ones and veterans.

Edited January 1, 2019 by Castañon del Rey

[hiclipucli]

uhm... the AI ships attacked players on OW now?  and they always attacked if in range, or just sometimes ? thx. (yes not playing a while...)

[victor]

1 hour ago, Intrepido said:

A good pve content where the AI doesnt make so many silly things will prepare a bit better the players for pvp. 

I have seen people without repairs or with weird fittings because "it is AI". Those players often do pretty bad in a pvp fight because they havent learned anything in pve.

A good PVE content is the one that attracts and keeps players in the game for a long time. 

Plus I have serious doubts that PVE vs IA could even train a player for PVP: PVE is all about armor and HP + gun reload, while PVP - as far as I had the chance to experiment - is speed, distance management, repair, demast and boarding 

 

[victor]

1 hour ago, hiclipucli said:

uhm... the AI ships attacked players on OW now?  and they always attacked if in range, or just sometimes ? thx. (yes not playing a while...)

no, but the feature will be implemented as per Devs statements.

[PG Monkey]

AI fleet ships just get in the way. Also there was a time when ai attacked, they even attacked eachother

[traitorous mctraitoro]

This is what happens when everyone keeps saying teak/wo is the best,

Use wo/teak, save lives

Edited January 1, 2019 by traitorous mctraitoro

[vazco]

10 hours ago, Sir Max Magic said:

Teak/Teak/Very Agile Bellona Carro equipped (me)

Try using LO/WO, or at least teak/WO ship with Cartagena. You will have a much better experience with AI. teak/teak can't angle well, probably that's why you were loosing armour. Also right now the less armour you have, the less thickness you have, so repair as quickly as possible to avoid more damage.

Bot smartness and buffs I think didn't change, but some game mechanics did.

[Licinio Chiavari]

1 hour ago, traitorous mctraitoro said:

This is what happens when everyone keeps saying teak/wo is the best,

Use wo/teak, save lives

different woods for different uses.

Pretty simple. And honestly going for HP better wo/wo.

Still t/wo is the best due to higher thickness than wo/t or wo/wo.
T/wo+planking = more HP, thickness and speed than wo/wo. So: simply swapping the book you can get more uses out of the same ship with different fittings.

PS: And I hate this way... as I hate frig meta with carp+mast etc. In the end: bulkloads of potential options, but only a very few working far better than others.

Edited January 1, 2019 by Licinio Chiavari

[van der Clam]

If I remember correctly from an @admin response since the AI buff (cannot find the link), all NPC are "equipped" with all module upgrades and every captain perk. So they sail well and their ships survive well. The 2 things I find ridiculous are when facing my bow at their broadside, somehow they can pen nearly every shot, and not even through the bow, but pen my broadside. What is more frustrating is I could have the same position, yet further behind the stern and they can fire both a full broadside AND their stern cannon and hit and pen. How the hell can they angle stern cannon nearly 90 degrees? How the hell can they angle their broadside nearly 90 degrees? Certainly, I am exaggerating saying 90, but damn near. Even with Swing Bed and whatever the other one is that increases your fire angle wider, I still cannot get the impossible angles NPC can get.

Another thing that gets my nerves is when capturing NPC and taking to port, why do they never have cannon on the stern or bow even though you know they were equipped with them during battle? lul

Edit: Also, when will we be able to train our fleet captains? If we could skill them, it would be sweet.

Edited January 1, 2019 by van der Decken

[van der Clam]

Considering the wood configuration discussed above, I thought I'd show an image of the 3 "best" options mentioned and the configuration results. Screen capture provided via https://na-map-test.netlify.com/

15 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

Because they use carros, and carros are meant to be crafted by the player.

interesting...ty

[Sir Max Magic]

On 1/1/2019 at 11:36 AM, AeRoTR said:

 

@admin please fix ai laser shooting and super turn rate. The stupid AI is very easy to kill for veterans ( boarding) but very difficult for newbies. Thus another brick wall to get into the game for new players, a point where they may stop playing. 

Exactly this was my main point with this thread !!!

When i thinking was AI can and will do with newbies when it will make even decent skilled veterans/casuals like myself fear...so much copies cant get sold of NA at all, that it will counter the loss of players

 

What i further wanted to say:

2 - 3 years ago, we also had this mentionend laser precision (which can also get reached by very skilled Pros), but we didnt had the impression that AI makes more damage with, has better penetration with same guns, has more and thicker armor !!

I dont know whether that is the case, but my impression is like this...you feel handicapped against AI...but sadly only against enemy AI, not speaking about your own Fleet ships

[greybuscat]

On 1/1/2019 at 5:12 AM, Castañon del Rey said:

If we make this game challenging only for new players then people will get bored soon as they are not new anymore. Not the way to go.

Epic events exist, and there are other conceivable ways to have NPC difficulty tiers. It's asinine to suggest that the baseline AI difficulty needs to cater to experienced players.

Perhaps this is one of those "Peace vs War" things, but I'm struggling to think of any "experienced" players I know of who need buffed AI to keep the game interesting. Don't most of the better players avoid fighting NPCs like the plague?

And not everything needs to be some crazy hardcore challenge, in the first place. If every AI ship came with a battery of Tomahawk cruise missiles, that would definitely make the experience more challenging, but would it be fun? Would it be fun after the 10th time? Or the 100th?

[Sir Max Magic]

On 1/1/2019 at 12:04 PM, Sir Texas Sir said:

OP the biggest problem I see here is your AI fleet was very weak wood like as was you.  Teak/Teak is a very poor option to grind AI.  Teak/Wo only if you have planking or HP mods on it (since fleets can't use skill knowledge).  Remember that pretty much all guns pen under 250m's (unless your stupid insane angled) so they are going to pen almost every broad side against you.  Hin t the reason your Dianna went down so fast.   You should of keep that in the distance and maybe shot sales.  

Oh and just for the record, AI steal XP and such from you.  So you using a bunch of AI just cute your own XP gains to 1/3 of what you should of gotten, not to mention fleet AI's are pretty stopid and don't use repairs.  If anything you should of had a ship the same tier as you and only that one ship not a bunch of them.  They tend to be a major crush too when folks get so use to using them against AI and than get into a real PvP fight and all they do is harm you (your short Combat Perks cause of that extra fleet you have).

Also don't use special cannons on AI, they are stupid and tend to not know how to range them so they waiste shots (if you got them all Carros).  It's best to just load them with Mediums unless it's a ship you will use (like switching from Trade ship to your AI in combat if you get tagged).  

I think AI are fine as they are other than as listed above the stupid turn rates and snipe angel shooting they do some times.   As many vets think they are extremely easy though I know a lot of casuals (I play US after all) that have a hard time fighting them. I seen guys that are RA been playing for years get handed there arse in a hostility mission against 1st rates cause they don't know how to protect there ships or when to fall back and repair.  I broken a lot of guys from using AI in battles in US that use to depend on them all the time.  Many of them where guys I use to fight and kill all the time on GLOBAL/PvP2 so I came in with a learning/teaching attitude to help them and a good number of the older guys listened and actually learned (can't go in screaming and yelling at them like Rax and others did).   

So I'll say take your time in those AI battles, don't go in with soft ships (teak teak use to be a PvP ship, now it's only for special builds.  Stay to the harder tank builds for grinding.  Take less fleets and more combat perks.  Speaking of such what was the rest of your perks other than Fleet 1&2?

Thx for your advices m8 and i will happily answer your last question:

- Double Shot (for my Longs)

- Carronade master (when i use mixed builds with Carros for sternraking f.e.)

- Expert Carpenter

[Sir Max Magic]

On 1/1/2019 at 12:05 PM, Castañon del Rey said:

Issue is not their behavior, i.e sailing/maneuvering. 

You hit the nail on the head !

Perfect sailing/maneuvering is fine and highly welcome to have a good opponent in maneuvering battles +1

In my view, issue is dealing more damage, having higher penetration values and bigger HP-Pool/Thickness...atleast it looks like this ?!