Seraphim sonar thoughts

[crispyambulance]

Have you played Sera navy? Let me tell you my practical experience.

On any map bigger than white fire, you will spend 5x the time, effort and APM to have any useful sonar coverage at all. Expanding your coverage will be painfully slow as you wait for engineers to slowly walk into position and then slowly build sonar. These engineers get so much as pricked and they blow up. If for any reason your navy has to retreat the engis and sonars will get destroyed by your opponent, forcing you to start over.

On Seton's a T3 sonar will give you coverage of an entire pond unless it's washed up on your shores and can be built by your naval production and then moved. Sera do not achieve this unless they have one of their T2s smack dab in the middle of the pond or so.

You will spend AT LEAST as much mass on the sonar creep and infrastructure to build it as your opponent spends on 1 T3 sonar.

Sera may get a slight advantage on a tiny naval map like white fire, but it's negligible because in the end your opponent can just upgrade their sonar to T3 and have a sonar that remains superior in every way.

[Sovietpride]

Have you played Sera navy? Let me tell you my practical experience.

On any map bigger than white fire, you will spend 5x the time, effort and APM to have any useful sonar coverage at all. Expanding your coverage will be painfully slow as you wait for engineers to slowly walk into position and then slowly build sonar. These engineers get so much as pricked and they blow up. If for any reason your navy has to retreat the engis and sonars will get destroyed by your opponent, forcing you to start over.

On Seton's a T3 sonar will give you coverage of an entire pond unless it's washed up on your shores and can be built by your naval production and then moved. Sera do not achieve this unless they have one of their T2s smack dab in the middle of the pond or so.

You will spend AT LEAST as much mass on the sonar creep and infrastructure to build it as your opponent spends on 1 T3 sonar.

Sera may get a slight advantage on a tiny naval map like white fire, but it's negligible because in the end your opponent can just upgrade their sonar to T3 and have a sonar that remains superior in every way.

Transports?
the fact that your air scouts have a random ability to still give vision on crash? <------ (Wtf is this about?)
the fact that you can blow up your enemies sonar if you so wish?
A cruiser for local radar?

For all the drawbacks you stated, there are very real methods of addressing them.

[crispyambulance]

Transports can make the process faster but not easier from the standpoint of APM. They actually increase the APM load.

Air scouts give vision after death to make up for the lack of an Eye of Rhianne or Soothsayer. UEF get satellite.

Yes, you can blow up careless enemies' sonar somehow. I'm not sure how that's relevant. It's much easier for them to blow up yours.

When I play navy, to have a cruiser close enough to a battle to give any useful intel at all is usually to put the cruiser in a careless position where it will get destroyed. And it's still nothing compared to the way T3 sonars cover the whole map.

[Sovietpride]

Course it requires apm, but then thats something for you to improve, rather than the games fault.
You can blow up enemy sonar - send torpedo planes. On maps liks roanoake, they tend to hang around in obvious areas such in te middle of roanoake.

Likewise, the time needed to get a t3 sonar and its supporting structures (power) normally doesnt hit the field til past 11-12 minutes. And in a lot of games, t3 sonar or lack thereof is a nice crutch, but will hardly save a dire situation.

The question is, seraphim has a tier 2.5 sonar as opposed to 3 which moves, and is this fair?

By the numbers,probably not.
On the other hand, what about the other advantages? Floating flak, fobos (who doesn't spam these to kingdom come?) ARAS, the list goes on.

I guess my opinion is simply that if you lose to another player in a navy game, is it "really" because they have a t3 sonar, or because theyre just that much better than you are?
For instance, UEF vs seraphim on roanoake is a harsh match up, of which t3 sonar or not doesnt rectify. In fact, you could equally argue that its needed to balance the playing field...

[Mad`Mozart]

First person to discover frigates give nice radar coverage, mobile and fat will get a cookie

[Lieutenant Lich]

Sooo... maybe it's time to rename Frigate to Intel Boat?

On the topic though, I play Phantom X as seraphim often for the sub hunter. If I put a sonar in a well defended place, I cannot reach to the area around neighboring islands. With UEF Sonar (I do sera or UEF only) this problem does not exist: Need sonar in a different spot? Move it! With seraphim I have to build a new sonar or, like mozart said, include frigs in my building sequence. No seraphim player wants to do either of the choices. Right? You want to waste APM queuing frigs/building sonars or you want to spend that APM micro managing some naval unit? Probably the latter.

[biass]

ur playing navy and not making frigs?

[ZLO_RD]

ur playing navy and not making frigs?

you usually make frigs to protect against enemy frigs. and actually sera destros quite good against frigs, (just like all destros except cybran)
also he was talking about phantom.... so if he would make frigs, there would be so many frigs that they would not fit map, also they are usefull early game cause you will have no sonar or omni... but in phantom you have everything, you don't need frigs

[Hawkei]

Well if you're committed to building Omni sensors then you have no real need for a T3 sonar platform. The only role left for sonar is to detect submerged targets. Either in the form of submarines or amphibious units. The T2.5 sonar is going to detect anything going near your base, or naval yards, and the rest of the map can be monitored using Spy plane patrols... At those extended ranges the only viable submerged threat is a missile sub - and the lack of T3 sonar + T3 sub hunter is designed (I believe) to give them a fighting chance. Much of which has been mitigated with the nerf to submarine nuke launch range.

[crispyambulance]

Likewise, the time needed to get a t3 sonar and its supporting structures (power) normally doesnt hit the field til past 11-12 minutes. And in a lot of games, t3 sonar or lack thereof is a nice crutch, but will hardly save a dire situation.

You can build 1 unit at 11 minutes that will reveal every single enemy unit in a pond on Seton's. That's pretty cool! It's so cool I ask for an engi so that I can build that sonar every time I play Sera, because Sera have no intel solution as quick to roll out or as convenient and easy to protect.

On the other hand, what about the other advantages? Floating flak, fobos (who doesn't spam these to kingdom come?) ARAS, the list goes on.

Aeon get all of these advantages and a T3 sonar. And an Eye of Rhianne.

Mad Mozart: I'm not sure what you're talking about. Am I supposed to carefully space out frigates all over the map to achieve the same effect as 1 T3 sonar? Maybe you can explain this to me in more detail. I spam frigates as hard as anybody. I'm definitely interested if you can show me something I'm missing here.

Hawkei: What? A non-cybran T3 sonar costs 100 power, cybran 250. You can easily build a T3 sonar as soon as you have your first T2 pgen, even as cybran sometimes. An omni takes 2000 power and yes it does not work against submerged units.

We've talked about substitutes Sera may (or may not actually) have for this intel unit. Some want to argue that it's not that useful of a unit anyway. On the flip side of that, since this unit doesn't matter, can anybody think of a reason why Sera would be OP if they just had the same capability as the other 3 factions? If it helps, think of this as a quality of life change for Sera rather than a balance change.

I have won a lot of (not pro-level) naval battles using nothing but Sera's units, and I agree it's possible. The issue for me is I realized you have to be profoundly stubborn or even masochistic not to ask a teammate for an engi to build a real sonar. All of these supposed substitutes every other faction has on top of their superior sonar. I want to use all of them at the same time when I play Sera, like the rest of the factions are able to, because intel is kinda important. If I couldn't get a teammate's engi, I just wouldn't play Sera. For all the sacrifices to what is the basic capability every other faction has, I can't see anything to compensate, and I think if everyone in this thread was being honest with themselves they would agree, since I see none of you playing Sera often if at all.