Atlantis rebalance

[Evan_]

As it stands, I believe the Atlantis is a very underpowered unit. It's health is too low for it to last long, while it's torpedoes I find to very little damage in the short time it lives, even with it's longer range. The SAM launchers on it's back are a nice touch, however I find they get little use in practice since most players will only have air engage navy if they have navy engage navy, where the Atlantis will either stay submerged or hang around at the back. The Atlantis has excellent range for it's torpedoes, but it's not like it can kite like destroyers and battlecruisers, meaning a bunch of sub hunters or torp bombers can sneak up and kill it. The ability to construct air 3X fast as an air factory sounds nice, until you realize that 3 T3 air factories are way cheaper and can take advantage of adjacency. It isn't like the Fatboy where you may be at a forward position and need engineers to reclaim or something, because Naval forces need to be constantly mobile, and air doesn't take long to get to the front.

The lack of default regeneration limits the longevity of the Atlantis, . It won't be getting many kills to boost it's health either. In addition to this, even while submerged, groundfire from other naval units and alot of land and air, will still do full damage. Because of this, it can easily die even to units it theoretically counters, like opposing battleships. It does have a range advantage, but that does not allow it to escape damage from opposing navies because of groundfire. Lets take a brief look at the other "Naval experimental."


The Tempest, which costs twice as much as the Atlantis, can take on 2 of them at the same time with just it's torpedoes and walk away with a good amount of health and maybe a veterancy to boot. However, if you take the time to babysit your tempest, you can groundfire Atlantis on it's approach from far away, and it's torpedo defense can negate a lot of damage. Because of this, a well microed tempest can take on THREE Atlantis and win easily. Heck you can even throw in a bulwark or two, it won't make a difference. The Megalith can come in and force Atlantis back, without taking much punishment. Strategic bombers, trebuchets, battleships, soul rippers, anything using groundfire with decent AOE. Even the humble Klink Hammer can lay down the hurt on a submerged Atlantis. I've tried using the Atlantis, and it's really frustrating when I find that it can't do any of it's roles well, not against decent players. Really, I find little reason to ever build an Atlantis at all, except perhaps in rare cases on huge maps when I already have a navy advantage.

In my opinion the Atlantis should be buffed, or at the very least they should decrease the groundfire damage when under water (and if that's already done, then do it a bit more).

[Lieutenant Lich]

Atlantis' weaknesses are different. It is an excellent meat shield, its torpedoes are pretty powerful, SAMs can take out lone torp bombers. Its weakness is the easiness of being ground-fired. I had a Tempest kill Atlantis just because it could ground fire it. This is the only big weakness of Atlantis.

By the way, they should never travel alone (torps can lure them to surface and strats will hit them), only with escort.

P.S.: Tempest has torpedo defense, maybe Atlantis should as well?

[Exotic_Retard]

*balance terrorists arrive in their balance-mobile*
fixed in equilibrium
http://equilibrium.x10host.com/changelog/#t3navy
*drive off spreading propaganda leaflets everywhere*

[Hawkei]

In truth, the torpedo's and SAM are little more than self defence. The primary purpose of this units is for use as an aircraft carrier. Which means keeping our distance and making aircraft to support the fleet. The advantage of the Atlantis is that it is able to do this while submerged and concealed from radar. In it's own way it is a kind of super-weapon. As an Atlantis loaded with Broadswords, submerged and then brought close to the enemy target can make for an awesome surprise attack.

Does this however justify the cost of the unit, or it's status as a T4? Well not really. That capability is just not very useful in real games. If it had a little bit more to it, the unit could be better.

I have made previous suggestions on what could make the unit better.

Spoiler: show

1. Add dual riot cannon weapons (with precisely the same capabilities as Fatboy. Allowing the unit to shoot at surface targets when surfaced.
2. Increase movement speed when submerged.

[PhilipJFry]

Is it just me or does anyone else have to think of the torrent thread when seeing what is written here?

If you build an Atlantis to fight Tempests you might as well make cruiser to kill subs.

Things you want to have an Atlantis for:

Making Air units
Outranging other submerged units
Killing Air units (only when you have Bulwarks to cover you of course)

edit:
Atlantis: 80r 0reg 252sonar, water-vision 100, storage 150units 2.8sp → 75r 15HP/s reg 250sonar 55water-vision 50air-storag 3.5sp

reload time 2s; damage 200 → reload time 1s; damage 100
Elevation 5 → 15, and also added proper hit-boxes and animation
@Exotic_Retard care to explain what the motivation behind the atlantis changes are in equilibrium?

another edit:
UEF has arguably the best/most specialized late game naval units of all factions. There is basically nothing that can destroy a decent UEF navy mix at the t3 stage. Giving the Atlantis more capabilities is not needed in my humbly opinion.

[IceDreamer]

If you really wanted to OP-ify Atlantis in a cool way you'd push the whole 'Surprise Attack' bit.

Stealth while submerged + temporary stealth on launched planes seems like a good way to break it

(Realistically, I'd like to allow it to fire the AA while submerged. Unique, cool, powerful, and not game-breaking).

[Iszh]

I thought carriers should get anti nuke?!? Has anybody solved the issued with built power?

My idea would be to introduce special carrier planes. Means to add lots of new units to the game. Copy all planes in a naval version just with alike names and much higher built time so the carrier can have 1024 built power not to spam anti nuke rockets and cannot produce its planes insanely fast. If somebody is bored he can give those new planes other models and maybe even minor balance features (e.g. better designed gainst naval stuff)

[ZLO_RD]

I thought carriers should get anti nuke?!? Has anybody solved the issued with built power?

My idea would be to introduce special carrier planes. Means to add lots of new units to the game. Copy all planes in a naval version just with alike names and much higher built time so the carrier can have 1024 built power not to spam anti nuke rockets and cannot produce its planes insanely fast. If somebody is bored he can give those new planes other models and maybe even minor balance features (e.g. better designed gainst naval stuff)

Easyer to copy jsut missile with less build time rather than all planes

[Iszh]

Yes sure but then you can assist the missiles and spam anti nuke rockets which would be kinda op. Thats the reason why nukes and antinukes have so insane built power that you hardly can spam or assist those rockets.

[snuffles]

What about addressing the actual issue? The effectiveness of Ground Fire on completely submerged units first.

The unit is supposed to be submerged to the depths, and like all other submarines - it would be stupid to operate only as low as periscope depths (think 14m below the surface) or surfaced for long periods.

IRL a submarine's strength against surface ships is the practical inability to hit a submarine with surface-based ballistic weaponry. It's just too deep. Why aren't FAF's subs effectively this deep when completely submerged? Sure, they should be vulnerable during their transition as they move through that depth-band where surface weaponry has an effect on them.

Can we push the submersibles dive depth past the AoE effect of surface weaponry to safe depths? Or must this be simulated? I say, thoughtfully re-work submarines, not just the Atlantis.

Tempest and Atlantis users will want to make use of deeper water, post-beta:
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/1367