It feels like AI Engineers make it almost impossible to destroy ships.

[Errodu]

A reoccurring problem I seem to be having in Guns of Icarus is AI Engineers on ships.

During a long fight of no deaths on either side, I start to realize something's wrong. I hold Tab to discover both enemy ships have 2 AI Engineers on their ships. My crew works hard and aims true to destroy core stations on the opposing ships - Hull, Balloon, Guns, Engine... But almost as fast as my crew destroys the stations, I read in the top left corner "Yvette has rebuilt Hull" "Yvette has rebuilt Balloon" coming from the enemy ship that we were pressuring.

The game reached a stage where my crew were getting bored and couldn't care less about the damage they were dealing. The damage wasn't sticking, the weapons felt underwhelming, and sooner or later almost everyone on both sides left, leaving just the captains. You can imagine what happened next - Four invincible ships wasting mortar and shells on one another.

I've obviously come to the conclusion that AI Engineers are too powerful on a ship. I could be wrong as I am new to the game (Been playing since yesterday) but it's just too frustrating to attempt to apply enough damage on a ship and watch it go from broken, deflated, half destroyed to near-perfect condition again.

Is the AI intentional this way? Is it just for the Noob servers? Is there a plan to change how strong AI Engineers act in the game?

I don't want to feel that I can cut out the middle man (actual players) and employ a crew of AI characters when the game is focused around teamwork.

[N-Sunderland]

The AI engineers are, to be perfectly honest, terrible. They have no idea how to prioritize, and I often see them ditching the hull to fix useless guns. It's probably a question of the teams not applying enough damage/missing too many shots. What ships and guns were you using?

[Errodu]

Well for one example we were on a Pyramidion armed with 2 Mercury Field Guns (Sniper Rifles) on the front, a Flamethrower and a Cannonade on the side. The fight happened in Labyrinth and it took 20 minutes just to get it away from the point. The enemy ships were Pyramidions. This example was where every 4 combined shots of our sniper rifles destroyed the enemy hull, guns, and engines. But before our snipers had finished reloading, "Yvette" had fully rebuilt the stations.

Another example is in the Desert stage on a Goldfish armed with the basics - a Manticore cannon on the front and 2 Whirlwind Gatling Guns on the sides. Not even a full on shot of a buffed Manticore barrage could deal enough damage to the enemy vessel before our cannons reloaded and they fully repaired their hulls. The enemy ships were Pyramidions as well.

Are these weapons just not strong enough? Or is there an actual problem?

[N-Sunderland]

Ah, so it was your weapons.

It's not that those guns aren't strong enough, it's that you need to use them differently. Mercs can rip armour apart, but they hardly do anything to the ship hull itself. Front carronade/flamer is good for harassing, but you once again neither gun is good for getting hull health. As for the Goldfish, the Manticore is all about disabling, but it doesn't break the hull armour. Were you guys using the gatlings between reloads? That would make a huge difference. The gats break the hull armour quickly, and then the manticore can be used to finish them off.

I'd recommend a Pyramidion with flak and gatling on the front. The gat cuts the armour up, and as soon as it's down the flak has insane killing power. Hope this helps

[Errodu]

That would explain it then - My crew was aiming and successfully hitting every station on the enemy ships (So much so that [Ally] Has Destroyed [Station] became a common popup in the top-left corner), and we were wondering why the ship itself wasn't going down.

This issue was just a personal burden on knowledge then  This does help, so thanks for the advice

I'd recommend a stronger tutorial for elaborating the strengths of each gun, but I know the development team has their hands full already. Again, thanks for the response.

[Linen]

The manual is quite useful in that regard. All you need to really look at is the weapon section on damage types and then hover over the guns in the ship selection mode to see what kind of damage they do.

For example, the Artemis does Explosive and Shatter damage. Explosive is good for killing hull. Shatter is for killing components. So the Arty will suck at breaking armour and will be less effective against balloons.

For raw killing power you want Pierce for armour and Explosive for hull, generally rocking a similar gun range too.

[Piemanlives]

Not going into depth here but from the looks of all this, while yes you had the damage, you couldn't put enough of it down to keep the hull down, not saying the guns are terribad but as stated above, just because a gun has high damage doesn't mean it's going to be effective in all situations.