NPC Combat feedback

[Barbancourt]

4 hours ago, Puchu said:

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.

I'd put repairing at the top of the list, and changing shot, and the AI should try to escape losing battles when there is opportunity to, and it should have unpredictable actions in boarding.  The AI not repairing seems like the most massive deficiency. 

[Puchu]

5 hours ago, Barbancourt said:

the AI should try to escape losing battles when there is opportunity to,

Sry, i cant but laugh at that comment. I know where you are coming from though. But... Seriously, one of the things i despise and hate the most about this game is that people run away instead of fighting it out, because fighting is less benefitial to the player than running, which is a MAJOR GAME FLAW. ... one of the many.

If the AI would also run away.... holy moly ... now that would be even worse than players running away.... after all it's still ai. Go there, kill it, and be done with it. There is no reason to drag stupid ai fights out by giving them repairs and the will to escape.

 

A better way to look at it would be: Make players  NOT run away. Now that would be something!

 

 

Jodgi and others have been proposing ways to make fighting more benefitial than running. Like giving players more exp and gold from fighting than they would loose by sinking instead of this "Winner takes it all" system, where the looser gets punished in all kinds of ways and the winner gets everything from ships to exp, money, pvp rewards, everything. There have been many suggestions on how to make a world possible where the looser also walks away with more than what he lost and im sure that, if the devs wanted it, there would be tons more of great suggestions. But to me it seems like the devs have no interest in actually making people fight, since many changes they make to roe and crafting and all kinds of other aspects of the game are actually incentivising running and ganking and not turning and fighting even if its against overwhelming odds. Why is that? I have no clue.

 

[Guest]

Return mixed ranked fleets.

But here's a new type/idea aswell...

An LGV with a Surprise in escort, this battle would be so interesting, you are trying to raid/disable LGV while it's trying to escape and the Surprise blasting you the whole time and getting in the way, what’s your tactic! (this LGV should have good loot too). a simple arrangement but would add a huge variety to the pve game. 

Could also have other fleets of 2 or 3 escorts and better escorts, for better loot, designed for groups/clans engagements.

 

PS, could use up some of these NPCs spots/resources and spread them around the map...

 

Edited June 23, 2019 by Guest

[Traven Mercer]

I will add my feedback since release on here.  AI is insulting to players. Fighting ships that have abilities that you cannot have with some massive buffs is not fun.  I haven't read one person say that fighting the AI ships was fun, and games should be fun shouldn't they?

Two ships stand out as just wrong  in my fights:

 

Essex:  Essex is too weak. (yes Im saying an AI ship is too weak)  Its my experience that they die way to easily like they are made of paper. Others have mentioned essex having isuues, so maybe its the ship and not the AI.

3rd Rate: 3rd rates are stupidly OP.  Ive had 3rd rates give my unboxxed 1st rate problems in broad vs broad fights with the AI.  No way a third rate should be able to stand toe to toe with a santi or LO and soak up the damage while returning equal damage. ive seen a third rate take down a Bucentaure with upgraded guns in a broadside fight. Again theres no way that should be happening. My elite third rate is no where near what the AI 3rd rate is doing so its not the ship, its whatever the cheating buffs the AI gets on that ship.

 

Mixed AI fleets,  Proper AI without stupid artificial difficulty and the return of the fleet missions of old would flip my review back to recommend!  i know you can do it devs!

Edited July 7, 2019 by Traven Mercer

[Nooop]

I wouldn't mind seeing npc combat excised entirely or kept in the peace server.

AI combat has two problems.

A. It can be exploited to easily 

B. To correct A the ai is given buffs to compensate

A and B both make for a frustrating experience.

Only ai should be traders plying routes and the surrender when you come along side them.

[Yoha]

I like hunting AI.

I like pvp.

So this idea that you should only have pvp on one server and pve on the other is garbage. 

Overall I think the AI in this game are pretty good considering how complex battle situations can be. Compared to most AI in most games, the NA AI are amazingly well programmed.

I would like to see more variety in the type of cannons AI use. These should also have a chance of dropping as loot. 

I would also like to see escorted AI trader fleets. 

Also make the missions where you sink AI more worthwhile. The gold chest ones before the nerf were really good (too good imho), but now they are not worth doing as they got mega nerfed. I would maybe reinstate the missions, and make the missions fill with a certain BR amount of AI ships just to make it interesting. Maybe even put the rewards as loot in the AI ships that way players have to actually loot and this will slow the mission time down.

[Busterbloodvessel]

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

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

 

It's and early Werner von Braun multi piston rocket starter. Just happened to backfire on the port side here.  Idea was dropped with the wind boost patch.

Buster (vrmmmm… vrmmmm)

 

[BuckleUpBones]

This fleet attack me right outside Carlisle (war server), I just pop into OW and was just sitting there looking for some soft targets, and as I was watching the horizon, this fleet came right up like lighting and tag, I mean so fast I didn't even see it, it just popped up right in front of me.

Is this working as intended? because this is the dumbest, stupidest AI ever, attacking a single lone noob sitting inside a capital region of all thing! like the Dev's couldn't add up the BR and make an 'if statement' of 'pointlessness'! 😡 

Why don't Dev's just introduce random destruction of ships, same thing, amounts to the same thing, or is it their ha ha AI?

 

 

Edited February 8, 2020 by BuckleUpBones

[Farrago]

On 2/7/2020 at 5:53 PM, BuckleUpBones said:

This fleet attack me right outside Carlisle (war server), I just pop into OW and was just sitting there looking for some soft targets, and as I was watching the horizon, this fleet came right up like lighting and tag, I mean so fast I didn't even see it, it just popped up right in front of me.

Is this working as intended? because this is the dumbest, stupidest AI ever, attacking a single lone noob sitting inside a capital region of all thing! like the Dev's couldn't add up the BR and make an 'if statement' of 'pointlessness'! 😡 

Why don't Dev's just introduce random destruction of ships, same thing, amounts to the same thing, or is it their ha ha AI?

 

 

Hopefully you sent an F11. If you were sitting in Pirate waters that is exactly what should have happened but that Privateer fleet should not be outside Carlisle.

[JDMonster]

In the plans for 2020 the Devs mentioned that they will be working on improving AI behavior.  Will you (the devs) be nerfing the AI dps in accordance to the improved behavior?  Because if the AI begins to perform better in terms of positioning as well as maintaining their damage output they will be unstoppable.

[nyjoshua]

Jumped a 3rd rate with a friend, I was in a turn build Snow. We had the ship down to 200 crew, and 75% sails the first part of the battle. It could still fire and turn as if it never lost the crew or took sail damage. AI should suffer crew problems just like players, otherwise there is no reason to kill the crew or hit sails. My snow also has a high pen bonus from books and upgrades while using Obusier guns.

Later in the battle it got Lokied, and the 3rd rate still could fire and sail like it had not taken any sail or crew damage. If players sailing their own ships lose 75% crew and almost 15% or 25% sails our ships would not function. The AI should have the same issue as a player.

Also the player that took over the ship also did a sail repair after we got his sail down to about 75%, which he repaired back up to 87%. I'm assuming the ship's "loot" would have been sail repairs.

[Sea Archer]

I have noticed, that ai behaviour has some changed. Once I wanted to chain an NPC right at the start of the battle, but it didn't show the sails, as if waiting for my chain, then after raising sails ai turned them a way, that makes it difficult to hit them. After I finally shot my chain ai started to sail. 

I like that. Not as stupid as it used to be. And it was no Loki.

On the other hand, I tried to grind some slots on a LGV yesterday and therefore attacked an ai brig. The brig was outgunned, but tried to sail parallel to my ship, while closing the distance. Which wasn't a bad move, since my guns could barely hit when really close.

But then the brig wanted to push my ship downwind, without considering that there was land. So finally both of us ran aground and I boarded the brig.

Again: no Loki.

I would like to see the ai beeing a bit more aware of land and, when fighting higher br-ships, trying to use his better turn rate, instead of sailing parallel. 

[Cathal Brugha]

12 hours ago, Sea Archer said:

instead of sailing parallel.

To me it seems like the AI are allergic to sailing parallel, they do everything they can to sail in the opposite direction from you, circling constantly. And with their cheat buffs, they can always out turn you.

[Sea Archer]

31 minutes ago, Cathal Brugha said:

To me it seems like the AI are allergic to sailing parallel, they do everything they can to sail in the opposite direction from you, circling constantly. And with their cheat buffs, they can always out turn you.

Some time ago you could force every to sail parallel. Just do it  (same speed and heading) and Ai follows. Haven't seen it for some time, but this one did it.

 

[Cathal Brugha]

Usually trade ships are easier to force a parallel sail.

[Farrago]

4 hours ago, Sea Archer said:

Some time ago you could force every to sail parallel. Just do it  (same speed and heading) and Ai follows. Haven't seen it for some time, but this one did it.

 

My experience is AI trade ship will go sort of its best wind to escape. If land gets in the way, it will run into it. If you plot a parallel course, it doesn’t change course. AI combat ships will try and play the turning game.

I’ve also noticed that AI seems a bit more protective of its sails than it used to be. 

[shadowdamon]

if the Ai gets better they should lose the buff slowly

or at least give more exp since they are hard to kill and they have a bit easier time to kill you

Edited April 7, 2020 by shadowdamon

[Cathal Brugha]

I think the AI fight better and make better tactical decisions than two years ago, it is time the AI buffs went

[Borch]

AI combat got 1 big problem in my opinion.

One is regular USS and the other is Elite USS. Reward is the same. Loot can be ofc better but that is RNG too.

Also, elite ship fleet are semi elites yet they do not drop anything special (from what i last checked) and as such it is basicaly pointles to fight elite with any +fleet.

Why do we have to waste our time so often in NA?

[Sea Archer]

Elite ships still drop special guns and notes, the last I sank some days ago gave dubs an obussiers, even if I haven't found a real use for them...

[Cathal Brugha]

2 hours ago, Sea Archer said:

Elite ships still drop special guns and notes

special guns, sometimes, seems to be about every third ship, in such a small quantity as to be useless anyway unless you just hang on to them and hope you get a few more of the same kind. Notes, very rare, and they are a mostly worthless as you don't even get to choose the wood types.

[rbnhd76]

Just out of port battle for selam, npc are entirely too strong. Npc shouldn't wipe 20 guys on a defense pb. My opinion. You should rename the game Get Sunk. There shouldn't be any tweaking of cannon damage. It's crap when you nail a broadside for almost no damage, then npc broadside rips half the planking, a tenth structure, takes out pump and rudder and for a bonus, sets you on fire. Yes that happened to me just now. Come on guys there has to be a better way. Thanks

[Sea Archer]

5 hours ago, rbnhd76 said:

Just out of port battle for selam, npc are entirely too strong. Npc shouldn't wipe 20 guys on a defense pb. My opinion. You should rename the game Get Sunk. There shouldn't be any tweaking of cannon damage. It's crap when you nail a broadside for almost no damage, then npc broadside rips half the planking, a tenth structure, takes out pump and rudder and for a bonus, sets you on fire. Yes that happened to me just now. Come on guys there has to be a better way. Thanks

I don't know what happened in your battle, I have participated in some NPC-Raider-PB ab PvP-Server and doing 1st-rate hostility missions from time to time, but never did an AI such damage to a ship of similar size. Maybe, because I use t/wo ships (if possible seasoned), but then it is quite easy to angle ai and let it's shot bounce.