Forged Alliance Forever

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-20T18:13:20+02:00

CPTANT wrote:
So why aren't subs a counter to frigates?

Sure they take a while to chew through a frigate, but the frigate literally can't return fire.

You mentioned the main problem, but not the only one. Here's why subs are bad against frigates:
1- Low DPS against high health. For example, the Aeon sub has 38 DPS and costs 360 mass. So it takes about 50 seconds to kill a Cybran frigate. This is a long tiem.
2- T1 subs are more expensive than frigates, despite the lower DPS (~38 against ~65) and more limited options (no radar, no AA, etc)
3- T1 subs are annihilated by torpedo bombers, destroyed in a single pass.

#3 is really the biggest problem. Given that upgrading an air factory costs about 900 mass (less than 3 subs) and a single torpedo bomber costs 270 mass (less than 1 sub), if you spam T1 subs against an opponent, you only can reasonably make 4 or 5 before it makes sense for your opponent to jump to torpedo bombers and just obliterate your entire sub fleet. Every 2 subs you build that get destroyed by a torp bomber is essentially the cost of a T2 mex wasted on nothing.

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 20 Aug 2020, 18:13

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-20T17:01:00+02:00

So why aren't subs a counter to frigates?

Sure they take a while to chew through a frigate, but the frigate literally can't return fire.

Statistics: Posted by CPTANT — 20 Aug 2020, 17:01

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-09T22:05:48+02:00

FtXCommando wrote:
the deep gameplay of torp launcher creep

That deny submarines as PD deny tanks.

And lose to frigates and destroyers as PD lose on artilery.

Statistics: Posted by Ithilis_Quo — 09 Aug 2020, 22:05

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-09T07:45:03+02:00

the deep gameplay of torp launcher creep

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 09 Aug 2020, 07:45

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-09T02:24:13+02:00

When in comes to naval warfare and how complex and complicate it is. Recomend fast look on equilibrium water balance. Its mabye not ideal, but there is far more dynanic as frigate spam and ussles submarines. There is some deep in it and multiple roles of vesels.

Statistics: Posted by Ithilis_Quo — 09 Aug 2020, 02:24

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-08T22:59:04+02:00

With respect Keyser, I think you're wrong. Both in your predicted snowball direction if you make these changes, and in yours and the balance team's assessment of how big a problem this is, how high priority it needs to be. We finally have the land game largely in a place where tech advancement happens nicely, nothing is overwhelming, and there's plenty of variety. Air and Navy are both still absolutely screwed up.

When I say "Dynamic", what I mean is "Not solved". On land, unpredictable things can happen and strategy is not set at the start of the game. There's no single path through the game on land without interruption. The same is untrue for both Air and Navy - They've been solved, and they've been solved because they have not fundamentally changed since the very... primitive balance given to us by GPG.

GPG's land balance was solved inside about 6 months of release: T1 spam won, UEF Percival won the lategame, and most units aren't worth building. We have now thoroughly changed this, and the game is now more dynamic.

In my opinion, both of them need completely tearing down and rebuilding from the ground up for greater dynamism. The brick wall of denial I encountered here in FAF is one reason I just gave up and decided if this is going to be solved, it will not be by FAF, it will be by a fan of the game making an entirely new game.

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 08 Aug 2020, 22:59

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-08T01:15:53+02:00

IceDreamer wrote:
Keyser, come now. There's a great deal of truth behind this thread. Frigates are OP, they have been for years, and the Cybran one is the worst offender. They are aburdly imbalanced in their HP/mass and flexibility. Absurdly. Their strength throws off the entire Naval game, and for a decade strategies have adapted around it to a fairly stable point. Stable != good. Stable != can't be better.

When the best statement to defend the fact that they beat their T2 "upgrade" unit is "But pathfinding eventually fails" or "But buildpower eventually evens out", we have a problem! Yes, I know those two statements are probably true for the various main battle tank matchups, but the fact is that in that case it takes significantly less time and resources, both absolutely and relatively speaking, to reach the critical shift point.

Frigates need a nerf, and a substantial one. I would suggest hitting their HP, hard, right in the face, and seeing what happens to the meta. My suspicion is that both T1 subs and T2 destroyers would see substantially more use. I also suspect that destroyer spam would become overly dominating, so would recommend this be accompanied by a nerf to destroyer torpedo DPS on all but UEF. You should end up with a far more dynamic fight in the water.

This is another discussion. I'm just telling him how to counter frigate spam, and rectifying the statement saying that frigate are the counter to destro.
The balance frigate-destro isn't bad. There is a lack of place for T1 subs, although it does find its use on water mexx map.

if you start nerfing hp and torpedo on vessel you gonna end up with very good subs (not taking into account the interaction with hover).
Now you only get some frig to raid, you spam subs to get navy control, and get destro for shore bombardment. If you start falling behind on subs count, it's snowball. There is no way to micro to keep yourself in the game.
if you hope to balance that around torpedo bomber sniping subs, then you get a very unstable (you call that dynamic ?) with subs getting rape in 2 sec if you didn't intercept the torpedo bomber in time. Ofc you could as well nerf the torpedo bomber (and maybe the cruiser ?). Maybe that way you can get to a stable gameplay, but i'm not even sure. You have to consider the impact of shield to protect subs, the role and strength of submersible vessel, hover (and especially hover flak), T3 subs, amphibious unit (ACU, nano SCU), torpedo defense (and harms) etc ...
I already brought that up in balance team, but we have more important task to focus on, and leaving subs to their niche job isn't that bad.

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 08 Aug 2020, 01:15

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-08T00:40:33+02:00

IceDreamer wrote:
Frigates need a nerf, and a substantial one. I would suggest hitting their HP, hard, right in the face, and seeing what happens to the meta. My suspicion is that both T1 subs and T2 destroyers would see substantially more use. I also suspect that destroyer spam would become overly dominating, so would recommend this be accompanied by a nerf to destroyer torpedo DPS on all but UEF. You should end up with a far more dynamic fight in the water.

I agree with this. Their huge HP never made much sense to me. Subs take ages to kill a single frigate, which... What the hell are subs for if not to kill surface ships? They exist only to counter other subs?

Statistics: Posted by RedX — 08 Aug 2020, 00:40

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-08T00:10:10+02:00

Destroyers lose to half their mass in frigates unless they are micro'd perfectly. That isn't taking into account that you had to spend a lot of time and mass to get your T2 HQ. The problem with nerfing frigs in the current balance is that hover would be OP. The balance team just buffed hover units significantly the last patch. I do think that navy balance is totally broken and needs to be reworked completely.

Statistics: Posted by ThomasHiatt — 08 Aug 2020, 00:10

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-07T23:12:21+02:00

Keyser, come now. There's a great deal of truth behind this thread. Frigates are OP, they have been for years, and the Cybran one is the worst offender. They are aburdly imbalanced in their HP/mass and flexibility. Absurdly. Their strength throws off the entire Naval game, and for a decade strategies have adapted around it to a fairly stable point. Stable != good. Stable != can't be better.

When the best statement to defend the fact that they beat their T2 "upgrade" unit is "But pathfinding eventually fails" or "But buildpower eventually evens out", we have a problem! Yes, I know those two statements are probably true for the various main battle tank matchups, but the fact is that in that case it takes significantly less time and resources, both absolutely and relatively speaking, to reach the critical shift point.

Frigates need a nerf, and a substantial one. I would suggest hitting their HP, hard, right in the face, and seeing what happens to the meta. My suspicion is that both T1 subs and T2 destroyers would see substantially more use. I also suspect that destroyer spam would become overly dominating, so would recommend this be accompanied by a nerf to destroyer torpedo DPS on all but UEF. You should end up with a far more dynamic fight in the water.

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 07 Aug 2020, 23:12

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-07T19:58:07+02:00

FunkOff wrote:
Destroyers are countered by frigate spam, not the other way around. Remember, one destroyer costs the same as 9 frigates and only has the HP of 4 and the firepower of 2. Aeon destroyer can't shoot backwards, either so it has to stop and turn to shoot.

mostly false, frigate spam can counter the destroyer when there is low number of destro/frigates on the field. When you reach critical amount of unit, pathfinding start playing against the frigates that need to get in range (the same thing happen on land, but T2 tank usually don't have range advantage vs T1 tanks).
Granted the aeon can't shoot right in the back, it does a way better job at kitting than the cybran destro for example. If you have several frig chasing down an aeon destro, they will usually be spread out enough to be in range of the turret. On top of this you can add the torpedo dps that will shoot backward without issue.

Statistics: Posted by keyser — 07 Aug 2020, 19:58

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-07T17:48:25+02:00

Destroyers are countered by frigate spam, not the other way around. Remember, one destroyer costs the same as 9 frigates and only has the HP of 4 and the firepower of 2. Aeon destroyer can't shoot backwards, either so it has to stop and turn to shoot.

Statistics: Posted by FunkOff — 07 Aug 2020, 17:48

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-06T19:41:01+02:00

I would add that technically destroyers can counter frigates with good micro and with sufficient space to maneuver. If you keep out of range of the frigates you deal free damage, so it is just necessary to kite away to keep the enemy frigates out of range. Frigates are faster, but if they are killed fast enough they might not get in range of the destros (just like a critical mass of kiting auroras keeps other t1 tanks from ever getting in range, even though they are faster), although I think this is difficult to achieve in practice, but still helps the destroyers trade pretty efficiently overall, especially if you have some of your own frigates to tank dps from any enemy frigs that get in range and block them from actually getting in range of the destros. It kind of depends on the numbers and micro.

RE QuestionMarkNoob.
Yes, torp bombers are definitely efficient, except if you send in a small number of torps vs a large number of frigates. If someone streams in one or two torps vs a cluster of 30 frigates, the frigates will trade very efficiently and people get the stupid idea "torp bombers bad vs frigs." This obviously goes for basically every kind of engagement, that the more of a numerical advantage you have the better the engagement will go for you.

So to the noobs out there that take the simplistic conclusion "torps counter frigs" and then get confused when it doesn't seem to work for them in game, don't forget that numbers still matter. E.g. anti air literally is made to efficiently counter air units, but a sufficiently large group of gunships can still trade efficiently vs them.
So, just make sure you have a large enough group of torps. I'm not sure the break even point, but I think generally if you send about as many torps as they have frigs, you'll do very well.

Statistics: Posted by Steel_Panther — 06 Aug 2020, 19:41

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-06T16:50:42+02:00

FunkOff wrote:
Torpedo bombers also suck against Cybran frigates, as they cost more than usually a frigate can 1v1 them

No idea how you come to this conclusion, a torpedo bomber is going to kill a Cybran frigate with almost 3/4 of its health left. One torp bomber can even kill two frigates pretty easily with about 200hp left and even gets a vet after both are dead.

Statistics: Posted by ____ — 06 Aug 2020, 16:48

Re: How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

2020-08-06T16:13:40+02:00

You build your own frigates. Frigates are the most overpowered unit in the game. Cybran frigates are better than other frigates, but frigates or torpedo bombers are still the best counter to frigates.

Statistics: Posted by ThomasHiatt — 06 Aug 2020, 16:13