Balanced Annihilation V6.5

[YHCIR]

The main problem with ships vs hovers is the speed factor, it's also the main reason I hate playing sea maps.

Con ships take ages to manoeuvre, then decide to jitter for a couple of seconds before taking ages to get out their build arm. As soon as a ship moves out of the shipyard it has to move forwards, stop & turn, move, stop & turn etc. (You also need to spread out tidal to prevent them getting stuck)

Meanwhile hovers just zip by and rape your conyard.

ginekolog, those are valid tactics but usually a hoverush can be done before you reach t2 ships and usually comes out of nowhere; sea players are also usually fighting against another sea army, or supporting the land units with destroyers which are useless vs hovers.

Cheaper/less effective t1 ship defences would help a fair bit IMO, would also stop the sea rush that every game has at the beginning. Getting a couple of sea LLTs would stop your lab getting owned so fast.

The other problem with sea units is that T2 are too powerful, if someone has taken the sea and established T2, you've lost.

[ZellSF]

ginekolog, those are valid tactics but usually a hoverush can be done before you reach t2 ships and usually comes out of nowhere; sea players are also usually fighting against another sea army, or supporting the land units with destroyers which are useless vs hovers.

If you're fighting two players than that's the problem, not the ship/hover imbalance.

[Dragoon]

comon dragoon, learn to play first then moan about balance. To kill hovers as seaplayer:
1. make 1-5 T1 sealabs, assist em with 4 con each and spam corvetes. In fight just ram corvets in middle of hover mass. Easy.
2. At T2 cruiser will also demolisih hover, just dont ram them but keep em at bay. Cruiser do 350 DPS, hover 80.
3. Make gunhips and kill hovers as their AA is quite bad (and should stay that way)
4. Make your own hover mass Sea has hardest to kill eco.

Learn how to play? Hmmm:
1. Spam corvets? The build time of the main hovertank is half the build time of a corvett. For every corvett you spam, the hovertank enemy will have 2 hovertanks. And both do the same amounts of damage - 2x lasers for the corvette vs the cannon for the hovertank - both have the same range, except the lasers do half damage at maximum range.
2. By the time you get to naval T2 and pump out a single cruiser, a hovercraft faction will have 10-20 3500hp assault hovertanks raping your shipyards. An assault hovertank costs 1/3 the metal of a cruiser...and navies don't have the fast build speed of land units due to the lack of nano-turrets.
3. It is unlikely a player would have the resources to build both ships and sea-planes in the early game. Furthermore, seaplanes are rather weak compared to T2 land planes, and the AA hovercrafts aren't too shabby. If you're going to go air, you might as well go 100% T2 aircraft on land and skip the naval part altogether.
4. That's why I'm saying hovers are overpowered...even the most basic hovertank will rape T1 navies.

Sea is fundamentally different from land - you cannot compare only hp-damage-cost in a meaningful way.

Except for the fact that hovercrafts are both sea and land, and are far more cost effective compared to expensive ships. Players going pure navies won't survive past T1 against a player using hovercrafts.

One thing you should know about sea is their massive buildpower. Each t1 builder is almost as fast as a commander. Also, tidal strengths are usually very high (20-25), providing a very cost effective energy economy. On top of that, sea metal makers are more cost effective than land ones.

The main problem is just getting navies to survive past T1 against a hovercraft rush. Increase the HP of the ships and increase the blast radius of ship cannons for more AOE IMO.

[Pxtl]

You keep saying "buff ships" and keep ignoring something - ships rape land units in shoreline attacks, because they can have superior range. Buffing ships would make that even more severe.

[jellyman]

If anything buff hovers or nerf ships.

Hovers have a slight chance of taking out sea at t1, if you have a sea ally to support (i.e. 2 vs 1 should always win), or if you are playing an opponent who is asleep and think that the game won't start until t2, which is unfortunately tragically common.

Against competent opposition hover's only value is to support sea, and to attack land across the sea before an enemy sea player is too entrenched.

If you spam lots of t1 kbots or vehicles you can be competitive with a t2 land player until that player ammasses enough t2 firepower to make an impenetrable wall for the t1 spam. But hovers are effectively t1.5, and for reasons pointed out above will not compete with t2 ships at all unless the t2 ship player is just not competent.

[Evil4Zerggin]

The thing about T2 sea isn't that the units are more cost efficient (at least after the cruiser nerf a few versions back). They may be individually powerful, but they are also individually very expensive. T2 sea tends to be hard to dislodge because of the following:

• Sea battles tend to be decided at T1 unless you're fighting on a narrow river like The Rock. If a sea player is T2, that means that they probably own the whole sea, with all the associated mex spots and likely an enemy navy + shipyard + comm reclaim. This means that their economy is likely larger than an average attacker's; a matter of having more metal, not better units for their cost.
• Even if economies are even between players, there is a natural progression from small units to large units as the game goes on. This is because large units provide better concentration of power. Flash work well when everyone can only afford a dozen of them in one place. 200 Flash in one place doesn't work so well because only a small fraction of them can actually be fighting at a time, and because they're more vulnerable to splash damage. Again, at the stage of the game where T2 sea is common, hovercraft can't concentrate enough power.

However, before T2, hovers are very potent in sea. Any combination of at least two of hovers, subs, and/or air will be very difficult to stop for a sea player since no unit is very effective against more than one of these. You don't need to have two players give their whole attention to it either; a single scout hover or gunship raid against an unprepared or distracted player is often enough to tip the balance, and it's not like the sea player can't provide a little destroyer fire support to help the land players back.

To me corvettes seem a bit weak as a hover counter, especially if one doesn't know about the damage dropoff with range; however, they're already strong in pure sea vs. sea because with some micro you can dodge most sub torpedoes and they're good against destroyers, so I don't know if one could really buff them. Hovers are clearly inferior to land units in a straight fight as well.

In practice, though, the sea player is usually the one building the hovers after taking out the opposing sea player (if one exists).

[BaNa]

torps should hit hovers, mabe with only 50% or 25% damage? that could be sweet. On the other hand it would make sea more into torp-launcher spam.

[Pxtl]

torps should hit hovers, mabe with only 50% or 25% damage? that could be sweet. On the other hand it would make sea more into torp-launcher spam.

iirc, torps do hit and kill hovers. They just don't target them.

And imho, more torp-launcher spam at sea would be a good thing, as it would encourage using the destroyer-style ships instead of spamming frigates.

[MR.D]

The real problem is lack of worthwhile surface defenses vs costs and effectiveness of the T1 ships when dealing with Hovers.

If floating HLT's were worth its cost, hovers would be less of a problem, as its the only water-Tier defense capable of hitting surface vehicles or defending your Ship lab against hovercraft.

3 Hover tanks can wipe out a floating HLT as easily as 3 flash can knock down a LLT and still have HP left to fight on.

Without its deck gun, even the T1 battleships can't take on hovers of equal cost.

[Pxtl]

The real problem is lack of worthwhile surface defenses vs costs and effectiveness of the T1 ships when dealing with Hovers.

If floating HLT's were worth its cost, hovers would be less of a problem, as its the only water-Tier defense capable of hitting surface vehicles or defending your Ship lab against hovercraft.

3 Hover tanks can wipe out a floating HLT as easily as 3 flash can knock down a LLT and still have HP left to fight on.

Without its deck gun, even the T1 battleships can't take on hovers of equal cost.

You mean the destroyers? Either way, to me it sounds like the solution is still letting torps hit hovers (but not depth-charges)... you'd have to switch around the weapons though. After all, you don't want subs killing hovers when the hovers can't return fire. So you convert the L1 sub's weapon into a DC, and do the reverse to the destroyer. Although it might look a little silly - a sub shoots DCs.

Alternately, let all sub weapons hit hovers and give the SAM hover back its depthcharge launcher... but that one was one of Caydr's less-popular ideas.

[Pressure Line]

why/how would a torp hit a hover anyway?

hover ship
--sea level-- ship
torp ship/sub

notice how the hover is ABOVE the level of the sea? that torps hit units that are entirely above the waterline is borderline bug imo, and the only reason they do hit is because most *A mods use hit spheres, instead of boxes (the bottom of the sphere is under the water, a propely configured box would be above the water, like the model is.)

a floating LLT would probably be a decent idea (would provide early protection vs light hover, sea and to a lesser extent, air)

[el_matarife]

Do floating mines explode when hovers hit them? Floating mines really should be able to stop hovers, as well as Shark's Teeth.

[BrainDamage]

why/how would a torp hit a hover anyway?

hover ship
--sea level-- ship
torp ship/sub

Most of the torpedoes are shipped with a proximity fuse ( generally magnetic/sonar sensing ) + sonar/wired remote for guidance, therefore it would still aim and explode directly below the water surface, under the hover, resulting into ripping off the hover skirt and sinking it almost instantly

if you wanna add hover "nerf" you could make them being able to move only in shallow water ( note: i'm just brainstorming here )

[el_matarife]

Honestly, removing the ability to move across water would make hovercraft totally useless. I think giving most ships and Guardian/Punisher/Toaster/Ambusher extra damage against hovers is the answer. The plasma cannons already have a "shore defense" role since they do extra damage to ships, you might as well extend it to defending against hovers and pelicans (Since they move across the top of the water too).

[Pxtl]

You know what? I was about to suggest that a hover-targeting torp launcher was a somewhat-expensive but effective substitute for a sea-LLT... but I just looked at the stats of a torpedo launcher. Never mind. Those things suck for doing anything but fighting subs. Seriously, you get the same DPS (ignoring laser-falloff) for a quarter of the cost in an LLT.

[ZellSF]

1. Spam corvets? The build time of the main hovertank is half the build time of a corvett. For every corvett you spam, the hovertank enemy will have 2 hovertanks. And both do the same amounts of damage - 2x lasers for the corvette vs the cannon for the hovertank - both have the same range, except the lasers do half damage at maximum range.

And hovertanks *will* miss their target a lot. So again, not two units you can compare damage directly.

[Evil4Zerggin]

The further the range, the more likely the hovercrafts will miss, but the less damage the corvette's lasers do. In fact, this was the original justification for having laser damage drop off with range (not a good reason IMO, but that's the way it is). So it's not that horrible a comparison. Generally I would try to get to short range with corvettes, though--I doubt a hovercraft would miss 50% of the time even at long range, especially if there are a lot of units.

Also MRPC against ships is fail. It's an offensive unit, but you can't really use it for offense against sea. At most you can deny a sea player a mex or two if they haven't capped it already, and they can still camp your coastline with subs. And once they reach T2 it's useless. In fact, 2 MRPC = T2 sea in metal.

[Pxtl]

I think the idea is that, with their long range (combined with shoreline DC launchers), the player can cover a large enough area for the player to set up a factory.

Never seen it happen in real gameplay, though.

[REVENGE]

You know what? I was about to suggest that a hover-targeting torp launcher was a somewhat-expensive but effective substitute for a sea-LLT... but I just looked at the stats of a torpedo launcher. Never mind. Those things suck for doing anything but fighting subs. Seriously, you get the same DPS (ignoring laser-falloff) for a quarter of the cost in an LLT.

OTA torpedo launchers attack Hovers, and gameplay was balanced.

Also, ignoring laser falloff is folly, never ignore laser falloff.

[det]

BA Corvettes seriously rape hovers. I think the problem is that most people arent aware of the minintensity factor. The close a corvette is the a hover, the more damage it will do. If you are fighting hovers from max range then you will probably only make cost.