Putting the new French Cruisers to the test in TR tournaments

[dseehafer]

Greetings all,

 

Thought I'd try a little experiment. I'm putting all 10 French cruisers up against the 10 cruisers of the other nations in training rooms.

 

To keep things fair I've entered battle in a destroyer and have spent the whole games hidden away in the corner, never firing, and just letting the bots have at it.

 

I started with the German cruisers. I did 6 battles, 3 on the Islands map (to force close-quarters combat and immediate action) and 3 on the Ocean map (no obstacles, combat at all ranges, pure ship on ship combat)

 

Using bots is arguably the most accurate way of judging the performance of the ships as they all are on the same skill level and all are JUST the ships, no captain skills, no modules, just the bare stats of the ship.

 

Germany won the series 4/2, winning two of the Islands battles and two of the Ocean battles.

 

In all 6 games, Germany started out by quickly gaining a big lead and, in all 6 games, France got a second wind halfway through the battle and brought the game to a very close finish, though only being able to pull off a victory in two of those battles.

 

Islands battles

 

 

 

 

 

Ocean battles

 

 

 

 

 

Now then Who shall I pit France up against next? The first nation to get 5 votes will be next, with the runner up being next after the winner, and the next runner up after that and so on and so forth.

 

Or should I not do any more at all? If this option reaches 5 votes before any of the others, I will cease further tournaments.

[Amogussy]

I'd say do Russia: everyone is saying the French cruisers are worse versions of Russian cruisers, especially the Henri IV

[urk_the_red]

Time to rehash the Hundred Years' War, and the Seven Year's War, and the Napoleonic War! France vs. Britain!

[mofton]

Well, if you do do Russia at least Moskva's seemingly less likely to team kill than naughty Henri...

 

Interesting experiment. I'd vote for 'any but RN' as RN CL from what replays I've seen are particularly stupid - charging through their smoke and never using it. Given that that's a big chunk of their balance I'd argue that they don't work well as bots.

[dseehafer]

Well, if you do do Russia at least Moskva's seemingly less likely to team kill than naughty Henri...

 

Interesting experiment. I'd vote for 'any but RN' as RN CL from what replays I've seen are particularly stupid - charging through their smoke and never using it. Given that that's a big chunk of their balance I'd argue that they don't work well as bots.

 

Saint Louis seems to be the star of the show on the French side, only 2 battles where she had less than 3 kills.

[Peregrinas]

Report Henri IV for teamkilling and throwing the game 

 

(Go Deutschland!)

[BlazerSparta]

Using bots is arguably the most accurate way of judging the performance of the ships as they all are on the same skill level and all are JUST the ships, no captain skills, no modules, just the bare stats of the ship.

 

No way. Not even close.

 

Bots are in no way an accurate representation of what a ship is like in actual gameplay.

 

For one, bots seem to have a playstyle which favours yoloing in and brawling, which heavily favours certain playstyles.

 

Second, if bots have the same main battery algorithms as our secondary gunner AIs do, something like the MN CAs will have an inherent advantage in that the bots will always shoot at the damage nullifying "torpedo bulges" of the french cruisers, rather than the more vulnerable areas above the citadel.

 

Finally, pretending captain skills and modules don't exist does not improve the accuracy in any way. Builds play a huge role in affecting the performance of a ship. One build on a ship might enable stealth torping, while another does not. One build might allow penetrating certain sections of armour, while another might not. That's not even considering the fact that the devs may have designed the ship around certain skills. In fact, they'd be stupid not to do so.

 

This "tournament" might be an interesting game, but nothing more. It demonstrates precisely nothing about the capabilities or power of any ship.

[dseehafer]

 

No way. Not even close.

 

Bots are in no way an accurate representation of what a ship is like in actual gameplay.

 

For one, bots seem to have a playstyle which favours yoloing in and brawling, which heavily favours certain playstyles.

 

Second, if bots have the same main battery algorithms as our secondary gunner AIs do, something like the MN CAs will have an inherent advantage in that the bots will always shoot at the damage nullifying "torpedo bulges" of the french cruisers, rather than the more vulnerable areas above the citadel.

 

Finally, pretending captain skills and modules don't exist does not improve the accuracy in any way. Builds play a huge role in affecting the performance of a ship. One build on a ship might enable stealth torping, while another does not. One build might allow penetrating certain sections of armour, while another might not. That's not even considering the fact that the devs may have designed the ship around certain skills. In fact, they'd be stupid not to do so.

 

This "tournament" might be an interesting game, but nothing more. It demonstrates precisely nothing about the capabilities or power of any ship.

 

The game and the ships in it are balanced, at least initially, in gameplay against bots. This is because of 2 reasons...

 

1: On the superstest server there aren't usually enough STs on at once to justify trying to get into a random battle so MOST of the testing is done in CoOp.

 

2: STs are also given certain tasks by the devs that must be completed in training rooms.

 

... or so I've been told.

 

Though you bring up some good points (like bots yoloing and aiming for the waterline), it is unwise to completely dismiss the vanilla stats of the bots as demonstrating "precisely nothing about the capabilities or power of any ship" because they obviously demonstrate enough about their capabilities and power to make them worth balancing ships against/with.

 

If I were to run these battles using players instead of bots then the team with the most skilled players would win. That wouldn't tell us who has better ships, that would tell us who has better players. Using bots ensures that it is the power of the ships themselves that decide who wins, and not the skill of the players playing them.

[mofton]

 

These Minotaurs teamkilled each other with torps, just charged through smoke at full speed and then at the end one just kept shooting a Hindenburg in the belt where shooting anywhere else would be a kill.

 

The further from normal a line is the more I think this model will struggle. USN vs. KM might be interesting given the firepower vs. torpedoes dichotomy but torpedoes are overwhelmingly more useful in co-op (especially for team killing...)