Atlantis

well positive is that submarines become navy's equivalent of "air" in that only weapons that are designed to attack them can hit them, instead of anything with big enough aoe, similar to how air units are shot by aa only. (I know air can get hit by non aa like artillery but thats something you cant even micro to force unlike groundfiring submarines, and mostly happens accidentally and when someone flies a swarm of planes over a mavor or something as it is about to shoot.)

it also solves what this thread was originally about, which is atlantis being useless by it not getting easily destroyed by battleships groundfiring it while its underwater, and every other submarine, it also turns them OP since now they arent countered by this bug, and thus have to be balanced around weapons that can hit them instead of groundfired surface weapons.

atlantis isnt as useless as you think

also your argument about solving atlantis issues my changing a fundamental feature on navy makes no sense. There are 100s of easier ways to do that

well it isnt useless but its heavily countered by something it shouldnt, reducing its power in ways it isnt supposed to, a submarine shouldnt have to worry about a battleship shooting surface of water above it and move around underwater to dodge them, because its a submarine deep underwater, it should worry about anti submarine weapons like torpedoes and depth charges instead, and thats what it should be balanced around

and I dont consider groundfiring underwater units with surface weapons a fundamental feature of navy, but then I suck at navy anyways so what do I know, point is submarines should be balanced around things that should be able to hit them, and not around what shouldnt, those 100s of easier way to buff atlantis each ignore fixing groundfire exploit (which also effects all underwater units not just atlantis)

In my opinion Atlantis is actually in a lot better of a spot than it once was with the mass based veterancy system, it now only needs to kill 6k mass to get a vet. It can actually be fairly effective. Atlantis wins vs 4 subhunters thanks to vet. Often you can get them out before battleships hit the field if you went T3 in air/land. They can also make air, which is useful for scouts and a few ASF/Torps. If anything it could get a speed/turn increase to it could dodge shots and arrive at the front faster.

@The_Mak An explosion underwater dissipates in a sphere-shape manner so the hit delivered to the target is quite minimal, that's why depth charges are if something, the WORST weapon when dealing with submarines. In world war 2 they knew it and that's why they developed hedgehogs.

A shell exploding in the surface will do shit to a vessel 30 meters underwater aside from making a loud noise.

Explosions are spherical in air too lol not sure how that is supposed to disprove their effectiveness...
Properties of water (high density, basically incompressible) actually make shockwaves more damaging than in air btw.

Also, depth charges were one of the the first effective weapons against submarines so it's dumb to call them the worst weapon in dealing with them.

Depth charges were the first method to deliver a significant amount of the explosive power anywhere where it might actually hurt the submarine. Anyone imagining that surface detonations, of any magnitude, would have any significant impact on a fully submerged submarine are just dreaming - and supporting it as a viable game mechanic is just twisted.

it not being realistic doesnt automatically result in it not being a viable game mechanic.

Hey, I wanted to say that being shot most of the time kills you, as such being able to respawn should have no place in any kind of shooter game involving real fire arms. It's unrealistic to expect real human being to come back from death.

FFS it's 3k something dudes, we now have advanced weaponry so just deal with ships being able to ground fire subs.

The thing about depth charges is the "depth" part -- they sink to a specific depth (set just before deployment to whatever depth you think the submarine is) so that they're as close as possible to the sub when they explode. If the explosion were on the surface most of the blast would go up (where the low-density, easily compressible air offers minimal resistance) rather than downward to any significant depth.

But Gameplay > Realism. We have advanced weaponry, why not just replace all PD guns with lasers and have them shoot down aircraft as well as surface targets? They should have no trouble dealing with artillery shells, tac and strategic missiles, even Novax satellites... All your "Reality + 1000 Years" arguments could be made here too. But that would (in my opinion) be BAD for gameplay.

I LIKE needing different weapons to deal with different enemies. It's not like we don't have ways of fighting subs. Torp bombers, subs of your own... there's even a unit called a Sub Hunter. That's what they're for. The groundfire mechanic is a mistake, someone forgot to check that the AOE stops at the surface.

Actually, it's no mistake, it's just an unintended side effect of a rather primitive AOE mechanism, and the growing proliferation of large radius AOE weapons. I think it was just overlooked, as it's a simple matter to have the AOE effect adjusted when impacting water versus impacting a target - it just hasn't been considered yet, and there's a cadre of players who prefer this over having to engage in submarine warfare. It's only natural to defend the mechanism.

@Sprouto said in Atlantis:

Actually, it's no mistake, it's just an unintended side effect ... I think it was just overlooked...

So, a mistake then? Those are awfully fine hairs you're splitting there.

"No, teacher. I didn't make a mistake on the assignment. I just overlooked that part of the question. It was an unintended side-effect of not reading the whole thing before filling in the answer. Full credit please?"

What's wrong with players "having" to engage in submarine warfare? This is one of very few RTS games that even have subs, and for me that's one of the main reasons I play... but if they're made so weak and ineffective by the groundfire mechanic, then what's the point? If you don't want to play with subs, just disable them in the unit restrictions.

@John73John I think you mistook what I meant - I fully support the use of submarines and the elimination, or reduction of ground fire having any effect on submerged submarines.

There are quite a few sub-systems in the game that were given a basic framework, and then were discarded, turned off, or never implemented at all. The ORBITAL layer, for example, or terrain effects that go beyond just graphical impact.

I, like yourself, prefer the idea of proper submarine warfare, utilizing the tools that were put into the game for combat on that layer.

@Sprouto Alright, fair enough.

If I were designing the game from the ground up, this is how I would handle submarines:

-Submarines (when submerged) are only vulnerable to torpedoes and depth charges
-There's no such thing as "underwater vision". You can see your own/allies' subs, but submerged enemies will never be visible. If you have sonar coverage then you'll see a grey "submerged unit" icon. The only exception would be EXP units, they'd have the circle icon. Sonar can see how big it is, but that's it. No indication of which enemy player or its remaining health. No way of telling if it's even a sub or an assault bot walking across the sea floor.
-Subs don't provide vision either, only sonar. So they can only tell the location of surface ships, not whether it's a cruiser or destroyer or which player owns it.
-Make destroyers/torpedo boats and UEF Battlecruiser more anti-sub specialized. How this is done would vary between factions. They could have better torp defense, use depth charges instead of torps (meaning a sub's torp defense does nothing), built-in sonar... I'm sure there are other possibilities.

Would it be fun if we gave frigates depth charges with a tiny attack range, so if you can put your frigates on top of enemy subs you can kill them?

@arma473 That mechanic exists believe it or not - at present, it's often used to fire anti-torpedo charges out to the flank of some units. These charges last for only a few seconds at best, sinking slowly as you might expect - watch the UEF boats that have anti-torp systems.

I believe it was more widely used as depth charges in the original Supcom, but with the release of Forged Alliance, most depth charges were converted to torpedoes.

I'm aware that depth charges are part of FAF because the Czar drops them.

Ironically, the weapons of torpedo planes are also classified as depth charges (perhaps they are only classified that way so torpedo defense doesn't nullify torpy boys).

I think it would be fun if it mattered whether frigates ran over subs. It would turn the tables a bit on subs harassing frigates (subs would have to be a bit more cagey about it but of course subs, properly microed, should be able to beat frigates).

Probably the depth charge weapon of frigates should not be available against buildings or floaty units (hover, surface ships, or walking on the surface like engineers), it would only be against submerged units. There's no reason to give frigates extra anti-building dps. It wouldn't make 1-2 frigates very dangerous for subs, but a big pack of frigates could kill subs if they spread out and the subs couldn't escape. Which would promote the sense that subs are "hunted" and need to be sneaky/snipers even when they're in a position to do damage.

Atlantis being able to build air units while moving, would make it more useful.

I know it's an engine limitation, but a workaround exists.

Also, why not make it's torpedo's do much more damage? Than it could do something for it's price.

because it already does something

Main issue i have with all of this is the ground fire frustration from an ease of play and realism standpoint. You have advantages garnished from losing intel. I say cut all restrictions on ground-firing spotted units so you don't get the blocker on your position in ground fire mode, then nerf damage in some way if not all the way because its bullshit and the shells would just explode or change course on impact.