no viable naval counter sera vs cybran

@deribus said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

Stealth affects all factions the same. There's no reason one faction would have more problems dealing with stealth than any other

Uh what? If X + Y exist and Y is stealthed but some factions have Z which counters both X + Y but another faction needs the correct amount of A + B to deal with either, stealth obviously does not impact all factions the same way.

It is quite literally game losing lack of knowledge if A + B does not know how much Y exists, not true for Z factions.

@xejinord11 said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

Hardly disagree

FWIW, 'hardly disagree' doesn't mean 'I disagree hard'. The word 'hardly' means 'barely'. That quote is very likely to be interpreted as 'I don't really disagree'. (Sorry if this sounded patronising - I was assuming that english was a second language, but it might just be one of those gaps in knowledge we all have. x )

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@prophet said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

you cant test this by taking away stealth. Thats makes this experiment null.

You're probably over-estimating the importance of stealth (see below), but I'd also bear in mind that we also can't make a reasonable comparison without factoring in the ability to lazorbeam surfaced units and do massively more damage to naval factories.

The argument that 'if the seraphim destroyers try to attack naval factories, the barracudas will kill them then go do the same' has flaws.

• Firstly, the destroyers put up a damn good fight against barracudas in the first place, as Deribus pointed out, it's not cut-and-dry. (thx for the table @Deribus! In my mid-range tests the barracudas did significantly better than yours, but similar in pattern.)
• Second, I gave it a try, and even with numbers high enough that the Barracudas win (8 barracudas vs 4 Uashavohs) the lasers killed 9 naval factories while torpedo-ing barracudas, (Actually, it was 6, but one was tech:2). So even when the barracudas win in this hypothetical, they lose most of their production doing so.

(As an aside, it feels like the player that builds nothing but anti-navy units probably should beat the player that builds more versatile units. I know that this post is about a 'what if' a certain composition can just win the game, so this is a bit off-point, but I think it's important to factor in. The fact that the fight is close, with seraphim winning smaller engagements mass-for-mass, is pretty awesome for seraphim!)

In a real game though, outside of 'what ifs', experiments, comparisons with missing factors (stealth/uashavoh laser), I think the lasers on the Uashavoh are SO important - way more important than barracuda stealth (see below). Even if the 2 players are just going to crash their navy into one another, there are always going to be a bunch of targets around for the lasers, very often frigates, and in a worst-case scenario, the sera destroyers can definitely make a go of killing naval factories.
Speaking of stealth - underwater vision is typically much longer than vision. I feel like this might be skewing your expectations of barracudas.
Barracuda torpedos have range:45.
Destroyers spot with water vision:45.
TorpLaunchers have water vision:45
(and cruisers have 60!) As soon as barracudas are in range, they are visually spotted and attacked back.
Notice how we see the barracuda - the un-indicated water vision range is so much longer than the surface vision (the lit-up area).

Honestly, the 'missing stealth' from the comparisons isn't really a factor at all in this matchup!

Most importantly of all though, I've found from real-game encounters with submarines, that torpedo launchers (even tier:1) being assisted with engineers (we always have spare engineers, and they're cheap as chips) do a fantastic job of fighting submarines off (especially seraphim(+aeon) engineers since they hover above torpedo range). If the player isn't building non-submarine navy, torpedo launchers are a mega-effective defence.
This absolutely extends to tech:2. A torpedo launcher or 2 makes these units fighting mass-for-mass big seraphim wins, especially when we pull engineers.
The barracudas can't use this against the seraphim destroyers though - The destroyers make an absolute mess of torpedo launchers! Torpedo launchers are only a 'trump card' against submarines, it seems.
Put all this together, and we have a barracuda army losing SO many situations, and very limited in what it can do.

I can see where the concerns came from Prophet, absolutely. I think, though, provided we know the important parts (particularly use of torpedo launchers against sub-loving enemies) this problem goes away.

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@ftxcommando said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

Problem with barracuda comes from their stealth, but sera is babymode navy and can just spam their destro regardless of circumstance

As I mentioned above, I think stealth was getting exaggerated by a few of us here in this topic (admittedly I didn't realise how little it helped vs T2 navy or torp launchers until now), but I agree somewhat about seraphim navy.
I love playing with pop-up destroyers, and would really like it if seraphim navy was a bit more clever to use. Oh well.

@sylph_ said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

@xejinord11 said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

Hardly disagree

FWIW, 'hardly disagree' doesn't mean 'I disagree hard'. The word 'hardly' means 'barely'. That quote is very likely to be interpreted as 'I don't really disagree'. (Sorry if this sounded patronising - I was assuming that english was a second language, but it might just be one of those gaps in knowledge we all have. x )

Tnx for the feedback, yeah I am not the native english speaker and appreciate when someone points my mistakes, I can get better by listening to feedbacks :DD

This absolutely extends to tech:2. A torpedo launcher or 2 makes these units fighting mass-for-mass big seraphim wins, especially when we pull engineers.
Put all this together, and we have a barracuda army losing SO many situations, and very limited in what it can do.

Generally, I think the problem of baracudas is not that they can not be countered, but because they barely can be spotted before they attack. T1 scouts do not see them, and usually u do not have t3 scout to spot them. Which is actually a cybran mechanics in general. It does not affect the gameplay so much, because there are only few maps that rely on underwater mexes. And if you do not have underwater mexes, barracudas can barely hit you hard.

@xejinord11 said in no viable naval counter sera vs cybran:

Generally, I think the problem of baracudas is not that they can not be countered, but because they barely can be spotted before they attack.

That comment is true, but a few posts in this topic someone (mistakenly) suggests that barracudas will get attacks against seraphim destroyers before the destroyers attack back!

In reality, the underwater vision range of units is so important, and I think the fact that it is not displayed in the actual game is confusing many of us.
Seraphim destroyers and torpedo launchers have a water vision range of 45, same as barracudas weapon range... So as soon as the barracuda can attack the uashavoh / torpedo launcher, the seraphim is also attacking the barracuda.

I think this mistake is why Prophet- is saying that stealth is so important in this fight.
(I, personally, didn't realise that the uashavohs and torpedo launchers could attack barracudas as soon as barracudas could attack them, until this week!)

Have you tried using the unit called the tech 2 torpedo bomber? It may be useful in this scenario.