Extensive Navy Redesign and Rebalancing suggestions - My vision

@evildrew said in Extensive Navy Redesign and Rebalancing suggestions - My vision:

T1 Subs
32 range as is
While emerged visionradius 32
While submerged visionradius reduces to 16 (I.e.Watervisionradius=Visionradius)

The one thing T1 subs are good at is chasing enemy frigates and killing enemy engies. Nerfing vision radius when submerged makes it much more likely they'll lose their target. Why nerf the only thing they're good at?

T2 units
Cruisers

UEF
2 fire modes with autotoggle and target priorities helping players prioritize.

1. 1 Missile able to track navy units only (not land units/buildings) doing 1k damage a shot, has a longer reload cycle of 10 secs (100 Dps) and Range of 90.
2. The existing bombardment without homing missiles

The original Supcom had MMLs with homing missiles, which was apparently extremely cancerous and reverted in FA. I can imagine UEF matchups becoming T2 cruiser spam with only some frigates and coopers for backup.

Aoen

Advantages:
*Act as a counter to counterintelligence boats of cybran.

Do they need this kind of advantage? They already have second highest range destroyer that hardcounters barracudas. I'm no expert, but I get the impression best matchup against T2 Cybran navy is already Aeon.

@rezy-noob said in Extensive Navy Redesign and Rebalancing suggestions - My vision:

speaking from experience, navy feels (by far) the most balanced thing in the game

Navy also has the smallest numbers of units:

• T1 land? Scout, (lab), tank, AA, arty
• T1 air? Scout, inti, bomber, transport
• T1 navy? Frigate, sub (plus Aeon AA boat)

The frigate is simultaneously a scout, front-line direct-fire unit, anti-defence unit (beating T1 PD on range at the same cost and trading decently vs T1 torp launcher) and (except Aeon) AA unit.

Sure, the frigate costs significantly more than most T1 land or air units but somehow it is a single unit able, mass-for-mass, to beat any T1 land unit or structure, when in range of water (range means only T1 arty can fire back). If T1 PD were able to match frigates on range then at least there would be some counter.

Probably a lot of the land/navy imbalance is due to forcing navy to have a role in a game where almost all base-building is restricted to land and confined enough to where there is only 1-2 significant bases worth defending. That said, navy is (IMO) a lot more fun on maps like Ndera where frigates have many raiding options than maps like Seton's Clutch.

So, can frigates be balanced well in both the role of T1 tank (front line) and T1 arty (base busting & raiding)? Kinda.

Then there's T1 subs... subs only beat frigates if the frigate's mission is to destroy the sub. It's not. The frigate completes its mission (destroy engies/mex/navy factory) before the sub kills the frigate. Effectively the sub loses, even if it lives and the frigate dies.

IMO to make subs useful, they should become ambush hunters: able to lurk stealthily (maybe requires cloak as above) and having a high-alpha strike (high initial damage, long reload time. E.g if T1 subs fire a torp salvo with total 750 damage and 20sec reload time, DPS is unchanged but 3 subs can kill 1 frig instantly. I'm not convinced that even this is enough to make T1 subs actually useful besides mex hunting.

In classic TA Subs equivalent would functionally 3-4 shot frigates

This is just t2 sub spam gameplay. Nothing here will stop barracudas aside from a complete and utter air win.

You even buff barracudas when they are insanely strong in game as is.

All that effort to rework navy but you still leave T1 with essentially 1 useful unit

Buffs every decent effin cruiser in existence. Leaves the worst one without anything to make it at least on par with the 3rd best one.

Yeah, god bless you aren't balancing the game.

@jip said in Extensive Navy Redesign and Rebalancing suggestions - My vision:

Technically all the suggested changes are possible with a few lines of Lua code at the right place. The most complicated change would be the firing mode toggle of the cruiser.

Note that you can use headers (#, ## and ###) to format your post instead of using bold (**)

edit: and you can use - for lists

I have the cruiser working as described with a manual toggle button. I just dont get how to apply the auto toggle from the cybran cruiser.

@mazornoob said in Extensive Navy Redesign and Rebalancing suggestions - My vision:

@evildrew said in Extensive Navy Redesign and Rebalancing suggestions - My vision:

T1 Subs
32 range as is
While emerged visionradius 32
While submerged visionradius reduces to 16 (I.e.Watervisionradius=Visionradius)

The one thing T1 subs are good at is chasing enemy frigates and killing enemy engies. Nerfing vision radius when submerged makes it much more likely they'll lose their target. Why nerf the only thing they're good at?

Subs still have sonar with which they would see the frigate while chasing it down. The only difference is if they get in vision range they have the icon show whether it is a frigate, aa boat, or whatever.
We could also give the sub a radar while emerged with which they would see planes at a certain distance.

T2 units
Cruisers

UEF
2 fire modes with autotoggle and target priorities helping players prioritize.

1. 1 Missile able to track navy units only (not land units/buildings) doing 1k damage a shot, has a longer reload cycle of 10 secs (100 Dps) and Range of 90.
2. The existing bombardment without homing missiles

The original Supcom had MMLs with homing missiles, which was apparently extremely cancerous and reverted in FA. I can imagine UEF matchups becoming T2 cruiser spam with only some frigates and coopers for backup.

The original one had the same range on the missile when targeting buildings as navy units, I am suggesting a much shorter range homing missile that only works vs navy and does much less damage. The UEF cruiser has no chance vs Aoen and Cybran cruisers and takes a long time to snipe a destroyer. I think you overestimate its power substantially. It would still be chanceless vs subs imagine a list of units vs which it could dominate and ones vs with it sucked like in the AoE1&2 booklets back in the day.

Aoen

Advantages:
*Act as a counter to counterintelligence boats of cybran.

Do they need this kind of advantage? They already have second highest range destroyer that hardcounters barracudas. I'm no expert, but I get the impression best matchup against T2 Cybran navy is already Aeon.

The whole point is to have unit types that have advantages vs others and through a unit mix you can equalize or extend an advantage.

@cyborg16 said in Extensive Navy Redesign and Rebalancing suggestions - My vision:

IMO to make subs useful, they should become ambush hunters: able to lurk stealthily (maybe requires cloak as above) and having a high-alpha strike (high initial damage, long reload time. E.g if T1 subs fire a torp salvo with total 750 damage and 20sec reload time, DPS is unchanged but 3 subs can kill 1 frig instantly. I'm not convinced that even this is enough to make T1 subs actually useful besides mex hunting.

I have a working Fire Beetle that cloaks when stationary and uncloaks as soon as you give it a move command. I had this idea in the past for subs too but forgot to mention it. This could also work nicely with the active sonar feature I suggested which would work like an omni wave to reveal them and cloaked commanders. Thanks for bringing it up but maybe some people would be against cloak on stationary subs while not firing but it could be added.

If you want "The whole point is to have unit types that have advantages vs others and through a unit mix you can equalize or extend an advantage."

Then just play better clearly a skill issue at hand.

@lord_asmodeus said in Extensive Navy Redesign and Rebalancing suggestions - My vision:

If you want "The whole point is to have unit types that have advantages vs others and through a unit mix you can equalize or extend an advantage."

Then just play better clearly a skill issue at hand.

I for one like the fact that PD counters tanks forcing the addition of arty to your tank force.

The best counter to frigates at the T1 stage is, um, frigates. The nearest equivalent of PD, torp launchers, is a better counter to subs than to frigates. But subs barely need a counter since they have so little utility in the first place.

IMO the proper counter to frigates should be some form of PD (delaying assaults on navy production until destroyers are available) but I don't see how to make this can be worked into SupCom balance.

This isn’t a 1 for 1 comparison. Frigates are more equitable to t2 tanks. They are supposed to be generally better than hover tanks in their niche. Some simple pd equivalent can’t beat them without throwing the rest of the dynamic off.

imo it is more like that navy seems to severely lack aoe, every ship gets individually shot at and sunk (and because of navy hp, slowly), meanwhile tank spam would get destroyed by mobile arty to which there is no equivalent in navy

but would it be navy otherwise

@rezy-noob said in Extensive Navy Redesign and Rebalancing suggestions - My vision:

is there any need to rebalance navy? no.

Yes there definitely is but its not what Evildrew is suggesting. I'd prefer like Mach said there be some AoE and less relevance on frigates as the only t1 gameplay and buffer for t2 and t3.