Patch 3704 Release Thread

[biass]

This talk of boat X vs boat Y is pointless. Most people don't understand how to harness naval power (and it is easy to find academic material since, somewhat perversely, the in-game navy mechanics tactically mirrors the WW1-era direct fire focus.

Things like crossing the T, staggered advance and simple things like treating your ships like cavalry (in the technical sense) makes all the difference. If you are going to treat your navy as a slugfest then you are bound to be disillusioned.

It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.

rocketrooster...

[UnorthodoxBox]

the in-game navy mechanics tactically mirrors the WW1-era direct fire focus.

Except the part where the boats can rotate about the Y-axis without having to move forwards or backwards. In all the setons I have played so far, there are no complex naval maneuvers because doing a naval maneuver means you just get shot at without any benefit. The craftsman's tools thing makes 0 sense because you can see immediately that certain ships are better than others. For example, take a look at aeon frigates. You can make 5000 mass worth of aeon frigates, which is about 17 frigates, but if your opponent is cybran and makes 5000 mass of frigates, they will have exactly 20. Also they have 50 more HP than aeon. Also they have 4 more dps. No amount of WW1 naval micro will make 17 aeon frigates beat 20 cybran frigates. As soon as you start trying to do these dumb maneuvers, the opponent will probably not even notice and just swarm with more units anyway.

[Little Miss Murder]

You're falling into precisely the 1v1 ship on ship comparison trap I talked about. Destroyers and subs exist to protect your Ships Of The Line; one's aim in battle is always to dish out licks without receiving them. The talk of numbers and mass for mass implies an attritional slugfest, and it is your skill as a naval commander to tactically rock the scissors or with range and positioning and focusing to remove the threats to your ships, even if outnumbered until you can reach some sort of parity.

A comment about the ability to turn on the spot - it is a side effect of the fact that maps do not have the vast expanses of true oceanic warfare, so in a sense it is a microscale version that approximates same because we dont have the benefit of scale. A more telling difference would be the fact that, in FAF, we don't have to worry about spotting the fall of shot, like in a real battle, since projectiles are rendered even under the fog of war. But I digress. It's more an issue that has its basis in the general Supcom world that, imv, intelligence is too reliable, cheap and easy to come by, but that is fodder for another discussion.

[UnorthodoxBox]

Yea... no. This game is not Rock Paper Scissors. Real world naval tactics do not apply. Ship vs ship comparisons matter and calling it a trap is false. Like I said, there is no super special naval tactic you can use to make 17 aeon frigs beat 20 cybran. Feel free to bring up replays of (competent) players using special naval formations and tactics to win. Also this is the balance forum, where the hell are people supposed to talk about unit vs unit comparison, if not THE LITERAL FORUM TO DISCUSS THE BALANCE OF UNITS.

[Little Miss Murder]

Feel free to bring up replays of (competent) players using special naval formations and tactics to win. Also this is the balance forum, where the hell are people supposed to talk about unit vs unit comparison, if not THE LITERAL FORUM TO DISCUSS THE BALANCE OF UNITS.

Challenge accepted!

On a side note, please don't shift the goalposts. Nobody here is complaining about ferinstance Percies vs Harbs, or Lobos vs zooies - obviously each has different tactical strengths and it requires the opposite of a slugfest to make them work as designed.

[UnorthodoxBox]

Percies vs harbs is very very much different than salems vs exodus. Percies are tanks meant to fight high-health, tanky units, or mop up t2. Harbs are agile (not anymore kappa) and meant to deal with late t2 units and low-health t3, while wiping the floor with t1 units. Salems are meant to outrange frigates and provide more concentrated health/dps, while also being able to deal with subs. Exodus are meant to outrange frigates and provide more concentrated health/dps, while also being able to deal with subs. I fail to see what you mean about moving goal posts.

[Little Miss Murder]

Ahem. You said it.. Destros are meant to outrange frigates. But you're complaining that we ought to focus on frigate vs frigate because that's "balance"?

[biass]

It seems to me as if there is a big bias towards favouring Cybran and a lot of hate vs Sera in the balancing committee.

Destroyers and subs exist to protect your Ships Of The Line

Fellas if you think Jagged or anyone in the balance team is going to listen to at best ancedotal / at worst comical opinions from average level players with no replays to support them after the YEARS of lich/hawkei/mayasaka/rooster balance cancer, you would indeed be delusional.

If you claim that UEF T2 navy is so much as an autowin againt seraphim T2 (when I thought it was almost the opposite..), you're going to need to bring proof to the table.

If you unironically looked up world war one military strategems to attempt to learn how to play I will be sure to send you a "get well soon" card.

[Hildegard]

Little Miss Murder is fundamentally based, and, dare I say it, redpi-
Ops wrong forum.

While no encyclopedic naval warfare knowledge is required, certain fundamentals apply (to some, these are self apparent). How did one of the best naval players in the game win another, from beach to rock, if not by displaying a battleship formation (that happens to be, as Little Miss correctly asserts, textbook WW1 naval tactics) enabling maximal collective range collision on targets? Whether or not the particular unit balance between this battleship and the other affected the outcome is another story. But for the record, it was Galaxy from beach winning Summit from rock, a result which I'd say the majority of this community would predict the other way. And this was a thread on this very forum!

From my experience with competitive games, balance is transformative as it varies on different levels of play. Some of the most lopsided, rock-paper-scissor duels between two entities of which the other was described as a "total hard counter" to the other, would often turn out to be incredibly even when performed by the best of the best.

While the frigate vs. frigate boogaloo will arguably have predictable results based on faction and in smaller scale, this becomes increasingly ambivalent the later the game stage is. For example, it's difficult to approximate how much additional damage Aeon frigates deal collectively from their slight range advantage during a large brawl. With infinite APM 17 Aeon frigates could possibly outperform 20 Cybran frigates simply by being able to focus more fire on a single target. While this particular example is unrealistic in a real game, I think the implication in it can be carried to naval combat as a whole. Positioning mistakes are the most common mistakes that you see on even the highest level of Seton's; wrong types of ships in the wrong place at the wrong time, and battleships not retreating in a timely manner and without breaking their formation.

Personally I find naval balance near perfect due to the undefinable leverage that always exists in the movements and unit compositions.

[FtXCommando]

My favorite WW1 navy tactic was when no real naval battle was fought and the Germans and UK kept ecoing to not massgift.

Germans still lost once USParagon came online tho

Don’t really get all the hype around formations here. Obviously when you talk about a frigate mass for mass battle you’re not arguing that one dude accidentally held fire on all his units or only moved in so that 5 frigates attack 20. Entire convo here got dumped into the thread because a dude said comparing which destros, bs, cruiser, whatever are superior is pointless. Which is just hilariously wrong. How the hell do you define what faction thrives at certain tech levels then? Just as hilariously wrong is the idea of balance being done by some sandbox where you order two mass equivalent armies into one spot and see who wins.