Does Camo effect BOT play ?

[Ericson38]

Does your camo effect the aim performance of BOTs ? The Narai mission is a lot of fun at T7, and wonder if I should be buying camo for it. 

[Sotaudi]

When a shell is fired, where it lands depends on RNG and dispersion.  What the camo does is increase the dispersion by 4%, so it is not that it is messing with the aim.  It is just making the dispersion pattern a bit larger off of the same aim point.

Bot AI is there to make decisions for them.  It determines who to target, where to go, and so on.  While it looks to me like low tier bots are intentionally poorer shots than they are at higher tiers, once the shell is fired, the mechanics are the same as they are for humans.  The shell trajectory is calculated based on the aim point and the dispersion value for the ship's guns, and if you have camo increasing the targeting ship's dispersion, that is factored in.  It doesn't matter if it is a bot that fired the shot(s) or a human.  Whether you get hit depends on whether you are where one or more of the shells lands based on that calculation.

So, yes, having a camo that increases the enemy's dispersion works the same both in PvE and PvP.

[Kizarvexis]

5 hours ago, Ericson38 said:

Does your camo effect the aim performance of BOTs ? The Narai mission is a lot of fun at T7, and wonder if I should be buying camo for it. 

 

5 hours ago, Sotaudi said:

When a shell is fired, where it lands depends on RNG and dispersion.  What the camo does is increase the dispersion by 4%, so it is not that it is messing with the aim.  It is just making the dispersion pattern a bit larger off of the same aim point.

Bot AI is there to make decisions for them.  It determines who to target, where to go, and so on.  While it looks to me like low tier bots are intentionally poorer shots than they are at higher tiers, once the shell is fired, the mechanics are the same as they are for humans.  The shell trajectory is calculated based on the aim point and the dispersion value for the ship's guns, and if you have camo increasing the targeting ship's dispersion, that is factored in.  It doesn't matter if it is a bot that fired the shot(s) or a human.  Whether you get hit depends on whether you are where one or more of the shells lands based on that calculation.

So, yes, having a camo that increases the enemy's dispersion works the same both in PvE and PvP.

 

Pretty much what Sotaudi said. I have found that it seems like bots have different levels of aiming ability. Poor, ok, good, unicum and maybe a few in between. It seems to me that it is on a bell curve, so the poor and unicum don't happen all the time. Bots cooperating and driving seem to be similar and getting all three at unicum doesn't happen often. The bots seem to know where in general you are as they will point their guns at the most dangerous threat if they don't see anyone. So sometimes you can come around an island and have a bot shoot you right away. Other times, the AI decides that some other ship is more important than you and they will stop firing at you and switch targets. Sotaudi was right on how the dispersion works in PvE and for operations, I would suggest using it if the cost is not too high for you. In regular PvE, I find that the cheapest 7.5k -3% detectability is more than fine. If you are playing T3 bots and below, you can skip camo all together if you want. I haven't played the T7 operations yet, but getting the Type 5 with the -3% detectability and +4% dispersion is worth it. Of course, if you want to use the fancy camo's with the XP and credit bonuses they should work well there too as the payouts are higher than regular PvE.

[Sotaudi]

9 hours ago, Kizarvexis said:

The bots seem to know where in general you are as they will point their guns at the most dangerous threat if they don't see anyone. So sometimes you can come around an island and have a bot shoot you right away. Other times, the AI decides that some other ship is more important than you and they will stop firing at you and switch targets.

The first is a function of the Bot version of the RPF (Radio Position Finding) Captain's skill.  It tells you/them the general direction of the closest enemy.  The reason they are pointing their guns your way when you come around an island is usually because they have no other target and RPF is telling them where the closest target is.  Human players with this skill can do the same thing plus humans can anticipate that someone may be on the other side of the island and do it even without the skill.

The latter is a function of targeting priorities.  Bots target based on proximity and health.  Lower health targets generally get prioritized, but there is a point at which proximity gets more weight.  This is one of the reasons I prefer Coop over Randoms (or PvP in general).  If you have a feel for the targeting system, you can often "shed aggro" like you can in an MMORPG PvE battle by proper positioning.