AI and Criticals: Fleet is Broken
So I understand that criticals are all about RNG and I also know that RNG is with the AI in fleet most of the time. What this post is asking is whether anyone else is seeing a massive increase in criticals by enemy ships and a massive decrease in criticals from your ships. I’ve been in the top 1-5 of my arena for nearly 2 months and I fight the same fleets every single day. Some days, you just get screwed over and other days things go right...or so i thought. For the last couple weeks, RNG has not favored me once. I thought “Well this is crud! How can there be so many yellow numbers when they attack and only yellow numbers with Advantage when I attack?”
It seemed odd to me that fleets I completely destroyed for over a month with ease now were completely destroying me in 45 seconds even though our fleet power was either equal or mine was higher by a significant amount. So I endeavored to figure out how poorly RNG was playing out. In 5 daily battles for 3 days, I recorded the battles and then went back and watched the replays to see what the critical percentage was for me and what the critical percentage was for the enemy fleets.
Results: I had less than a 20% critical rate (not including Imperial Assault) when not using abilities that guaranteed critical hits (ie - Ghost basic when stealthed or advantage). I figured that seems a bit low, but maybe that’s just because the sample size of 15 battles wasn’t large enough. When I recorded the critical hit rate for the AI, I was astounded. The AI was able to manage over 75% critical rate on attacks that weren’t guaranteed critical hits, a number that is staggering compared to the percentage I had been experiencing. Considering my lowest ship’s Physical Critical Chance percentage is 23.33% and the highest is 38.38% the math doesn’t work.
I also started to notice that my Imperial Assault ability was becoming extremely ineffective and I looked at this in the recordings as well. I was only able to use the ability 8 times, a usage rate of merely 53.3% (that is extremely poor against these opponents). For those who aren’t familiar with the ability, it is an ability that calls in 12 attacks that “can’t be evaded” to deal damage to random enemies. I got criticals on a regular basis with this ability before, but when I looked at the recordings I found that in 8 uses, I did not register a single critical hit. Mathematically, the odds of this happening are extremely low. 12x8=96 So in 96 attacks, I didn’t register a single critical hit (this can easily be found by looking for yellow numbers which signify a critical hit that has landed).
Considering my Executrix has a Physical Critical Chance of 24.33%, if we round down to 20% for an easier number I should have gotten at least 1/5 of those as criticals. That would be a minimum of 19 critical hits. None of these attempts actually destroyed all remaining ships either so that means all 12 attacks were used with each activation. This is astoundingly low and is past the point of being ridiculous. Again let me remind everyone that I understand RNG is usually not in most people’s favor, but math is math and it really shouldn’t be this glaringly obvious that fleet battles are broken. This doesn’t even take into account all of the other percentage based portions of fleet that I’m seeing become more and more in favor of the AI.
Examples:
1) Target locks and dodges from ITF have disappeared. There used to be battles where my ITF would dodge 5 attacks and give me a win. I rarely ever see dodges anymore, yet I’ve come to expect a ridiculous amount of dodges from an enemy ITF. I had a battle just the other day that saw the enemy ITF dodge 6 of my attacks in a row resulting in the executrix using Imperial assault and killing 5 of my ships in the process, all of which had at least 75% of their health remaining. I saw lots of yellow numbers on this Imperial Assault used by the AI.
2) Bonus attacks from FOTF - This one doesn’t surprise me as much since it has been broken since I began attacking fleets with FOTF. This ship gets its bonus attack at an alarmingly high rate. When using its basic attack, you have a 45% chance to attack again, and each attack gives a 55% chance to target lock. In the battles i recorded where this ability was used, I found that the AI gained the bonus attack over 80% of the time with a 93% chance to inflict target lock on at least one of these attacks. This really wouldn’t bother me so much were it not for the fact that the critical chance on these attacks was on par with those listed earlier. 2 target lock inflicting attacks each of which have an extremely high chance to be criticals 80% of the time is broken.
3) Slave I - The ship’s basic ability is another multi attack situation and one that inflicts target lock. The ability percentages are 55% chance to deal damage a second and third time which all 3 possible attacks have 55% chance to inflict target lock. I actually use this ship and have found that the multi-attacks and target lock capability is lacking to say the least. Rarely do I actually get a target lock and most of the time it was due to actually attacking the two or three times. When I did attack Slave I, I found that the chance for it to attack more than once was 74% and the chance to inflict target lock was 83%. (Many of these attacks were due to retribution from the Scimitar) Once again I also found its critical chance to be the same as listed above.
These are just a couple scenarios where the math just doesn’t fit. One reason I started recording battles was due to a glitch where the Phantom II dodged all 12 attacks from Imperial Assault (which can’t be evaded). I’ve seen capital ships bring in consecutive reinforcements without a cooldown turn. Biggs has begun to dodge at a much higher rate as well which doesn’t make sense unless he has evasion up which I notice and will account for while attacking. Biggs being able to get critical hits so regularly also keeps his protection regenerating and taunt on regardless of my dispels. This puts me at a huge disadvantage when my ships cannot gain these bonuses at the same rate.
Overall what used to be enjoyable (even when the RNG gods didn’t look favorably on me) now has become a nightmare. I hate attacking in fleet because I know I’m going to get completely destroyed with ease. What used to be a good battle now has become a total wash. What used to be a decisive win for me now has become getting lucky and hoping I can get lucky and win. I’m curious if anyone else is seeing such a drastically different result in arena as of the last couple weeks. I’d love to know if I’m the only one having this experience
It seemed odd to me that fleets I completely destroyed for over a month with ease now were completely destroying me in 45 seconds even though our fleet power was either equal or mine was higher by a significant amount. So I endeavored to figure out how poorly RNG was playing out. In 5 daily battles for 3 days, I recorded the battles and then went back and watched the replays to see what the critical percentage was for me and what the critical percentage was for the enemy fleets.
Results: I had less than a 20% critical rate (not including Imperial Assault) when not using abilities that guaranteed critical hits (ie - Ghost basic when stealthed or advantage). I figured that seems a bit low, but maybe that’s just because the sample size of 15 battles wasn’t large enough. When I recorded the critical hit rate for the AI, I was astounded. The AI was able to manage over 75% critical rate on attacks that weren’t guaranteed critical hits, a number that is staggering compared to the percentage I had been experiencing. Considering my lowest ship’s Physical Critical Chance percentage is 23.33% and the highest is 38.38% the math doesn’t work.
I also started to notice that my Imperial Assault ability was becoming extremely ineffective and I looked at this in the recordings as well. I was only able to use the ability 8 times, a usage rate of merely 53.3% (that is extremely poor against these opponents). For those who aren’t familiar with the ability, it is an ability that calls in 12 attacks that “can’t be evaded” to deal damage to random enemies. I got criticals on a regular basis with this ability before, but when I looked at the recordings I found that in 8 uses, I did not register a single critical hit. Mathematically, the odds of this happening are extremely low. 12x8=96 So in 96 attacks, I didn’t register a single critical hit (this can easily be found by looking for yellow numbers which signify a critical hit that has landed).
Considering my Executrix has a Physical Critical Chance of 24.33%, if we round down to 20% for an easier number I should have gotten at least 1/5 of those as criticals. That would be a minimum of 19 critical hits. None of these attempts actually destroyed all remaining ships either so that means all 12 attacks were used with each activation. This is astoundingly low and is past the point of being ridiculous. Again let me remind everyone that I understand RNG is usually not in most people’s favor, but math is math and it really shouldn’t be this glaringly obvious that fleet battles are broken. This doesn’t even take into account all of the other percentage based portions of fleet that I’m seeing become more and more in favor of the AI.
Examples:
1) Target locks and dodges from ITF have disappeared. There used to be battles where my ITF would dodge 5 attacks and give me a win. I rarely ever see dodges anymore, yet I’ve come to expect a ridiculous amount of dodges from an enemy ITF. I had a battle just the other day that saw the enemy ITF dodge 6 of my attacks in a row resulting in the executrix using Imperial assault and killing 5 of my ships in the process, all of which had at least 75% of their health remaining. I saw lots of yellow numbers on this Imperial Assault used by the AI.
2) Bonus attacks from FOTF - This one doesn’t surprise me as much since it has been broken since I began attacking fleets with FOTF. This ship gets its bonus attack at an alarmingly high rate. When using its basic attack, you have a 45% chance to attack again, and each attack gives a 55% chance to target lock. In the battles i recorded where this ability was used, I found that the AI gained the bonus attack over 80% of the time with a 93% chance to inflict target lock on at least one of these attacks. This really wouldn’t bother me so much were it not for the fact that the critical chance on these attacks was on par with those listed earlier. 2 target lock inflicting attacks each of which have an extremely high chance to be criticals 80% of the time is broken.
3) Slave I - The ship’s basic ability is another multi attack situation and one that inflicts target lock. The ability percentages are 55% chance to deal damage a second and third time which all 3 possible attacks have 55% chance to inflict target lock. I actually use this ship and have found that the multi-attacks and target lock capability is lacking to say the least. Rarely do I actually get a target lock and most of the time it was due to actually attacking the two or three times. When I did attack Slave I, I found that the chance for it to attack more than once was 74% and the chance to inflict target lock was 83%. (Many of these attacks were due to retribution from the Scimitar) Once again I also found its critical chance to be the same as listed above.
These are just a couple scenarios where the math just doesn’t fit. One reason I started recording battles was due to a glitch where the Phantom II dodged all 12 attacks from Imperial Assault (which can’t be evaded). I’ve seen capital ships bring in consecutive reinforcements without a cooldown turn. Biggs has begun to dodge at a much higher rate as well which doesn’t make sense unless he has evasion up which I notice and will account for while attacking. Biggs being able to get critical hits so regularly also keeps his protection regenerating and taunt on regardless of my dispels. This puts me at a huge disadvantage when my ships cannot gain these bonuses at the same rate.
Overall what used to be enjoyable (even when the RNG gods didn’t look favorably on me) now has become a nightmare. I hate attacking in fleet because I know I’m going to get completely destroyed with ease. What used to be a good battle now has become a total wash. What used to be a decisive win for me now has become getting lucky and hoping I can get lucky and win. I’m curious if anyone else is seeing such a drastically different result in arena as of the last couple weeks. I’d love to know if I’m the only one having this experience
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Replies
my tie fighter who was an incredibly high dodge rate, and is supposed to dodge was getting pummeled (with maul and his protection gain and a heal from thrawn). My opponent had 3 ships left to my 5, it came down to slave 1 (opponent) vs, silencer, tie fighter, maul(me)
And slave one(dodge, dodge, dodge takes out tie fighter). Dodge, one hit, hits silencer. Then 2 more dodges, then another 2. Then another 1 then tarkin used his special and I lose.
Questions :
1) What was your sample size for percentages ?
2) Are you aware AI has a built in boost I cannot remember but I thought it was in the 10-20 % range so if AI is criting 20 % more than you it's built in that way because people were asking for harder AI (I think this is the case someone correct me if I'm wrong)
3) Over the month where you were destroying people were everyone's ships maxxed and G12 or have people slowly caught up with you ?
I would keep collecting as many samples as you can so people cannot throw "small sample size RNG RNG blah blah at you" take into account the built in advantage the AI has.
Get poe to G12 and max his ship. TFP will no longer be an issue for you in fact you will probably start targeting fleets that have it in first 5.
If that built in bonus is there with the TM gains then yes that FOTP is going to attack over and over and over.
If you have thrawn get Zylo's shuttle in there even if it sucks (you want it slow) and the silencer or falcon. On thrawns first turn you activate his heal buff even if you don't need it, gives offense up to silencer and defense own on biggs or 5's. Your shuttle should get a turn by now, give silencer 100% TM and advantage and you can now basically oneshot biggs or 5's as long as you have Offense Up, Advantage, and enemy has Defense down, Silencer special should one shot or leave one or two red pips even at full protection. Tank is dead. If that does not line up correctly buff falcon then shuttle goes give's TM falcon get's 3 attacks or a massive AOE shot (enemy TFP shoul be in the red or dead from POE so a chance to kill TFP then thrawns next AOE is another chance all while you are taking out FOTP. It's a fun set up Solves TFP and Biggs issue.
This does not help... what commander are you running, what ships are you running, what ships are you facing
then we can help
i.e. my squad’s potency is 20% higher but the AI lands the debuffs all the time with the same toons. Tenacity is about equal and no tenacity mods on them. Also today i went against a team with poor tenacity. All i needed was for my Vader’s basic attack to land an ability block. 5/5 times it doesn’t land even though the math says I should get it 4/5 (80%). I get 0/5 and none of the attacks show “resist” on the character I’m attacking. It alone cost me a top50 finish.
It just makes me wonder if they have been messing with the game and making it harder to win against the ai. I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want attacking to be fair, and want it to be harder. If my team should dominate, why am I not dominating? I shouldn’t be penalized because other people are asking for it to be harder.