T1 Subs & T1 Frigs

I was wondering, what if the radar of T1 frigs was removed and instead given to T1 subs? It would softly encourage maintaining a few subs in your frig mix which in turn gives decent targets for torpedo bombers to make intel more valuable during the early navy stage. It would also make drops and so on stronger since it's meta to make just a line of frigates to see anything coming your way on any large navy map.

I don't feel like it would make subs significantly more powerful and it would also really help out UEF destroyer since frigates have 80 radar range compared to valiant 60 damage range but only 28 range for their actual weapon. A lot tougher to find them in the jamming frigate mix for UEF if you don't have perpetual intel on them.

This wouldn't apply to t2 subs because of the fact UEF and sera don't have them, but I wouldn't be opposed to letting sera destro and cooper also have radar if it wants to be extended to t2 subs.

Do people think it would open up more interesting play in early navy?

I was thinking about this because of those navy maps (ie skadi) where you have tons of reclaim in the water. If you get early control with frigates, you deny all reclaim forever because 3 frigates see anything dropped and will close in and kill the engineers immediately.

I like this idea (swapping radar from frigs to subs). Gives an attacker something they can target to gain an advantage and generally makes it a tiny bit less about just mushing the frigate armies together.

No. If u dont want enemy to see your drops, kill the frigs.
Simple.

Reads like a farm shitpost but sadly you actually think that's a thoughtful post

I dislike this because of irl reasons such as subs would have to surface to have radar.

You do give good points though. What about sub sonar, can surface for radar, and take away frig radar making subs more useful and making Intel more expensive with carriers.

While that would make it more realistic, the issue is that the game really doesn’t like dealing with units that can submerge and you only have a few that are not submerged when u select them. I’d think it would make for very annoying micro to have to keep babysitting the subs and ensuring they are either submerged or not.

For the record what that guys want is easily codeable

Submarines have sonar. It is a bit illogical to give them radar. This could lead to frigates not building anymore. Especially for an aeon. I think it was right to reduce the radar in frigates, make the radius less than the sonar submarines. For example 50 (vs. 60 radius for sonar subs)

While this proposed change might shake things up a little for the 1800+ lobbies, I don't think incentivizing subs over frigs for the other 90% of players is a good idea.

I am also taking issue with the realism of subs detecting land and air-based units better than frigs. A strong sonar would be ok, but a submerged unit providing intel on land-based units and buildings is just silly. And this argument is not just about "but muh realism, reeee", it also helps accessibility and makes the game more new player friendly when units behave according to expectations.

I had a large post having to do with torpedo DPS and defense measures, submarine deck guns and anti-air of T1 naval forces, and the conclusion I've come to is that Aeon T1 navy is not good and T1 Navy doesn't function like other T1 branches (air, land).

Also, do people use T1 subs in high-level play? Seraphim T1 subs seem nice, on paper at least.

No, (t1) subs are essentially only viable on maps with underwater mexes.

@xayo said in T1 Subs & T1 Frigs:

While this proposed change might shake things up a little for the 1800+ lobbies, I don't think incentivizing subs over frigs for the other 90% of players is a good idea.

I disagree with this off the sheer fact that people below this rating do not presume subs to be a noob trap unit. This change does not make subs > frigs but it makes a 90% frig 10% sub force have superior general utility to a 100% frig force. Which is both much closer to what I see lower rated players do on navy naturally and judging off of the constant questions I get about when to make subs, better for them as well.

Throwing a random -likely a dumb- idea, out here... but.
What if the sub's radar is only active when it's surfaced?

This way, it can't just 'see' land units and structures - as this might be a little unrealistic.
And it would encourage surfacing subs for their secondary ability.

Granted, they will be blapped 90% of the time when they're on the surface by frigates and whatnot.
but hey... least you can use the extra weapon on the subs (faction dependant).

Overall, decent idea, to change the navy play "Softly" as you said, but the detection of land units when it's submerged is quite, weird.

~ Stryker

I'd rather see a whole navy revamp of all three tiers & experimentals personally. Add some new ship types etc. Navy is so god damn boring and stale imo. That said, I don't really have any ideas towards a revamp like that. Though I always liked BlackOp's dreadnaughts.

Radar must be larger when sub is on surface. And less when it's under water

i like the idea, t1 subs are literally unplayable if the game goes above 10 mins which obviously doesn't happen to frigs.
Frigs are are way too efficient, literally the best combination of radar,aa,direct damage,hp for a relatively low price, t1 radar doesn't even use energy which is a bit weird but oh well.
tweaking subs without actually changing damage is great, micromoments of surfacing to get more radar coverage gives more opportunities and a good risk-gain potential.
decreasing their direct vision and increasing radar coverage is probably the best option as to me

I'm on the realism side for this. It's also counter intuitive to casual players. I'd like for subs to be balanced around killing things - high alpha with long reload and higher dps for example. It gives them some stopping power against frigs snowballing. Lower sub speed could also slow down navy. A radar decrease on frigs seems reasonable. At t1 it's a bit excessive, and at t2 air scouts, static sonar, and cruisers can do the job.

Trying to diversify frigs into an intel unit and a damage unit seems like a band-aid solution from only having two units. From a spam perspective, it's like making moles and mantis different units. The gameplay is still spammy as heck. Really there should be more units, but It seems like the game's fun is back loaded after the t1 stage, but then you also get stuck at t1 due to how expensive it is. With only two units (one unit) to balance things around, there isn't much choice but to spam.

The boring t1 stage and slow start are probably the worst things about FA, and maybe all rts too. I find I tend to play other games that get into the action quicker than fa, and when I do engage with fa, I'd rather watch a stream so I can skip the boring part.

Land also has terrain, pd, and the acu, not to mention t1 navy is resistant to air. Imagine t1 land without the acu or pd on an open map? Maybe trying to balance sub groups to focus navy interactions, like how acus do, and having unscouted subs slow down enemy forces, like pds, could help give more varied unit interactions and strategies. The interaction could be like othuums and snipers, but more about water vision than range. Frig diversity in jamming and torp defence also effects navy a lot more.

Change the deck gun to artillery with longer range than frigates so they could possibly be used as support in fight along with their torps, can be used as regular subs submerged, and lastly they can be used to raid mexes that are out of range or terrain of frigates and can do that sneakily. This can also gives a reason to have radar surfaced.

The more I look at individual unit stats, maybe this isn't so much a frigate problem as much as it's a submarine problem? Torpedo damage, attack rates, attack salvos and torpedo defense is really strange, kind of all over the place.

It takes more than a minute for a T1 sub to kill a T1 frigate iirc, increase sub damage massively and lower their reload speed