KageBot v1.0

Difficulty Moderate

Focus Awareness During Offense

The purpose of KageBot is to train players who are refining their pressure and various meaty attacks, and as a result do not have the focus to keep track of the other factors of the match and allow opponents to sometimes do large damage for offensive mistakes. This bot has dangerous options on wakeup and in mid-range when being pressured by an approaching character. Kage is likely to punish the player for both 'pushing too hard on offense' and 'panicking and going into full defense' when close. The bot does not focus on teaching the player to counter or avoid most of Kage's offensive tactics, as they are fairly standard, though it does have two of the basic ones, so it is not intended to be used for the 'defending yourself' aspect of this matchup.

There is no such thing as truly 'successful' play against this bot. By design, it is intended to frustrate the player and test their ability to hold a comfortable mindset while constantly being at risk of taking damage from an invincible move when attempting a meaty attack. Since Kage can defeat the player with just a few Critical Arts, it is important to be extremely careful in movement and awareness, but becoming overly defensive will often mean that a single flinch moment will still result in a Shun Goku Satsu. If not using V-Trigger II for this bot, the point system remains the same, since the player loses both a danger and an opportunity, but we strongly suggest focusing your training on that V-Trigger.

Gauge Settings

As with all bots, 1P Health should be set to "Normal". 1P CA Gauge and 1P V-Gauge should be set according to the player's character preference, aim to use the settings that will help best train the meaties/punishes you are aiming for, or force more awareness, as needed.

Settings for 2P are Health - "Auto-Recover", V-Gauge - "Auto-Recover", CA Gauge - "Auto-Recover" (use "Maximum Start" if just using for warmups or if your version of the bot seems to do too much CA on wakeup). Main variants use V-Trigger - "II"

Goals

Completing each action gives 1 point. Try to get to 10 points without dying.

Points System

A - Crush counter punish his Shoryuken (note that in a correct bot this move should be quite rare)
B - Neutral jump out of his EX Ryusokyaku (overhead stomp kick) and punish it with a full neutral jump combo.
C - Land a Meaty attack combo or throw, after punishing Kage's Critical Art or after the punish for any other point system (this second part changes at higher levels of Difficulty)
D - Neutral jump or back jump full punish on his Shun Goku Satsu

Difficulty Levels

Easy - Points given for ABCD
Medium - Points given for BCD, points still given for the meaty after Crush Counter punish of Shoryuken.
Hard - Points given for BC, points no longer given for the meaty after the CC punish, but still given for the meaty after the Shun Goku Satsu punish
Extreme - Same as Hard, but 1P CA Gauge and V-Gauge are set to "Normal".

Action #1

5HP, hidden [66, 5HP+HK(hold the HP)], 41236 end recording instantly

This input can be slightly tricky depending on your button configuration, but generally it is obvious if it is correct or not.

Action #2

FirstFrame 1LP+MP (hold until end), 4HP (should combo, a bit of mashing is ok), hidden [66], 41236(9) end recording instantly

Another quick input rather similar to the first, the difficulty is in making sure the 4HP combos. You can use the standard [Button Input: 1] trick for the FirstFrame here, easily. If you add the optional 9 input at the end in order to increase his jumps, make sure that it is fast enough that he just does a grounded Hadoken when going from Action #2 to Action #1.

Action #3

FirstFrame 1/3MP+MK (hold until end), 623 end recording instantly.

A very basic but completely vital Shoryuken motion input. As you can see from the video, precision is not required. Test with Action #1 or #2 to verify that it works for that purpose and for Critical Art.

Action #4

FirstFrame 6KKK+PPP, hidden [9, 63236] end recording instantly

This input has two complications, the first is that using the [Button Input: 1] method for FirstFrame feels counterintuitive because he will walk forward until you press the button. The second is the timing. This input is actually a 63214 input, but due to some property of Kage's forward throw, if you input it as that, it will become 63236 with most timings. Therefore we reverse it, but the timing can be tricky to make this become a clean 63214 (Half Circle Back). The 9 input is slightly long so he can jump, but the length of it is at the player's discretion based on how much jumping they feel they need in the bot. Overall performance is not heavily affected with shorter timing for this, and the 9 input can be removed entirely if you would like more of his ground game, though he will do more kicks..

Action #5

FirstFrame 1/2MP, 5LP (usually combos), 5LP, 6, 5/6LK, end recording instantly

Practice Kage's Shun Goku Satsu timing, it is a bit stricter than the Shun Goku Satsu variant for Akuma for some reason. This input combines with Action #1 to deliver the Shun Goku Satsu, but is probably the hardest to input if you are not used to the input for this Critical Art.

In-Depth

Still in progress.