Best posts made by Cascade

After reading this thread my opinion on ras boys has changed. Taking away their energy income would be enough to nerf them to where they are still used, but then t3 pgen spam is needed, which makes game enders and such actually end the game when someone's power goes up.

As Aeon or UEF it's impossible to find nuke subs, commanders, RAS boys, etc without a sonar. I was going insane trying to find aeon nuclear subs because my scouts couldn't see them lol. It's something too important to leave up as a feature of faction flavor imo

One thing that I miss about the old additional reclaim info mod was that it gave you the total sum of reclaim on screen. It was fun to zoom out and see the exact amount of reclaim on the map or in a specific area

I decided to dig into some navy stat lines because I felt that frigates were quite strong and I was blown away.
The Problem
In both DPS/mass and HP/mass, frigates are extremely strong. So strong that any composition that replaces frigates for another unit will almost always lose. (granted that each navy is equal in mass totals) I have left out the battlecruiser because in my sandbox testing it is the only unit that dishes out enough dps with direct fire, combined with kiting ability that it reliably wins over frigates even with bad micro

THE DATA
Note: All data was pulled from the unit database which I assume is up to date

DPS/MASS

Frigate dps/mass
UEF.......................0.178 dps/mass
CYBRAN ...........0.257 dps/mass
AEON..................0.202 dps/mass
SERA....................0.202 dps/mass
AVERAGE...........0.209 dps/mass

Destroyer dps/mass
UEF.....................0.122 dps/mass
CYBRAN..........0.102 dps/mass
AEON................0.094 dps/mass
SERA..................0.093 dps/mass
AVERAGE........0.102 dps/mass

Battleship dps/mass
UEF.....................0.056 dps/mass
CYBRAN..........0.056 dps/mass
AEON................0.045 dps/mass
SERA..................0.050 dps/mass
AVERAGE........0.051 dps/mass

HEALTH/MASS

Frigate hp/mass
UEF.......................7.7 hp/mass
CYBRAN............7.6 hp/mass
AEON..................6.4 hp/mass
SERA....................7.4 hp/mass
AVERAGE..........7.3 hp/mass

Destroyer hp/mass
UEF.......................3.3 hp/mass
CYBRAN............2.7 hp/mass
AEON..................3.3 hp/mass
SERA....................3.1 hp/mass
AVERAGE...........3.1 hp/mass

Battleship hp/mass
UEF......................5.1 hp/mass
CYBRAN...........5.6 hp/mass
AEON.................5.3 hp/mass
SERA...................5.4 hp/mass
AVERAGE.........5.35 hp/mass

CONCLUSION:

Frigates have ...........2x the dps/mass of destroyers
Destroyers have..... 2x the dps/mass of battleships
Frigates have ...........4x the dps/mass of battleships

Frigates have ..........~2x the hp/mass of destroyers
Destroyers have ....~0.7x the hp/mass of battleships
Frigates have ..........~1.4x the hp/mass of battleships

A Few Scenarios
10k mass
40 frigates (2571.6 DPS) vs 2 destroyers, 22 frigates.......(1874.38 DPS)
40 frigates (2571.6 DPS) vs 4.4 destroyers (10k mass)...(1012 DPS)
40 frigates (2571.6 DPS) vs 1 battleship, 8 frigates............(1064 DPS) (lol)

I don't really know how to measure range with these values but in my sandbox testing I found that the kiting ability of destroyers isn't enough to stop the mass equivalent in frigates, which in my opinion is a good thing. Pure destroyer spam should lose to frigates. The problem is that destroyers + frigates will lose to pure frigates

My Proposal: Battleships and Destroyers should be more specialized to incentivize a 3 tech navy composition. Destroyers should become more glass cannon like with = or slightly worse dps/mass of the frigate but also have it's health dropped substantially. That way destroyers MUST be shielded with frigates but also good enough that a destroyer+frigate composition wins over pure frigates. Battleships should become far tankier, with their hp/mass = or slightly worse to the Frigate, but their dps should be dropped substantially. Also some range buff would be good. This means that battleships can act as a back row artillery section but they could also be cycled up front and act as sponges and the destroyers can fall behind them. This should make navy gameplay more engaging and make the current stalemate meta of lobbing battleship shells at each other while the frigates afk waiting for a full commit from the opponent less viable.

Some common arguments against pure frigate spam being OP

Just make torpedo bombers bro!

frigate aa is good enough that a lot of them will stop torpedo bombers. Also this creates a weird dynamic that you/your team must be winning air in order to not lose to frigate spam

Just kite them bro!

Not all destroyers can shoot while kiting, and half of them that can kite don't have all guns available while doing so, which just makes frigates even better

being frigate locked is okay, I won't be punished until they send t2, bro!

while true on some maps, 3/4 factions have good enough aa to stop torps, seraphim being the weakest and cybran being the strongest. Shards are great btw

Frigates being OP is okay and I like it that way, anything above t1 should be used for punishing an already won navy position, bro!

I understand that in a ladder game there is usually a lot on your plate and navy comp is just another addition to the long list of things to pay attention to, but it makes navy gameplay in team games so boring

I'd like to hear what you guys think

Edit: I mostly play Setons and large team games so my experience might be different than yours. Feel free to tell me why!

I think Recruit ---> Sergeant ---> Lt. Colonel---> General ---> Support Commander ---> Supreme Commander
Something like that would be cool

The Omni range is about 1/5th the size of the sonar range on cybran and seraphim scouts. It makes avoiding scouts very easy

Supreme Conflict

Seton's Clutch

I'm not a noob anymore but I did play FAF intermittently in 2016 and then I quit and came back a year later. Back then I only played dualgap because it's what was most welcoming for >100G >500R noobs. I had a very hard time finding games outside of dualgap/astro that would let me play at 600 rating and there was almost no chance that I could get into a wonder/1k+ random map team game. Eventually I gave up on improving to an acceptable rank and stopped playing altogether. Only did i manage to come back and git gud was when I found some friends to play with that would vouch for me in 1k+ lobbies.

@myEmperor they make for great ocean floor vacuum cleaners

@Resistance the more i play setons at higher levels, the more i realize that it's really open to creative strategies. It can be static sure, but most players won't let their opponent just sit there and eco. The only position that needs to follow a strict BO is the air slot but even then you can still ignore it and do something unorthodox with a surprising level of success

Can we just have a vault for shitters and then a vault tailored for quality maps/approved authors?

sign up Cascade 1653

That sounds cool at face value but then I remember that I already have three other ratings to keep track of, nevertheless a dozen new ones for all of the popular maps!

every game that i've had on Saskiya has been a treat! rating ~1700