Make t3 navy more exciting!?!
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Except subs still have a game usage beyond alt clicking at a battleship and seeing who wins the boxing match.
You use them to raid underwater mexes and bp on navy heavy maps like Maridia or Drunken Beetles as they are harder to spot and respond to. You also use them to counteract Seraphim or UEF destros.
Just because a 10k mass unit is capable of killing a 1200 mass sub hardly means the unit is irrelevant and could be replaced by some surface ship. And even then, there is still the fact that a battleship user has to both expend the apm to keep targeting this moving targets while also losing his battleship dps doing this while an enemy battleship could be getting free damage on him.
Honestly the only sub that actually feels the doom-and-gloom in this thread is the Atlantis because it is neither sneaky nor maneuverable.
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I would counter that by saying we see anything underwater being taken out with ground fire - so it's not exclusively the domain of submarines - which would be a natural conclusion. The only time we don't see that is with water depths greater than the AOE radius (and then some since those units are often a couple of units high themselves).
The AOE radius is truly the culprit - and no real analysis has ever been done to associate the range of AOE with the accuracy of a weapon, and that's especially true of all the large battleships - and - more important - just about every modded unit that's been introduced. The proliferation of AOE - on even the smallest units, is another subject though.
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Yes, I immediately discarded most other things underwater because it would break just about everything that isn't a sub.
Tempest would be busted OP and so would HARMS. Actually that's about the only two that come to mind 4head but still.
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It's highly map dependent - that's for sure - a great many water maps have very shallow water which contributes to the issue as much as the AOE and depth of underwater units themselves. That's why I suggested simply reducing the AOE range on water impacts - this allows the ability to continue to exist - but moderates in a way that makes water depth a more important factor.
I don't, offhand, recall the AOE on the big battleship guns - but it's AOE radius is 4, or more, in some cases - that's really a great deal.
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@ftxcommando said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:
Except subs still have a game usage beyond alt clicking at a battleship and seeing who wins the boxing match.
That is your (justified) concern, we do not know for sure that will happen. However, I hope you too can admit that the current ground-fire meta is silly on face value. Again, some silly things are kept for skill reasons or otherwise, however, we should just try if we can remove the silly things.
To re-iterate my point, with some clarification:
Sub Grounf Fire Nerf
- Because ground-firing subs feels wrong
- Because some consider that the subs are pushed out of the game at T3
- Acknowledging this might adversely affect the T3 high skill water meta
The following change is implemented:
- Direct fire splash damage against subs is reduced by 95-100%
Near future:
- Players are asked to watch the T3 navy game carefully and report to the balance team
- The balance team will revisit this issue the next patch, and possibly revert this change
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Anyway I'm still gonna be saying that ground fire should stay. And any kind of realism pleading means jack shit in Sci-fi game where they can easily have "intelligent" ammunition for battle ships that instead of exploding on contact will explode after going through certain amount of armor or traveling deep enough underwater.
Anyway if people want to shake up the subs + navy meta I would rather go about it this way:
- Start by increasing the muzzle velocity of all t3 navy units to make their effective DPS higher than it currently is without having to increase their theoretical DPS. Part of why the current fights tend to take so long is due to ineffective weaponry on half the ships at long ranges. Increasing the muzzle velocity will make it so more shots connect even when enemy is microing his units, allowing for faster and more decisive impact of t3 navy when fielded early. Honestly this change is something that could be implemented easily in the next patch without breaking the meta/destroying the balance all together.
As for subs balance:
- Keep the ground fire as is.
- Increase the HP and speed of subs so that they are harder to hit and kill by surface units
And now for the clue of the program: Introduce depth charges to more T2 destroyers, Torpedo bombers and other anti-submarine units while making them useless against surface targets so that the DPS against frigs etc stays the same(obviously Aeon units would need some rebalance here)
This way you can make them more resilient against ground fire while having them still be squishy against normal anti submarine units like destroyers. This would also introduce more balancing levers in submarine balancing which you seem to want.
Obviously that only goes if we can make it happen by making depth charges aim at subs only or by introducing armor for navy that makes it invulnerable to depth charges.
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On topic of my original post:
I like the Idea of battleships being able to deal more damage to each other by preventing dodging.
Faster muzzle velocity would be one option but that would also make frigates etc. a lot more voulnerable to battleships. Thus requireing to adjust the hp/dps stats of battleships anyway. Also it kind of breaks the theme. I love the summit for its projectiles, they just have the right feel of weight to them.Another option would be to decrease battleships acceleration and turn speed. Making it impssible for battleships do dodge anothers salvos. This would also go with the theme of battleships being sluggish. Downside: The pathfinding mess around factories would get worse when factroy placement is done poorly.
I could even imagine giving battleships a slight top speed buff in order do accelerate the t3 navy stage. Top speed doesn't affect dodging capability when the acceleration is low enough. -
I love navy, and have always thought it was a bit underdeveloped in this game. I have been studying naval history for game development reasons for another project, but as for games I don't see a lot out there similar enough to FAF to really get a good metric for what people find fun. I really like the macro aspect of SC, that's what brought me to it, and others above have mentioned not just random micro but micro that's actually fun and has a use. One quote I like for game dev is "A game is a series of meaningful decisions" from Sid Meier. So how do we add options to the t3 navy that let the player make meaningful decisions, and if they have the APM, boost their fleet effectiveness?
We could add toggle-able abilities. I'm unsure what would be viable, but toggling your big ships from direct fire to plunging fire, or a tight vs wide spread, seems like it would be useful. Something like an overcharge could be done too. A hard hitting shot that costs energy or mass, with a cooldown, etc. And the right click 'auto use' feature. Perhaps it can do HP damage to the ship per use or something?
I think every ship should start with HP regen. Ships have damage control and I think for big ships this could be expanded upon. A fast repair mode, (or an ACU style upgrade that only repairs HP damage), that disables the ships guns and movement, and makes it extra vulnerable to torpedoes (IE, adding late game raiding targets for subs). Could be interesting. I think this would pair well with expanding on battleship veterancy. Adding other benefits through the ranks to incentivize keeping your capital ships alive, and tending to them.
If I can find time I will try to mod this in to test it.
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@kalethequick said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:
I love navy, and have always thought it was a bit underdeveloped in this game. I have been studying naval history for game development reasons for another project, but as for games I don't see a lot out there similar enough to FAF to really get a good metric for what people find fun. I really like the macro aspect of SC, that's what brought me to it, and others above have mentioned not just random micro but micro that's actually fun and has a use. One quote I like for game dev is "A game is a series of meaningful decisions" from Sid Meier. So how do we add options to the t3 navy that let the player make meaningful decisions, and if they have the APM, boost their fleet effectiveness?
We could add toggle-able abilities. I'm unsure what would be viable, but toggling your big ships from direct fire to plunging fire, or a tight vs wide spread, seems like it would be useful. Something like an overcharge could be done too. A hard hitting shot that costs energy or mass, with a cooldown, etc. And the right click 'auto use' feature. Perhaps it can do HP damage to the ship per use or something?
I think every ship should start with HP regen. Ships have damage control and I think for big ships this could be expanded upon. A fast repair mode, (or an ACU style upgrade that only repairs HP damage), that disables the ships guns and movement, and makes it extra vulnerable to torpedoes (IE, adding late game raiding targets for subs). Could be interesting. I think this would pair well with expanding on battleship veterancy. Adding other benefits through the ranks to incentivize keeping your capital ships alive, and tending to them.
If I can find time I will try to mod this in to test it.
As a Connaisseur of naval warfare myself, an interest that I mostly satisfy with world of warships because t3 navy in faf is boring, I have a few points to add.
I Love the idea of toggleable abilities, like imagine tempest actually being a naval oc gun with variable damage as per power maximum and with paragon as ultimate power plant allowing it to one shot everything within its range and damage radius. Lots of fun ideas: battleship secondary guns could be buffed so that they have a better defense vs frigates and frigates become less strong in late game naval fights, but all other Aspekts stay the same. Secondaries should have less range, and fire at low hp frigates or be able to be microed against low ho targets, that could be a fun micro mechanism.
I think the main game of faf naval warfare could be really improved a lot and be made more fun. I don’t think muzzle velocity is a good tweak, because if anything naval projectiles are quite slow in faf, considering how big units are and how far they supposedly travel. A 10km salvo is in the air for a good 5-12 seconds depending on ammo type.
I would love such changes!
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@big-bennis-magic If I get a mod working I'll PM you for testing.
The big point is to do it without adding assets to the game and such. I remember having fun with some of the black ops ships back in the day.
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@harzer99 said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:
On topic of my original post:
I like the Idea of battleships being able to deal more damage to each other by preventing dodging.
Faster muzzle velocity would be one option but that would also make frigates etc. a lot more voulnerable to battleships.Generally you make a good point, but on this.
We also don't worry about Mantis being vulnerable to Bricks. T3 units beat T1 units, that's the game.
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@valki said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:
Generally you make a good point, but on this.
We also don't worry about Mantis being vulnerable to Bricks. T3 units beat T1 units, that's the game.
This not applying to navy is specifically why many people like navy combat and consider it the largest strength of the game.
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@ftxcommando said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:
@valki said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:
Generally you make a good point, but on this.
We also don't worry about Mantis being vulnerable to Bricks. T3 units beat T1 units, that's the game.
This not applying to navy is specifically why many people like navy combat and consider it the largest strength of the game.
Can you name one or two of these many people? Making a bc and farming destroyers isn’t the same as having to deal with hover spam, frigate rushes; with aon destroyer rushes as UEF, - there are so many frustrating Gay navy moments how can you say it’s the largest strength of the game.
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No idea why what you wrote has anything to do with what I wrote. I'm talking about the fact all tech levels have a niche to fill and don't really get obsoleted (other than t1 subs) in navy. It's not really controversial to say this is something a lot of people enjoy about how navy is balanced, go to global rating and collect the top 10 players that play sentons for proof.
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It’s not that they play setons because of the lovely navy balance. Aon frigates are trAsh, cybran friggers op, Uef destro stinks and subs are worthless. Harms are completely uncounterable if spammed with Sacu, Atlantis is a wet fart, shield boat blobs are op, subs op vs sera, shards a joke and torps op. Setons is not played because of these nuisances, it’s played because of the rocks, and the trees and the mid reclaim and the ability to make everyone look really stupid.
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Its almost like the factions have different strenghts and weaknesses. How strange
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@big-bennis-magic Heh, shards are a joke. lol.
cries
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@ftxcommando said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:
@valki said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:
Generally you make a good point, but on this.
We also don't worry about Mantis being vulnerable to Bricks. T3 units beat T1 units, that's the game.
This not applying to navy is specifically why many people like navy combat and consider it the largest strength of the game.
Well we could apply the T3 > T2 > T1 logic partially and say:
- Battleships and other T3 direct fire units ground firing T2 and T1 subs is "Working as Intended"
- T3/EXP subs and submersibles should become immune to direct fire splash damage
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Well Bennis has a point,some unit are clearly bad and their efficiency rate is so low that it is almost erased from usage,speaking of the same shards,atlantis,t1 sub which are being completely replaced by hover or torps for the same cost that are basically giving insane advantages due to their lower cost
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Another possible option on battleship balance: make them less effective direct fire (unit-vs-unit) weapons, thus only really useful for bombardment. Keep T2 destros (+ UEF T3 destro) as the navy mainstay. This could perhaps be achieved via damage classes (reduced damage, with bonus vs structures)?
That might also help reduce splash vs subs without affecting splash vs harms.
Honestly though, SC navy would need a lot of work (and probably a lot more units) to be properly balanced IMO.
