Make t3 navy more exciting!?!

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.

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.

@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!

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

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.

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.

Its almost like the factions have different strenghts and weaknesses. How strange

@big-bennis-magic Heh, shards are a joke. lol.

cries

@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

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

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.

@ftxcommando said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:

And stopping them from being ground-fired would be a net good because.....?

Because they are fucking subs, gunning down a submerged submarine is fucking stupid.
The synergy of air and naval goes through the window when all you need are cruisers and BBs.

Subs should be subs instead the current underwater LAB we currently have.

Subs should be subs instead the current underwater LAB we currently have.

Subs should actually be stealthy-need-sonar-in-the-water-to-detect, but the game doesn't feature sonar-dropping aircraft. I'm not really sure if they can be fixed. Stealth really requires active and passive variants of both radar and sonar. Pretty soon we're talking whole-new-game.

@cyborg16 said in Make t3 navy more exciting!?!:

Subs should be subs instead the current underwater LAB we currently have.

Subs should actually be stealthy-need-sonar-in-the-water-to-detect, but the game doesn't feature sonar-dropping aircraft. I'm not really sure if they can be fixed. Stealth really requires active and passive variants of both radar and sonar. Pretty soon we're talking whole-new-game.

I'm confused, quite sure it's already like that.

If possible some kind of armor to avoid surface damage when submerged or something alike. I recall that by engine limitations subs couldn´t change depth on the fly when changing from depth waters to shallow waters but I'll be happy with a workaround.

Both situations - damage from surface detonations and getting decent sonar from aircraft, are relatively easy fixes - simply limit AOE range when a projectile hits water, and you'll get a rather realistic simulation of the natural mechanic without taking ground fire completely out of the picture - in about 3 lines of code.

As for getting sonar from aircraft - it's actually already there - but - due to the elevation of the aircraft that have it - and the range of the sonar they carry - it actually doesn't penetrate a whole lot of water area. Either the sonar range would have to be adjusted for the elevation, or the sonar would have to emit from an invisible bone that hangs well below the aircraft. The proper solution would be to create an intel entity which drops from the aircraft, every few seconds, and if it lands in water, becomes a short term sonar buoy. The code for that too, is already in the game - it's used in the Aeon Eye of Rhianne, which creates a vision entity. This would be an adaptation of that.

@sprouto Well that sounds dope! Having T2 torps droping probes to detect subs as IRL. 10/10 Makes subs great again.