Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-06T08:56:47+02:00

the Cruisers (top part of the map) threaten all top mexes, apart from 8. If you win navy and can put a single cruiser there, your opponent has to invest in TMD or risk losing almost everything. The torrents are on the low side of the map and they can reach all mexes, apart from two

^that's the description bit that goes with the map image

Statistics: Posted by Plasma_Wolf — 06 Jan 2017, 08:56

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-05T23:53:05+02:00

Morax wrote:
Note to self: Always play on the top side since it can't be ranged by cruiser missiles while the south can
imba1.gif

note to self: pay attention and realise that the ships are different in the map picture before making sweeping statements.

Statistics: Posted by Exotic_Retard — 05 Jan 2017, 23:53

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-05T23:47:40+02:00

Note to self: Always play on the top side since it can't be ranged by cruiser missiles while the south can

imba1.gif

Statistics: Posted by Morax — 05 Jan 2017, 23:47

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-03T03:00:43+02:00

Plasma_Wolf wrote:
while you may think of Navy as only reaching a small part of land, I'd turn it the other way around: navy is completely out of reach of land.

Yes, I think this underlines the part where I went wrong. I just realized that with MML or mobile arty, you can simply run up to it with your land army and murder it in the face, but you can't do that to navy. Once it's uncontested, it probably stays that way.

I appreciate all the replies and especially this really in-depth explanation. I figured navy must be worth it somehow because otherwise the good players wouldn't be doing it, but now I think I also understand why. Thank you! I'll go build some boats.

Statistics: Posted by Xyx — 03 Jan 2017, 03:00

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-02T14:05:54+02:00

As others said, navy can be used for some good area denial. That's something you can't do with air, yes you can if your opponent doesn't have any AA but that's a rarity. Also, if you make the mistake of no AA and your opponent goes off to kill your expansions with gunships, you can still turn it around by spamming flak.

Land only does area denial if there are T3 artillery. With those and a good number of assault bots, you can place your army somewhere and simply wait while your opponent has to think of a way to chase it out. T2 land doesn't have this (TMLs have range but are only effective against buildings). Yes, the range bots and the seraphim T2 bot are good in kiting but it's not anywhere near the area denial you can achieve with T3 artillery.

T2 firebases can do area denial but they're so expensive that if you spend that much mass in telling your opponent that you're somewhere to stay, your opponent can just say "OK, I'll go somewhere else" and then he kills your stuff there.

Navy on the other hand: destroyers for Aeon and Cybran, and cruisers for UEF and Seraphim, have such a good range that they can deny any sort of base building near the shore. If you're the first one with a destroyer you can do a lot of damage. Your opponent has to be very quick in a solution for the problems a T2 navy poses. If you have a larger navy and he has yet to build up the build power for building his T2 navy, he already lost the battle on the water. Depending on how much water there is compared to the land mass, that can decide the battle. Maps like Setons, Seraphim Glaciers, High Noon spell GG as soon as navy has been decided.

Your counters, if you're losing navy are hover (beaten by mass frigates, and in the case of Cybran and Seraphim also destroyers), Torp bombers (which are beaten by cruisers and fighters), or gunships (which are beaten by cruisers, especially Seraphim).

So your counters are very limited and while you may think of Navy as only reaching a small part of land, I'd turn it the other way around: navy is completely out of reach of land. If there's an important pass near the water, land will be useless as soon as navy is decided.

Maybe you can think of it this way as well. Lower-end players like to build firebases to deny passage in a good portion of the map. A good T2 navy can deny a passage in a good portion of the map, and then move to a different part to deny passage there.

I've got an image of Cruisers and Torrent Missile Ships on the map Africa. The majority of that map is land, but there are two lakes and may not look important, but the Cruisers (top part of the map) threaten all top mexes, apart from 8. If you win navy and can put a single cruiser there, your opponent has to invest in TMD or risk losing almost everything. The torrents are on the low side of the map and they can reach all mexes, apart from two. With torrents, don't bother building TMD, just sit in that unthreatened corner and cry until the only land units that your opponent will now need are going to kill you.

It's correct that navy is very expensive, but the pay-off is very good too. The naval battle can take almost the entire game, but five minutes after it's over, the game is over

Statistics: Posted by Plasma_Wolf — 02 Jan 2017, 14:05

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-02T11:39:48+02:00

The big difference is:

Air = most deadly and fast -> cannot attack anymore where is defense like big sam shields or lots of cruisers under shields

Land = basic attack weapon -> takes some time to come over defense with siege weapons

Naval = Low dps, high cost, huge range -> Cannot be stopped by defense not by air not by land it will destroy everything in range which is quite huge with 5km Tml in sub nukes which means you will have control of the coast and nobody can take it away anymore

(Limitation that naval cannot be stopped by air depends on skill of player and patch in faf cybran navy needs either enough aircraft carriers or a huge t1 frigate spam against air, other factions have it more easy with shields and cruisers. And yes sure if one air player on seton for example totally fails and the enemy air player can spam 10k+ mass in torp bombers or other stuff he can stop navy more or less efficient ... )

Statistics: Posted by Iszh — 02 Jan 2017, 11:39

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-02T06:18:28+02:00

Land cannot really fight boats, and boats have epic range, getting you nasty tools like missile ships and that can ruin bases without much trouble

Statistics: Posted by biass — 02 Jan 2017, 06:18

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-02T05:13:25+02:00

It is a chokepoint, what happens when either side has naval units close to it? Any land units get pounded before they reach their destination, if they ever do. Front player can also just make a firebase, walls etc. that make it that much harder. Land units can't win the naval battle (yes hover might), if you win the naval battle you control a large area. Sure you can rush land fast before any navy if your front opponent can't counter it and air player can't make gunships or such to deter it. You can also do drops with land units where there's no defence.

Statistics: Posted by Viba — 02 Jan 2017, 05:13

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-02T03:46:41+02:00

Farmsletje wrote:
The main reason why you build navy is because you can harass your opponents main base/eco when you get navy control (on most maps). Take the classic setons clutch for example. If you get navy control in one of the 2 ponds you can build cruisers/destroyers (and later on battleships/missile cruisers) to kill basically all the mexes/eco from your direct opponent. Even though it's movement is restricted, it's still more than worth it because you get to destroy your opponents base.

Parking a destroyer near your opponent's base and shelling it into oblivion is great, but it's also very expensive. Couldn't you do the same, except for less mass, with T3 mobile arty or T3 MML? Or possibly even building T2 stationary arty or TML near your opponent's base? T2 stationary arty doesn't look as good on paper as the mobile units but it looks still comparable to a destroyer in terms of cost and performance.

What is it that still makes navy the better choice on a map like Seton's Clutch? Why don't the "navy" players just build land units and jam those down the middle to overwhelm the team that spends its mass on ostensibly less efficient naval units? I get that this is not a conventional approach but I have yet to learn why. It looks good on paper.

Statistics: Posted by Xyx — 02 Jan 2017, 03:46

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-01T20:09:31+02:00

The main reason why you build navy is because you can harass your opponents main base/eco when you get navy control (on most maps). Take the classic setons clutch for example. If you get navy control in one of the 2 ponds you can build cruisers/destroyers (and later on battleships/missile cruisers) to kill basically all the mexes/eco from your direct opponent. Even though it's movement is restricted, it's still more than worth it because you get to destroy your opponents base.

The reason why hover can't win in a mass to mass ratio versus either land or navy is because it will be way too OP. The upside of high mobility comes with the cost of a lower dps/mass ratio. But the high mobility makes hover units quite good for raiding on water maps.

The reason why you build air is because your AA can't be everywhere at once, and if it is it means that you spend a lot of mass on AA, much more than they spent on their air. Also, not all AA will be usefull against all tech types of air. T2 flak for example is very good versus T1 and T2 air, but it's bad vs T3 strats. Same with T1 stationary AA. If you've got enough of them it defeats gunships in a mass to mass ratio, but the gunships can just dodge your AA and raid all the other parts of the map that isn't covered by your AA. This is the opposite of what you want in both teamgames and 1v1 games. In 1v1 games you want to control as many parts of the map as possible, which means you can't cover everything with AA, and in teamgames you could protect your base with lots of AA, but that would mean that you're basically ditching your allies since not all of them will have enough time to build AA themselves.

Statistics: Posted by Farmsletje — 01 Jan 2017, 20:09

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-01T17:24:32+02:00

Well air can be super effective too with gunship, but you need to micro them well, win air, and use a timing before all opponent base (and expansion) is covered by flak for example. But it is possible to go heavy air play. Land/naval play is safer in general.
hover unit are handy, when you need to spam tanks for land play, you can also use them to help fight naval, cross pound (regor, canis, loki). They are also nice to defend from naval bombardment but mass inefficient wise.
there is a navy unit called frigate that has super good hp and dps / mass ratio. This explain why it's hard for hover to win navy. But it's a close fight unit (low range) so they aren't going to do tons of damage to your opponent eco (depends of map, for example if there is lot of mexx in range of frigate then spaming them is really important). So it is use to gain navy control.
the unit that is going to be use to kill eco when you have navy control is the destro. (thanks to its big range). It is also gonna help winning navy control when number of frigate are going to get big.
to be more precise, destro are a good unit at killing eco on most map (when a good part of mexxes are in their range). But you need to gain map control first and also destro cost a lot. So you can kill opponent eco way faster (earlier stage in a game) and at a lower price with land unit. (again it depends of map, but if you have choice between land and naval, focus on land, but try to not lose naval control either)

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 01 Jan 2017, 17:24

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-01T17:14:03+02:00

Alright, so, as my little noob brain understands it currently...

1. Land units are more efficient than navy or air. So if you can go by land, send land units.
2. Navy is more efficient than hover or air. So if you have to cross water, send navy.

Is that correct?

Where do hover units fit in? Aren't they essentially land units with upside? If so, then why aren't they more efficient than navy?

And what about air? If you know your opponent is going to build air, why build air at all? Why not just build some AA? Bombers are expensive, mobile AA is cheap. And if you don't have any air units, then your enemy's interceptors are a waste of mass. What's the point of having air superiority if mobile AA or AA turrets still counter your bombers?

Statistics: Posted by Xyx — 01 Jan 2017, 17:14

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-01T16:34:59+02:00

if you have the choice land units are more efficient if thats what you mean. you CAN build navy in tiny ponds on some maps like canis and get like cruisers from it or BS or something but its not really worth it if you can get t3 mobile arty for 800 mass each for example, and cheaper hq, ect.
destroyers technically have a little more dps/mass and theyre less fragile but unless youre cybran they cant really go places, and even then theyre really slow and dont have aoe which makes them worse vs stacked shields and many units.

Statistics: Posted by Exotic_Retard — 01 Jan 2017, 16:34

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-01T16:34:37+02:00

yeah nah mate check out the cruisers ay

Statistics: Posted by biass — 01 Jan 2017, 16:34

Re: Why go naval?

2017-01-01T16:31:16+02:00

or you can build Cybran destro that can walk on land and use it as land arty

Statistics: Posted by ZeRen — 01 Jan 2017, 16:31