Bnavvers who dont know where to start

Whoosy · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 6:36 am Post subject:

Silly me thought this thread was to help me learn to bnav.

What was I thinking? Wink

andi_kan · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:12 am Post subject:

Whoosy, it does. This thread is to help those new to the bnav scene on how to approach certain situations. Of course, every one of our officers here have got different approaches given a certain situation, and this is where everyone gets their ideas torn down in discussion.

And btw, that was cheating, triple-posting !
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Andikan
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You do not need to see a miracle to believe;
Merely believing without seeing, is in itself a miracle.

Whoosy · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 12:52 pm Post subject:

I didn't mean to triple-post! /me grins EDIT (Scarymuffin): What triple post?

I was just referring to the fact that the thread went from bnav tips to spies and grand frigs and never returned.

teal · Broad Forum Tart Joined: 18 Dec 2005 Posts: 110

So after the AI change about a week ago, I've been having trouble with my bnavving. The tricks and tips I mention are still viable, but not as effective as before. LSM (last second moves), move cancellation and move rotation don't get you as much benefit as it did before. I'll try to come up with a more efficient strategy as time progresses. It doesn't mean to not use the strategy listed above, as it will give you a better advantage rather than having both ships broad sides facing each other exchanging shots. I just wanted to develop a more effective way of bnaving against the brigands.

To bad the brigands actually got smart eh?

Teal

andi_kan · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 5:53 pm Post subject:

My problem isn't so much of brigands getting smarter, bnav-wise. I still win by up to max-2 at least 90% of the time, but the real problem is that they SF much harder, much faster. I used to encounter killer chainsaws around 7-8 battles into a pillage, now I get them like on the 4th or 5th one. And I also just encountered a yellow MB on the second battle -- whassup with that?
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Andikan
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You do not need to see a miracle to believe;
Merely believing without seeing, is in itself a miracle.

Backsword · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 6:57 pm Post subject:

so, does bnav with the navy actually affect your sea-battle ratings? And is there actually a big difference in terms of ship behavior when you're fighting with the navy and pillaging? Because I get the feeling even though I'm getting smoked pretty badly in the navy, this is the easy stage -.-
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Pauling · Illustrious Forum Tart Joined: 03 Sep 2005 Posts: 431

I'm pretty sure the navy does affect your ratings (I think we had this conversation once- check the old stuff, it's worth reading).

As for differences? My main one is that bots are much dumber than humans. They don't team in the sf, and since you're facing low staffing, the guns load much more slowly than, say, Udu is used to even while you struggle to control damage and make sail tokens (which is easier to do with a full 7, where you don't need to puzzle + nav at same time).
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andi_kan · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 7:31 pm Post subject:

Yes, it affects rating. I used to do it to improve my rating and seen it work.

As for difficulty, the main difference is this. On navy, you usu. fight sailor sloops, whereas on a pillage (my pillages, at least) you fight green/yellow cutters and/or MB's, imps. The difference is that, imps vs. sailors.

Of course, when I'm with navy, I also go for larger kills like sea lord brigs, scoundrel frigs etc. Just that you meet them rarely.
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Andikan
............

You do not need to see a miracle to believe;
Merely believing without seeing, is in itself a miracle.

teal · Broad Forum Tart Joined: 18 Dec 2005 Posts: 110

So here is my update after the brigands got more clairvoyant.

This might not be the best way to bnav...but its been quite effective in my last couple of pillages. The only times i lost were chainsaws (max-1.5 and max-2) but most of the time it works quite well.

So all of my tips at the beginning of the post still hold true. Getting their ship to come towards you is usually the most effective way of hitting them. Of course it would be much better to get behind them...but it is very unlikely that it will be possible for you to even move behind them unless they are already seriously damaged.

However, the brigands clairvoyance is more of a problem now as they will not move into your line of fire because they know when you shoot your cannons at them. So in order to counter this problem, my best solution is using move rotation (not move cancellation where you take off the same moves and put them back on). Move rotation is the procedure of putting a false set of moves into your board, and then changing them to the correct moves at the end when the timer runs out. This way, the brigands believe that you will move in a certain direction, while in reality you will move and act differently.

The advantage of move rotation over move cancellation is that you dont have to clear ALL of your moves and put ALL of them back in again. With rotation, you can put some of your true moves into your tokens and put some false ones in there also. When the timer gets low, you only need to change those few false moves into their true moves. So instead of having to clear a total of 4-8 moves (includes cbs fire), you only need to change 1-2 moves which uses less time to change at the last second. Usually with LSMs, you give the brigand enough time to react to your moves, or else you end up being too late and half of your moves don't get registered. This is the same with move cancelling. By only having to change 1-2 moves, the brigands cant react to the change fast enough.

Now the difficult thing to try to figure out is what moves should you falsify and which ones should you keep. Unfortunately, it varies with each movement. But for simple standards here is what i do. I usually place all the cbs that I am planning to fire into their correct positions. That way I dont have to deal with them later in LSMs and whatnot. The moves which you typically want to falsify are the first 1 or 2 moves. For example, if your first two moves you want to be RR then you could make them SS. When the counter gets close to the bottom, a simple left click in each of those slots will change them from straight to right.

A good tip to remember is what each mouse button does.
Left clicking rotates the arrows in the series of blank, L, S, R, blank
Right clicking rotates the arrows in the series of blank, R, S, L, blank (basically the opposite direction of left clicking.
The middle mouse button skips every other token. (If you start with no move, it will jump to S. If you click it again, it will jump back to blank. If you start on L it will jump to R. If you click it again, it will jump back to L)

I hope this helps people in their future b-navs.
Future posts will include screenshots of move rotation.

PS. I know that move rotation isnt exactly the same as what I explained above, but its close enough that it gets the procedure across.

Teal

Kathe · Neophyte Forum Tart Joined: 22 Aug 2005 Posts: 29

To get the brig in this position you have to think like the brigands think.
Usually, brigands will take the most direct route to shoot you or grapple you. Use the way they are programmed to your advantage.

Kathe,
slightly bragging Razz

hharadore · Neophyte Forum Tart Joined: 22 Dec 2005 Posts: 48

Also worth noting is that brigands use auto-sails, so much of the lower level brigands (typically the brig drivers in sloop v. brig) will waste forward token after forward token driving against the winds.

andi_kan · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:21 am Post subject:

I don't understand what Teal was trying to say here... are you saying or implying that the brigands can actually differentiate a Forward movement as opposed to a Right movement, and even go so far as to know which turn your moves are placed? As far as I know, brigands know only as much as we do, ie. whether 1 move or 2 move tokens are placed. If this is true, then move rotation makes no difference to the brigands' behaviour whatsoever.

On another note, I also wish to point out that brigands are extremely good at guessing movements. There are a couple of positions where no matter which side you moved (or even stayed idle), there is a possibility of being grappled. And so far, based on experience, the brigands have got it spot on at least 80% of the time Crying or Very sad

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Andikan
............

You do not need to see a miracle to believe;
Merely believing without seeing, is in itself a miracle.

teal · Broad Forum Tart Joined: 18 Dec 2005 Posts: 110

To answer andi's question about know if you place a right or left, the answer is yes. That's kind of what I meant by clairvoyant. So theoretically, they should have the same advantages/disadvantages that we hold (only knowing the number of tokens that we place). However, you are fighting against a computer, and they have all the information at their disposal. Whether they use it or not is moreof their choice and not ours. I know that I am no more informed about how they move than anyone else here, but from my experiences, they seem to know which move you place in and where you put it. They have been quite adaptive recently, knowing whether you move left or right or straight, and when you place that move. Maybe it was just me with horrible horrible luck, where they were able to guess correctly my moves and shoot me in the butt, but I really doubt it. This was when I was testing their new capabilities, but with my new format for fighting them, I have had no problems with them.

Using LSMs are bad, and here are the reasons why you want to try and avoid it.
1)When you LSM, the brigand also LSMs you back. You won't be able to decipher how many moves they will take, and usually you wont be sucessful in your planning unless they are already out of moves.
2)When you LSM too much, they start falsifying the number of moves they show. For example, it might show only a half bar (2 moves) but when the timer runs out, they actually move 4 spaces. Im not writing about when the show 2 in the bar and end up moving 2 spaces and shooting the other 2. This not only happened when using LSM, but also when the moves were permanently placed ahead of time. I placed all 4 of my moves, and did not change it at all, and they still falsified their moves.
3) The ever notorious greyed out token. Always hear the bnavver complaining about lag? When you try to fill all your moves at the last second, its more likely you wont be able to place all of your moves. Either that happens or you place all your moves too early that the brigands can react to your moves in time.

This is all just a matter of opinion so a lot of it (maybe all of it) can be wrong. But it gives you insight to my thoughts behind it. XD

Teal

andi_kan · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 10:37 am Post subject:

About the clairvoyant thingy... indeed the brigands do get me a lot, but there are also times when I went against normal human psychology and moved in weird patterns and came out un-grappled/unscathed. Personally, I guess that brigands just do lots of good guessing -- like if your opponent is 50-50% likely to move left or right, but if you see lot of rocks on the left, it suddenly becomes more likely that the opponent will choose the clearer route.

I will need to do much more research on this before I give concrete opinions though, so at the moment, all I'm saying is based purely on experience.
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Andikan
............

You do not need to see a miracle to believe;
Merely believing without seeing, is in itself a miracle.

_Tyrant_ · Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:18 am Post subject: