no viable naval counter sera vs cybran

@prophet said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

So if the cybran player masses t2 subs (1.1k mass) vs sera destroyers (2.25k mass) they have a hard counter for half the mass.

Hardly disagree, sera has the best t2 subs which are destros. 7K Hp on sub compared to 1300 (I forgot I am not sure), and around 2600 for 2 subs which is same as 1 destro. 7K vs 2600 HP is not even comparable, the difference in DPS is not as big as in HP.

@prophet said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

t1 subs cant do any damage to t2 subs.

No way, if you shift g sera t1 subs they are imbalanced, 8 can take down even a destro with barely losses, of course dependent on a sutation.

Just tested it (without stealth)

So to be fair, Sera doesn't insta-lose to Barracudas and actually wins in small amounts. Only at high unit counts do they start to lose due to Barracuda anti-torpedo flares.

Focus fire makes a big difference, in a 5 vs 10 3-4 subs should survive, which would be a pretty significant loss for the Sera player, and probably a full navy loss in the near future. Sera just loses T2 navy against Cyb without air support.

It's completely irrelevant that they can shoot stuff overwater; even if you managed to actually get to and kill the factory, you lose in the direct navy combat pretty significantly so the enemy can just do the same to you afterwards.
Overall T2 Sera navy is just much weaker than Cyb T2, and the only way to alleviate it is to get air support.

I can re-test it later today with focus firing, but off the top of my head that should make things even worse for Cybran since they provide more potential targets at any given time.

What about Seraphim Tech1 subs Vs Cybran Tech2 subs? They have torpedo defense, is it up to the task of beating similar mass values of cybran subs? I think Flares can only grab a limited number of Torpedoes, so overwhelming might be an option.

@tankenabard Cybran T2 subs have better range, stealth, and speed than Seraphim T1 subs, so if the Cybran can spare any attention to kite they should be able to crush the T1 subs.

Might I recommend a novel idea? Perhaps seraphim destroyer can recieve a buff to sonar and underwater vision ranges when it's underwater. This would produce a plausible reason to submerge them sometimes.

Just kill your opponent in the T1 stage. All problems solved

Sera destro doesn't have a plausible reason to submerge sometimes?

Surface your destroyer on a factory and you've got even more HP!

@xejinord11

as much as there isnt even a point replying to this, seeing as you have proviced 0 evidence at all. I will repeat by saying no, they dont have any adequate counter to subs. you have proven no damage values, no insight. saying the sera destroyer is the best because is can submerge is a useless statement to say. great they can submerge, and die just as fast as before

@deribus

so what you are saying is your chart is wrong?

you cant just take away the stealth element and say that sera destroyers win. if you add back the default ability of stealth, then 2-3 volleys of torpedoes will go off before sera destroyers are in range.

now lets add another layer of strategy to this, basic micro. You can kite sera destroyers with t2 subs, all while keeping them hidden because of stealth. redo that chart with stealth and you will see the subs come out ahead.

@prophet Deribus literally tested it and gave proof that sera destros are fine vs subs. It's UEF who's screwed vs subs not sera. You make t1 scouts to counter stealth

@exselsior

you cant test this by taking away stealth. Thats makes this experiment null.

@prophet said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

@xejinord11

as much as there isnt even a point replying to this, seeing as you have proviced 0 evidence at all.

lol I have given you one big argument which HP. "0 evidence" hahaha

@prophet said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

@xejinord11

saying the sera destroyer is the best because is can submerge is a useless statement to say. great they can submerge, and die just as fast as before.

You can not even read I suppose. I have not said in the message that sera destroyer is the best, I said

@xejinord11 said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

Hardly disagree, sera has the best t2 subs which are destros.

Generally, if I think t2 cybran subs are annoying unit, but not against Sera. If you have a problem against t2 cybran subs playing on sera, it is basically your personal problem, cause @Deribus even has tested it and gave you detailed information. Just consider that losing 1 destro to 2 subs is a draw, not a loss.

Problem with barracuda comes from their stealth, but sera is babymode navy and can just spam their destro regardless of circumstance (frig spam, hover spam, destro spam, sub spam), so the fact the enemy could have swapped their destro production to some subs doesn’t matter when it doesn’t change your production at all. The problem of barracuda comes from navies that rely on unit mix ie uef navy.

At worst it would encourage you to invest more engies on torp production if the sub spam gets particularly serious.

Stealth affects all factions the same. There's no reason one faction would have more problems dealing with stealth than any other

@deribus It does make a difference when you knowing your opponent is making a certain units means that you need to react early by switching your production.
Stealth makes it harder for you to notice this unit exists, so it hurts you less if you just spam a one fits all unit and don't have to worry about making the correct counter unit.

@deribus said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

Stealth affects all factions the same. There's no reason one faction would have more problems dealing with stealth than any other

Uh what? If X + Y exist and Y is stealthed but some factions have Z which counters both X + Y but another faction needs the correct amount of A + B to deal with either, stealth obviously does not impact all factions the same way.

It is quite literally game losing lack of knowledge if A + B does not know how much Y exists, not true for Z factions.

@xejinord11 said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

Hardly disagree

FWIW, 'hardly disagree' doesn't mean 'I disagree hard'. The word 'hardly' means 'barely'. That quote is very likely to be interpreted as 'I don't really disagree'. (Sorry if this sounded patronising - I was assuming that english was a second language, but it might just be one of those gaps in knowledge we all have. x )

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@prophet said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

you cant test this by taking away stealth. Thats makes this experiment null.

You're probably over-estimating the importance of stealth (see below), but I'd also bear in mind that we also can't make a reasonable comparison without factoring in the ability to lazorbeam surfaced units and do massively more damage to naval factories.

The argument that 'if the seraphim destroyers try to attack naval factories, the barracudas will kill them then go do the same' has flaws.

• Firstly, the destroyers put up a damn good fight against barracudas in the first place, as Deribus pointed out, it's not cut-and-dry. (thx for the table @Deribus! In my mid-range tests the barracudas did significantly better than yours, but similar in pattern.)
• Second, I gave it a try, and even with numbers high enough that the Barracudas win (8 barracudas vs 4 Uashavohs) the lasers killed 9 naval factories while torpedo-ing barracudas, (Actually, it was 6, but one was tech:2). So even when the barracudas win in this hypothetical, they lose most of their production doing so.

(As an aside, it feels like the player that builds nothing but anti-navy units probably should beat the player that builds more versatile units. I know that this post is about a 'what if' a certain composition can just win the game, so this is a bit off-point, but I think it's important to factor in. The fact that the fight is close, with seraphim winning smaller engagements mass-for-mass, is pretty awesome for seraphim!)

In a real game though, outside of 'what ifs', experiments, comparisons with missing factors (stealth/uashavoh laser), I think the lasers on the Uashavoh are SO important - way more important than barracuda stealth (see below). Even if the 2 players are just going to crash their navy into one another, there are always going to be a bunch of targets around for the lasers, very often frigates, and in a worst-case scenario, the sera destroyers can definitely make a go of killing naval factories.
Speaking of stealth - underwater vision is typically much longer than vision. I feel like this might be skewing your expectations of barracudas.
Barracuda torpedos have range:45.
Destroyers spot with water vision:45.
TorpLaunchers have water vision:45
(and cruisers have 60!) As soon as barracudas are in range, they are visually spotted and attacked back.
Notice how we see the barracuda - the un-indicated water vision range is so much longer than the surface vision (the lit-up area).

Honestly, the 'missing stealth' from the comparisons isn't really a factor at all in this matchup!

Most importantly of all though, I've found from real-game encounters with submarines, that torpedo launchers (even tier:1) being assisted with engineers (we always have spare engineers, and they're cheap as chips) do a fantastic job of fighting submarines off (especially seraphim(+aeon) engineers since they hover above torpedo range). If the player isn't building non-submarine navy, torpedo launchers are a mega-effective defence.
This absolutely extends to tech:2. A torpedo launcher or 2 makes these units fighting mass-for-mass big seraphim wins, especially when we pull engineers.
The barracudas can't use this against the seraphim destroyers though - The destroyers make an absolute mess of torpedo launchers! Torpedo launchers are only a 'trump card' against submarines, it seems.
Put all this together, and we have a barracuda army losing SO many situations, and very limited in what it can do.

I can see where the concerns came from Prophet, absolutely. I think, though, provided we know the important parts (particularly use of torpedo launchers against sub-loving enemies) this problem goes away.

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@ftxcommando said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

Problem with barracuda comes from their stealth, but sera is babymode navy and can just spam their destro regardless of circumstance

As I mentioned above, I think stealth was getting exaggerated by a few of us here in this topic (admittedly I didn't realise how little it helped vs T2 navy or torp launchers until now), but I agree somewhat about seraphim navy.
I love playing with pop-up destroyers, and would really like it if seraphim navy was a bit more clever to use. Oh well.