Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-06T22:58:10+02:00

Plasma_Wolf wrote:
No, I suppose you'd concentrate on the Bships first?

Yeah, and UEF Summits (and Neptunes) pwn all other BShips.

If the goal was simply to add some surface targets to soak up Summit DPS, then Athanahs would probably make more sense. The problem there is that Karotten would've needed a T3 land fac *and* he would've needed a ton of Pgens.

(..and his surface ships/shields would've been eaten by your battlecruisers, and you could've swamped them with your destroyers and frigates too)

This actually brings me to another balance issue. I think the Athanah's E drain of 300 is too high (250 would be more consistent with the Asylum and Parashield). I also think the Bulwark's E drain is too low.

The Bulwark's cost nerf in 3603 was +260 Mass, +2,600 Energy. I think that should be reverted to 3599 levels (1,400 M, 10,400 E), and then the equivalent cost (in T2 Pgens) should be added to its E Drain (+115 E drain for a total of 265 energy drain per second).

This shift brings the Bulwark more in line with the cost patterns for the other mobile shields, and it forces the UEF player to do a bit more infrastructure work before they start spamming Bulwarks. This is nice on island maps where Pgen space is scarce, and it gives players a nice alternative strategy when they're being overrun with Bulwark spam; they can target the base/pgens.

Statistics: Posted by Mr Pinguin — 06 Nov 2011, 22:58

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-06T22:39:25+02:00

No, I suppose you'd concentrate on the Bships first?

Statistics: Posted by Plasma_Wolf — 06 Nov 2011, 22:39

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-06T16:03:14+02:00

Karottenrambo wrote:
Funk, hngrfhlk!

How can one or two battleships be effective against your fleet? They have a smaller range, so I would had to move them to your fleet, while you could already shoot them. Its questionable if they even would had come through your shields, before they are overwhelmed by your ships.

Well, primarily you use b-ships to down the shields, then torp bombers/subs to target and kill the shields. Once the shield boats are sunk, the T3 subs can pretty much murder everything with impunity.

Also, something you forget it I cannot both ground fire my bships and attack your bships with them at the same time. Doesn't work that way XD

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 06 Nov 2011, 16:03

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-06T14:29:17+02:00

Funk, hngrfhlk!

How can one or two battleships be effective against your fleet? They have a smaller range, so I would had to move them to your fleet, while you could already shoot them. Its questionable if they even would had come through your shields, before they are overwhelmed by your ships.

EDIT: Just look at monkeys fleet at the end, he had battleships, battlecruisers, atlantis and shieldboats and you lost not a single unit. Of course your fleet was much stronger, than it was when you was fighting Fok and me, but I dont think it would had looked much different, if I had built some.

I dont want to say that sera t3 naval is up, the lategame uef navy is just very strong.
Against another faction it maybe had went completly different.

Statistics: Posted by Karottenrambo — 06 Nov 2011, 14:29

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-06T05:55:10+02:00

Oh yeah, Bulwarks definitely were pivotal and my strategy absolutely depended upon them. Also, I've always said Serpahim T1 and T2 navy is underpowered, so clearly the crappy subs/crappy destroyers aren't going to beat a strong UEF fleet. However, my point was that Karo completelydis regarded Battleships as a strategic option and that was the largest factor in his failure. If he had used them as well as other units, we could more definitively say whether Seraphim T3 navy is UP or not... it's generally considered the best just because T3 sub hunters are so good and making up for the crap T2 and T1 navy on larger maps.

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 06 Nov 2011, 05:55

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-06T00:06:44+02:00

FunkOff wrote:
My thoughts on the naval battle were that my forces were really well mixed and well microed. I kept the cruisers back so they could just use their AA missiles (I don't need air superiority to use torp bombers if I have cruisers to shoot down enemy fighters.) I kept the shields and destroyers in the middle.... UEF destroyers have such weak torpedoes they are useless against subs and are only good at helping to stop frigate bum-rushes.

Well.. I don't want to write another wall of text, but I went back and watched part of the replay again to dissect it a bit more..

I agree with you in that you generally micro'd better and you had a better mix of units overall, but most of your ideal mixing came later and it's not really a fair comparison because the Seraphim can't build that kind of mix anyway. Aside from your deadly use of ground fire and the fact that Karotten and Fok didn't coordinate as well (their attacks were out of sync and Karotten had trouble keeping his units under Fok's Bulwark bubbles), I think your main advantage came from the fact that UEF has a better mix of complementary ships available to them (and you out-eco'd Fok). You didn't do anything that special with your fleet positioning imo. At some points you did well with screening with coopers (later on), but earlier on, you had a force with almost no anti-sub power (mostly Valiants) facing off against a bunch of subs, and you still did fine through the brute force of higher HP and shields.

Because the UEF fleet comes with plenty of surface dominance *and* it can't be easily pushed back by Seraphim subs, you were able to sit off the shore of Fok in something like an aggressive turtle stance, grinding away at Fok's base and slowly increasing your advantage through a battle of attrition. I'm not saying that you didn't play this well. I think this is really how the UEF shines and I've seen you play this way in many other games (although you seem to be getting better about building more coopers and fewer Atlantis..)

The question is: Do you think you would've been able to pull that off if you were playing Seraphim?

You definitely played better, but you were also outmatched in a rough 2v1 after Sin died. When Fok and Karotten first pushed your base, it was a couple Valiants, a couple Bulwarks, and a T2 torp defense that first gave you the edge (they wasted a bunch of units grinding against your shields).

There's no way, for example, that you could've fielded a T3 land fac and 2-3 Athanah shields at that point in the game. (And Athanah's are inferior to Bulwark's anyway because of their slow speed and smaller bubble, which would've made it harder for you to give chase once Fok decided to flee).

Bships kill things at long range, everything else is just there to protect the bships are close range. Like, did you see the first battlecruiser I built? I let it get surrounded and it was killed very quickly. In tech 3 naval battles, maneuvers are more important than hard counters.

Yeah, your first BC went down, but you came out way ahead in that match up.

Karotten did surround and sink your BC (and a cooper, frig, and 1 bulwark), but he had support from Fok's 3 destroyers and Karotten had to suicide a bunch of units to do it. (2 Destroyers, 9 frigates, 10 T1 subs, plus Fok lost a cruiser and a Bulwark).

So I'm not sure if this makes your point. Subs should be a great counter vs Neptunes (and Karotten probably could've submerged his destroyers if he wanted to save them), but even with the 'blunder' of leaving your Neptune a bit behind and outside your bubble, you still managed to destroy more Mass than you lost in that battle.

Statistics: Posted by Mr Pinguin — 06 Nov 2011, 00:06

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-05T18:36:27+02:00

My thoughts on the naval battle were that my forces were really well mixed and well microed. I kept the cruisers back so they could just use their AA missiles (I don't need air superiority to use torp bombers if I have cruisers to shoot down enemy fighters.) I kept the shields and destroyers in the middle.... UEF destroyers have such weak torpedoes they are useless against subs and are only good at helping to stop frigate bum-rushes. The battleships and coopers were out front because the battleships can take a lot of punishment and the coopers are weak, but only work at close range. The Atlantis's I built... were arguably irrelevant to the whole battle. They only did minor damage to enemy subs that got close... and helped me refuel my planes. The majority of damage was done by the bships.

Bships kill things at long range, everything else is just there to protect the bships are close range. Like, did you see the first battlecruiser I built? I let it get surrounded and it was killed very quickly. In tech 3 naval battles, maneuvers are more important than hard counters.

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 05 Nov 2011, 18:36

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-05T12:01:35+02:00

Karottenrambo wrote:
And then he just scouts the fleet and force fires the shields.
You also give up some of the t3 subs agility, when you combine them with t3 shields.

I dont think that this "build some oversea-units, to support t3 subs" work in general. Either you only build undersea units to be only attackable by torpedos, or you build an usual fleet with battleships/t3 hover shields/destroyers/frigates which would undoubted be worse than their UEF counterpart.

Hello.
I just registered for these forums so that I could reply and say that I agree with Karottenrambo.
Sera navy is gimpy in every area except for their T3 subhunter, and their T3 subhunter is a few things:
1) It's a T3 unit.
(This requires teching past the strength of everyone else's T2 navy. You all know this of course, but people gloss over this distinction so quickly. If you add in the fact that an early Cybran/Aeon/UEF T2 naval advantage can lead to surface dominance and raiding of mexes or other key targets, it's a pretty big problem for Sera players to be forced to wait a couple extra mins and thousands of mass for T3. This seems like a good place to mention the Sera's uniquely weak T2 torp defense, which certainly isn't helping them sea-turtle through T2.)

2) It's a ranged kiting unit that has to stay submerged and operate (mostly) alone (i.e., without surface ships).
(It can wear enemy fleets down from a distance, but it can't stand-up to fight T2 subhunters, Coopers, and Destroyers head on, especially not when the other T2 fleets get the support of stealth or shields. And its AA is a neat bonus, but even a pack of well micro'd surfaced Yathsous are still easily overwhelmed by a small investment in torp bombers.)

This is important because the Yathsou can't hold ground which makes it easier for surface fleets to pull double-duty, pushing Yathsous back towards a harbor/shore and raiding valuable surface targets at the same time. It doesn't help that the Sera have the gimpy torp defense and immobile sonar, which further increases their exposure and denies them an easy safe haven to retreat into. Even worse though, the Yathsou cannot hold the line as an effective screen for surface ships, which means that Yathsous are much harder to support with slower shields and cruisers. All of the other navies can build a nice mixed fleet, with cruisers adding excellent AA and their superior radar/sonar/water vision. The UEF is especially strong here because of the Bulwark's huge bubble (easing shield stacking) and its speed, which drastically simplifies the micro needed to keep a fleet together and covered vs fiddling with Asylums or Athanahs.

There's really just no comparing the meager Sera naval options with UEF or Cybran.

Anyway, the replay was fun, thanks for posting it. ...And I'm not saying Karotten played a perfect game or that Funk doesn't deserve credit for rallying, but...

In the middle of the game when Funk's fleet first started facing off against Karotten and Fok at the bottom, the remarkable thing to me was that Funk's fleet could hold on just fine against the early Sera sub pack, despite the fact that he only had a mix of Battlecruisers, BShips, frigates, and bulwarks (maybe a Valiant or two?). The point being: If he'd spammed Coopers early he actually could've chased the Yathsous down with coopers+bulwarks, but the bulwark spam plus the superior HP and torp defense was enough that he was able to mostly ignore Karotten's subs and focus on dueling with Fok's BCs and shelling his base. (Funk was throwing small numbers of torp bombers at the subs, but Karotten and Fok had air superiority so that didn't count for much).

Really, what that video showed was the same problem that immediately appeared with 3603 T3 naval balance. UEF has a ridiculous pairing with the Neptune (pwns destroyers and matches Bships), the Summit (easily the best Bship with superior range and HP), and the dirt cheap Atlantis.

One final thought: About mid-game, X4127 made some comments in the chat about how surprisingly weak Atlantises were vs Yathsous, saying that they could lose to "just 5."

No offense, but I laughed. 5 Yathsous cost 15k Mass! A friggin' Atlantis costs 12k and it's a fancy carrier with uber long range and intel. The real crime is that a UEF Summit (9k Mass) can one-shot 2-4 submerged Yathsous at once using ground fire. With solid ground fire micro (which Funk did quite well), a 51k hitpoint Summit can crush much more than its cost in 4.5k hitpoint T3 subhunters. I think most people would expect subhunters to be a hard counter vs Bships (I do), so that's a bit crazy.

(Tempests are a sham too, but I don't want to get carried away here)

Statistics: Posted by Mr Pinguin — 05 Nov 2011, 12:01

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-03T18:26:05+02:00

And then he just scouts the fleet and force fires the shields.
You also give up some of the t3 subs agility, when you combine them with t3 shields.

I dont think that this "build some oversea-units, to support t3 subs" work in general. Either you only build undersea units to be only attackable by torpedos, or you build an usual fleet with battleships/t3 hover shields/destroyers/frigates which would undoubted be worse than their UEF counterpart.

Statistics: Posted by Karottenrambo — 03 Nov 2011, 18:26

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-03T17:50:48+02:00

What I mean is that for T3 shields to be efficient, you need to distract fire from the shields with cheaper units like t1 arties. If you have no shields, it's of course useless to build t1 arties that are outranged. I wasn't speaking about your specific situation in the game.

As you said, the shields will be the only targets available and be pretty much done for as soon as they are on radar. T1 arties are useless against such an advanced fleet but allow the shields to last much longer because they divert fire. All dots look the same on the radar; it's better to have 15 (shields + arties) than just 3-4 (shields only).

Statistics: Posted by pip — 03 Nov 2011, 17:50

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-03T17:44:32+02:00

pip wrote:
Karottenrambo wrote:I dont think that using t3 shields with t3 subs will help much, as all primary weapons of every ship will target them(just because there is no other target).

Well, that's why you need to spam T1 arties and frigates besides your shields, which adds to the cost of the shields but allows them to be truly efficient.

wat

T1 arties and frigates vs destroyers & battlecruisers? You can not be serious.

Imo we lost the sea battle because we attacked funk to early and to intense with our damaged fleet, we just gave him mass for free.
I also used the crappy sera destroyer to long, I should have teched to t3 subs much earlier.

Statistics: Posted by Karottenrambo — 03 Nov 2011, 17:44

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-03T17:03:00+02:00

Karottenrambo wrote:
Zock wrote:use sera mobile shields with the subs and they rape, you will also need a t3 land fac buts thats a fair investment for the strenght you get.

I dont think that using t3 shields with t3 subs will help much, as all primary weapons of every ship will target them(just because there is no other target).

Well, that's why you need to spam T1 arties and frigates besides your shields, which adds to the cost of the shields but allows them to be truly efficient.

Statistics: Posted by pip — 03 Nov 2011, 17:03

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-03T16:59:26+02:00

FunkOff wrote:
I was under the impression karo mostly lost because he used only subs.... no battleships and no torp bombers (carriers are useless, sadly)

But honestly, what else could he build? Torp bombers would be useless against multiple shield boats protecting just one or two cruisers and torpedo boats eating torpedoes from the bombers anyway.
Battleships? Well, that was indeed needed but not enough because of the multilayer shield boats. Honestly, Zock is right, T3 shields are mandatory to give T3 subhunters and Battelships something to push the opponent. But the cost to get them is very high, and while you try to get them, you fall behind in the sea battle.
It's true he didn't build enough frigates, but again, thanks to shield boats, UEF frigates and subs will just eat Seraphim frigates.

Also, Karotten, you forgot that Sera battleships can build nukes. You would have saved quite some mass because a battleship is also useful in the naval warfare.

Statistics: Posted by pip — 03 Nov 2011, 16:59

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-03T16:48:07+02:00

I was under the impression karo mostly lost because he used only subs.... no battleships and no torp bombers (carriers are useless, sadly)

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 03 Nov 2011, 16:48

Re: Epic Naval Battle

2011-11-03T16:33:36+02:00

Zock wrote:
use sera mobile shields with the subs and they rape, you will also need a t3 land fac buts thats a fair investment for the strenght you get.

I dont think that using t3 shields with t3 subs will help much, as all primary weapons of every ship will target them(just because there is no other target).

Statistics: Posted by Karottenrambo — 03 Nov 2011, 16:33