I don’t play Naval anymore, but from pure curiosity I checked this in the Test Sail, and it doesn’t look like “broken aiming” to me.
It actually looks like the next step to make aiming fully automatic in Naval Arcade.
The previous change solved the “aiming problem” for players, who didn’t know how to aim.
This particular change solved the “aiming problem” for players, who didn’t know where to aim (which part of the vessel).
For example, the AI is even better in killing boats now:
Spoiler
https://youtu.be/cg0KUILlMaM
It shot the front section first, and then the rear section. Nice and easy kill by just pressing 2 buttons (select enemy and fire). I didn’t even have to move my mouse.
Against Destroyers it gets even more interesting:
Spoiler
https://youtu.be/cFWz2_0Zmb8
You can see even though I don’t move my mouse even an inch, the AI is fully automatically aiming at enemy guns/engine areas. The funny thing is, before the aiming change I would shoot the same areas. The only difference is, I would shoot slightly lower than the AI, but these areas are the “weakspots”.
Anyway, that was good enough for the AI to fully automatically explode enemy ammunition, and that’s actually impressive! With fully automatic aiming, newer players don’t have to know where to aim anymore. The AI seems to be targeting enemy weakspots very well.
Of course I’m not sure if this aiming change will stay. But there is a logic in it, it’s not “random shooting”. It looks more like a test for fully automatic aiming in Naval Arcade. I’m not saying this system is perfect. I’m just saying it makes sense, because it’s very newbie friendly. It doesn’t matter where you point your crosshair, you will always hit enemy weakspots automatically (assuming the enemy won’t change their course).
The funny thing about this change is that all the arguments people used to defend simplified aiming works for this change too. If you want to aim manually, just play Naval Realistic. Naval Arcade should be for new players, who don’t have to understand how or where to aim. So why not introducing the system that does everything for the player? The player’s job right now is to press two buttons: select an enemy and fire. And this could be even simpler if you have automatic enemy selection turned on in options (if I remember correctly, it’s turned on by the default). Then you only need one button to hit enemies. Your mouse cursor position doesn’t matter anymore, the AI will shoot at the enemy weakspots for you, which is great from the new players perspective, right?
BTW: With this aiming change, I strongly suggest to fire guns independently. This way the AI will nicely spread the damage over the different enemy weakspots, maximizing possible crew damage.