Up minimum game size to 6, plus bot improvements.

Suggestions Game Modes and Maps
#1

Anyone who has tried to fly T4 and T5 will be familiar with 3v3 or 4v4 matches. More often than not, these include bots.

 

Having suffered through a really xxxx Detonation, plus several utterly xxxx SQ matches, I’ve realised what this desperately needs; a total overhaul.

 

Up Minimum Game Size to 6 Ships!

If needs be, add Bots. However, this game is simply not designed for 2v2 or 3v3 gameplay. 5v5 could work in a pinch, but the absolute minimum for a decent game is 6v6. Even then, it is far from ideal. Any lower and you’ll usually get curb-stomp battles.

 

The issue there, of course, is that the system for equipping and instancing Bots is xxxx awful. Thus, the Bot improvements:

 

Bots are of equal tier and equipment levels to the strongest ship in the game!

If one side has a Rank 15 with all purples, then every single bot will be Rank 15 with all purple gear. This change is to make Bots actually dangerous. In my last match I was under near constant attack by an enemy Bot - an Anaconda - and I did not care. My ship was T4 with Mk III healing modules and I could tank the bots damage without noticing. That bot was too weak to do anything in that game. The problem for me was that my bots were no stronger, and I was facing a rank 14 Guard with more synergy than my R11 Engineer… so you can imagine how little they accomplished.

 

Bots need to carry bombs!

Or, to give a broader definition, Bots need to complete objectives. The bot match I fought could have been won in mere minutes had my Bot allies picked up the bomb, or even acknowledged the bomb existed. They don’t complete objectives, and their tactics are often bizarre and random. Which leads us to…

 

Bots must obey pings!

In a real game, I can ping a target I need dead, or something that I need my team to focus on. In a Bot match you might as well have invited Tier 1 to a Tier 5 match for all the good they’ll do. No, scratch that; most T1 pilots are more useful at completing objectives than your average Bot.

Some form of functionality is needed to make these things useful. Otherwise, why even bother putting them into the game? You may as well remove them and just have 1v1 matches…

#2

Up Minimum Game Size to 6 Ships!

A 1v1 with 5 bots on a side would be dominated by the bots and not the players.  Six human players on a side is good, but a low player base prevents it.

 

Bots are of equal tier and equipment levels to the strongest ship in the game!

Some of the bots aren’t even fitted that well.  Sometimes they don’t pick a good ship, like an LRF in a 3v3 spending it’s time sniping.  In my opinion, my bots should match the highest rank of my opponent and his bots should match my highest tier.

 

Bots need to carry bombs!

Only in detonation is this a problem.  There’s also the strategy of planting a bomb without a bot being suicidal.  I have personally watched a bot mozy on over from guarding a beacon to capturing the final beacon in capture the beacons to secure a win.  The bots understand the other game modes.

 

Bots must obey pings!

They need to understand pings, which they don’t.  I don’t want a bot traveling 10km across the map because I tapped R twice, but if he’s by my side I want him to help me double team.

The worst part about bots is all the “hints” that say “stick together, you are invincible as a team” and the first thing they do is drift away.

#3

I agree bots need work, the ping system would be nice. I personally think that audio “follow me” “attack my target” “regroup” “fall back” commands that players use anyway via keybinds and AI respond to would be the second best case scenario. 

 

I think a bigger and more fundamental issue regarding bots that needs to be addressed is their accuracy. I used to play a lot of T4/5 and as a result I am unfortunately familiar with bots. 

 

It depends on the weapon but lasers behave like aimbot, this was especially brutal with ion emitter. Particularly when bots behaviour involves following a player around the map, player and bot being a gunship ion emitter. 

Apparently it isn’t just lasers, I was getting perma-shot at by assault rails today in my fed inty. Witnessed in via the exciting and new edition of T3 bots… Not to blow my own horn but I was having a pretty good run today, I went up around 60dsr in about an hour, so I’m confident I wasn’t playing badly today. But even so I couldn’t dodge the bots assault rails, they were glued to me. 

 

And the best case scenario would be to remove bots in pvp altogether, unless they serve some fundamental role in the battle like a MOBA style battle or something.

Their only current use is in small games and if Star Conflict were changed only slightly as to not accommodate for these small matches, but rather keep people in queue until there are enough for a 6v6 for example, I believe the game would be a lot better off.

I think this would go nicely with added transparency towards current active games, such as a list of active games split into tiers with basic information like no. of players, duration/time left on match, scores and any other information that would help the player estimate how long they will have to wait for a game. So that players can gauge for themselves just how long they’ll be sat in queue and the likelihood of getting a big match. As soon as a player see’s an active game coming to a close, they know to queue up. Provided matchmaking is smart enough to not put the player into a small game within their first 1-2 minutes in the queue.