Let's talking about HARMS

I agree that HARMS = aids. Newer players get absolutely destroyed by them, and the APM drain is atrocious. You destroy one and another one pops up.

I understand they are not op and have a cost but for the average player, the window / tactics to punish someone building HARMS is to short/difficult.

Even on other game modes like phantoms, it’s a meme to just go Cybran because HARMS can completely stop a phantom / navy invasion very quickly. (Not here to talk about meta or phantoms, simply that people pick Cybran often because building HARMS takes seconds but getting rid of them takes a lot of minutes and effort).

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@femboy Nah harms bad because bc outrange them so as long as u have sonar and decent navy compostion at this stage u absolutely crush the guy who do that

@unknow yes but average player + trying to chill in a game, don’t want to try hard having to manual fire HARMS. I want to play FAF, not find the HARMS and ground fire it until it dies oh wait there is another one now and now they are rebuilding the old one

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When groundfire is the solution, you might as well put it above water.

The idea of the unit being underwater imo is that you can't hit it with surface weapons.

Perhaps place it above water and give it stealth and or cloak. Then you still have the ambush element while not being a pain to deal with.

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@bangernoob not that it totally disagree, but wouldn’t hover require similar effort to deal with since u need to micro frigs and make sure ur bs dont get swarmed. (Ofc bc and sera destro but lets assume they are not in play) I do agree that using apm to kill hover is intended gameplay while ground firing feels more like abusing a bug.

@femboy Quite impressive skill issue here u just like if your opponent could make boys and harms into the navy u did something quite wrong not crushing him before or u eco even more and don't make navy so harms are useless, average player wanting to chill just ignore harms and push all in because he has more navy and crush his opponent and with navy won u just send a few torps to wrap it up no more deal about it

It’s like saying micro’ing your ACU so you don’t die to notha is bug abuse that requires ground fire to solve and it isn’t fair to average skill players.

The hover example is the best comparison, a person makes a counter (hover) to your unit mix (frigs) unless you spend the time to actually maximize your units (frigs). Same as a person makes HARMs to counter your late t2 or t3 navy unless you spend the time to maximize your units (destros/cruisers/bs/mermaids). You can play chill casual if you want, you just failed to take the tax of effort expenditure that your opponent pushed you into when they spent the mass on long term losing units. Go find another way to win if you don’t want to meet it, or complain about how hover tanks crush unmicro’d frigates too.

Is it possible to change the target ability of harms so battleships can target it normally?

@veteranashe that could be interesting, add like a dummy unit or smthn.

I was going to make a new thread, but I see the idea was already floated here: make a dummy unit that sits above HARMS

This unit would only be targetable by units that have sufficient splash damage to hurt the harms underneath

That way, units like battleships would automatically target the HARMS even without player input, and they could easily be given orders to target HARMS. Strat bombers, missile cruisers, etc. would have an easier time killing HARMS without the APM cost.

But obviously it wouldn't be targetable by things like: torpedoes, depth charges, guns with no splash, guns with not enough splash radius

@arma473 I believe this was tried for a patch. And for a few different varieties of submerged unit.

Other balance ideas:
~ Make it's salvo size smaller. So anti-torpedo is more effective.
~ Make it take mass to shoot, maybe even manual fire or a limited magazine. Like a torpedo TML. So it's effectiveness is partly because of supporting engis reloading it.

I like the idea of HARMs, but find them very annoying to counter. Though I must admit that is because I play Dual Gap a lot, and that has essentially the perfect naval funnel there. On other more open maps it is probably less annoying, as it's harder to mass AA around each one.

You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!

In my opinion the only proper solution is that sufficiently submerged units (aka, subs when dived, harms when completed) should not take damage from surface damage. And with that notion, the HARMS should be rebalanced to take that into account.

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@jip Is that so hard to do or why is it still that subs are getting hit by bombs and asf aren't.
I would have thought it would be normal for subs not to get hit and before reading it i would have never assumed they would get damaged.
I always believed this was a design decision, as i didn't expect it to be hard to implement.

Umm, I'm quite sure ASF can still get hit by bombs and other stuff. They are you know, just high up there in the sky so it's kinda hard to hit them randomly but cases of strat bombs or other stuff hitting asf flying through the air have been documented.

@e33144211332424 Yeah i know, but why are they so high up and subs not so far below?
Why are subs allowed to get hit and air isn't?

You can groundfire air with anything that has a projectile at the same level as them. Just as subs get groundfired by anything with the aoe to reach their submersion level.

I've had gunships killed by t1 arty, even.

@ftxcommando Well if you could just direct hit subs it would be fine i guess. I think it's just weird, that they get hit by surface explosions.
Direct hits are a lot harder to intentionally do and a lot rarer to just happen.
But if you could "air fire" your arty, so the shell explodes on asf height, it would probably be quite broken.

@ftxcommando
Pro Gamer Move:
Shoot down a satellite with a tempest, diving the ship mid firing sequence to shoot up.
"It's Balanced"

You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!

Pro Gamer Move:
Shoot down a satellite with a tempest, diving the ship mid firing sequence to shoot up.
"It's Balanced"

I don't see the problem, it's the beauty of the simulation... although I think only mavor shells are able to shoot down a sat (or used to?).

@nex said in Let's talking about HARMS:

@jip Is that so hard to do or why is it still that subs are getting hit by bombs and asf aren't.
I would have thought it would be normal for subs not to get hit and before reading it i would have never assumed they would get damaged.
I always believed this was a design decision, as i didn't expect it to be hard to implement.

it is not difficult to do - it is just that I don't have approval of the balance team.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned