@Marked_One AFAIK HARMs depth was changed several times
Atlantis
@HintHunter said in Atlantis:
Meh they can still get manually fired up on by battleships, the splash dmg from cannons fulfills that role and prob for the better of the game.
underwater units shouldnt be able to get hit by surface weapons except for massive aoes like nukes, a submarine is supposed to be below the surface where surface weapons cant reach them, which is the whole point of them
if we consider it balanced that underwater units should be getting hit by surface weapons like battleship cannons, then why cant battleships simply target underwater units automatically to shoot at them considering they can technically hit them when manually groundfired? this whole thing even only works when microed intentionally, the current situation is basically exploiting this flaw in game code where surface weapons can hit underwater units simply because water levels arent deep enough for how large aoe those weapons have for their uses and balance on surface combat
so if we consider this situation ok, then all surface weapons that can reach underwater units with their aoe should be able to target underwater units like they do any surface unit, this may seem silly but in this extreme you can see how that ruins the point of underwater units as they get picked off easily by things that shouldnt be able to hit them in first place, atlantis is just one of units that is most effected by it because of it being slow and big and thus easier to groundfire, but all underwater units have this problem that shouldnt exist
just think realistically how is a battleship supposed to hit a submarine with its cannons while its underwater and how nonsensical that is, yet considered fine here apparently?
Would it be possible to calculate the AOE distance differently, e.g. every 3 meters above ground is the same as 1 meter underwater? That would majorly reduce underwater AOE without removing it entirely. You could still go fishing for t1 subs with a strat bomber, but not with t1 bombers or corsairs.
Just put HARMS on the surface and let them be targeted by direct-fire weapons. Make them into mobile buildings (like t3 sonars) and make them veeeery slow, that way when they are discovered they can hide again. Give them a toggle ability to cloak for 15 seconds, faster movement + no shooting, so you can try to relocate them when they are found. Add a new unit, "Fake HARMS," a cheap, slow-moving unit that looks like HARMS to the enemy but its torpedoes do very little damage. Then HARMS are still relevant without this silly business of being underwater.
The issue with the atlantis is that it doesn't really have a roll to fulfill in lategame uef navy. Uef doesn't need carriers as much as other factions since shieldboats make sure cruisers don't die quickly anyway. Meanwhile you use torpedo boats as defense vs subs. The most use i've gotten out of atlantis' is when using it as some sort of bulky sera t3 sub do get value by damage over time. A big issue of sera t3 subs when trying to get value from them is that they are so easily killed. Your opponent can just send 5 torps to kill it and the insane aa that they have isn't too relevant when they die to torps in 1 pass anyway. The atlantis meanwhile just ignores those torps because of the insane hp it has, but trades of by not having great dps/mass and mostly being insanely slow, which leaves the main reason why atlantis' are bad: groundfire by battleships.
If atlantis were unable to be groundfired by bs's they would most likely be way too strong since you can stack a lot of them with no proper counter. A few suggestions were made in some balance call a few months back but other things had priority over a uef t3 navy adjustment since even without atlantis it's already pretty well balanced.
The few suggestions i remember/can think of are:
- Give it the reverse shieldboat treatment by decreasing its size a bit and making it more manoeuverable
- Lower it's depth in the water by just a bit. Not enough to make bs unable to groundfire it but enough to make it harder to be groundfired. Currently even fobo's can groundfire an atlantis which means they are insanely close to the surface
All in all even though atlantis aren't in a great state atm it isn't a very big issue and therefore it's not being worked on.
@TheWheelie I get what you mean by it isn't a priority at the moment. what is sad is that leaves an experimental of all things without any purpose or point. I don't know how it would effect balance, but it would fit the whole aircraft carrier theme if an Atlantis was the centre piece to top of your uef navy late in the game. With the cost right now its as spammable as a battleship, with bad aa, less hp and less dps....
Like you said, there isn't really a point in it atm. but with a few decent buffs and price increase to match, if could make a formidable AA, complement to your Battleship fleet...
The speed isn't a major issue since your battleships are even slower than the atlantis, at best it provides good intel.
right now, it really feels like very expensive and inefficient t3,5 aircraft carrier.
hopefully when other major issues have been fixed the atlantis could get some tlc that it needs.
Id love to see it be the kingpin of your navy, as an aircraft carrier normally is.
atm the bloody thing is even cheaper than a monkey lord.
if atlantis would be overpowered by battleships not being able to groundfire it, thats when you balance it by nerfing it, the reason it currently isnt overpowered is only because of this broken aoe hitting underwater mechanic keeping it useless, first we need to fix the mechanic that is broken (aoe hitting underwater) and then nerf atlantis until it is balanced, then it will be balanced without this counterintuitive groundfire nonsense currently used to "balance it"
simply: it doesnt need more maneuverability or reduced size to dodge things that it shouldnt have to dodge, it needs to not be able to get hit by them in first place, and nerfed afterwards in stats if its op until it isnt, you can reduce its torpedo range/damage, hp or whatever until it can be countered by things that should counter it instead of being countered by things that shouldnt exist at all (groundfire)
why is it broken that a battleship can shoot a submarine that is underwater with its surface cannons?
@FtXCommando said in Atlantis:
yes, that is what i asked
a game play should be straight forward to understand. There shouldn't be tactics abusing a dubious logic to be part of the meta.
For a new comer, a bs with little torpedo capability shouldn't be able to counter submarine.
on top of this, the way you have to do it seems counter intuitive :
- you can't just click the sub, you have to ground fire it
- you need to ground fire next to the sub then drag the order on the sub
- if you don't want to waste a round of shots, you need to ground fire outside of the range, and then drag the order on top of the sub
@TheWheelie said in Atlantis:
Even though it is unintuitive it doesnt mean that it is broken and/or a bad mechanic
yes it means that it is a bad mechanic game design wise.
It works (read : game is balanced ish), but it isn't healthy; and a balance avoiding this mechanism is preferable.
Problem No.1
Weapons AOE ignores water, if it's in the range of the explosion it gets damaged.
Problem No.2
Subs are in certain depth and they don't change it. And it is very close to the surface. Normally subs would be much deeper and AOE of those weapons would not affect them at all.
@TheWheelie said in Atlantis:
sorry used the wrong word. i meant bad for gameplay
well i'm gonna give you another situation :
Let's remove aa from the game.
But don't worry you can still kill planes by groundfiring arty.
Good news is that you raise the skill threshold and you induce some big brain gameplay where the guy with bomber will try to dodge arty shots before dropping etc
you can even have it balance : some pre-shot visualisation to predict in a easier fashion where to shoot; maybe increase all the rof of arty.
In the end would that be better gameplay or worse gameplay than what we have ? well you might like that, but i wouldn't enjoy it tbh.
Subs are in certain depth and they don't change it. And it is very close to the surface. Normally subs would be much deeper and AOE of those weapons would not affect them at all.
Brilliant point.
The reason subs are so close to the surface is because the game engine is far from perfect. Not because they're supposed to be close to the surface. If the game engine was more realistic subs would be able to go down to different depths.
One possible fix is for submarines to go down as deep as possible, rather than being at a fixed depth. I have no idea how hard that is to code.
If that is not possible: once you recognize that subs aren't supposed to be close to the surface, and they are only represented in the game as being close to the surface because of engine limitations, there is no reason to allow them to be ground fired by battleships, at least, when they're not in very shallow water. Other possible fixes would be either (1) eliminate/reduce the ability to ground fire subs, or (2) eliminate/reduce the ability to ground fire subs when they are not in shallow water. Either one of those things is preferable to the current situation. Perhaps you could accomplish 1 or 2 by giving subs a different "hit box" when you're looking at AOE splash damage compared to when you're looking at direct fire like torpedoes and depth charges.
It would affect balance to do this (ground-firing subs at this point is an important part of the meta), but we can adjust balance by changing unit stats.
The main reason why groundfiring is something i want to stay in faf is because it is one of the rare situations where micro is rewarded quite heavily. I know lots of people on faf don't care about that but i do. I do agree that the groundfiring doesn't make any sense from a logical standpoint but i don't give anything about that tbh. Gameplay is all for me.
Harms are a great example of this btw. They can be groundfired by battleships and even uef/sera cruisers i believe, but people still see them as super strong simply because groundfiring them takes a lot of attention and micro. All in all you get a big reward, free kills, if you groundfire them but it comes at the cost of great time investment.
Your example would make sense if you didn't remove aa from the game, but still added the option for arties to be able to hit air by groundfiring. After all even without groundfire you can still counter subs. There is a very important difference between the 2 situations: In 1 it is mandatory and in the other one it is simply one of multiple options. Therefore, if in addition to there being aa you would be able to do dmg to bombers if you did some sick arty groundfire then i would love it to be added to the game