A significant buff to them would be a build time decrease. They often times take just a little too much time to be relevant. I'm in favour of a modest 10 per cent build time reduction. This increases their role as a last resort defense tool against early navy aggression, but not too much.
Naval Balance Survey
@Tagada
@BIG-BENNIS-MAGIC
You make good points and I agree with you that as it stands it could become far too defensive at the t2 navy stage to buff t2 torp launchers much. While land has specific counters for PD (t1 arty, t2 MMLs), there isn't a unit that really fits that role for navy. Subs and missile cruisers have different roles, and cruisers would still be pretty easily and cost effectively countered with tmd. Having to wait for battleships buys the defender a HUGE amount of time, so Bennis is right this is an enormous advantage for the eco heavy defender. There is already a significant enough defenders advantage. So I would be ok with making t2 torp launchers slightly more cost effective than t1, but still counterable with t2 navy. Looking at the unit database stats, t2 torps have double the dps, 60 range instead of 50 and cost a bit more than double the mass, and triple the build time. I think that makes them generally a worse option than t1, especially since as emergency defense build time is pretty important. So I think just a small mass cost and/or build time reduction is probably fine, but I don't want to make them too easy to spam up either.
But maybe t2 launchers having almost 4x the hp is important enough that along with the small range advantage they really are well balanced with t1 and we should leave it alone. In any case there shouldn't be any significant changes made here.
I am pretty traumatized from winning navy with a handful of frigates left over, only to be wiped out when I lack the dps to kill all engineers building T2 torpedoes. True he can also build land PD to kill frigates, but those don't kill my subs.
If anything, make them as punishing to T1 navy as T2 PD is to T1 land... but INCREASE build-time or short-range potential.
T2 Torp Launchers should have the same range as UEF destroyers. Make them require siege to outrange. (Or given them Aeon destroyer range to require battleships or cruisers.) It is obvious that the T2 torp launcher's main problem is it is outranged by all T2 and T3 ships. It's competent against subs, but nowhere near as effective as torpedo bombers or even destroyers. Merely being okay against subs is not a reason to make T2 Torp Launchers. Ideally, it costs a bit less than a destroyer, so it should be able to about match a single destroyer (because it can't move or hit hover/land targets) by returning shots at the destroyer's maximum range. Although it's worth noting that they might still be underpowered even with a huge range buff as taking them out safely with ships becomes a simple matter of parking your destroyer behind a rock or something the torpedoes will get caught on but the destroyer's shots can fly over. We shouldn't be afraid of over-buffing T2 torp launchers because nearly every trait they have sucks ass - Expensive/immobile/torpedoes only/extremely slow turret yaw speed/the stupid things can't even shoot straight down/useless against hover/lots of wasted shots because torps track targets and are slow (when a target dies, so do all the torps that were chasing if).
I see the T2 torpedo launcher much like T2 flak: it's an ineffective last resort tool if you failed to do your homework ( scouting) and therefore didn't prepare naval build power to defend against navy aggression, or Air BP likewise. The thing Is that both of these structures do not require the respective Hq they can defend against: T2 Torpedo can defend against some T2 naval aggression or keep these vessels out of naval factories range, but it can be build with T2 ACU or any other T2 builder. Therefore you save the hq worth of time, mass and power and therefore the structure needs to be less effective mass per mass wise than T2 naval units.
I think though that as a last resort naval defense the launcher builds just a little too slow, and I think a slight buff in terms of build time would be a nice way to fine tune it
@big-bennis-magic said in Naval Balance Survey:
I think though that as a last resort naval defense the launcher builds just a little too slow, and I think a slight buff in terms of build time would be a nice way to fine tune it
It is more like the first resort after losing navy. If spamming up T2 torpedoes is nerfed, T2 land PD is the first resort.
The key difference for me is that T2 land PD cannot kill the submarines, and the submarines will prevent your opponent from rebuilding its own navy until he builds torpedo bombers. This seems very fair to me. His superior eco allows him to shut down the coastal bombardment, but not to cancel your victory entirely.
I've always wondered why the torp launchers were floating.
If the t2 sunk after built could be area denial to t2 destroyers so one can win navy and keep it but have to fight for the beach before surface bombard
could T1 PD and SMDs be allowed to be built on water, SMDs maybe but T1 PDs might need to be considered as if your on a map like setons then you could build defenses on the water but hover (especially zuthees) could attack them, and might give navy more of a role to kill them and allow a defensive option for navy against hover unless its T2 or 3, also Aeon frigates should be reduced in cost if it has lesser HP then the other factions even if it needs more energy to be built, frigates are just unbalanced in general even with T3 involved, they all should have their HP reduced by like 500 maybe, also reduce the shards and coopers hp as well, the speed of the units should be changed to feel more diverse or feel more like the faction your playing, the frigates could stay the same speed to catch up with other units but units like destroyers and cruisers just have the same speed, maybe have the UEF and cybran cruisers just as fast as destroyers while the aeon and seriphem destroyers should be faster, or could make the sera and aeon cruisers slower somewhat, also should buff the cruisers HP by like 1000 hp in my opinion as i feel like torp bombers if enough of them are built could just shift G a full fleet of cruisers and wipe them out, could buff the AA and range of it as well, also the UEF and aeon cruisers need a buff with their main guns in terms of range, they are most likely never going to get used in naval combat so might as well use the guns to fire on land, also there needs to be options to target deep inland and strat subs are the only things that can do so, could maybe give them more of a role to snipe key targets if theres air superiority in the way and need to destroy something , and maybe add something to the UEF and Aeon strat subs like torp defense or speed for aeon or a deck gun or reduced cost for UEF, i think strat subs should be used more other then nuking, would you use the hauthuum just for nuking? could make the sera carrier fill in the role of killing land targets deep within
also should torpedos be able to be dodged if they are out of range of when they were fired like torp bombers and torpedo defenses, they could also expire if thats not an option
@valki Aeon and UEF T2 PD can kill subs with groudfire, also T2 arty of any kind can also, oh also T1 bombers with ground fire can also work against subs (aeon bomber has a trail in the water when bombing also) oh and T1 cybran mobile arty as well as zuthees can do the same as well
@annihilator1066 said in Naval Balance Survey:
@valki Aeon and UEF T2 PD can kill subs with groudfire, also T2 arty of any kind can also, oh also T1 bombers with ground fire can also work against subs (aeon bomber has a trail in the water when bombing also) oh and T1 cybran mobile arty as well as zuthees can do the same as well
Only with a lot of micro, lower 50% of players don't know or don't do this.
The ground fire is my main issue, just take it out alltogether. Also cybran frigates should be weaker with all the t2 stealth trickery invovled.
The main reason cybran navy can be said to be good is due to it being piggybacked by it's beast of a frig. Nerf the frig and you will suddenly have to deal with buffed t2 stage considering that the consensus is that it's weaker than it's counterparts.
Sure the stealth is annoying but other factions have better tools, and the moment you start losing just a little bit you are gonna get snowballed on hard as you can't even properly retreat.
Cruiser AA just feels way too powerful in terms of raw DPS.
However, nerf it too much and you can end up in a situation where naval superiority is useless if you don't have air superiority.
So, what if cruiser AA had way less DPS, but even more range? That way it's not gonna be able to melt waves of bombers, but the sheer range of the AA would allow you to maintain an air presence you otherwise couldn't have, which in turn would be what protects the fleet from large waves of bombers.
It'd couple really well with aircraft carriers, since you could keep ASFs far away from them making it much more safe to strike from and return to the carrier.
For the UEF cruiser AA is currently a range of 75 and a DPS of 500 (Cybran and Aeon have same range and similar DPS, Seraphim are weird).
I'm thinking something like a range of 100 and DPS of 300, or even 120 and 200.
@bellatrix cruisers are the most inefficent dedicated mobile AA there is. One passing them with torpedo bombers is mass efficient.