Why go naval?

[Xyx]

Bit of a noob question, perhaps, but... why should you build naval units at all? Why would you bother trying to rule the sea when all the really important stuff (mass points, your enemy's base) is on land? Why make units that can only fight on half the map? (I'm not talking about Salems here, obviously, since they break the rules.) Instead, you could be investing your mass in hover units or air units that can go everywhere. It doesn't even make much sense from a noob economy perspective because a T2 destroyer costs about as much as a T3 strat bomber, but the destroyer is restricted to the water whereas the bomber can zip across the map and hit anything anywhere.

Can someone shed some light on this? People obviously build navy all the time, and I assume for good reason. I just can't make sense of it. Why shouldn't I just completely ignore the water and instead focus on land and air? Are shore bombardments such good value that they cannot be ignored?

[Exotic_Retard]

navy beats hover if microed correctly, and navy can bombard your base from the sea until theres nothing left and you cant really stop it, just hold it off. Strats are great for everything if the enemy doesnt have enough sams + shields and you won air, but later in the game their costs stack up for a snipe with a good chance of failure anyway, while even a small navy attacking your base is already useful since you need to invest in defenses against it, and it will only get worse.

so if you go navy you can kill everything in a certain distance from the water, but its expensive as well. on some maps with little water it doesnt make too much sense but on others its necessary if only to prevent your base from being bombarded. you can get away without navy and kill everything with torps on some maps for some time but thats only if you win air, if you dont you are screwed, while navy is a bit more consistent than that.

well or something along those lines anyway, hope this helps

[Xyx]

It's starting to make sense. Thanks!

So how does navy compare to mobile arty or MML on maps where there is water but all the land is still connected?

[Lieutenant Lich]

So how does navy compare to mobile arty or MML on maps where there is water but all the land is still connected?

What do you mean?

[ZeRen]

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

[biass]

yeah nah mate check out the cruisers ay

[Exotic_Retard]

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.

[Xyx]

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?

[keyser]

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)

[Farmsletje]

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.