Bots In Co Op

[Cirran]

I am starting to notice "weird" behavior from the bots in Co Op.

Stopping and not moving at all.

Extremely passive play. Not moving forward to engage. Immediately stopping all forward progressing and moving backwards, sometimes into cover and just sitting there, sometimes just moving backwards.

Making no effort to avoid torps from any range.

Shooting torps at odd angles where no enemy is.

Bots are acting very unusual (to me)

 

Cirran

[Slammer58]

WG has been known to introduce odd bot behaviors every update or so, but I can't say that I've noticed any from this past update...so far.

[BOBTHEBALL]

So far I haven't noticed anything strange, maybe it's just me but I'm sure others will be feeling the same.

[Kiruna]

No, they do seem to be acting stranger than they were before. I’ve had a couple of games where all A spawns and most B spawns were rushing C across the map and like 1 of 9 was going B recently. I took a citadel and sunk so I was observing a friend who was still alive and the carrier was dropping Torps 1 or 2 km away but in a way they would parallel my friend’s ship with no chance of hitting ship unless my friend turned 90 degrees. Was very strange to say the least. 

[Gnirf]

I think they are more unpredictable in that they instead of going forward to your position they go sideways at first. If you are lucky you can get 6 enemies to sink/fire upon but if you are unlucky maybe only one or in extreme cases even 0.  

[Musket22]

Seen many many instances of the bot CV just being stopped mid-ocean/not behind an island.

[SunkCostFallacy]

Oooh! One of my favorite topics!

Let's talk about CVs first. Back in the days of the WG forum, there were many complaints in the PVE section about the bot CV making a break for the map border and embedding itself there when it was the last ship left. And so the devs made a change, duly communicated by the CMs telling us that when the red team were running low on ships the bot CV would head towards the nearest cap.

And for a patch or so, that's what happened.

NOW, however, I'm seeing bot CVs do all three things: Make a break for the map border, head to the nearest cap, or just give up on moving altogether.  I've seen no communications from WG saying that they've changed the programming for the CVs though. So unless I missed it, the official stance is that a bot CV should head to a cap when the red team is down to (I seem to recall) about a third of it's ships.

Now on to one of the really amusing ones: Islands.

From the day I first visited the WG forums, until it's untimely death, there wasn't a week that there weren't at least 2 or 3 complaints about bots getting stuck on islands.

And so, we were informed that the bots were being tweaked to make them avoid islands. My personal impression was that it seemed to get a bit better, then revert to them getting stuck again. So WG told us that they'd improved the bots and if they hit an island, they'd reverse off it and get back into the game (so to speak).

What was quite hysterical to me is that immediately after that announcement and the ensuing patch ... bots began running into islands much more frequently. And yes, they could (and did) reverse off the island.

But of course in the feeding frenzy of a COOP match, running into an island and then backing up just made that bot an easy target and very quickly a sunk target.

At the same time, which is quite noteworthy, I noticed that the bots were MUCH more likely to collide with each other.

 

We were told, some years back, that we needed to be patient because the devs were implementing a new system to enable them to adjust bot programming much more easily and quickly. Thus far, I can't say that their new system has improved the bots all that much.

Truthfully ... I don't expect the bots to improve all that much, so when they do the weird stuff ... it's just business as normal as far as I can see.

 

 

[Wrath_of_Deadguy]

Bots are definitely squirreling more since the last patch. It has never been this bad. All the usual derp is still there, but whole bot teams racing off to one flank or the other has become almost an every other match thing, and at least one or two of them do it every single game. It's gotten to a point where flank spawns have become a toss-up between monster games and barely covering your service cost for want of anything to shoot at. I'm seeing more and more pink players in games, and I'm betting most of the time it's just because they had a previous match where they simply didn't get to shoot anything because they aren't AFK or torping teammates.

The island-booping feels like it's worse, too, but isn't nearly as frustrating. At least if one of the toasters gets stuck on the island it spawned behind they aren't all across the bloody map on the other side of six more islands.

[Efros]

The bots reaction to your BB or CA changing to AP ammo seems to be widespread now. They all turn in towards you when you double hit that 2 key.

[Jagerbomb_2021]

13 hours ago, Wrath_of_Deadguy said:

Bots are definitely squirreling more since the last patch. It has never been this bad. All the usual derp is still there, but whole bot teams racing off to one flank or the other has become almost an every other match thing, and at least one or two of them do it every single game. It's gotten to a point where flank spawns have become a toss-up between monster games and barely covering your service cost for want of anything to shoot at.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice that. I've had a few games where I barely get off a few salvos and then there's nothing to shoot at because the bots are all lemming to the other side. I wish coop used the ocean map frequently because then regardless of where the bots go, you'd get clear lines of shooting.

[Efros]

The messing about they did with spawn points, to let subs in, hasn't helped this situation. Bots get the opportunity to piss off to the next spawn over, or indeed the one across from that, because their spidey senses don't tingle enough from the almost backline spawns.

[Beleaf]

Tinfoil hat talk but I believe it's intentional due to the Battle Pass.

Take a ship that is hyper efficient at bot killing, like a Kleber or Schlieffen, and you could easily finish your dailies in roughly 10-14 battles, which is nothing. Now if every other game the bots abandon your flank, then things start to get more time consuming.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Beleaf

[Efros]

If you have the enhanced Battle Pass you can finish your dailies in 8 or 9 games providing you are on the 4 stage Dailies, a semi decent Asymmetric game with some blue boosters and your 3 containers will be taken care of as well.