Well, technically speaking the majority of the people running the bots aren’t the cheaters. They’re the people creating the accounts to sell to the cheaters. So, more like underhanded businessmen. But I get your point. They all suck. :D
And I do admit that, right now, my play time has been more limited than normal. Because, you know, I get sick of getting kicked from servers constantly. :O So I will take your word for how it’s been of late. Mine was just an observation of what I’ve seen. I’ve seen less random shooting and more ships performing evasive maneuvers without sailing for the edge of the map. So that seemed positive. :)
Not true, actually. Many if not most naval bots are established accounts running the game afk off a script, as shown by their plentiful clan tags and large non-naval vehicle inventories. They’re level 100+ ground/air players who have bought a bot script and one naval premium to run the game overnight and get the event rewards while the honest players have to grind it out.
At the current 2.2x naval score multiplier, running 24/7 you just need to average 325 score per game to get two high tier vehicles. So that’s what they’re doing.
Yeah. And getting a 325 match score is almost a guarantee if you actually shoot guns and take a few hits. But I’ve also seen a lot of bot players that were obviously farming for money early on to sell the account, too. I’m sure it’s a mix of both worlds. And no matter which version they are, they suck.
So I’ve been watching this pretty closely since Oct 2021 when the first naval bots appeared.
At first I thought it was an organized concern selling accounts, but I don’t think so anymore. Not as the major driver, anyway. Lots of people think of selling their accounts, I think everyone has wondered what their 1500 vehicles might be worth at some point. It’s totally against TOS, and if you buy an account and then lose your money, good, I say. But you don’t need bots to produce an account resales market, it would exist anyway.
I think what we’re currently seeing is a lot of bot script users on established accounts with a few occasional wacky one-offs like that shoti guy (naval RB is a small mode, so even a few bad actors like that can make a big difference in other people’s experience)… unless it just trying to make Gaijin look bad his actions seem pretty inexplicable.
The exception is the Kerchbots. By process of elimination, I’ve come to think those are the script makers’ lab rats. Fresh accounts, only the starter premium, zero cost, work up through the ranks slowly, quietly shut down, then reappearing, slightly improved, slightly different, then shutting down again. I think those are the tests for the next version of the script, tbh. I think if we’d been looking we could have seen them as the indication of the next wave of naval bot scripts each time.
Anyway, that’s my working theory now. The money’s in the script sales to established players, probably always has been. There’s been sidelines and offsets in things like event farming, farming referrals and possibly creation of some fresh accounts for sale, too. But the weight of the illegal effort here is selling people a way to use that 2.2x naval RB multiplier to grind while they sleep (and also make SL and RP too). I think Air RB might be like that, too, the Ground RB bots that they hammered flat pretty fast probably were… dunno about Sim Air bots, I don’t play that mode.
Actually, the entire Shoti clan are bots, as I’ve found and reported as such. Almost everyone in their account has only one vehicle in their line up (often the Frank Knox), but some of them seem to have been valid accounts before since they somehow obtained medals from other nations… Either way, the sooner they are gone the better for the early-mid tier (seems like something is being done though, considering most of them is lacking activity points at this time). Although this is the first I’ve heard about the Yubari bots…
Knowing that there are ‘players,’ who literally haven’t looked at WT during the entire event, yet will walk away with 2 top event vehicles, while genuine players with job, family, relationships, will struggle to get much more than the Ki-48 (unless they can neglect family/relationship in favour of WT during their free time over almost 2 weeks), has got to be infuriating at the very least. Doubly infuriating when you realise the next event will be just that little bit harder (they always are), in part because Gaijin will look at the results and conclude ‘too many’ players got 6 coupons - and many of those ‘too many’ will be the afk botters.
They’ve all been banned. Entire squadron, back at the start of September.
The fact Gaijin didn’t announce their first ever effective intervention after two years of naval botting is… baffling. Reminds you of the scene in Dr. Strangelove:
I agree with your theory. In recent months, 90+% of the bots I (probably waste my time) report are undoubtedly real players in air/ground. They should be even more aware that the scripts they are using are a TOS violation, not that it appears Gaijin will ever do anything about them. The devs must never actually play, because the matches that have them are instantly obvious. I had a 4.7 match a few days ago that somehow was bot free: the first giveaway is that everyone doesn’t open fire immediately with 90% accuracy right at the start of the match.
So I have done some thinking about carriers and submarines again and thought it might be cool to share the idea here to get some feedback and maybe forward it as a formal suggestion:
What if subs and carriers are implemented like how game-provided planes (and alternatively, drones for Ground RB) are used? As in, you need kills in a match to get the spawn points needed to spawn one in for your team. This would solve the issue with submarines in that they are only best countered in low tiers while high tiers would (mostly) have the air defenses necessary to fend off large amounts of air threats? So in BR bracket from 2.0-5.0 you can get some WW2 submarine and from 5.0 you get some early war light carrier that gets a bit better as you climb the BRs. If Super_Cacti’s decompression plan comes into play, you can even have a wider range of carriers to play and the Modern Navy matchmaker might even have access to both (need considering cause no one wants the modern carrier’s complement coming down upon some poor destroyer).
Pro:
These specialty vehicles are locked in BRs that they can be adequately defended against
As its locked behind (presumably pretty high) spawn points, you wouldn’t have matches filled with them, especially not at the start of the game.
Cons:
The biggest con is probably the choice of vehicles to play is out of your hands. It will probably be the kinds of vehicle that is representative of your nation; so for submarines it’d be like Type VII U-boats for Germany, Gato-class for the Americans, etc. etc. Carriers might be a little better off since it got wider BR bracket to play with but you will inevitably miss a few niche favorites.
As it is a spawn point based system, by the time you can spawn one, the match might have been progressed to the point where you can’t make any meaningful contribution with it.
Looks like Submarine test trials are here through the Battle of the Atlantic Event. I’m too burnt out after crafting event (and doing that TOG 2 grind) so I don’t think I’ll have a chance to play it so I’ll leave it to you guys to have any feedback on how subs mechanic is panning out. It is worth noting that it won’t be the same as the live game since you are solely worrying about subs, though. And it’s fighting destroyers and others that can defend against it.
The event is pretty good. The subs absolutely suck though, they are too slow, lack visibility and the mines just bounce of enemy ships. Dessies work well though.
Most success I have had in a sub is surfacing and firing torps point blank at a dessy trying to kill me.
I’m curious about the lack of visibility, how does that work? Can you listen to engine sounds to zero in on a target, kind of like how some ground battles devolve into? Any sonar ping mechanics?
Surface ships have sonar ping and you see a flash outline of the subs. Its hard but you can depth charge pretty easy once you get the hang of it. The smaller ships just get eaten by the sub guns however, since the subs can surface and submerge pretty much in seconds. So your crappy coastal is not going to hit them with anything larger than a 40mm.
The subs do have a periscope but its very narrow scoped and you don’t get any decent information on your trajectories. If the dessies get close to you, you’re pretty much done for.
C’mon, this is Gaijin, there’s an exploit naturally. Periscope depth is 7m and ‘obviously’ at that depth you travel at submerged speed (slow), but you can put the periscope up and look around (that’s not the exploit). Surfaced is 0m (depth is measured from this baseline, not bottom of hull or whatever.). At 4m you are entirely submerged apart from the top-most autocannon (2 x 20mm mounts). Despite being entirely submerged (and having no way to get air to the diesels) you can travel at max surfaced speed and you can spam the 20mm guns… not sure how the gunners get to the guns given all hatches must be closed, nor what happens to them if you go deeper… well, I do know actually, they must teleport back inside as you don’t lose any crew. While at 4m you also get the external view above surface. But the exploit gets better, because at 5m you’re completely invisible with top-most parts of the sub (20mm) being just under the surface, but you retain the above-surface external view AND the surfaced speed = stealth of a submerged sub; speed and awareness of a surfaced sub.
At periscope depth and below the external viewpoint is from under the surface and is quite limited (in this event with poor weather Atlantic conditions). You can see ships passing above you and see their depth charges. Like I say, quite limited and by 60m everything is black and you can’t really see anything. Of course, you see infinitely more than a real submerged sub, but it’s not too much of an unrealistic game breaking advantage (might be different on some crystal clear, fine sunny day Pacific maps?)
On the whole the mechanics are quite well done… aside from the 4-5m exploit which allows precisely the kind of dweebery that made me reluctant to wish subs on the game, even though I like the idea.
Yea, subs seem able to absorb a few 5” salvoes (???) and when you get to close range the DD is handicapped by the - still-not-fixed - close range random aiming ‘feature,’ whereby even with exact range set and green circle on target (ie the point guns are allegedly pointing at), the shells splash half way to target, go wildly left/right or over the top of the target.
So I guess we got FCS UI element now, does anyone want to throw in their opinion of the feature? I will try it out soon enough but the update is taking an eternity with my slow internet.
The shellfall over/under/straddle indications have been very useful for adjusting aim, but for easier readability I think it would be useful to lock the player-direction-being-viewed overlay to 12 o’clock and have the player and enemy ship icons be displayed relative to that, rather than the current setup of the player-view indication freely rotating around the player ship 's icon while both ships involved in the calculation are shown relative to compass north for some reason ?
