Something about Seattle vs the bots.

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

I know this ship gets a lot of bad press, and I know most of that is from PvP mains, but I tried her out in Co-op on the PTS yesterday and I felt like I was trashing everything the bots sent my way.

She's like a Cleveland which got the heal and the DP AA she always needed; and hey, Cleveland used to see a hell of a lot of Tier 10 when she first moved up to T8 anyway, so even the matchmaking's not that much of an issue.

Is PvE just more forgiving of what flaws she has? I've gone from "Cleveland is my last stop on the US CL line" to "Let's get Seattle and see where it takes us" in the space of a day.

 

[Efros]

I've found that ship performance can vary from day to day in COOP. Sometimes you can't put a foot wrong other times you get blown out of the water on first sight. The latter happened to me last week for a couple of days, almost every time I took out a cruiser of any description first detection resulted in an incoming salvo removing half or more of my health. Made for some very scrappy games. It passed and now my cruisers, touch wood, are seemingly a bit more resilient. 

Tin foil hat time: a friend has suggested that bot behaviour is modified somewhat by a players skill level. His logic was that he was being focused from all parts of the map despite there being better and more vulnerable targets closer to the bots targeting him. He opined that this was happening as he was being perceived as the biggest threat. I doubt WG put that amount of effort into the AI... or did they?!

As to Cleveland, she used to be one of my hoodoo ships, one that I dreaded to see on the lineup as she always seemed able to knock the crap out of me. This was after her promotion. Something happened either to her or me but nowadays she is no threat merely a fire breathing annoyance.

[dashtardly]

Seattle is a very good ship. Shells are somewhat floaty at long range (similar to Atlanta) with a good ROF and fire chance. Like any CL, you have to watch out about showing too much broadside. As a caveat - Helena and Cleveland are some of my favorite ships. And Worcester is also a beast too.

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

12 minutes ago, Efros said:

He opined that this was happening as he was being perceived as the biggest threat.

There are days when bots slow down and stay behind cover to get torped and shot at by friendly bots rather than continue out (as they had hitherto been doing) to face me. I do wonder if they aren't starting to recognize strong opponents who are frequently encountered. 

Because win-rate is a very poor metric in co-op (as it's so close to 100% for most of us), I suspect the metric being used is something more akin to how often we finish in the top three.

[HazeGrayUnderway]

Her gun angles are bad and trying to use more of them gets her rekt.  Personally I find her useless.

 

Cleveland exists and is a handier ship to play in Tier VIII.

I also have Worcester in Tier X.

 

Her main problem is that Tier IX normal cruisers are trash.  There's nothing good about them for the long term after you get the Tier X.

 

In the RTS CV days, at least Seattle was in the 4 ship family of absolutely brutal AA that could be built to reach out to 8.6km.  They were Seattle, Worcester, Neptune, Minotaur.  But since that's no longer possible, a major benefit to Seattle disappeared.

[aardvark7734]

1 hour ago, Efros said:

Tin foil hat time: a friend has suggested that bot behaviour is modified somewhat by a players skill level. His logic was that he was being focused from all parts of the map despite there being better and more vulnerable targets closer to the bots targeting him. He opined that this was happening as he was being perceived as the biggest threat. I doubt WG put that amount of effort into the AI... or did they?!

Over the course of the last year or so I've felt similarly to your friend. I've encountered several grotesque examples of the AI focusing my ship at a time when there were numerous other ships that were some combination of closer/more vulnerable/more imminently lethal to them. I understand confirmation bias and without incontrovertible evidence I will not claim here today that WG is doing this. Just that I can't explain in any other way the inconsistent and seemingly irrational targeting decisions the bots make. The generalizations of "presenting a better target" or "lowest hit point" just don't always work.

Here is a description of what I'm suggesting WG might be doing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_game_difficulty_balancing

One thing that's been made abundantly clear to me—WG will not hesitate to squeeze every player for every dollar a player is likely to give. If they thought they could retain both lower and higher performing users by having the bots prioritize the latter, I think they'd pursue it in a heartbeat. Think about how much they spent to implement and operate their recruitment program and all the community engagement flogging. That's one end of the tube—the other is retention. Is it really that big of a stretch that they wouldn't do this without any serious consideration of whether this was fair for players? This is WG we're talking about. They aren't constrained by "fairness". Instead, their guiding philosophy seems to be "the ends justify the means".

[dashtardly]

1 minute ago, aardvark7734 said:

Over the course of the last year or so I've felt similarly to your friend. I've encountered several grotesque examples of the AI focusing my ship at a time when there were numerous other ships that were some combination of closer/more vulnerable/more imminently lethal to them.

Yes, I've had this where a BOT just had the hots for my ship (would not target any other ship).  Now,  once you are low on health the Bots will target you (following the strategy of removing ships from the field of play, just like players should be doing). Bots don't damage farm like players do.

[HazeGrayUnderway]

9 minutes ago, dashtardly said:

Yes, I've had this where a BOT just had the hots for my ship (would not target any other ship).  Now,  once you are low on health the Bots will target you (following the strategy of removing ships from the field of play, just like players should be doing). Bots don't damage farm like players do.

Cruiser play is more dicey in Co-Op than Battleship or even Destroyers.

 

DD players have stealth and can smoke up.  Battleships can tank like champs.

 

Several days ago in a Co-Op game I was playing Moskva and spawned with a Georgia player.  We both pushed together straight south and encountered a BB + Bot Moskva.  Both Bot Ships focused squarely on me.  Good thing Moskva can bow tank like a champ, because that was the only thing I could do and not get deleted.  This let the Georgia player easily flank both ships and score big, killer hits.  I did f--k all for damage, but I had in that short game segment, something like 700k+ Potential Damage.  Georgia had a high scoring game.  His HP level when the game was over?  A few bits of HP lost due to secondary hits, that was it.  He was essentially untouched.

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

11 minutes ago, aardvark7734 said:

If they thought they could retain both lower and higher performing users by having the bots prioritize the latter, I think they'd pursue it in a heartbeat.

You know, if it were confirmed that this were ACTUAL POLICY, I'd be laughing so hard I'd wet myself. "YOU FILTHY TRANSISTOR-LICKING SON OF A CLAPPED-OUT CROOKES TUBE! YOU FEAR ME, DON'T YOU? YOU KNOW MY NAME AND YOU FEAR MY WRATH! COWER AND DIE BEHIND YOUR ROCK, OR COME OUT AND FACE ME LIKE A MAN!"

 

I guess it goes down something like this:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNOFxMpgjXI

 

[Estimated_Prophet]

@Efros, @Ensign_Cthulhu, @HazeGrayUnderway,

I've often said WG needs to get a (redacted) clue about aggro; and if they did, their bots might do better.

There are times bot targeting is so moronic, it proves the rumored 'Priority Target List,' is out of date, or next to useless.

I've had bots target me for no more apparent reason that I'm driving a premium ship.

'First getting spotted... Here come shells instantly from various ships, from; "weren't your guns just pointing at someone else a second ago?" from ships surrounded by enemies, or about to get torpedoed to death, from ships on the far side of the map, and most lovely of all; lunatic impossible shots (for a human,) from the other side of two or three island chains/mountains.

Wouldn't doubt the various things the three of you have said; but to that, I would add; They're too lazy to make changes.

Bizarre, really, when you consider an apparent propensity for changing things that aren't broken, and that it could be argued Priority Targeting isn't broken...

[GandalfTehGray]

The heal is nice for dds/cruisers chipping away your health but the firing angles were a constant issue. If you can dodge the BB fire though it will let you melt the Dd and a cruiser down which is generally adequate for xp. 

[VesseI]

On 7/5/2021 at 11:46 PM, Ensign_Cthulhu said:

I know this ship gets a lot of bad press, and I know most of that is from PvP mains, but I tried her out in Co-op on the PTS yesterday and I felt like I was trashing everything the bots sent my way.

She's like a Cleveland which got the heal and the DP AA she always needed; and hey, Cleveland used to see a hell of a lot of Tier 10 when she first moved up to T8 anyway, so even the matchmaking's not that much of an issue.

Is PvE just more forgiving of what flaws she has? I've gone from "Cleveland is my last stop on the US CL line" to "Let's get Seattle and see where it takes us" in the space of a day.

 

That's the beauty of Co-op. Any ship can be made to shine there. Any player can trash bots, because these bots are dumb, even the ones that obviously have upgraded AI.

To really see how you can perform in Seattle, PvP is the way.

12 hours ago, GandalfTehGray said:

The heal is nice for dds/cruisers chipping away your health but the firing angles were a constant issue. If you can dodge the BB fire though it will let you melt the Dd and a cruiser down which is generally adequate for xp. 

I'm grinding the Seattle now, and I'm struggling with her firing angles. 

I wouldn't even think of going out in the open, dodging BB fire, since she's paper thin.

In Co-op that's not a big issue; but in PVP, it is amplified many times over. Island hugger, she is. 

 

 

[GandalfTehGray]

18 minutes ago, Hukom said:

.

I'm grinding the Seattle now, and I'm struggling with her firing angles. 

I wouldn't even think of going out in the open, dodging BB fire, since she's paper thin.

In Co-op that's not a big issue; but in PVP, it is amplified many times over. Island hugger, she is. 

 

 

In pvp it's best to learn to be able to do both, use the islands but once the enemy spreads out you can open water against some enemies. Just have to get used to the timing to unmask guns versus dodging. 

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

1 hour ago, Hukom said:

That's the beauty of Co-op. Any ship can be made to shine there. Any player can trash bots, because these bots are dumb, even the ones that obviously have upgraded AI.

So what? I play this game to have fun. I spent the full coal price on Smolensk to trash bots because that ship was so toxic that nobody wanted to see her in PVP. If I want to spend my credits and a linkable permacamo to trash bots in Seattle, who the  are you to judge?

The bill of goods I was sold was that Seattle was so irredeemably bad that she wasn't worth playing through. And so I listened to the people who said that, and I'm beginning to suspect that what they really meant was "Worcester is so much more powerful that I can't be bothered wasting my time on an intermediate step." Because those were the days when we got shown the ships during development, and Worcester was hacking down planes and setting fires like nobody's business.

If I hadn't listened to those people, I'd have used my Go Navy tokens to pick up a Worcester camo rather than halting at the Cleveland.  them all with a rabid moose in heat, shoved in sideways.

[AVR_Project]

On 7/5/2021 at 12:03 PM, Efros said:

I've found that ship performance can vary from day to day in COOP. Sometimes you can't put a foot wrong other times you get blown out of the water on first sight. The latter happened to me last week for a couple of days, almost every time I took out a cruiser of any description first detection resulted in an incoming salvo removing half or more of my health. Made for some very scrappy games. It passed and now my cruisers, touch wood, are seemingly a bit more resilient. 

Tin foil hat time: a friend has suggested that bot behaviour is modified somewhat by a players skill level. His logic was that he was being focused from all parts of the map despite there being better and more vulnerable targets closer to the bots targeting him. He opined that this was happening as he was being perceived as the biggest threat. I doubt WG put that amount of effort into the AI... or did they?!

As to Cleveland, she used to be one of my hoodoo ships, one that I dreaded to see on the lineup as she always seemed able to knock the crap out of me. This was after her promotion. Something happened either to her or me but nowadays she is no threat merely a fire breathing annoyance.

No tin foil hat:

Take any ship into co-op and just shoot into the water.  DO NOT hit any enemy ships.
For giggles, just buy a tier 1 Hermelin (price zero) and miss every bot you encounter.  Either shoot way out front, or just behind them.  They might hit you 3-4 times, but don't shoot them back.

Amazingly enough, they will circle you at close range, missing every shot, even coming to a dead stop.  Just keep shooting the water.

I once had a Christmas mission on the Tier 5 Visby for torpedo hits....   YES THIS WORKED !!!  Even the bot secondaries missed me at 2KM.

Like I said... Tier 1 costs you nothing more than time to try this out.

[GandalfTehGray]

1 hour ago, Ensign_Cthulhu said:

 

The bill of goods I was sold was that Seattle was so irredeemably bad that she wasn't worth playing through. And so I listened to the people who said that, and I'm beginning to suspect that what they really meant was "Worcester is so much more powerful that I can't be bothered wasting my time on an intermediate step." Because those were the days when we got shown the ships during development, and Worcester was hacking down planes and setting fires like nobody's business.

If I hadn't listened to those people, I'd have used my Go Navy tokens to pick up a Worcester camo rather than halting at the Cleveland.  them all with a rabid moose in heat, shoved in sideways.

Aside from the heal amd slot 6 mod it's a downgrade compared to Cleveland but I would never pass on an opportunity for free t10 camo even if it's a ship I don't plan on getting for a long time. I really regret not playing more during that event, the Kami grinds, and then the events that gave away the legendary commanders for Russia, French and German. 

Like I spent coal to get the 2 or 3 anniversary crates that gave the t8 Camos for New Orleans, Z23, Monarch, Kiev while only having 1 of those lines even started at the time. Hell I just got Z23 a few weeks ago and still don't have the monarch but know that camo is waiting for me once do get there. 

I can only think of a few ships that I just hate playing even in coop and that would be the T2 and 3 German cruisers. 

[VesseI]

5 hours ago, Ensign_Cthulhu said:

The bill of goods I was sold was that Seattle was so irredeemably bad that she wasn't worth playing through.

That exactly is my point, literally any ship can be made to shine in Co-op. 

5 hours ago, Ensign_Cthulhu said:

So what? I play this game to have fun. I spent the full coal price on Smolensk to trash bots because that ship was so toxic that nobody wanted to see her in PVP. If I want to spend my credits and a linkable permacamo to trash bots in Seattle, who the  are you to judge?

We all play this game to have fun. And in Co-op, any player can trash bots because these bots have been programmed to be consistently dumb. No one cares how you spend your resources. Literally no one is judging you. 😂

 

[Swervenkill]

On 7/5/2021 at 1:29 PM, HazeGrayUnderway said:

Cruiser play is more dicey in Co-Op than Battleship or even Destroyers.

 

DD players have stealth and can smoke up.  Battleships can tank like champs.

 

Several days ago in a Co-Op game I was playing Moskva and spawned with a Georgia player.  We both pushed together straight south and encountered a BB + Bot Moskva.  Both Bot Ships focused squarely on me.  Good thing Moskva can bow tank like a champ, because that was the only thing I could do and not get deleted.  This let the Georgia player easily flank both ships and score big, killer hits.  I did f--k all for damage, but I had in that short game segment, something like 700k+ Potential Damage.  Georgia had a high scoring game.  His HP level when the game was over?  A few bits of HP lost due to secondary hits, that was it.  He was essentially untouched.

I've come to dread certain cruisers in Coop, Yahagi, Marblehead, Hawkins because they tend towards being glass cannons. The problem is when the game starts you either surge forward, are detected first  (trapped between destroyer concealment and battleship speed) and then focus fired by every red ship in a hundred kms, or you hang back behind the battleships and get crap-all for damage and experience. Because your armor sucks you can't even bow tank. 

I still play them, I just cringe when they are next in line. I have the French line at higher tiers and they can bow tank, and the british CL line which has smoke so I haven't seen it higher tier.

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

10 hours ago, Hukom said:

That exactly is my point, literally any ship can be made to shine in Co-op. 

We all play this game to have fun. And in Co-op, any player can trash bots because these bots have been programmed to be consistently dumb. No one cares how you spend your resources. Literally no one is judging you. 😂

 

Okay, in that case I've misinterpreted the thrust of your post; my apologies.

[HazeGrayUnderway]

7 hours ago, Swervenkill said:

I've come to dread certain cruisers in Coop, Yahagi, Marblehead, Hawkins because they tend towards being glass cannons. The problem is when the game starts you either surge forward, are detected first  (trapped between destroyer concealment and battleship speed) and then focus fired by every red ship in a hundred kms, or you hang back behind the battleships and get crap-all for damage and experience. Because your armor sucks you can't even bow tank. 

I still play them, I just cringe when they are next in line. I have the French line at higher tiers and they can bow tank, and the british CL line which has smoke so I haven't seen it higher tier.

I wouldn't bow tank much with Cruisers.  Only in very specific cases can they bow tank BB gunfire:

High Tier German & USN Heavy Cruisers have 27mm bows and cannot be Overmatched by 381mm and smaller guns.  But the moment the 406mm+ AP starts flying, the tactic is not feasible.

In High Tier, outside those two cases above, the typical Cruiser extremities are 25mm, RNCLs are even worse.  380mm+ AP Overmatch 25mm armor.  French Cruiser Line falls into this category.

Tier VI Pensacola and VII New Orleans have 25mm hulls, and they can tank 356mm or so AP shells.  But the moment larger stuff, i.e. 380mm+ AP start flying, it's game over.

High Tier Russian Cruisers have 25mm bows, so the same vulnerability to 380mm+ AP applies.  However, X Petropavlovsk and X Premium Moskva have 50mm icebreakers covering part of their bows.  Moskva's icebreaker rides ridiculously high out of the water, it looks like she's wearing a damn turtleneck.  But Moskva's side protection is atrociously bad.

 

The best forms of defense for the French Cruisers are range, speed, mobility, and plenty of room to roam.  Tanking gunfire and hoping for non-pens and bounces is not it.

[rallybackmonkey]

I just finished my Worcester grind, and I did just fine in Seattle, even in PvP.  I had no trouble taking her in to Grand battles even though she’s bottom tier and can get deleted by the Super BBs with just a few guns. That said, I’ve generally found the American CLs do very well in Coop, Helena is easily my favorite coop ship.