Countering Seraphim T3 submarine hunters

Say you’re in a navy position and your air player is behind or busy, so you can’t get help from torpedo bombers. Judging from the T3 Seraphim submarine stats (335 DPS for 3000 mass), it seems challenging to counter a pack of them.

Do you have to rely on ground firing destroyers or what would work?

As UEF: Spam Coopers and shieldboats, maybe atlantis.
As Aeon: Spam destroyers and late game tempest
As Sera: Make t3 subs and mobile shields and try to outmicro.
As Cybran: Spam cybran destros, harms if in defensive position
In general: make battleships and try to ground fire them if you're accurate enough
If you have air control: spam t2 torps as they're the most effective counter vs t3 subs (don't suicide one by one).

It's normal for a navy player to make their own torpedo planes and just trust that the air player will provide cover with ASFs when necessary. It's normal to get T2 air before T2 navy so you can make engineers and a T2 pgen.

For a lot of situations, even if the torps only get 1 pass, they might do enough damage to be worthwhile, especially against subs, which tend to have not a lot of HP for their price.

  • torpedo planes cost 270 mass each (the unit DB says 240 for some reason, but it's wrong)
  • You can kill a T1 sub in 1 pass, and the subs cost more than 1 torpedo plane
  • a T2 sub takes 2-3 passes (2 for Cybran, 3 for Aeon) but they cost more than 4 torps
  • a T3 sub takes 6 passes but they cost more than 11 torps

Even if half your torps get shot down before they drop anything, that can be cost-efficient against T3 subs.

You can ground-fire with destroyers. Aeon destroyers especially have a nice AOE that can work. Aeon destroyers also have stronger torpedoes than other factions which makes them dangerous to subs.

Ground-fire with battleships is even better, because they have even bigger AOE.

@arma473 said in Countering Seraphim T3 submarine hunters:

You can ground-fire with destroyers. Aeon destroyers especially have a nice AOE that can work. Aeon destroyers also have stronger torpedoes than other factions which makes them dangerous to subs.

Not recommended, its too much apm draining and will miss most of the shots if enemy is microing properly, get closer to the subs and torp damage should be enough to kill them.

Thank you both!

I haven't tried recently, but a single mermaid would make something like even 5-10 t3 subs completely useless which frustrated me to no end when I used sera for navy.

One aeon destroyer can kill the sub with a sliver of health left. If it's 1 destroyer and 1 frigate, the frigates additional torpedo defense will have the destroyer take nearly no damage.
This was an isolated test, but just remember to make frigates to support your fleet.

As Sera, utilize the range and use them as a late game skirmishing unit. Attacking then pulling back before anything can engage. Good stuff.

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