Operation Raptor Rescue

[MM_and_RNG_are_Rigged]

I love how completely and utterly over-tuned the enemy AI is in this particular operation. And I cannot be, and AM not, the only one who holds this opinion.


1.) Enemy ammo switching: They spam HE until you get set on fire, then switch to AP. You put out the fire, they switch immediately back to HE without ANY pause, spam you until you're burning again, then it's right back to AP. Now I understand that players do this, but there is far more error in player decision between this and computer controlled opponents.

2.) Enemy torpedo launches: They never seem to miss their intended targets, and automatically calculate for most WASD "hacks" that players may use to avoid them. This is coming from the ship-launched ones. The air-dropped torpedoes, at times it feels like I'm facing off against a human opponent who's manually dropping them, at other times I see them half a continent away and am like "yeah okay, hum drum, oh you have one plane left that just dropped. meh. *dodged it*. next?"

3.) Friendly AI torpedo avoidance: Not once have I ever seen any of the support ships OR Raptor for that matter take any evasive actions whatsoever. They maintain constant speed and a straight-line course. Asking players to soak incoming torpedoes is asking far more than what most players are capable of. Yes, concentrated fire on enemy DDs can nuke them before they get a chance to launch, and if your team has even half a brain this normally isn't a problem. But then when the enemy DDs aren't launching at Raptor and the convoy, please see #2.

4.) Enemy Fighters: They always know exactly which squadrons to target, and which ones to go after. It's damn near impossible to get most of them in a strafing run as they fly straight at you and 'left click' your own planes with impunity. Now admittedly, this is probably just an issue with me as I am still not the greatest with carriers, but I've never had this many problems against human opponents who aren't even predictable in what they're going to have their planes do.

5.) Enemy torpedo dodging: I know this cannot be just me, but doesn't seem a little weird that regardless of whether it's a cruiser, battleship, or even the two carriers (not even gonna argue DDs, cause trying to torp a DD is pointless) that unless you are launching ship-borne torpedoes from at or less than 5km away, hitting them is close to impossible? Seriously, I've seen good players dodge a lot of torpedoes from those kinds of ranges before, but never with near unfailing ability to do so. I've done this in the KM, USN, and IJN DDs, and in every single one I've had to close to within suicide range just to have a chance at getting hits. To top it all off, they hardly ever start maneuvering until after you've already launched. And the moment you do launch, they cut speed and either turn in or turn away. I have had this happen to me many times, even when my fish are the only ones in the water that are "friendly".

6.) Enemy gunfire accuracy: Flat out, I know they're just computers, but holy crap. I wish I had their accuracy and their near unfailing ability to always be able to exactly compensate for sudden course and speed adjustments when firing at enemy ships. And this is coming from someone who is finally enjoying the Pensacola and having to learn how to hippy-hippy shake her fat American a** to keep from getting outright nuked. Of all the ships in this game, aside from DDs, I don't think any of them require as much WASD as the Pepsicola.


Now, before you all go jumping all over me saying "L2PLAYSCRUB" and "gitgud" and "you don't like it, uninstall" and "QQ div up" and whatever else have you, just think back to some of the battles you've had in this particular scenario in question. Hasn't there been a few times where even *you* have being thinking to yourself: "Seriously? How in the hell is this even possible?" I've not had this issue with seemingly imbalanced AI tuning in any of the other operations, even Defense of Newport Naval Station which is hated by a lot of people for it's bad AI. It's bad, but beatable. You have to work to get 5 stars, but it never felt like an "ice skate up the side of Mt. Everest while hauling 3000lbs of sand with a plastic pasta strainer" type of work. After over a month, I just now recently had a team good enough to get the mission done with 5 stars, and that has been the only time I've managed to 5-star Raptor Rescue. Up until then, all other attempts had been 2s or 3s, with only a handful of them managing to hit 4 stars.

If this mission is this difficult on the 'Normal' difficulty setting, I honestly don't even want to contemplate what it's gonna be like on the 'Hard' setting when they decide to release that.

My recommendation is scaling back the enemy AI on this particular operation. In any of the above 6 areas would be nice, but mostly when it comes to their gunfire accuracy and the friendly ships' complete unwillingness to pull any form of evasive maneuver to dodge incoming torpedoes that are spotted. And don't tell me it isn't possible. I know it's possible. I saw civilian ships in Dynamo do it all the time.

Ugh. Rant over. Flame me now if you wish. I welcome it.

[pewpewpew42]

This is an easy operation. The enemies can be dealt with rapidly and efficiently if a few players know what they are doing.

[Legendary_Typo]

Is it really that hard? The only Operation I've played before was the Dunkirk event one, and the first game I played in Raptor Rescue, I got five stars. Maybe I just got lucky with my team, but I don't really think so.

[FayFay731]

By far raptor rescue is the second easiest operation there is next to aegis (not counting Dunkirk). There's very few enemies with a lot of time in between waves.

[pikohan]

I actually think this is the hardest one too. I agree that the bots are less predictable in Raptor than in some of the others.

[SgtBeltfed]

4.) Enemy Fighters:  Always go after the nearest loaded aircraft, the biggest problem is after you shoot down the first fighter squadron, the next one will launch in X number of seconds, and will be closer to your strike aircraft than to your fighters. This can be avoided by having you strike aircraft wait up and get your fighter out in front of them after it finishes off the first fighter squadron.

 

World of Warships, Operation Raptor Rescue, in the IJN Ryujo, 5 star result

 

From what I've seen, none of the operations are that hard, getting a random team that can fight it's way out of a wet paper bag, now that takes some doing.

 

[Lord_Zath]

Ran through all four scenarios last night with 7 friends (we rotated a few out).  5-star'd each operation once, and 5-star'd Raptor Rescue a second time.  It's pretty easy if you:

 

1.  Run a cruiser with smoke and/or heal (Leander, Perth, Graf Spee).

2.  Go to the Engineer ship for repairs at 50% health.

3.  Prioritize the enemy destroyers.

4.  Don't run destroyer - they just don't do enough damage reliably in a fast enough time.

 

I was rather surprised with how much easier these missions were than in their initial Public Test form.  In general, fewer enemy ships, and lower tier as well.  

 

If you're unable to best this scenario, I recommend evaluating your experience and trying to learn from mistakes.  What did you do wrong?  What could you do differently?

[klymar8]

 Just played it today with Estimated Prophet and Khafni and we all thought that the bots were outrageous . If you have not played it lately try it now and tell me it is so easy . Estimated is quite good in his Ryouhy(? IJN CV)  and was complaining about ;  7) The bots will sit still or go in a straight line until he would set a DB drop on them and then instantly move to avoid them completely .     In 3 tries we finally got 4 stars ; which since they were trying to help me get the USN commander and that was good enough and we stopped then (Khafni had to leave before the last one) .

 Thus I totally agree with the Original Post .

 

[awiggin]

On 8/13/2017 at 3:20 PM, Lord_Zath said:

Ran through all four scenarios last night with 7 friends (we rotated a few out).  5-star'd each operation once, and 5-star'd Raptor Rescue a second time.  It's pretty easy if you:

 

1.  Run a cruiser with smoke and/or heal (Leander, Perth, Graf Spee).

2.  Go to the Engineer ship for repairs at 50% health.

3.  Prioritize the enemy destroyers.

4.  Don't run destroyer - they just don't do enough damage reliably in a fast enough time.

 

I was rather surprised with how much easier these missions were than in their initial Public Test form.  In general, fewer enemy ships, and lower tier as well.  

 

If you're unable to best this scenario, I recommend evaluating your experience and trying to learn from mistakes.  What did you do wrong?  What could you do differently?

 

I don't know how people could struggle with this, but then they struggled with the Sunray scenario, so anything is possible.

Haven't bothered with the scenarios until the Halloween event, and ground quite a bit of elite xp from it, but the number of players struggling to get thru it just astounded me.

I was expecting something more difficult when I did raptor today......easy 5 star on the first go with a random team and some semi duffers.

[SgtBeltfed]

Amusingly enough, I ran Raptor Rescue 4 times last night, 2 5 star runs, and 2 complete failures. Both of the 5 star runs were in the Ryujo, guess she kinda does look like a floating box truck and is mean for carrying things (like lots of potato by product). I was almost like most of the players had never seen the op before. It's really bad when most of the team goes south in search of a CV to kill, despite it being dead for at least 5 minutes. This the influx of steam players?