How do you beat Cybran Frigates?!

[IceDreamer]

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.

[Ithilis_Quo]

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.

[FtXCommando]

the deep gameplay of torp launcher creep

[Ithilis_Quo]

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.

[CPTANT]

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.

[FunkOff]

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.