-_V_- wrote:Emptyless wrote:Is Sera a good navy candidate and if so what default early unit composition would you recommend?
Depends on the balance of the day really.
As for today, it's good overall, but against a player who's very good at eco and bunkering, you might face some issues.
- subs is the weakest still, the anti torp doesn't make up for its low HP
- frigates, well nothing special
-destroyers ROCKS. It's currently the best one by a margin for me. It bashes the other destro with at least 50% HP left if you do it properly. When I mean do it properly, I imply decent micro, and not going at it straight up while not being submerged. IF you would do that, you'g lose some HP already even before you would shoot a missile. Remember aeon and cybran destro range is 80, sera and ref, 60.
EPIC bs weakness of the sera destro is that they almost all the time can't hit the t1 torp launchers with their beams...
That being said, if you 're in the enemy base and he tries to defend with t1 torp launchers, I guess you won the navy battle already, so not so much of a biggie.
- cruisers are just the best against t2 air, crazy crazy good, for the TML I'm not sure if they are better or not than UEF. I can't really make the difference, except the sera never stop shooting.
Keep in mind, against t3 air, they're not really good, aeon cruisers are better at this, much better. So don't expect to shoot down easily t3 torps with those. But if one air fight happens above sera cruisers, then they can be deadly, try a air fight above mobile flakes, you'll understand what I mean
- t3 subs are on the paper great, but in game now, i don't think they rock so much anymore.
- bs, well nuke is great, but 8 min to build the nuke last time i checked
. Still it can really be a game changer. A mobile nuke that can deplete several nuke def missiles for ONE nuke missile is a good deal overall
.
The only real problem I face when I play sera navy occurs when I have to face someone who plays heavily shielded navy, and just turtle. It can be seriously very hard to break. Mass wise, the unshielded sera navy is better, on paper. But because of the build time of the frigates (for them to make up for shields), it can be really painful to get rid of all those enemies shields.
Bottom line it also relies on your usual, or more on your chosen game style for one particular game, that will decide which faction is the best naval one for you.
If you wanna play aggressive and harass your opponent or for instance help a weak mid player (thinking of seton), then cybran is the deal because of the range of the destros. Still be careful with the rush to the base: 5 frig rape one destro, and the cybran destro doesn't shoot backward and is too slow to escape frigs. I personally LOVE when my opponent takes cybran and tries to naval rush me
. Except for the fuckin time where Zock got me with this (TA loves to rub that in my face lol) this thing didn't work on me for ages. And I don't see this working anymore on any good player either. It could also be because now it's even a bigger risk than it used to be because now you got double penalty : you fucked up your eco to rush, you failed, but on top of that you gave sweet free mass to reclaim to your opponent.
If you wanna turtle and eco whore, you might wanna chose UEF or AEON. although I would say UEf would be better cause it's for lazy asses who move centimeter per centimeter and let the others die while people eco.Boring gameplay but it works if you care only about your mass income and plan to win only late game or even very late game. Basically you sit tight 'till you can get a nice eco and those BC + BC running, then you just move ahead centimeter by centimeter, get the mass back, 'till you win.
Aeon requires more micro to stack all those mini shields properly, but it's good enough for eco whores, especially considering that the ACU has double RAS. The tempest is awesome if can avoid it to get stuck. Considering the cost, the atlantis is a joke compared to the tempest.
Sera is the one that seems to be more balanced aggressively and eco whoring wise. Double RAS, you can still be aggressive against your naval opponent (forget about killing land troops), you can get cheap flaks and if really needed, you can get strong shields in the worst cases scenario.