A Few questions Cybran ACU & Janus, & more

[BrotherTerran]

There are few difference in opinion on a few units and also a strategy I see seems very effective.

1- The Cybran ACU torpedo upgrade is cheap and reins supreme on short water maps like "Arches" and others. It seems a very effective way to deny navy to opponents. Around T2 torpedo bombers might come into say otherwise if you don't have cruisers and frigates already covering your ACU. Is there a solid defense against this? Build lots of torpedo launchers? What have you done that works? Also, does the Cybran ACU stealth work against sonar?

2- Many articles on Wiki and others informed me the UEF fighter/bomer Janus is an awesome bang for your buck. It seems balanced to me am I just missing something obvious here? Was it unbalanced, but now ok?

Thanks for your input

[theeggroll]

Janus miss 99% of the time and im pretty sure torp acu isnt cheap

[ZLO_RD]

cybran torpedo acu is not expencive if you have extra t2 power (witch usually you never have on small naval maps)
but it can be nece to send your com to battle right away just for reclaiming , and then transition to stealth and torps, it will help with DPS and survivability, so you can continue reclaiming and rebuild front naval factories that also serve reclaiming purposes

but need to be said that torpedo ACU alone is very weak against Aeon, Cybran and maybe seraphim destroyers, especially when there are more than 3 of them
torpedo defence of cybran and aeon can efficienty reduce DPS of cybran com torps..

there is a possibily for torp bomber snipe as well but spotting cybran stealth com underwater is not easy, only ship can do such thing, torpedo bombers and hover tanks can't, even if acu is in vision range, they will not see it

torp upgraide can be very good when you need to get back into navy after loosing it to t1 navy, cause it is very effective against t1 navy

Janus bombers are mostly reported as very bad unit, but imho they are OK, just need to remember that it has similar problem as t1 bomber, low splash, ineffective against groups of moveing targets
But they still do job of killing t2 power or TMD
they have great antiair, and can even be usefull against strat bombers (barely, and with proper micro), but if you look at their cost... you will realise that is almost never worth it to make them just because of their antiar capabilities

[BrotherTerran]

Thanks the Cybran upgrade is 1500 mass 37500 energy which breakdown to -10 mass -250 energy..really not that much. I definitely agree in T2 it is not nearly as good, but for denying navy on a T1 level seems almost unstoppable. I made a torpedo launcher trap, but if they are wiser I'll guess having T2 torpedo bombers will be workable solutions. If you think of anything else let me know. The range and damage on it is just mean.

That sounds more accurate on the Janus. I thought the splash was huge and great for swarms, but agree as anti air better to get T1 interceptors or if your econ can manage ASFs. You really do pay extra for having the flexibility. Is the Cybran or Seraphim fighter/bomber any better you think?

[Flamingo]

The torpedo upgrade is a powerful investment on paper, but in practice using your ACU for naval engagements is a very risky proposal. If you're trying to build static torpedo defenses to "catch" your opponent then I can see why it might be giving you trouble, though. If you're in the water at all, the only thing you need to do is overwhelm the ACU with anything mobile that can fire torpedoes. It's just like if you catch an ACU on land by itself - the gun upgrade is stronger than T2 units, but a swarm of T1 units can easily saturate the ACU's reload intervals.

The reason why navy is so risky is because the battles will turn on your ACU much easier. Two Salems have 12,000 HP but can get killed pretty rapidly anyway in a naval engagement. That's more health than an ACU without engineering upgrades. Torpedo bombers will also snipe a commander as easily as they snipe destroyers - stealth prevents the ACU from being spotted without sonar, but planes will never lose track of a target if they're told to fire on something, so they only need a glimpse of you.

Navy is a larger scale. The ACU is worth a T2 boat and a half. Generally when I try to use my ACU for active naval combat he just gets blown up - he's also significantly slower than any boat, so he can't maneuver or retreat if you misjudge the situation.

[ZLO_RD]

I thought the splash was huge and great for swarms, but agree as anti air better to get T1 interceptors or if your econ can manage ASFs. You really do pay extra for having the flexibility. Is the Cybran or Seraphim fighter/bomber any better you think?

There are only Janus, sera t2 bomber, and Corsair

Janus trows bunch of bombs each of them has small splash, witch means that small target may not receave full damage cause some of bombs may ladn to far away, also they are napalm bombs, witch means they have "damage over time" effect, basicly they burn stuff for little time in little zone where you trow bomb, so in case of moveing target, it may leave that burning zone before full damage was taken
Janus is capable of dealing 1200 damage max, but it rarely does so
sera t2 bomber is little bit more reliable (if it will actually drop it bomb...) it has one big bomb that just deals 1200 damage to everything in not very big area...
you can also dodge those bomber with your ACU pretty easy, but they are still more dangerous than UEF onces, they are harder to dodge and if you don't dodge you usually reseave full damage of bomb, while Janus almost never can actually deal full damage
Antiair capabilities of sera t2 bomber are identical to UEF t2 bomber

Cybran Corsair is one of the most faimous units in game, instead of bombs they use missiles, witch are impossible to fully dodge, but some of missiles most likely will not hit target even if target is as big as t2 power generator
they also deal 1200 damage, but to smaller targets alot of missiles can miss or target can dodge most of them

even tho cybran bomber usually deals least amount of damage it is far more reliable to shoot and deal at least some damage than other t2 bombers
also missiles start shootig from greater range compared to t2 bombers of sera and uef, witch makes very hard to stop corsair from shooting at 1rst pass.
Corsair has much weaker antiair DPS, and also uses missiles for that, witch adds missile travel time, wtich makes damage being done slower.

some times corsair can decide to shoot himself and waste whole load of missiles on stuff that you was not targetting and also will do it while tryes to turn away and miss everything, but it happens rarely

also corsair is best against moveing targets, with makes it possible to elliminate all mobile antiair of enemy army from single pass and then just start kiling it with air, and this is another reason why people think that corsair is "OP"

[BrotherTerran]

thank you that was a very thorough reply. Ok now just another newb question, why oh why do people surround the mass extractors with P1 generator as opposed to mass extractors. I see this a lot on veteran games. Yes you aren't using as much power, but power usually is the thing you shouldn't almost ever run out of. Mass usually in the linchpin/bottleneck in the production of your army/base. You don't upgrade any faster with P1 gens tell me Obi Wan what am I missing here?

[Sovietpride]

thank you that was a very thorough reply. Ok now just another newb question, why oh why do people surround the mass extractors with P1 generator as opposed to mass extractors. I see this a lot on veteran games. Yes you aren't using as much power, but power usually is the thing you shouldn't almost ever run out of. Mass usually in the linchpin/bottleneck in the production of your army/base. You don't upgrade any faster with P1 gens tell me Obi Wan what am I missing here?

It reduces the power cost of said mex upgrade.
Early game when energy is tight, it can make the difference between balance and begging team mates for non-existent E.

[Turkey]

The other thing is by the time you get around to capping them, you'll have t2 power and won't need the t1 pgens any more.

[gnatinator]

There are tradeoffs: It's quite crippling as Cybran to have both Tech 2 (your HP boost) and the gun on the same arm.

So even though the torp upgrade is a nice early/mid game on Naval maps, in return you get a shitty early/mid game on Land maps.

..
And yeah as mentioned above: on paper the Janus is awesome but the DPS is spread over a wide area so not very effective in a typical game.