NPC Combat feedback

[AeRoTR]

55 minutes ago, Wyy said:

the problem is they use unlimited double ball and charge aswell as medium cannons, so the damage feels higher, but its actually not.

but the damage is higher if unlimited double and charge are used. So please reduce the damage  

[toblerone]

3 hours ago, admin said:

We love how reduced turning skills became the magic button and actually increased complexity and tactical depth (allowing you to make choices when fighting Bots).

We do feel that turning debuffs for lower level ships can go even lower. As even pro players could not rake NPCs consistently. (Now you can)

Additionally we plan to add more defined roles AND adding elite NPCs with epic loot. 
+ will address the wide horizontal shooting ark as it seems to be an annoying factor for many. 

Can I suggest to reduce a little bit also the reload rate of 7th rates … newbies cannot board or rake (or outmanouver) properly enemies and these NPCs hit quite hard on a basic cutter with no upgrades

[Captain Hammered]

42 minutes ago, toblerone said:

Can I suggest to reduce a little bit also the reload rate of 7th rates … newbies cannot board or rake (or outmanouver) properly enemies and these NPCs hit quite hard on a basic cutter with no upgrades

I agree with this. While I prefer the much harder, more challenging AI, new players are going to have a problem. I've also felt right from the beginning that class 7 ships are overpowered historically, both in firepower and performance  - even the dinky little Pickle is no 'Barrett's Antelope' as it were. 

I've restarted my game and character about 3 times now - 4 full grind-ups to RA rank and every time I'm surprised and perturbed how difficult the first three ranks are to achieve - and that was before the changes to the mission system. Now it's going to be much, much harder. 

Quite personally - and this is merely a personal opinion - to assist new players I'd love to see the return of Rookie Brigs, placed on short runs around national ports in OW - only attackable by Class 6-7 players, though I doubt that's possible. Players in Class 6-7 ships anyway - that is do-able. They would represent new AI officers in the best ships they can afford (in other words cheap, leaky crap), just learning their trade. Lousy - if any - loot to discourage experienced players, but just enough XP to give new players a solid and pleasant learning experience.

Edited April 10, 2019 by Captain Hammered

[Sir Texas Sir]

4 hours ago, Wyy said:

the problem is they use unlimited double ball and charge aswell as medium cannons, so the damage feels higher, but its actually not.

Honestly these two perks should be free to players just like we have limited chain shot and now the free fleet perk.  Maybe have it where you learn double ball at level 5 or double charge at level 7 etc.  There is no reason for them to be perks if AI gets them for free and it's a limited use item so they should be something that all ship captains know.

[Ligatorswe]

5 hours ago, admin said:

We love how reduced turning skills became the magic button and actually increased complexity and tactical depth (allowing you to make choices when fighting Bots).

We do feel that turning debuffs for lower level ships can go even lower. As even pro players could not rake NPCs consistently. (Now you can)

Additionally we plan to add more defined roles AND adding elite NPCs with epic loot. 
+ will address the wide horizontal shooting ark as it seems to be an annoying factor for many. 

Excellent. I feel the game is moving in the right direction. 

[Lucky Jack]

Would it be possible to have various engagement philosophies that are random, rather than just one main one all the time? You could set up machine learning algorithms to take data from human players, drop them into a database of sorts (UDC?), whereby the AI is randomly given a philosophy from say thirty different engagement styles at the beginning of the engagement?

For human players, we wouldn't know what we are getting and might add to the experience of "what do we have this time?" Right now, AI behavior is a bit predictable.

 

[Captain Hammered]

On 4/10/2019 at 1:30 PM, Lucky Jack said:

Would it be possible to have various engagement philosophies that are random, rather than just one main one all the time? You could set up machine learning algorithms to take data from human players, drop them into a database of sorts (UDC?), whereby the AI is randomly given a philosophy from say thirty different engagement styles at the beginning of the engagement?

For human players, we wouldn't know what we are getting and might add to the experience of "what do we have this time?" Right now, AI behavior is a bit predictable.

 

I agree in principle - it would be great to have a widely-varied and complex AI system that could include - if I'm reading you right (and how I personally imagine it) specific AI behavious such as: The Aggressive Captain, The Wary Captain, The Fearful Captain, The Undisciplined captain, etc. - personality traits for Captain and crew that would define how the AI ship fights. An AI Bellona might, for instance, be overly concerned about the status of his armour and not engage too closely, or even run - or he might be suicidal but incompetent, or brave and highly skilled, etc. 

I'm just not sure how it would work in practice - it sounds like it could require a complete teardown and rebuild of the AI protocols. I've no idea how complicated that could be; as far as I know computers are magic boxes with little green imps inside pressing buttons.

[Papillon]

35 minutes ago, Captain Hammered said:

I agree in principle - it would be great to have a widely-varied and complex AI system that could include - if I'm reading you right (and how I personally imagine it) specific AI behavious such as: The Aggressive Captain, The Wary Captain, The Fearful Captain, The Undisciplined captain, etc. - personality traits for Captain and crew that would define how the AI ship fights. An AI Bellona might, for instance, be overly concerned about the status of his armour and not engage too closely, or even run - or he might be suicidal but incompetent, or brave and highly skilled, etc. 

I'm just not sure how it would work in practice - it sounds like it could require a complete teardown and rebuild of the AI protocols. I've no idea how complicated that could be; as far as I know computers are magic boxes with little green imps inside pressing buttons.

 

Seems to me that you could apply any number of modifiers to the AI at battle entry that would define his character or ability, and simply make it RNG so that it's unpredictable.  We have so many other RNG things in the game why not AI too?  You would even get elites out of that approach.

[Lucky Jack]

6 hours ago, Captain Hammered said:

I agree in principle - it would be great to have a widely-varied and complex AI system that could include - if I'm reading you right (and how I personally imagine it) specific AI behavious such as: The Aggressive Captain, The Wary Captain, The Fearful Captain, The Undisciplined captain, etc. - personality traits for Captain and crew that would define how the AI ship fights. An AI Bellona might, for instance, be overly concerned about the status of his armour and not engage too closely, or even run - or he might be suicidal but incompetent, or brave and highly skilled, etc. 

I'm just not sure how it would work in practice - it sounds like it could require a complete teardown and rebuild of the AI protocols. I've no idea how complicated that could be; as far as I know computers are magic boxes with little green imps inside pressing buttons.

Haha for sure! You're on the right track. The vision could go anyway really.

Basically the AI algorithm would have to be rewritten in a way that it learns from how human players engage. That way, instead of the devs having to come up with AI law/behavior/philosophy, which would be hard for every to be happy with, you have the NPC's drawing from a central database of combat engagements, one that is always growing organically. Of course you still have to program the base line into the AI law, but that could be as simple as sailing or combat theory.

I would imagine that the database could be categorized by ship classification, that way you don't have the fighting philosophy of a 1st rate by an AI captain in a Snow, or vice versa. Then there would be AI learning from new players in 7th's or vet players in 7th's. The resulting engagement one might find them self in would be highly varied, like you suggest.

It just seems like coming up with a one-size-AI-fits-all is kind of tough and hard to agree on, from both a dev deliverable and a player expectation.

[mikawa]

Why all the efforts with AI? We have central game mechanics not working why bother then with AI? It‘s the at least important aspect of the game. Besides: AI turns normal when rudder is red damaged. This should be fixed. When a human player has red rudder he can‘t turn at all until it‘s yellow again. 

[Lucky Jack]

3 hours ago, mikawa said:

Why all the efforts with AI? We have central game mechanics not working why bother then with AI? It‘s the at least important aspect of the game. Besides: AI turns normal when rudder is red damaged. This should be fixed. When a human player has red rudder he can‘t turn at all until it‘s yellow again. 

AI happens to be a big element of the experience of this game. Makes sense the devs would ask for feedback on it.

[DevsGoFluckYourselves]

Kindly Delete This Account

Edited July 31, 2020 by KindlyDeleteThisAccount

[Ahoy H.R. Matey]

How about baselining things for starters by removing the NPC overbuffs and giving them the same actual equipment as players? You know, longs and carros where appropriate (instead of magical medium cannons that shoot like longs and hit like carros), actual chasers that don't vanish when the ship is capped, actual permanent upgrades, actual skills, and the same limited ammo as we have?

It won't matter on PvP since only lower-rate NPC ships are capturable, and would give us on PvE something to do - as in, if you are a broke but skillful captain, you could go out and try to catch yourself a better ship or catch yourself some actually useful equipment instead of yet another Fir/Fir/Crew Space barge loaded with mediums (which, despite being Fir/Fir and sailing like Fir/Fir, tanks the incoming fire like LO/WO or maybe IDK, LO/Iron).

Then you could broach the subject of teaching the NPCs to use repairs, because why not? Repairs aren't all that technically complex. Sure, when players use it, there's some light strategery involved, but at the end of the day "IF ARMOR < 50, USE HULL_REPAIR; ELSE IF SAILS < 75 USE SAIL_REPAIR; ELSE IF (RUDDER_BROKEN OR PUMP_BROKEN) USE EMERGENCY_REPAIR" or somesuch.

Saying "our AI is dumb therefore we'll give it ungodly bonuses to compensate" is easy but also lazy. Y'all are better than this. (Also, I get why you did it early on - it was a justifiable shortcut to get things going, but now it's the spit'n'polish time). It also breaks immersion like nobody's business, and makes PvE piracy boring, because 99 times out of a hundred you'll always capture a crappy scow that is only good for either looting and sinking, or taking back to port and selling to Admiralty. And that's after the crappy scow puts up a fight worthy of a 5/5 gold ship with permanently loaded doubleshotted double charge in some kind of long-ranged carronades.

Edited April 30, 2019 by Ahoy H.R. Matey

[McPoyle]

The new AI is much harder than before, and the payout of xp and reals have been reduced to basically not even worth going into combat (Big part of the game from the title). I was on the US coast (not many 2-3 rates to attack) and attacked an Elite Belle along with a reg Belle and a Surprise, while I was in my Christian. After the battle I had aprox 70 crew lost and half my armor taken down. The payout was 280xp and enough reals to pay for damage and and crew. I don't mind a hard AI, but when I am trying to unlock perks and getting pretty much nothing in return for combat I don't find it worth my time to even bother. The payout IMO on both xp and reals is pitiful at best (the old system was at lease somewhat rewarding).

Today was my last day playing this game until release. Nothing to do but waste mass amounts of time trying to unlock 1 perk. If this is not fixed at release, I see no reason to continue with the game. It is a sad joke at best and a real slap in the face to players from the Dev's. The Dev's have managed to take most everything that was fun about this game in testing and change it into a further grind with little to no reward just weeks before release. Players ships are unbalanced and the AI is hard AF with little to no reward. And to top all that off, managed to make ship crafting in PvE pointless. The salt will flow heavy on the steam reviews if the game is released like this. 

[Doug Maoz]

26 minutes ago, Wraith said:

The payout/reward structure is absurd. For new players especially it's critical that it's highly rewarding in both XP and Reals to be out on the open water and farming AI. It has to be this way in order to create opportunities for hunting, on top of make the inevitable ship loss associated with these activities still worth the risk.

When I brought my friends into this game (wayyy back when ships had durability) they lost SO. MANY. SHIPS. to AI boarding. There is a real learning curve here and people are going to lose their boats very anticlimactically to OP AI boarding. Hell, on my first day back I lost my Surprise to a Belle I went too close to while tacking.

There's gotta be substantial rewards in place so that you can earn up a new ship within a few combats/missions to account for loss to AI and hunting players. 

[Limpear]

11 hours ago, Doug Maoz said:

When I brought my friends into this game (wayyy back when ships had durability) they lost SO. MANY. SHIPS. to AI boarding. There is a real learning curve here and people are going to lose their boats very anticlimactically to OP AI boarding. Hell, on my first day back I lost my Surprise to a Belle I went too close to while tacking.

There's gotta be substantial rewards in place so that you can earn up a new ship within a few combats/missions to account for loss to AI and hunting players. 

People say that yesterday the one streamer destroyed santissima trinidad(bot) on his hercules and got 70k reals. You want better prise? Then be ready to rich guys hoo get millions reals very fast. Do not forget that for the loss of the ship you will be paid compensation. I think rewards are fine and your risks are minimal!

[Barbancourt]

4 minutes ago, Routan said:

 

Ppl will be rich pretty fast anyway. Can think of some clans, that will have organized there trade and earn millions each day allready after a week.

How much you can make from trading (or even delivery missions) depends strongly on which nation you're in and their map footprint. 

 

[--Privateer--]

Which mods do I stack to get this cannon angle? 👀

 

[Capitalism]

6 hours ago, --Privateer-- said:

Which mods do I stack to get this cannon angle? 👀

 

I think there will be a whole new page devoted to AI cheating in the new wiki.

[Aster]

That is clearly the turreted cannon mount mod its quite rare that lucky ai that clearly is NOT CHEATING has it. He also probably has a detachment of space marines mod also quite rare.

[blademage]

I'm playing since spring '16 and always was fucused on PvE Bots.

IMHO Bots should always be far easier enemies than players, thats one of the reasons they exist. They shouldn't be just boring, expensive of frustrating as they ever since have become a more and more valuable and important part of the game.

For me there are currently seem to be two types of bots:

- Fleet bots: Do they share the same AI? It looks like they are really stupid and blind (like nearly all AI was back in '16 before they received some love)

Maybe they are better than I realize, but I don't think so^^ (lost AI Frigate&Essex against one Essex, when I ordered them to demast the enemy). I leave them without any more comments.

- Enemy AI: perfectly sniping, well penetrating, hit me everywhere from every angle, never running out of special shots)

As I play only actively on PvE / Peace, I can say: The balance in firepower is a bit off right now (~15% to 20% too overpowered AI in relation to the "ease in maneuvers"), what - for most players - makes repairs either a very expensive or time consuming problem.

So my thoughts on AI:

• The prizes you get for a sunk / capured ship should be adjusted (-and get returned slowly, as the economy stabilizes) for about a month.
• If nothing else, firing angles should be reduced for AI

 

[Thonys]

hi devs 

some feedback .

what i see is a unbelievable  almost impossible angle of degree (80 degrees) when passing a ship at  0.5 mtr distance .

 

is it possible to decrease the firing angle  degree of the npc .

it looks weird..! ( and that frustrates)

it's not a historical gun mount for lower and middle deck ( not game worthy for this game)

only swiffel can have that angle of degree.( upper deck)

 

 

ps. the overall game does not need this behaviour at all.

 

 

Edited June 19, 2019 by Thonys

[Msk]

3 minutes ago, JG14_Cuzn said:

My personal favorite is sailing parallel to an Ai and having his rear guns broadside me  

 

i love a perfect stern rake on a larger ship, then when at the T you eat a full broadside, though last night i watched aster hugging on the broadside of an elite bellona slighty ahead of it on the nose. Then 90% of the broadside ended up being a perfect double stern rake....poor men and structure got touched in their no no spots

[Guest]

On 6/7/2019 at 6:08 PM, --Privateer-- said:

Which mods do I stack to get this cannon angle? 👀

 

The thing is there already mechanics in place for fighting superior ships... (also skull captions now)

If you want to fight superior foe you just go and fight a higher ranked ship, if that is not enough then you go and fight a higher ranked fleet.

The generalist/gamer expects NPCs of equal rank to be of equal ability.

As soon as NPCs has enhanced abilities which a user can't counter, it's cheating (or bad programming).

The pve game doesn't need NPCs with 180 degrees firing arc's or faster reload, pen etc, etc..., it doesn't need to cheat.

Signed
    Recipient of a "NPC Canon Turret Ship". 

Edited June 23, 2019 by Guest

[Puchu]

To me it doesnt matter how strong the npc is. What matters to me is: Can a player learn skills he needs for pvp by fighting ai? One of the most important skills to learn for pvp is: Positioning and angling. If the npc's have different fireing angles than actual player ships, then the players who fight a lot of ai will behave completely different from players who fight pvp, because all the things that could work vs real players would not work vs ai. So to me it's important that the ai has the same abilities as an actual player would have, since it is a way for people to train and learn how to stay out of fireing arcs and how to angle properly.