AOE hitting above a submerged unit should deal 50% dmg

you can target the engies automatically even if hitting ground next to them would be better (thus micro improving something bomber does, not allowing it to be possible at all), you can't target the submarine nor the surface of water above it automatically with a battleship

You act like something is only a gameplay mechanic if it improves something that already existed while it is not if it does something completely new, which makes no sense at all. You can argue that you don't like the mechanic, but you can't that it isn't one to begin with.

The fact that there are submersible units in the game and they are not targetable by the majority of units, except for those specifically stated for use against submersible/navy units, heavily implies to the player that submersible units cannot be shot by other, non-specific units. There's nothing to the contrary stated in any unit description. Since there's specifically a torpedo bomber in the game, you would think that those cheap t1 bombers can't just 2 shot your subs, but they can. You will only find out if you see it happening to you, read some forum argument, or are exceptionally curious and sandbox it. Sure, it is a "game mechanic." But it is more of a hidden easter egg mechanic, which is obviously not great in a competitive online strategy game.

The three options are to communicate this information to the player better, remove the hidden game mechanic, or live with the bad game design.

if "it can happen" means it is a mechanic then yes it is a mechanic, but many of these mechanics that were equally products of simulation were nerfed/removed or banned:

• terraforming is a mechanic that is banned
• crashing air experimentals is a mechanic that got nerfed
• crashing air units going through shields was a mechanic that got removed (they now bounce off instead)
• crashing novax got nerfed
• launched nukes hitting a plane on their way up got removed
• loyalist deflecting billy (a tactical missile) is removed
• many more...
• battleships being able to consistently hit underwater units with their surface cannons but only with manual groundfire is... fine?

so why is this one so different? I know you like micro and I have nothing against micro, but being able to do something using micro that is otherwise basically impossible for the unit to do without it, makes no sense, why can't submarines just get hit by intended weapons and be balanced around that like all other units? like I said (in case of tldr):

@mach said in AOE hitting above a submerged unit should deal 50% dmg:

it is basically like having all air units fly at acu altitude (such as uef drones do), still untargetable by ground weapons but getting hit by random weapons fire anyways because they are physically in the way, clearly the solution is to have them fly at appropriate height where only the aa weapons can hit them instead of random horizontal surface tank shot that it got in the way of, but no, instead we should have air units stay on the ground but have more hp so they can survive these random tank shots, and players should micro tanks so they can shoot the air units instead to counterbalance it, this is how groundfiring submarines looks like

EDIT: wasn't there also a thing about making tempest shoot directly up to hit air units by making it submerge at just the right time? whatever happened to that "mechanic"

Battleships and shit hitting subs in the dumbest feature is the game and nobody can tell me otherwise. It should be removed 10/10 bad gameplay feature.

Well yea i agree it's badly communicated and should be improved

@mach said in AOE hitting above a submerged unit should deal 50% dmg:

Mach

if "it can happen" means it is a mechanic then yes it is a mechanic, but many of these mechanics that were equally products of simulation were nerfed/removed or banned:

terraforming is a mechanic that is banned

crashing air experimentals is a mechanic that got nerfed

crashing air units going through shields was a mechanic that got removed (they not bounce off instead)

crashing novax got nerfed

launched nukes hitting a plane on their way up got removed

loyalist deflecting billy (a tactical missile) is removed

many more...

battleships being able to hit underwater units with manual groundfire is... fine?

so why is this one so different? I know you like micro but being able to do something using micro that is otherwise impossible for the unit to do without it, makes no sense, why can't submarines just get hit by intended weapons and be balanced around that like all other units? like I said (in case of tldr):

What does something like a unit getting nerfed has to do with this? Almost all of these changes happened for balance reasons and not for gameplay reasons and are thus irrelevant to the discussion. Blocking nukes with random air units was too strong so it was nerfed, crashing novax to block nukes was too strong so it was nerfed, crashing air t4's were too strong so it was nerfed. Groundfiring subs is not too strong so it isn't nerfed. Also most of these changes didn't even remove the mechanic.

So this one isn't different at all. Aside from the fact that it should be better communicated i don't see anything wrong with it since it's one of the rare instances in the game were micro is rewarded aside from 'i draw circles with this unit'. Removing the feature will make the navy fights less interesting even though they can be equally balanced.

@mach said in AOE hitting above a submerged unit should deal 50% dmg:

EDIT: wasn't there also a thing about making tempest shoot directly up to hit air units by making it submerge at just the right time? whatever happened to that "mechanic"

That mechanic is still in the game, what about it?

Btw just for info,

In starcraft 2 there is a mechanic were your workers lose their collision with eachother and can glitch on the same spot when u spam click them on a mineral patch. This has been used in tourneys for the longest of times in early aggression/cheese games to defend against said aggression/cheese since you greatly affect the surface damage from where you can take damage. This feature allows the workers to behave in a way that you "normally" won't be able to behave and can therefore be roughly said to be the sc2 equivalent of the groundfiring sub mechanic. in sc2 however this mechanic is widely adopted and is used as a micro feature for the early game.

In Aoe2 you have a similar example which is that deleting units removed possible damage penalties. Idk if this started as a bug, it probably did, but over time players adapted and it became a core part of micro in the game.

Just an example to show that your way of thinking to remove the feature isn't necessarily right.

I do not find the game nearly as micro sparse as you and FtX seem to. Early game bomber/lab micro and engy dodging micro easily decides games on its own. Air fight micro easily decides games on its own. If you fail to shoot down some drop it can decide the game. Carefully microing some T2 or T3 units can multiply their effectiveness many fold. Careful offensive ACU usage and good overcharge targeting nets insane unit advantage.

Navy is already a pretty micro intensive theater since all the units are very expensive and leave behind large amounts of reclaim. A bad engagement or accidental suicide of a single unit can put you into a virtually unrecoverable position. You're supposed to dodge destroyer/BS shots, target the low hp units, kite with the long range units, use frigate blobs to tank damage, get a bunch of mobile shields or shield boats to cover your units, keep engineers scooping up the reclaim, manage your air and torpedo bombers without losing them all. Is the weird submarine and HARMS groundfiring metagame really needed here?

Adding or preserving micro doesn't seem like a very compelling argument since it's a more macro-oriented game, there is already a lot of micro in my opinion, and very few people are able to play at a high level or dedicate the time necessary to learn everything.

@thomashiatt said in AOE hitting above a submerged unit should deal 50% dmg:

I do not find the game nearly as micro sparse as you and FtX seem to. Early game bomber/lab micro and engy dodging micro easily decides games on its own. Air fight micro easily decides games on its own. If you fail to shoot down some drop it can decide the game. Carefully microing some T2 or T3 units can multiply their effectiveness many fold. Careful offensive ACU usage and good overcharge targeting nets insane unit advantage.

Navy is already a pretty micro intensive theater since all the units are very expensive and leave behind large amounts of reclaim. A bad engagement or accidental suicide of a single unit can put you into a virtually unrecoverable position. You're supposed to dodge destroyer/BS shots, target the low hp units, kite with the long range units, use frigate blobs to tank damage, get a bunch of mobile shields or shield boats to cover your units, keep engineers scooping up the reclaim, manage your air and torpedo bombers without losing them all. Is the weird submarine and HARMS groundfiring metagame really needed here?

Adding or preserving micro doesn't seem like a very compelling argument since it's a more macro-oriented game, there is already a lot of micro in my opinion, and very few people are able to play at a high level or dedicate the time necessary to learn everything.

Yes i'm probably overselling it a bit, it's probably because i tend to compare it to sc2 or aoe2. In comparison to macro however micro is way less important. Micro can win air fights, but numbers win air fights more. Not saying it shouldn't be like that, but when talking about extremely small micro impacts like the groundfiring subs thing that doesn't impact the vast majority of games i see no good reason to remove it. It is a macro oriented game, not a macro only game.

I completely don't get the argument that it's not worth to preserve something if it only tends to be used in higher level plays. A higher skill ceiling is completely acceptable as long as it doesn't affect the skill floor, which groundfiring subs doesn't do. Almost every game in existence have a numerous amount of top lvl features that the vast majority of players will never use or use properly. Why do you think that is?

What's important is that something like this is an optional tool to have in addition to other options. You don't have to groundfire subs since there are enough different ways to deal with them, but if you're willing to micro you can get more value out of your units (but it's still nowhere near as dominating as some other examples you said).

Harms are different in the way that aside from groundfiring there isn't a proper normal way of dealing with them since they are way stronger against those units, but because they're immovable groundfiring them is way better than groundfiring the movable subs. That's why i think that the current interaction around harms (and t4's since they basically can't dodge either) is bad while the interaction around subs isn't.

Of course it happens in a small minority of games, and is never going to change, and doesn't really matter at all. Here on the FAF forums we just debate on principles and theoretical arguments like the great philosophers we are. This is the topic of the week so I must pick a side and write lots of words. I have only played a few games ever where there were HARMS or T3 subs. The T1 bomber example is more relevant in my line of work.

Perhaps HARMS could automatically surface and re-submerge in a cyclical manner to give surface weapons a chance to target and damage them. Or maybe that would totally ruin the unit. Idk I don't think I have ever even built one tbh.

@thomashiatt said in AOE hitting above a submerged unit should deal 50% dmg:

Of course it happens in a small minority of games, and is never going to change, and doesn't really matter at all. Here on the FAF forums we just debate on principles and theoretical arguments like the great philosophers we are. This is the topic of the week so I must pick a side and write lots of words. I have only played a few games ever where there were HARMS or T3 subs. The T1 bomber example is more relevant in my line of work.

Perhaps HARMS could automatically surface and re-submerge in a cyclical manner to give surface weapons a chance to target and damage them. Or maybe that would totally ruin the unit. Idk I don't think I have ever even built one tbh.

That's an interesting idea to try to have them emerge on some conditions. How about you make them have 300E maintenance cost and if you powerstall they dont have the power to stay submerged and rise to the surface. You would have to make them dock on the seabed like in EQ i think it was. Then argue that they have a magnet that needs powering to keep them attached to the metals in the ground or some story that anyone can believe makes sense.

@thewheelie said in AOE hitting above a submerged unit should deal 50% dmg:

What does something like a unit getting nerfed has to do with this? Almost all of these changes happened for balance reasons and not for gameplay reasons and are thus irrelevant to the discussion. Blocking nukes with random air units was too strong so it was nerfed, crashing novax to block nukes was too strong so it was nerfed, crashing air t4's were too strong so it was nerfed. Groundfiring subs is not too strong so it isn't nerfed. Also most of these changes didn't even remove the mechanic.

the reason groundfiring submarines seems it is not too strong is because so far this feature has always existed to "balance" submarines, so we never even saw submarines without it, they would more likely be overpowered without it, which is why they have to be rebalanced once this "feature" is fixed, instead of keeping nonsensical mechanic so as to not have to balance them

I completely don't get the argument that it's not worth to preserve something if it only tends to be used in higher level plays. A higher skill ceiling is completely acceptable as long as it doesn't affect the skill floor, which groundfiring subs doesn't do. Almost every game in existence have a numerous amount of top lvl features that the vast majority of players will never use or use properly. Why do you think that is?

I don't think I am a "high rated" player but I see groundfiring submarines happen all the time when there are any built in first place at point battleships are around (they mostly aren't, probably exactly because this counter exists so why bother with them), mostly it happens with harms

another thing is that harms itself is also being balanced around this for some reason, it even had its underwater depth raised specifically so it can get hit by battleships no matter where it is placed (it used to sink to the bottom of ocean before, making groundfiring unreliable), speaking of backwards balancing

I'm not saying harms should be op, but it should be rebalanced in other ways without being able to get hit by battleship surface cannons to offset its opness

blocking nukes with air units and crashing novax did get removed, you literally can't block a nuke with air units now because it goes through them, and novax has a random trajectory making intentionally dropping it on anything specific effectively impossible

loyalist deflecting billy is also impossible now (thus removed), crashing air units also can't go through shields anymore (removed), all these mechanics were removed, not merely units rebalanced

I don't mind any of those mechanics being removed btw, except for loyalists billy deflect (it is a tactical missile and that's what they deflect) and nerfed t4 air crash damage (should be balanced with random trajectory like novax was instead imo), because those make no sense, just like balancing submarines around surface weapon groundfire

and I know bugs with the game sometimes get turned into real features, but I don't see groundfiring submarines as one such feature, or why, for example, similar feature of loyalist deflecting billy is at the same time considered unacceptable in comparison and got removed unlike this one

the value you get out of groundfiring submarines is too massive in comparison to other options for dealing with them, especially harms