AI Skill Slider???

[The Chef]

I searched and couldnt find a definitive answer to this so I figure I will ask and see what others think. What is the difference between this slider and the sliders for AI Contact and AI Power? The description for the AI Skill slider states, "Move this slider to the right to increase both the contact and power abilities of CPU hitters." Well the description for the AI Contact and AI Power sliders state, "Move this slider to the right to increase the CPU's overall ability to make contact with the ball." as well as "Move this slider to the right to increase the overall power of the CPU hits." Now to me this seems like they are all doing the same thing except for the fact that the Power slider seems to only effect the power of the hits, I assume the velocity at which the ball leaves the bat, where as the Skill slider increases the ability of the CPU players to not only make contact but to also hit homeruns, is this correct? If so it would seem more beneficial to leave the skill slider lower and only increase the contact/power sliders to compensate for lousy offense but after seeing so many slider sets with the skill setting anywhere from 70-100 Im starting to question my theory, especially considering I have my skill slider set at 10 currently. The skill slider starts out at 30 when on rookie settings but this game, more so then others, seems to rely on how the sliders work together, what may seem low to some is balanced out by something opposite being higher, sorry for the ramble, its late and this has been bugging me all day today.

[pberardi]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

I searched and couldnt find a definitive answer to this so I figure I will ask and see what others think. What is the difference between this slider and the sliders for AI Contact and AI Power? The description for the AI Skill slider states, "Move this slider to the right to increase both the contact and power abilities of CPU hitters." Well the description for the AI Contact and AI Power sliders state, "Move this slider to the right to increase the CPU's overall ability to make contact with the ball." as well as "Move this slider to the right to increase the overall power of the CPU hits." Now to me this seems like they are all doing the same thing except for the fact that the Power slider seems to only effect the power of the hits, I assume the velocity at which the ball leaves the bat, where as the Skill slider increases the ability of the CPU players to not only make contact but to also hit homeruns, is this correct? If so it would seem more beneficial to leave the skill slider lower and only increase the contact/power sliders to compensate for lousy offense but after seeing so many slider sets with the skill setting anywhere from 70-100 Im starting to question my theory, especially considering I have my skill slider set at 10 currently. The skill slider starts out at 30 when on rookie settings but this game, more so then others, seems to rely on how the sliders work together, what may seem low to some is balanced out by something opposite being higher, sorry for the ramble, its late and this has been bugging me all day today.

There is nothing wrong in your analysis. No one really knows what it does. I agree that it seems redundant to hike this slider up while one is increasing con/pow at the same time. However, many people including me, are trying desparately to get the CPU to hit and defeat us more consistently. I'm increasing it along with con/pow to see what the deal is.

When everyone starts going one way, I take the contrarian approach and go the other way. Anyone for cpu con/pow @ zero with AI skill @ 100?

A well tuned game should play well with user and cpu contact/power @ zero! This way the true attributes of each player comes through. I should be able to hit homers with Hafner and doubles with Sizemore with a good eye and discipline and no help from sliders. Same goes for the CPU. A power slider should be for those who want to hit 450 ft bombs or 349 ft homers, not hit the ball harder. Harder should come from where you hit the ball on the bat (timing/contact) and the pitch you hit, (FB vs curve).

We are looking for some balance that's all.

[gtm]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

There is nothing wrong in your analysis. No one really knows what it does. I agree that it seems redundant to hike this slider up while one is increasing con/pow at the same time. However, many people including me, are trying desparately to get the CPU to hit and defeat us more consistently. I'm increasing it along with con/pow to see what the deal is.

When everyone starts going one way, I take the contrarian approach and go the other way. Anyone for cpu con/pow @ zero with AI skill @ 100?

A well tuned game should play well with user and cpu contact/power @ zero! This way the true attributes of each player comes through. I should be able to hit homers with Hafner and doubles with Sizemore with a good eye and discipline and no help from sliders. Same goes for the CPU. A power slider should be for those who want to hit 450 ft bombs or 349 ft homers, not hit the ball harder. Harder should come from where you hit the ball on the bat (timing/contact) and the pitch you hit, (FB vs curve).

We are looking for some balance that's all.

I wish this were true that having everything set to zero would put into focus the player attributes the developer has assigned the players and let the games play out from that. Obviously, this doesn't work because this is why they give us sliders. We have to tweak the games to death just to try and get a somewhat realistic game. Oh well. Thank goodness we have slider gurus here at OS.

[bigfnjoe96]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

Right now I'm testing:

AI SKILL: 25
AI CONTACT: 75
AI POWER:50

Playing the D-RAYS, just lost 5-1 D-Rays had 16 hits. Only 1 was a HR. 8 Singles, 4 Doubles, 3 Triples in 40 AB.

Will test some more later

[highheatkingsb]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

Try this:

AI Skill 55
AI Contact 55
AI Power 60
Mod Eff: 60

[The Chef]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

They need to add a few sliders next year to the game, most importantly would be a foul ball slider and a strikeout slider. There are so many variables when trying to strikeout the CPU, contact/power, AI skill, AI pitcher difficulty, take ball/strike sliders that it seems next to imposible to find that sweet spot and get a respectable amount of strikeouts.

[brunnoce]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

Right now I'm testing:

AI SKILL: 25
AI CONTACT: 75
AI POWER:50

Playing the D-RAYS, just lost 5-1 D-Rays had 16 hits. Only 1 was a HR. 8 Singles, 4 Doubles, 3 Triples in 40 AB.

Will test some more later

seems interedting joe, but what about your numeber of stirkes out? did you get a realistic amount?
also, what did you have for the AI pitcher difficulty? i think this slider also direct affects the AI batting performance.

well i think when we talk about ai batting we need to look at all sliders that affect it, as the take strike , ball slider...i think those 3 sliders(skill, contact, power) cant produce the exepect results whitout getting the other ai batting sliders balanced.

[brunnoce]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

They need to add a few sliders next year to the game, most importantly would be a foul ball slider and a strikeout slider. There are so many variables when trying to strikeout the CPU, contact/power, AI skill, AI pitcher difficulty, take ball/strike sliders that it seems next to imposible to find that sweet spot and get a respectable amount of strikeouts.

i totally agree with you...whenever i find a good balance of those sliders to get a realistic amount of strikeouts the ai just cant hit me(6-7 average per game)(not to mention that i am geting way better pitching results with my #4 and #5 starters than with my aces..which is wrong..specially when youi have zambrano and harden playing for you(i play with the cubs and the As)) Dont know why, but i just cant strike out batters which zambrano, harden, haren or evan street, while with j.blanton , r.hill and most all of my MR its usually a strike out fest, sometimes this makes me think the ai pitching dificult slider is upside down....and in the other hand, when i get the ai offense to produce, i can barely strike out 3 guys per game...and thats after alot of tests..not only play one test game ..i usually test my sliders tweaks for about +20 games in a new season mode so it keeps every stat tracking.

[nnng07]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

Okay guys this is a little confusing, but I will try to explain the difference between the AI SKILL & AI CONTACT/POWER sliders.

Increasing the contact slider more or less increases the practical size of the bat, meaning that a given pitch has to be a fraction of an inch further away from the bat to miss it with this setting up high. Basically the same swing that would swing and miss with this at 0 could very well be a double down the line with this at 100. Now, this does not actually change the *swing* the batter takes. I don't think adjusting this, or the power slider, changes the *kind* of swing taken.

As with the contact slider, I think the power slider affects what happens with the ball once the bat goes through the zone and hits the ball, but does not actually change the type of hack the AI batter takes. So his swing is the same, but it might turn out that even off the end of the bat he drives the ball instead of grounding out because AI Power is at 100 instead of 0.


Now, the AI SKILL slider affects contact & power in a different way. Moving this up from whatever baseline setting you started with will NOT cause the CPU batter to have a 'bigger' bat -- meaning a bigger sweet spot. That is not how the contact is affected by turning this up. Instead, it is my understanding from playing this game over and over that the AI SKILL slider affects the *hitting approach* of the AI batter. By stating in the description that AI contact and power abilities improve as you move this up, what it means is that the hitter are actually *smarter*, less likely to be fooled. They make more contact and have more power because they anticipate the mixing of speeds and changing of locations better. This is what is meant by AI SKILL. When it says that they will have increased contact and power, they don't mean that the CPU sweet spot will be bigger or that their 400-foot HR's turn into 500+foot bombs, just that they AI will have better contact and power as a result of a better batting approach.


Hope all that made sense!

[The Chef]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

Okay guys this is a little confusing, but I will try to explain the difference between the AI SKILL & AI CONTACT/POWER sliders.

Increasing the contact slider more or less increases the practical size of the bat, meaning that a given pitch has to be a fraction of an inch further away from the bat to miss it with this setting up high. Basically the same swing that would swing and miss with this at 0 could very well be a double down the line with this at 100. Now, this does not actually change the *swing* the batter takes. I don't think adjusting this, or the power slider, changes the *kind* of swing taken.

As with the contact slider, I think the power slider affects what happens with the ball once the bat goes through the zone and hits the ball, but does not actually change the type of hack the AI batter takes. So his swing is the same, but it might turn out that even off the end of the bat he drives the ball instead of grounding out because AI Power is at 100 instead of 0.


Now, the AI SKILL slider affects contact & power in a different way. Moving this up from whatever baseline setting you started with will NOT cause the CPU batter to have a 'bigger' bat -- meaning a bigger sweet spot. That is not how the contact is affected by turning this up. Instead, it is my understanding from playing this game over and over that the AI SKILL slider affects the *hitting approach* of the AI batter. By stating in the description that AI contact and power abilities improve as you move this up, what it means is that the hitter are actually *smarter*, less likely to be fooled. They make more contact and have more power because they anticipate the mixing of speeds and changing of locations better. This is what is meant by AI SKILL. When it says that they will have increased contact and power, they don't mean that the CPU sweet spot will be bigger or that their 400-foot HR's turn into 500+foot bombs, just that they AI will have better contact and power as a result of a better batting approach.


Hope all that made sense!

That made perfect sense and explains it a lot better then I could hope to. By using that logic it would seem that I may want to lower the AI Skill slider to obtain more strikeouts while keeping the contact in a respectable level so they arent getting to pitches that they shouldnt touch. This may sound dumb but I hate seeing the CPU swing and foul off pitches that are clear outside the zone, if anything, I would rather them swing and miss if they are going to swing, especially considering how far outside the zone they are.

[brunnoce]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

i agree with you guys...
i am playing with ai skill 100 and i see hte computer hit HR from pitches that would never be hit out of the park like a splitter in the outside low corner that breaks outside the box that almost touches the ground....dont know how but the guy streached down there and amazinly pulled it over the fence for a +415ft hr. also i see guys hitting hrs when i pitch them a fastball up at their eye level, when i was just trying to pitch a ball to let them know i wont be in the strike zone that much, never seen that in any baseball game, ususally when they try to hit this, casue the see something up, they miss or they hit a louzy flyball, but with ai skill 100 its a diferent story, its HR after HR, gosh evan mariners betencourt hit a hr out of me the other day, in the same game jojima had 3!!! the last one i was just trying to pitch around him...but he could still hit another bomb...just an ET.

i think i might try loweing the skill and moving contact/power up..if it doesnt work, i ill try the other way, 100 for skill and about 40 power, 50 contact

[The Chef]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

i agree with you guys...
i am playing with ai skill 100 and i see hte computer hit HR from pitches that would never be hit out of the park like a splitter in the outside low corner that breaks outside the box that almost touches the ground....dont know how but the guy streached down there and amazinly pulled it over the fence for a +415ft hr. also i see guys hitting hrs when i pitch them a fastball up at their eye level, when i was just trying to pitch a ball to let them know i wont be in the strike zone that much, never seen that in any baseball game, ususally when they try to hit this, casue the see something up, they miss or they hit a louzy flyball, but with ai skill 100 its a diferent story, its HR after HR, gosh evan mariners betencourt hit a hr out of me the other day, in the same game jojima had 3!!! the last one i was just trying to pitch around him...but he could still hit another bomb...just an ET.

i think i might try loweing the skill and moving contact/power up..if it doesnt work, i ill try the other way, 100 for skill and about 40 power, 50 contact

I currently have the AI Skill at 10, Contact at 45 and Power at 55 and lost my last game to the Brewers 7-4. Im really enjoying the game right now, that hasnt changed, Im just trying to get a few more strikeouts since that still seems to be a problem. Ive got a few ideas on this, set AI Skill at 100 but drop Contact down to 40, Ive thought of dropping AI Skill to 0 and leaving everything else alone and have gone as far as to see if there is a strikeout rating for pitchers and increasing it on the edit player screen so I can pick up a few more. With the settings I have now, Billingsley got rocked by the brew crew, struckout 2 over 4 1/3 innings, walked 3 and gave up 9 hits, he was murdered. Once I find that sweet spot for strikeouts while the CPU's offense is still being competitive I will be in heaven and done altering things.

[pberardi]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

Okay guys this is a little confusing, but I will try to explain the difference between the AI SKILL & AI CONTACT/POWER sliders.

Increasing the contact slider more or less increases the practical size of the bat, meaning that a given pitch has to be a fraction of an inch further away from the bat to miss it with this setting up high. Basically the same swing that would swing and miss with this at 0 could very well be a double down the line with this at 100. Now, this does not actually change the *swing* the batter takes. I don't think adjusting this, or the power slider, changes the *kind* of swing taken.

As with the contact slider, I think the power slider affects what happens with the ball once the bat goes through the zone and hits the ball, but does not actually change the type of hack the AI batter takes. So his swing is the same, but it might turn out that even off the end of the bat he drives the ball instead of grounding out because AI Power is at 100 instead of 0.


Now, the AI SKILL slider affects contact & power in a different way. Moving this up from whatever baseline setting you started with will NOT cause the CPU batter to have a 'bigger' bat -- meaning a bigger sweet spot. That is not how the contact is affected by turning this up. Instead, it is my understanding from playing this game over and over that the AI SKILL slider affects the *hitting approach* of the AI batter. By stating in the description that AI contact and power abilities improve as you move this up, what it means is that the hitter are actually *smarter*, less likely to be fooled. They make more contact and have more power because they anticipate the mixing of speeds and changing of locations better. This is what is meant by AI SKILL. When it says that they will have increased contact and power, they don't mean that the CPU sweet spot will be bigger or that their 400-foot HR's turn into 500+foot bombs, just that they AI will have better contact and power as a result of a better batting approach.


Hope all that made sense!

Wow, it seems so clear now. This explains while playing vs. the Yanks, they hit every strike (no matter where it was placed) for a hit! It was only until I threw balls and pitched around them, they started making out.

I would prefer trying to find the medium where the discipline and tendencies of each player is prominant. I may do the following:

1. If I dominate a weaker team the first two games of a series, I may raise this considerably for the 3rd game so as to not sweep a 3 game series.
2. If I'm playing teams like the Yanks or Redsox, I may lower to avoid the 3 1/2 hr long hitting fests that they seem to produce. If they beat me at a low rating, then no need to raise.
3. Its become apparant that flexible sliders maybe needed to accomodate different skills of lineups. I'll use this as my flex slider!

Last, I wonder with most of us playing with weak/strong teams off, if this slider actually adjusts if it were "on".

[pberardi]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

I currently have the AI Skill at 10, Contact at 45 and Power at 55 and lost my last game to the Brewers 7-4. Im really enjoying the game right now, that hasnt changed, Im just trying to get a few more strikeouts since that still seems to be a problem. Ive got a few ideas on this, set AI Skill at 100 but drop Contact down to 40, Ive thought of dropping AI Skill to 0 and leaving everything else alone and have gone as far as to see if there is a strikeout rating for pitchers and increasing it on the edit player screen so I can pick up a few more. With the settings I have now, Billingsley got rocked by the brew crew, struckout 2 over 4 1/3 innings, walked 3 and gave up 9 hits, he was murdered. Once I find that sweet spot for strikeouts while the CPU's offense is still being competitive I will be in heaven and done altering things.

Yes, I'm finding 45con/55pow for cpu just right. I can't give up HR's to the cpu with anything less. Teams like the Yanks can beat me but not blow me out!

With AI skills above 60, I find the good teams to be downright annoying. Endless hits, long innings. Of course this is part of the game but all game long is unrealistic. I'm going to use this as my flexible slider. Simply adjust it based on teams. This way, I don't beat the Royals every time I play them and I don't get swept by the Yanks either.

The other slider I can't seem to fathom is the mod slider. It seems whenever I bring in a middle reliever, the CPU rocks him!. I'm beginning to understand the smaller "circle" that represents the pitch quality determines how effective the user will be. Therefore, I pitch around the hitters. This "mod" slider forces me to throw accordingly. But, I'm not sure if it should be high or low.

[bigfnjoe96]

Re: AI Skill Slider???

seems interedting joe, but what about your numeber of stirkes out? did you get a realistic amount?
also, what did you have for the AI pitcher difficulty? i think this slider also direct affects the AI batting performance.

well i think when we talk about ai batting we need to look at all sliders that affect it, as the take strike , ball slider...i think those 3 sliders(skill, contact, power) cant produce the exepect results whitout getting the other ai batting sliders balanced.

brunnoce, I have AI Pitcher Difficulty @ 10 & AI Difficulty MOD @ 90. I played another game against D-Rays. I won 6-4, but once again the D-RAYS had a good variety of hits & only 1 HR.